May 14, 2020
Inspiration The Da’as to Have Da’as Torah
This is what happened.
When I was a teacher, I mentored a student who followed me out of high school through her seminary and post seminary years. I knew her well. Very well. And then she got engaged and we were thrilled. Both of us. Maybe she was more thrilled, but you know what I mean. A year later, once she was married, she needed to talk to a rav about an issue related to a medical condition she had since childhood (of course her husband knew about it before they were married!). Here she ran into a glitch. The rav needed her input in order to make a halachic ruling, input that only she could give because it had to do with her; knowing herself and her medical condition in a way that nobody else could know her. It was a serious shayla with many ramifications.
In my multiple roles of woman of house, teacher, and now therapist, my interactions with rabbanim have been mostly positive. And eye-opening. And beneficial.
So, what was the glitch?
My student called me distraught. The rav listened to her very carefully and said, “Something doesn’t make sense. Are you sure about what you are telling me?”
“Of course I make sense!” my student cried to me. “I lived with this all my life, practically. I know! I know what I know!”
I listened.
“The rav wants to talk to you,” she said. “He said that if you know me so well, maybe you can help him to get clarity on this issue.”
She explained to me the issue carefully. She explained to me all the medical jargon and personal material I needed to know in order to ascertain for the rav that my student knew what she said she knew. I listened even more carefully.
My student was mature. She was smart. She was very self-aware, realistic, and clear. I had no doubt that she knew what she said she knew.
I called the rav and told him all this as he asked me many questions. He reiterated again his concern that something didn’t feel right to him, but on my say-so, on my student’s absolute certainty of her clarity, he would pasken the shayla accordingly.
My student was relieved.
I was not.
I called her back to let her know what the rav had said. And told her this:
“I believe you that you know what you know. When I listen to you, it leaves no doubt in my mind that you understand the situation and have absolute clarity and certainty about what you know. But this is the not the first time I have dealt with a rav. And I have learned that when a rav has an instinct about something, he is usually right. I have no idea,” I said to my student, “how you can be wrong about this situation and the rav, who knows nothing about you or the medical aspects of this, can be right. But I am simply afraid to let his psak go simply according to your assessment.”
My student was quiet. “What should I do then,” she asked.
“Go to a specialist,” I said. “I know you are burned out and it may be a waste of time and energy and even money. But go anyway. I will feel more at ease knowing that you have checked this out one more time.”
My student went.
She called me right after the appointment, while still on the street waiting for an Uber home, half-crying, half laughing, embarrassed and confused and relieved.
“The rav was right,” she said. “He was right!”
She was dumbfounded. “How did he know? How could he have known better than me?”
And the new psak cleared up any ambiguities and caused a simple and quick resolution to an issue she had thought was more serious than it actually was.
My relief was as profound as hers, though not my surprise.
In my multiple roles of woman of house, teacher, and now therapist, my interactions with rabbanim have been mostly positive. And eye-opening. And beneficial.
When my clients today are ready to date and wonder how they will avoid the pitfalls they have watched their parents plunge into, one of the things I encourage them to research in a shidduch is whether or not this bachur seeks out da’as Torah. There is a red flag over a potential shidduch that doesn’t have. A girl or woman who has recourse to a rav about halachic and hashkafic questions one who understands how to guide in navigating issues she naively didn’t think she would need to address when she was ensconced in her sheltered home and school environment and didn’t have to address any situation in which people disagreed with her; of she disagreed with others in a fundamental way that could potentially impact her and her children.
When consulting da’as Torah is a way of life, when a rav is an integral part of a person’s and couple’s life, someone who knows a person or this couple well, in a deeper way, then many challenges, in shalom bayis, in parenting, with parnassah, with hashkafah remain challenges rather than problems.
This holds true of children who grow up in homes where consulting da’as Torah is the norm. When they are faced with situations that trouble them, and they are odds with a parent who they feel does not understand them (welcome to the world of teenagers!), a rav can effect harmony in an otherwise acrimonious situation.
I remember my friend’s child who was wreaking havoc in the family because he wanted to put on a specific levush for his bar mitzvah to which his father adamantly refused to listen. I don’t remember the outcome, but this was a family that generally consulted their rav, so this situation was defused by a compassionate rav with knowledge of both son and father.
An ad for a savings account coined the catchy phrase the gift that keep on giving. A person lucky enough to have a relationship with a rav to take what he can give, is truly in a position to enjoy the gift that keeps giving as the benefits escalate and spills over to create blessings in so many areas of life.
I have just reread what I have written and I am surprised at my preachy tone which is so unlike my usual style. And decided to change nothing of it. Please read it not as preachy but as passionate. My gift to you.
Originally published in Binah Magazine
