Guest Post- Rabbi Pesach Sommer
Running Thoughts #58
By Rabbi Pesach Sommer
Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 12:59 PM
I’ve noticed something at the marathon expos I’ve attended: you can tell a lot about a person based on the shirt he is wearing. If he is sporting the shirt from that weekend's race, having received his goody bag and immediately donned his shirt, you can be sure it is his first race. Then there are those who want you to know that they are “real runners”. Those guys tend to wear shirts with the Boston Marathon logo, or a shirt from some Ultra-triathlon. Interestingly, the best runners don’t seem to feel this need. They are often the ones who are wearing some no-frills logo-less running shirt they found at Goodwill for $2.89.
It’s not just runners who use things as status symbols. Whether it is clothes, a car or a house, people often feel the need to let everyone know how well they are doing. I know that I am included in this. Worst of all, I only recently realized that I was doing this with my son Yehuda.
Yehuda is less than three months away from his bar mitzvah. Contrary to popular thought, there are no requirements for becoming a Bar Mitzvah, other than turning 13. All the other things are cultural expectations rather than religious ones. In my community, it has become the norm for boys to read the weekly Torah portion when they turn 13. If that experience which takes about a year to learn does not overwhelm them, than perhaps the added expectation of studying a tractate from the Talmud, or a whole book of the mishna might do it. Yehuda is a great kid. Like many people, including his father, he sometimes gets a bit overwhelmed when he has a lot on his plate. He has been teaching himself his Torah portion on his own, something that is rarely done. We have also been studying mishna together. Recently, for various reasons he has fallen behind. Rather than accept the fact that he might not finish what we were studying in time for his bar mitzvah, I have pushed, threatened and cajoled. Predictably, this has had only an adverse effect. Only recently did I realize that I was the problem rather than him. I realized that I wanted him to finish for me, so that people would see how smart my son is, what a good father I am, and how religious I am. I started pulling back and letting him move at this own pace. I accepted the fact that we might not finish on time. Paradoxically, or perhaps not, we have been covering a lot of ground.
My son is not an extension of me and he is certainly not a running shirt. Seems like he is not the only one who is figuring out how to be a man.
Pesach Sommer is a loving father and provider for his wife and six children. In recent years he started running assiduously and gleans life lessons from the process of running which he shares in emails to friends. He is an evolved person who thinks seriously for himself and is passionate about his life. He is an excellent teacher who in the spirit of true chesed wants to see to it that kids are challenged and assisted toward getting what they need. It is an honor to have these words, which touched me deeply, posted (with permission) in this space. If you are not exceedingly touched by the last paragraph, then we probably don't have a lot to talk about, but then again, you probably haven't made it this far.
posted by rabbi neil fleischmann @ 11:53 PM
7 Comments:
I'm a bechor. At my bar mitzvah, my father went all out, so I prepared the parsha, which was a relatively short one, thank heavens, and memorized a 15 page lomdishe pshetl in yiddish. It took about 20-25 minutes to say. In middle of delivering the pshetl, one of my uncles asked me a kushya. I just looked at him like he was out of his mind. By the time my younger brothers hit the big 13, the standards were much, much relaxed. That's the way it was with most things; I fought the battles, but it was my brothers who benefitted most down the line.
That reminds me of the story of Rav Yisrael Slanter. Before a public shiur, some of his detractors stole his notes of mar'eh mekomot from his shtender. When it was time to speak he looked down, then paused for a moment. He looked up and proceeded to give the full, brilliant presentation sanz mar'eh mekomot sheet. Afterwards, one of Reb Yisrael's talmidim said that he was confident that he knew why his Rebbe had looked down and then up before the talk. He said, "Don't think tht he took the moment to put together the talk in his head -he didn't need the time for that. He paused to decide if he should reveal that he could give the talk without notes.
(I was thinking that one could suggest that you looked at your uncle like he was nuts because you didn't want to show off by answering the kushya.)
Thanks, Kishke, for commenting and sharing this memory/phenomenon. It is a good contribution to the discussion topic of relevance and effects of birth order. That's a topic I think about pretty much every day.
I was thinking that one could suggest that you looked at your uncle like he was nuts because you didn't want to show off by answering the kushya.
One could suggest it, but it wouldn't be true. I remember thinking at the time: "My father wrote this thing. Ask him if you're so interested!"
The uncle in question was a young man then, who had just married into the family. He was (and is) a very earnest fellow. Both contributed to his asking the question. I learned a lot about his personality from that question.
It's amazing what we can hear in people's words when they think they're saying something else. isn't it?
I guess. The problem is that often what you think you're hearing could easily be an echo of something in your own head.
Well, you did learn about your uncle. I think one can be intuitive and right, or not. And one can think one is intuitive and be wrong... as you suggest.
When my boys were bar mitzvah, I had them layen. I was a bit tough about with some of them when they got lazy, b/c I felt they could do it, especially since the parshios were really short, and I could tell they had a feel for it. They did beautifully. I had them memorize their pshetls too, but they were in English, and only about 3 pages long.
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