Rabbi Shimon Russell discovered his best self by parenting his struggling kids
Rabbi Shimon Russell, an international authority on the phenomenon of young people who opt out of frum life and a longtime Lakewood mental health professional before relocating to the Jerusalem suburb of Givat Ze’ev, also wants to see us in healthy, supportive relationships. And he’s even given us a book to help us get there.
Drawn from Rabbi Russell’s talks and wisdom, Raising a Loving Family — written by author and educator Rabbi Zalman Goldstein — is not only a rich repository of foundational parenting psychology and practical down-to-earth guidance for creating loving and enduring bonds with our children; it’s about how to make kids feel they really matter, and how, by developing healthy parental attachments, to raise them in a way that even if and when problems and crises arise, they’ll have the resilience to weather the storms of trauma and other roadblocks in their young lives.
True, there are a lot of parenting guidebooks out there, and some are even Torah-based, but this one doesn’t talk at you, it talks with you and holds your hand. Because no one knows the complex challenges of today’s struggling youth and their overwhelmed, confused, and devastated parents like Rabbi Russell. He’s been there and back himself, on a journey he never wished for and never expected — but one that’s molded him into a person he never dreamed he’d be.
It was 1963, and the Russell family was driving through the streets of London on the way home from their zeide’s traditional Pesach Seder, when inquisitive nine-year-old Shimon, looking out the back window at the city’s sparkling lights, suddenly asked his father, “Daddy, why do we go to a Seder every year?”
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