“You are not failing at adulthood, even though you have not yet managed to buy and renovate a house”
The article by Rabbi Kerzner about the importance of chesed at home was truly phenomenal. This piece highlights, in such a gentle tone, how easy it is for people to appear to the world as the nicest people, yet in the confines of their homes lash out at their spouse and kids, knowing that they can get away with it. Our kids see right through our hypocrisy. If you have pleasant and tolerant Shabbos tables when guests visit, yet are brazen, irritable, and apathetic when eating just with your family, the children may come to resent you. It turns out that if the very chesed the person does for people outside the home triggers resentment in the hearts of the person’s loved ones, the noble intent to be kind to others can backfire in a dangerous way. May we learn this crucial lesson of “chesed begins at home,” and consequently merit to see only nachas from all of our children.
Yitzy Stern
Thank you so much for the fantastic article by Rav Aryeh Kerzner about the community-family balance. It was so powerful to hear about the struggle between giving attention to one’s family and giving quality time to the community.
I would like to add an element to this conversation that was not addressed in the article. Rav Kerzner beautifully explained that the main reason people have difficulty helping out at home, being nice to their spouse, taking care of their children, is because no one on the outside sees the chesed done in the confines of one’s home, so the pressure to perform simply doesn’t apply. You can take liberties at home because you won’t be held to account by the world.
However, there is perhaps a simple explanation for people slacking off at home, as opposed to out in the world. It is so easy for the chores, the responsibilities, and the chasadim that one does at home to become routine and turn stale. The chesed done at home is meant to be done so consistently that it is at risk of becoming rote, and lost in the shuffle.
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