L’kavod the heilige tzaddik, ba’al m’chaber sefer Kedushas Levi, Reb Levi Yitzchok of Bardichev, zy’a.
The Bardichever built an entire life around one skill. He’d see a Yid doing something wrong, and figure out a way it was right. He was the classic defense attorney, and always on call.
I would suggest that most of us have this skill within us, at least towards some people. Clearly, if it’s a mitzvah in the Torah to judge people favorably, that means there is some real avodah to do, and we have to work on it. But by nature, Yidden have that spark already, and we just have to learn to fan it. We can easily motivate ourselves — after all, wouldn’t we want people to come to our defense when we’ve made a mistake?
What’s hard to swallow (at least for me) is that I don’t think I do this so well with my kids. They get different treatment than strangers do, for some reason.
I’ve gotten used to the really loud guy in shul. He’s not trying to annoy me personally, he just either enjoys singing a lot or has fantastic kavana. Both are fine with me.
The friend that doesn’t answer my emails, that one’s harder, but I know him already, he’s busy, too busy for his own good, and I’ve learned to feel some rachmanus for the guy.
So why do my kids get a different standard entirely? My kids interrupt me. I don’t bother explaining it to the youngest one yet, the middle one gets a somewhat nice reminder, but the oldest gets a punishment. Now, maybe he should get that punishment. After all, it was the 13th time he did that today, and he probably did it 13 more times to his mother.
But even with that punishment, I should probably remind myself that he’s not a bad kid — he’s just nine years old! And if I wanna be a real Bardichever, I should up the bet — this nine year old is so excited about something that he wants to share with his father! What a tzadik!
And then, if I can wear the Bardichever hat a little longer, I should report it back to the Boss. “Hashem, this kid over here wants to connect to his parents. He doesn’t know how to hold in his excitement about telling them something important to him. What a great form of chutzpah! And that’s Klal Yisroel — we’re chutzpahdig to You, but just because we want to connect!” OK, needs work, but not a bad start.
Maybe we can take this one day at a time. We can decide to look at our children and see the part that is honest, tired, overwhelmed, or a million other things, and zoom in. We can choose to represent our own children the way we’d want someone representing us.
This article was found in Nekuda Tova Issue 101 – Bardichever Yahrtzeit Edition.
