Rav Shimshon Dovid Pincus ztz’l, speaking to a larger crowd, once mentioned a letter he’d written to his son where he provided some advice about a question the boy had asked him.
But before he got into the actual advice, Rav Pincus asked a “kashia on himself,” a question only a great person would have.
He asked: who am I to give advice to my son? Chazal tell us that if you want to trust someone to teach you correctly, they have to be “domeh l’malach Hashem,” similar to a malach, with an extreme level of purity and kedusha. So what business does a father have handing out guidance?
His answer: that condition applies to a Rav. If a Rav is like a malach, then learn from him. But a father is different. A son has to know that when his father advises him, and has his best interest at heart, that guidance is coming from Shomayim. The child can rely on it. Not because the father reached some lofty spiritual level, but because he’s the father.
We’ve talked in this column before about parents needing to believe in themselves. That the normal doubt of “who am I to guide this kid,” doesn’t have to run the show. Now we have a stamp of approval from Rav Shimshon Dovid Pincus, and I, for one, am considering writing it all over the walls of my house in permanent marker.
You don’t need to have the perfect chinuch philosophy figured out. You don’t need a semicha, or a psychology degree, or a spotless record of never losing your temper before you’re allowed to tell your kid something true. You need to show up, come from a place of genuine care, and try to steer them somewhere good.
We assume that unless we’ve got it all together, our words don’t carry weight.
But Rav Pincus is telling us that the weight was never about how put-together we are. It was about the relationship we have. A father speaking to his son from a place of love, wanting what’s genuinely good for him, has already got Shomayim behind it.
The next time our children ask us our opinion, and we feel that flicker of “who am I to answer this,” we can remember what Rav Pincus told himself first. We don’t need to be malachim.
We just need to be their parents.
This article was found in Nekuda Tova Issue 97.
