We Make Mentschen!

A few weeks ago I spent two days in Melbourne where a function was held in honour of Rabbi Yitzchok Dovid Groner's eightieth birthday. Rabbi Groner is the head of the Chabad in Melbourne.

Amongst the anecdotes that were told, I found the following particularly poignant.

In 1994 the Yeshivah institutions in Melbourne were facing bankruptcy and the Commonwealth Bank was threatening to foreclose on the mortgage. As a result, a number of communal identities and well-known business people went to see the then head of the Commonwealth Bank, David Murray. They were going to tell him how important the Yeshivah was for the Jewish Community. Many of them knew Murray personally and were convinced that they would get a sympathetic hearing.

Arriving at the meeting, they were taken aback. Murray had brought along with him a fellow called John Edwards or, as he was commonly known, John "the Hatchet" Edwards. Edwards was the man responsible for bad accounts. Things looked even grimmer when it became clear that it was Edwards, not Murray, who was going to chair the meeting.

Right at the outset he made it known that he was an atheist with absolutely no sympathy for any religion. On the contrary, he thought that religion was the bane of society. From his perspective, it would be better if everyone went to public schools and ceased sponging on the community. He concluded that as far as he was concerned the Yeshivah was no more than a client, and a particularly bad client at that. If the Yeshivah couldn't pay what it owed, he was going to wind it up just like we would any business in default.

All the businessmen sitting around the table were flabbergasted. In their minds, the case was lost. He didn't even give them an opening.

After a minute, Rabbi Groner gets up - he is a very big man - and says: "Hello, your name is John, my name is Isaac. How do you do?"

Then Rabbi Groner grabs Edwards around the shoulders and bellows: "Look here Johnny, I don't think you understand what we do here. We make mentschen. Do you know what a mentsch is? A mentsch is a person who has respect for all other human beings. A mentsch is a person who cares about others. A mentsch is a person who is a good civic citizen. Australia needs mentschen - and we produce them."

By the end of the meeting, everything had turned around - and a compromise deal was struck.
Rabbi Groner was not kidding when he spoke about an institution that produced mentschen. Yeshivah Melbourne was my school and Rabbi Groner was my Rabbi. He is also the Rabbi of many of today's religious and communal leaders throughout Australia. As Rabbi Groner said last week, there are some people who complain that Lubavitch takes over. "Lubavitch," he explained, "doesn't take over at all. It teaches its students that community service is the most important value in life, and it's therefore no surprise that so many of our graduates have put communal life way ahead of their personal and professional lives."

To give you an understanding of the kind of place that Yeshivah Melbourne was and the kind of person that Rabbi Groner is, here is another short story that was related that night.
Manny Althaus recalled how Rabbi Groner once came into his class to test the students. Manny, always the cheeky kid who forty years on is not much different, answered the questions in a rather chutzpahdik manner.

Rabbi Groner - quick as a flash - gave him slap. (I'm not advocating it - that's just what happened in those days - you could slap a naughty kid and not end up in jail!)

Came recess, and Manny finds himself being summoned into the Rabbi's office. He goes, tail between his feet, expecting to get yet another hiding. As he walks through the door, Rabbi Groner puts his arm around him and says, "Althaus, in class I had to give you a patch. But I want you to know that I love you. And he gives him a huge kiss." (In those days you could do that too without getting arrested!)

The reason I tell you these stories is because it is relevant to us. You see, the school I went to was not a school at all. It was a family and it had an absolutely astounding impact on the lives of its students - an impact that went far beyond education in the normal sense.

If we did something unacceptable outside school hours - we were hauled over the coals. We were bringing the family into disrepute.

Today, it's not like that. If the school dares discipline a child for something the child did outside school hours, the school is likely to find itself in court.

Now that's fine as long as parents take absolute responsibility for their children outside school hours. But do they?

Why is it then that children of fourteen and fifteen years old are strolling the streets at 12.00am and 1.00 am and even later on a Saturday night?

Why is it that so many children are drinking, drugging - and out of control?

Did anyone see the article in the Sydney Morning Herald a few weeks ago - that the main culprits of underage drinking are the children's own families who supply them with the drink or the money to buy it? And the article continued that many of these kids are likely to grow up with serious alcohol problems?

You know two years ago on Simchas Torah we had a problem - kids were drinking in our home. Some of them stole alcohol from our home and then they went off to the park and drank more.

I copped a lot of flak for that, but I took it on the chin and decided to do something about it. This year I decided to take action at the risk of becoming very unpopular. No liquor was left on the tables on Simchas Torah and only adults poured the drinks. I had strings of kids trailing me - literally begging for drinks. I had kids pulling PhotoID cards out of their wallets and saying see I am eighteen - when the card showed that they were sixteen or less!

I took it on the chin and was ready to be unpopular - tough love, I think they call it - and I certainly hope that parents will follow suit.

I was recently told that on a recent Saturday night a number of kids were hanging out outside the reserve on Lancaster Road, several of whom were holding baseball bats - at 11.00pm. So one of the parents, who is on the Board of the School gets out of his car - and says, "hmm, I didn't know that the school had a baseball team!"

But jokes aside - where were the parents?

This is not a matter of religion. This is a matter of bringing up your kids as responsible adults. Of creating mentchen.

Why are parents so afraid of their children? If you need to punish, then punish. You can follow Rabbi Groner's example and kiss them immediately after. They may not tell it to you at the time, but they will know that you love of them and that you care about them, even more than if you cower to all their needs.

It is a parent's responsibility to know where their children are - not where their children say they are but where they are - and what they are doing.

A lot of parents feel helpless. How can they be different to the many other parents who let their kids do as they please? I can only suggest that parents who really care about their kids form groups, and instead of trying to tackle this very serious problem on their own, tackle it together. Anything less is pure irresponsibility.

Finally, many parents think their kids are no different than they were when they were young. But I really wonder. What is available to kids today is a lot more dangerous than what was available to kids in our time.

When I was in New York recently, I noticed an advertisement on several subway cars. It read: "Just because you did drugs and survived, don't be so sure that your kids will too."
We are about to celebrate Chanukah - which on a deeper level is the Festival of Jewish Education (Chanukah derives from the Hebrew words Chinuch=Education). Education means a whole lot more than imparting facts. It means, as explained above, creating mentschen. I wish all of you, and me too, lots of success in parenting. It's the one area where we can really make a difference.