When I ask her how Petach Habayit first started, Rebbetzin
Esther Levi smiles:
"For twenty-five years, I answered telephone calls asking for
help. People, especially women, needed help and advice for
sholom bayit, voiced their deep uncertainties on the
broad issue of chinuch (raising children) and needed
assistance and support in correcting the mistakes they had
already made in both of these realms."
Fielding those calls on an ongoing basis, most of them
directed to her husband, R' Dovid Levi shlita, a well-
known, dynamic personality who has done tremendous work in
this area, she realized that people were sad and
disappointed. Jewish homes were in trouble; wonderful young
husbands and wives were feeling challenged and confused.
Small problems that needed just a small dose of wise advice
to solve them, were brushed under the carpet and kept quiet
and hidden — and thus the wounds festered . . .
Instead of the light of the Shechina and the glow of
happiness being the dominant experience in the Jewish home,
there was much sadness and bitterness and lack of
understanding on the parts of the two lead characters in the
family — the parents.
These small misunderstandings almost always tended to evolve
into major disagreements and much tension. Children grew up
and were adversely affected, sometimes even turning their
backs on everything their parents held dear, in order to
escape that friction-filled atmosphere at home. Thus, new
problems piled onto the family's strained records.
There was something awry here, Rebbetzin Levi realized. This
was just not the way things were meant to be. Small problems
should be solved, not be allowed to grow and balloon into
emotional explosions. Disagreements are a natural and normal
part of life and need not escalate into virtual bombshells
that break up a home. There was something missing and nobody
seemed to know what . . .
The Hirsch* (names have been changed to protect privacy)
family, with their seven children, were caught in the web of
the parents' constant disagreements. After years of bickering
and subsequent embarrassing accusations hurled from one
parent to another, Mrs. Hirsch finally picked herself up and,
with all seven children in tow, left the house for calmer
pastures.
It took months of intensive back-and-forth discussion until
R' Levi, along with other Torah personalities, managed to
find some common ground between the warring parties. It
turned out that the disagreements had really been pretty
minor; the problems had begun when those small
misunderstandings were followed by a series of damaging and
hurtful responses that had set the ball rolling towards a
break-up. If the two parties, or perhaps even one of them,
had made more educated and more diplomatically acceptable
responses, the outcome would have been different.
Boruch Hashem, years have passed and the family is
together again and growing happily. They recently married off
their first child to a wonderful yeshiva boy — and
nobody would believe there was ever a shadow of a problem in
the family's unity.
"So we realized," Rebbetzin Levi says with a sigh, "that
people lacked the education and know-how to make informed
choices about their responses. There is usually a provocation
and then a gut response that makes things worse — and
from there, the road to unhappiness isn't long in coming.
After things are so bad, the correction can take months of
intensive involvement to implement. It takes understanding
and investment to build a home and then so much heartache and
misery can be avoided."
Part of the problem is that understanding and discussing
these topics is difficult to carry out practically. Teaching
and understanding the topic of sholom bayit, is not
appropriate in a school or yeshiva setting, though it is
precisely our young people who need to hear and absorb its
lessons.
Our children today are raised with everything going for them.
Throughout their childhood, parents typically provide
everything they need on a silver platter. It is only after
marriage that challenges creep up and things may not always
be exactly the way they'd planned. With each little
disappointment, either with their spouse or with their new
life, the Little Voice that whispers: 'I fell into a bad
deal', gets ever louder and they feel unable to cope with the
situation.
Worse, they have nobody to discuss the situation with. They
haven't a clue as to whom they can approach about such an
issue. So things are kept quiet and hidden, while ill
feelings bubble beneath the surface like live volcanoes,
ready to erupt at the slightest provocation.
When we feel physically ill, we head for the doctor's office,
secure in the knowledge of his expertise. The same should
apply for interpersonal issues; at the smallest aberration of
happiness and unity, couples should have access to the right
individuals who are capable of advising and encouraging them
towards growth and domestic joy.
"Why is there so much trouble and misunderstanding in the
area of sholom bayit? Where does it all begin?" I ask
Rebbetzin Levi.
In reply, she relates a wonderful parable that her husband
uses constantly in his lectures:
There was a medical freshman just starting out in university
and, as a fitting introduction to his upcoming years of
study, he was taken on a short tour of a hospital. To his
surprise and chagrin, he noticed that the hospital was
overflowing with patients, every bed filled with a sick
person. He couldn't understand: how could it be that in
today's sophisticated world of medicine and great scientific
breakthroughs, there were still so many sick and ailing
people?
He subsequently spent several years in intense medical
studies, slowly gaining familiarity with the amazing
intricacies and complexities of the human body. He saw how,
in order to specialize in any one area of medicine, one had
to devote several additional years in studying only one's
areas of choice alone — like the ear, nose and throat
area. His horizons now broadened, he now posed an entirely
different question: how was it that so many people were
walking around in perfect health, when there were innumerable
ways in which any single part of their bodies could actually
malfunction?
A husband and wife come from diverse backgrounds and harbor
greatly contrasting expectations — and yet they are
expected to build their new home with mutual understanding
and harmony. It is a miracle when all goes right! At Petach
Habayit, we believe that marriage is an art that can and
should be studied in order to succeed. Petach Habayit has a
dream. Its dream is to set up organized courses of study and
lectures that will accompany every chosson and
kallah as they prepare and enter marriage. In this
way, our young people will have the opportunity to hone their
knowledge and skills in the fine art of sholom bayit,
making the right choices and giving the best responses in
their individual lives.
To date, Petach Habayit has centers running in Jerusalem,
Beit Shemesh, Beitar and Kiryat Sefer. Each of these learning
centers is inundated with requests for further lectures and
courses on these topics. It is Petach Habayit's dream to set
up additional centers in every major community around the
globe, to help address the prevalent problems in these
areas.
Leah lives in Beitar. She comes from a wonderful, stable
family and never encountered any major turbulence in her
marriage. And yet, she attests to having taken the same
course three times consecutively and wants to keep going in
the future. "These lectures have improved my life
immeasurably in every way and I simply don't want to stop
this wonderful influence in my life!"
Petach Habayit is under the direct auspices of Rabbi Moshe
Halberstam shlita. Petach Habayit's long-term dream is
that every young couple, the world over, will be accompanied
through their transition into marriage, by trained, competent
Torah personalities for both personal advice and telephone
access. With Hashem's help and with the aid of the wider
public, may this dream become a reality, the sooner the
better — there's simply no time to lose.
[Esther Levi can be contacted at 02-5381073.]
