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Every Person Is Your Mirror

How to Deal with Difficult People

1 hr 2 min

Class Summary:

This Women's class was presented by Rabbi YY Jacobson on Tuesday, 30 Tishrei, 5779, September 9, 2018, at Ohr Chaim Shul, Monsey, NY

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  • Anonymous -5 years ago

    האם זה מוכרח

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    • Anonymous -5 years ago

      Yes, my mistake.

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  • D

    Daniel -5 years ago

    Age of Noach during the Mabul

    Wasn't the age of Noach 600 during the mabul? 

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  • M

    Moshe -6 years ago

    This can also give us clearer insight into the difficulty parents have when they obsess over their child’s faults. When a parent has not conquered their deficiency, which in turn causes the parent’s struggle to be passed down into their children in a stronger form, the parent is not only seeing a mirror of their own shortcomings, but they are ultimately witnessing the effect their failure has birthed as well. They are viewing their error actually living in another person as a result of their flaw. A defective creation of themselves extending into their children. This makes the divorce of obsession and the realization of where the fault lies, that much more testing.

     

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  • AFT

    A few thoughts: -6 years ago

    • It is possible that (almost) all struggles are passed down from parent to child. Noach had a problem with his sexuality. It was passed down to his sons Shem, Cham, and Yafes. Shem and Yafes confronted and conquered their struggle and so when they heard of their father’s failure, they did not become obsessed and angry, but rather took it as a calling that they were in need to assist. Cham, however, never confronted his issue and so his problems were passed down to his son as well. This is why Rashi (Genesis 9:22 sourced from Bereishis Rabah 36:7) says that Cana’an, Cham’s son, went to tell (obsessively) to his father that Noach was naked, and Cham, after sexually assaulting his father, told his brothers of the sexual failure of their father.

    • The Cana’anites dwelled in Sodom and Gemorah, which is known as the epitome of immoral sexuality, and was ultimately destroyed.

    • As each generation passes without the previous conquering its struggles, the issue simply intensifies and grows. When a child sees their parent continuously failing in a specific area and never attempting to repair it, they take it a sign of acceptance and so the issue strengthens. We see that Noach had a struggle with his sexuality but did not let it express itself onto others (got drunk and exposed his naked body). Noach did not triumph over this battle and so it was passed down to his children with more severity. Cham therefore had the fault expressed onto others, where he even defames his father. Being passed down to Can’an and future generations, it eventually built into a society of total sexual immorality. For this, God needed to start the page clean. There was no way the struggle would ever be addressed and rectified and so God destroyed Sodom and Gemorah.

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    • Y

      Yitzchak -5 years ago

      Some say that Cham castrated his father to avoid Noach having more kids avoiding having to split the world for others. 

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  • Anonymous -6 years ago

    It is very important to know how to balance the truth. To know when you are finding a fault in yourself and not being too harsh and creating false faults.

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