By Yedida Wolfe
What would you do if your parents owed you money? Would you keep quiet and struggle with debt? That seemed like the safest bet when I first heard the question. Money can cause relationship rifts when handled without care. When I saw this letter in Esther Etiquette’s regular column in the upcoming Tammuz issue of the N’shei Chabad Newsletter (www.nsheichabadnewsletter.com) I couldn’t wait to see how she would address this delicate matter. Only for COLlive readers, an advance reading…
Dear Esther,
My parents told me that they would be paying for my family’s tickets to my brother’s wedding. They told us to book the tickets and they would reimburse us when they saw us next. The wedding came and went and I think it slipped my father’s mind. I don’t know how or if I should even ask him for the money. We bought the tickets on a credit card and don’t have the money to pay the bill. If we don’t get reimbursed we will have to ride the vicious wheel of those endless high-interest payments, never really making a dent in the debt. There is no way we would have flown to the wedding with all our children had we known we have to pay for it ourselves. I would have gone alone. Now what?
Esther offers a graceful, loving, yet assertive solution for obtaining the forgotten funds.
If your parents offered to pay for the tickets then I would assume it is something they genuinely want to do. You could e-mail your father something like this:
“Tatty, thank you so much for bringing the whole family to the wedding, something we could never do on our own! We and the children will cherish the beautiful memories forever. Enclosed are the receipts for the tickets. Thank you again. I love you.”
It’s important the young family doesn’t stay silent, letting resentment stew under the surface. The pent-up frustration, not to mention high-interest debt, can significantly damage even a close relationship over time, allowing doubt to creep in about their parents’ good intentions and vice versa.
Also in the Tammuz issue, Rabbi Gershon Schusterman, an author about whom readers tend to write us, “More, more please, of Rabbi Schusterman,” explores cynicism, “the belief that altruism is dead and that people are motivated solely by self-interest.”
Confronted by the easy sarcasm he hears in comments like “No good deed goes unpunished,” and “We call ‘em as we see ‘em,” Rabbi Schusterman takes aim at those of us who “seek to impugn a good deed by attributing it to nefarious motives.”
While many cynics claim they are just being realistic, Rabbi Schusterman challenges that view. A realist “strives for excellence. When he falls, he picks himself up and strives again.”
“Cynicism is admitting defeat even before going to battle,” Rabbi Schusterman writes, displaying “abject cowardice.”
It takes courage to the fight the “often lonely fight.” Rabbi Schusterman references the “Frierdiker Rebbe in his battle against the G-dless communist regime…the exiled chassidim in the ‘Worker’s Paradise’ who endured difficult years of hunger, poverty, and isolation from their community and Rebbe.” They lived with determination and prevailed.
Miriam Nevel beautifully describes one such story of mesiras nefesh in her heartwarming piece about her parents’ devotion to spreading Yiddishkeit even under Communist rule. Spending the summer in a Russian dacha, Nevel’s family kept Shabbos in secret, running out of kerosene needed for the stove as the rural market was only open Saturdays.
At first their neighbor Natasha’s offer to bring them fuel seemed like a perfect solution. The family would pay Natasha Friday and she would give them the canister after Shabbos.
Natasha kindly reassured the family. “Don’t worry, I won’t denounce you to the authorities…You are like my Mama and Papa…I’ll buy the kerosene for you because you are a Subbotnik…for me, it’s fine, because I’m a Communist.” But, you see, Natasha was a Jew!
Just as Miriam Nevel’s mother “so happily shared any bounty of food that she had with neighbors in Moscow, so too did she want to share her religious bounty, her closeness to G-d, and the beauty of Shabbos, with her Jewish neighbor in the country.”
Natasha was soon keeping Shabbos, and the following week Miriam Nevel’s father brought kerosene from Moscow for both families, since neither would be able to purchase the commodity from the market (which only came on Saturdays) any more. Miriam writes, “Natasha seemed to be drawn to us like the kerosene in the hose—by gravity.”
Another highlight of the Tammuz issue is Nison Gordon’s article about visiting the Ohel on Yud Shevat in 1950s. The crowd recited the maaneh lashon, as the Rebbe’s son-in-law, who was now the Rebbe himself, served as chazzan for the congregation.
Nison Gordon writes: “His lips move in prayer for the thousands of Jews whose names are sent to him literally from all corners of the world, from the Sahara Desert in Africa to a little town deep in the American South, where a Lubavitcher Shliach has struggled and toiled, finally to plant a seed of faith. Every name involves joy and sorrow, hope and despair. Each is a world unto itself.”
Nison Gordon’s rich prose describes the scene as he explores the congregants’ reveries. He shares the experiences of a young man–a blond-bearded chossid raised in one of Russia’s underground yeshivos—who ran to the Russian train station to see the Frierdiker Rebbe’s departure into exile.
Surrounded by police, the Frierdiker Rebbe had turned to the crowd and said:
“Only our bodies can be exiled. Only our bodies, not our souls. Regarding Torah and mitzvos, we are under no foreign rule. No force on earth can change this. With the old stubbornness of an ancient people, and with the strength of mesiras nefesh of all our precious generations, I cry out, “Al tigu bimshichoi velinvi-ai al toreiu! Do not touch my anointed, and do not harm my prophets!”
Gordon then recounts the Frierdiker Rebbe’s trip to Khersen in 1934 when he said, “Yidden I love you! The trials and dangers of my communal work during the War, and later in times of hunger, need, and persecution, allow me to say: Yidden, you are so very dear to me!”
Though it was only a few years since “this great Jewish leader passed away,” Nison Gordon notes we “already see how alien such words of true Jewish love sound in our society.”
The Rebbe used to discuss issues of media and journalism with Nison Gordon, a gifted Yiddish writer. Gordon’s heartfelt account originally appeared in Di Yiddishe Heim.
To find out more about Natasha, Yud Shevat in the 1950s, and how to defeat cynicism, as well as other questions for Esther Etiquette and other topics of great interest to all Lubavitchers, please subscribe now in time to receive it by mail by visiting www.nsheichabadnewsletter.com.
the n’shei covers have been getting more and more beautiful recently! kol hakavod
I don’t lend my parents money, or pay for something because they promised to pay me back. If they want to pay, they can show me the money – and give it to me – up front. I learned the hard way that neither of my parents pay me back – when I was a kid, a teen, etc. My father forgets until you remind him a few times. My mother insists that “we don’t count pennies with family” when you ask her to pay you back, after she promised to pay you back and convinced you to make the… Read more »
You cannot compare a parent’s child-raising expenses to when a child puts out money that he doesn’t have ONLY because the parent promised to pay him back.
To #8:
You are very sweet and tactful, but you gave the parents an option not to pay after they committed to doing so, leaving the kids with a mountain of debt that they cannot pay off. If the parents can’t pay, they shouldn’t have made the offer.
This issue looks like it’s gonna be fascinating im so excited to read it! I don’t exactly agree with Esther etiquette about sending your parents a receipt when they offer to pay for something.. They’re not your customer and you’re not collecting a debt you’re just politely reminding what they promised to their child..
you need to be more careful that nothing in the Nshei Journal can be misconstrued- because all kinds of people read it. I remember when my husband shy’ichye sent his writing to the Rebbe, the Rebbe was careful to the nth degree that in no way could it be misinterpreted.. The title on the cover We remain Chassidim With A Question can be misconstrued in a nagative way. eg.t hat we Chas V’sholom question if the R.s words are still valid.etc. I know this would be clarified in the article. However how about those who just glance at the cover… Read more »
who are the two men in the photos? one with the Rebbe and one with tefillin on
i would never do something that would require me to say to my parents “i really, really wish i wouldn’t have to ask you”
i don’t have to ask. i can do without.
i went to this wedding (theoretically) BECAUSE my parents came to me saying “please make tickets for the whole family on us”
to go crawling and begging from one’s parents – for a luxury!? ugh.
I would be honest with my parents:
Dear Tatty and Mommy,
Thank you so much for offering to pay for our family to come to the wedding. It’s not something we could have or would have done without you!
I really, really wish I could pay for it myself and wouldn’t have to ask you, but our credit cards bills are due and we don’t have the money. Are you still able to help us with this?
the original of this picture (lag baomer 5717-1957) clearly shows that the shtender cover was BLUE. now all of the sudden it changed to RED!
photoshop is ruining the authenticity of pictures of our rebbe just to make them “look nice”. now you cant know the difference between an original and a “worked on” picture. who knows where this is leading to…
We owe our very own existence to him yet we demand of him all the time. A healthy relationship with your parents is to ask respectively, especially if it slipped their mind. I don’t care how many diapers you changed, you don’t ask your child to lay-out money and then expect them to eat the bill.
B”H
If we calculate per hour sleepless nights, endless diapers change, things they bought us, care they provided and love they gave we would be forever in debt. Boruch Hashem our parents don’t write emails to us reminding who much we owe. 🙂
A giant ahead of his times!! His Hiskashrus and Kesher to the Rebbe was indescribable. We miss you our beloved Rebbe and Rabbi Goldstein- Moshiach NOW!!!
It looks like a beautiful painting. Who is the artist?
You can never be owed money by your parents what if they were to collect from you?!
Great photo! Rabbi Yosef Goldstein (“Uncle Yossi”) entertaining the crowds in English at one of the early Lag B’omer parades, while the Rebbe looks on.