Possible Limits
By: Rabbi Dr. Dovid Fox
This article is a sequel to last week’s piece on Limitless Possibilities, where I began to explore the topic of personal and interpersonal boundaries. A point which I introduced was an observation made to me that today’s Orthodox youth have fewer limitations and restrictions and seem happier and more at ease in their world. I will focus now on understanding values and boundaries.
One of the fads or zeitgeists when I was a young clinician was Values Clarification. This was a movement seeking to seep into education and psychology, emphasizing the importance of selecting the values which one wished to live by. The first part of this movement was admirable. We spend too little time educating our youth about values, about what we stand for and stand by. The approach of helping people identify and define their personal values seemed enriching. The second part of this, however, proved much less encouraging. It emphasized encouraging our youth to select their own set of values, as if a young child or even a teen has sufficient worldview and world-grasp to determine what is important. This shortcoming of Values Clarification used to remind me of the story of Pinocchio who chose “the land of toys,” a mythical place where children did no work, never went to school, and never studied. Rather than recognize the enduring value of work, integrity, and productivity, they spent their days in play and idleness.
I can remember as a young professor giving a seminar in the home of one of my graduate students. I had missed a lecture owing to yom tov, and had agreed to assemble on a Sunday for a makeup lecture. The class met in a large home of a particularly wealthy student, and because it was a Sunday, I brought my four-year old daughter along because my student also had a girl of the same age, and they could play together during my three-hour lecture. Arriving at the mansion, my daughter and I walked up the steps and were greeted by the woman and led to the large hall where my class waited. Meanwhile, my student said to me that her own daughter had said that my girl could sit and watch her play with her toys but could not play with them or read her books. “We are encouraging her about the value of making her own decisions and about protecting her property and are supporting her in her decisions so that she grows up with good self-esteem.” Needless to say, my little daughter spent the morning listening to Tatty lecture and never got to meet the other child. I was bothered by the shortsighted perspective of this woman who was en route to becoming a psychotherapist. What values would she be imparting to her patients one day—do what feels best for you? Ignore tradition? Create your own morality system? Was this really a “Values Clarification” or was it about empowering children and others to act on impulse under the guise of making a considered and stable choice? Eventually, much of the Values Clarification system corroded, or at least eroded, although for a while it even made its way into Orthodox Jewish education forums. Again, this approach was not without some value and merit, yet it led to the tail. Many of us in the Psychology field began to feel easier as some of the proponents of this approach later expressed their conviction that children must be taught values rather than left to their own whims.
Values are the fundamental principles and belief systems that guide an individual in distinguishing right from wrong. Put another way, a value is a standard that motivates us to attain an aspired goal that will promote social morality. When my personal behavior leads me eventually to a desired goal, particularly one which has social merit both for me and others, I am acting on a value. Integrity, responsibility, honesty, and respect are among our cherished values. They lead us to a meaningful goal of promoting a stable society. Our Sages teach something similar: the value of maintaining a reverent respect for social structure promotes the purposeful goal of living in a stable society, for without this value there would be anarchy and chaos. Values are for each one of us, but are greater than each of us, because they pertain to the welfare of our social environment as well as the whim of the individual. I will give an example which I observed recently. I was driving through a particularly observant Jewish neighborhood. I saw a teen-aged girl in the uniform of a religious high school walking through the street with a candy bar which she unwrapped, throwing the paper wrapper onto the sidewalk. Her behavior was not goal-oriented, i.e. she did not have a specific goal of littering the neighborhood. However, many of us do have a goal of maintaining and promoting cleanliness, hygiene, and a pleasant environment for self and others. Had her behavior been based on a value such as caring about her community, she likely would have waited to deposit the rubbish in a garbage can, which was within easy reach on the corner. The person who is motivated to think ahead and to preserve some basic social standards would decide to dispose of the trash appropriately. What then, was the value of her littering the neighborhood? There was no value motivating her, only impulse and whim.
I was once at a school barbecue hosted for families enrolling their children in a yeshiva katana. The large garden was full of happy children and their parents. The lines were forming to get the hot food waiting on the grill. I heard a father tell his children that they should sneak around the back of the barbecues then cut to the front of the line to get served quicker. They listened to him and came back with plates of food while dozens of other adults waited in line. I commented at the time to my young wife that the value or non-value which he had successfully taught his children is to get what you want when you want it and disregard the structure followed by others.
Our adherence to values requires several things. We must define our values and present them to our children and our students. We must be accurate role models of wholesome values, and we must learn to think ahead about the ramifications of how we live and help our children do the same. I plan to develop this theme in a forthcoming article.
Rabbi Dr. Dovid Fox is a forensic and clinical psychologist, and director of Chai Lifeline Crisis Services. To contact Chai Lifeline’s 24-hour crisis helpline, call 855-3-CRISIS or email [email protected]. Learn more at ChaiLifeline.org/crisis.
