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Sugar
: the first addition: infancy
Isn’t it incredible that yeast needs sugar in order to grow?
So perfect.
How do we encourage healthy rising? We begin with sweet-
ness.
In comparing the creation of a dough to a recipe for nurturing,
the beginning of the dough process parallels infancy. Infancy,
whether literal or emotional, is not a time for discipline. It is a
time for pure sweetness and warmth.
“WHATEVER WE ARE DOING, NO MATTER HOW
HOLY, WE SHOULD NEVER BE SO ENGROSSED
When Babies Cry
AS TO MISS THE SOUND OF A CHILD’S CRY.”“
As mentioned earlier, the first lesson we learn in life is that
of trust and faith. It is the mother who is uniquely positioned
to provide this first and most crucial life lesson. When a child
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cries and his cries are immediately answered, there is a deep
understanding that resounds in the child’s psyche: I am loved
and cared for. My needs are important and I am heard.
Not everyone agrees with answering a baby’s cries immedi-
ately. As a matter of fact, there is an entire contingency of par-
enting “experts” devoted to warning mothers of the dangers of
spoiling their babies.
Remember your inner, quiet, persistent voice that knows the
answer even when you think you don’t? Well, mine told me to
pick up my children as soon as they cried. And I am so grateful
that I listened. Above the cacophony of voices telling me that I
was ruining them, not allowing them to “self-soothe,” and de-
stroying their ability to ever fall asleep on their own.
They have grown up. They have no trouble sleeping through
the night these days (waking them up in the morning is the much
larger problem now!), they are exceptionally proficient at com-
forting themselves, and they feel completely loved and heard. I
am so glad I was able to tune out all the opinions to the contrary.
Chasidic teaching and lore clearly promotes the prompt re-
sponse to a child’s cry. There is a famous story told of the Alter
Rebbe, the great master, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi (the one
from the “Shmuel Munkes story” on page 56), who lived in the
apartment above his son, Rabbi Dovber.
In the deep of night, the Alter Rebbe, immersed in his
studies, heard the loud and persistent cries of his infant
grandson, a son of Reb Dovber, in the apartment below.
As the minutes passed and the baby’s cries went unan-
swered, the Alter Rebbe left his holy books and went
down to the child. He picked up the child and comfort-
ed him, not leaving him until the child was fast asleep.
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Though the baby’s father had been sitting near the child
the entire time, he had been so deeply immersed in his
holy books, he had not even heard the child’s cry. When
Reb Dovber finally became aware of his father’s pres-
ence in the room, the Alter Rebbe rebuked him gently,
saying, “One must never be so immersed in study or Di-
vine service as not to hear the cry of a child in need.”
There is nothing in the world more important than answering
a child’s cry.
There is a similar story told of Rabbi Moshe Leib of Sassov, the
holy Sossover Rebbe.
While walking to synagogue one Yom Kippur eve, the
Sossover Rebbe heard the cries of a child from within a
home. When he realized that there was nobody there to
comfort the child, he entered the home and rocked the
child himself. The baby’s mother had thought the child
was asleep and had run to the synagogue to hear a bit of
Kol Nidrei, the awesome opening prayers of Yom Kippur.
Her child had, however, awoken scared and alone and
the Sossover Rebbe would not leave him in that state.
All those who had assembled in the synagogue waited
in wonderment for their Rebbe to appear for Kol Ni-
drei. When the Rebbe finally did appear, he began the
Kol Nidrei service with the reprimand that no child’s cry
should ever go unanswered.
The Need for Attention
One of my favorite New Yorker cartoons from over the years—
in fact, one that I have deemed “fridge worthy,” though, alas, I
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have forgotten the name of the artist who created it—goes like
this:
There are two women seated on a couch drinking coffee, appar-
ently trying in vain to have an adult conversation. Behind them,
standing on the back of the couch, is a small child who is writing
in huge letters on the wall, “I WANT ATTENTION!” “Oh, don’t mind
him,” the mother says to her friend, “he just wants attention.”
Have your laugh, but why is a child’s need for attention any
less urgent than his need for food? Indeed, giving him attention
demonstrates that he matters to you. It means that his existence
counts and that he is recognized in this world as being import-
ant. Attention is important! If a child cries and “just wants to be
held,” that is a valid need. A need that is as valid as the need for
physical nourishment.
This brings me to today’s trend of letting a baby cry it out, oth-
erwise known as CIO (when you abbreviate it, it sounds scientif-
ic, doesn’t it?). This is supposed to teach a child to “self-soothe”
and develop healthy sleep patterns.
The Early Human Development journal published research con-
ducted at the University of North Texas in August, 2011.1 Observing
25 infants aged 4–10 months in a five-day inpatient sleep train-
ing program, researchers monitored levels of the stress hor-
mone cortisol in the babies, who were left to cry themselves to
sleep without being soothed.
1 Middlemiss, Wendy et al. “Asynchrony of Mother–infant Hypothalamic–pitu-
itary–adrenal Axis Activity following Extinction of Infant Crying Responses In-
duced during the Transition to Sleep.” Early Human Development 88 (2012):
227-32. Http://anaesthetics.ukzn.ac.za/Libraries/Documents2011/Early_hu-
man_development_June12.sflb.ashx. Web. 16 Mar. 2015.
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The scientists measured how long the infants cried each night
before they fell asleep. The mothers sat in the next room and
listened to their children cry but were not allowed to go in and
comfort them.
By the third night, the babies were crying for a shorter peri-
od of time and falling asleep faster. (See? Sleep training works!)
However, the cortisol levels measured in their saliva remained
high, indicating that the infants were just as “stressed” as if
they had continued to cry hysterically. So, while the infants’ in-
ternal physiological distress levels had not changed, their out-
ward displays of that stress were extinguished by sleep training.
Simply put, they had trained themselves not to
communicate
their distress, understanding that it wouldn’t be listened to.
(Hmm . . . maybe not such a great thing.)
Attention=Trust=Self Confidence
In his book, How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hid-
den Power of Character, Paul Tough examines the skills and traits
that lead to success. Ultimately, he advances the hypothesis that
character attributes may be more significant indicators of future
success than cognitive skills such as IQ and intelligence.
“[I]n the past decade, and especially in the past few years,”
writes Tough, “a disparate congregation of economists, educa-
tors, psychologists, and neuroscientists have begun to produce
evidence that . . . [w]hat matters most in a child’s development .
. . is not how much information we can stuff into her brain in the
first few years. What matters, instead, is whether we are able
to help her develop a very different set of qualities, a list that
includes persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness,
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grit and self-confidence.”
In other words, the bread of faith that is fed by the mother is
the magic ingredient in the success of a human being.
In her article entitled “Dangers of ‘Crying it Out,’” Darcia Nar-
ancestors took for granted, that letting babies get distressed is
a practice that can damage children and their relational capaci-
ties in many ways for the long term. We know now that leaving
babies to cry is a good way to make a less intelligent, less healthy
but more anxious, uncooperative and alienated person who can
pass the same or worse traits on to the next generation.”
Dr. Narvaez goes on to cite research that has shown that ba-
bies left to cry alone in their cribs suffer from extreme distress
and that the practice creates long-term effects, such as impaired
growth and an inability to trust. Disturbingly, the neurons in the
brain also wither away.
Developmental psychologist, Erik H. Erikson, famous for hav-
ing coined the term “identity crisis,” describes the first year of
life as a sensitive period and a time for establishing a sense of
trust in the world, which at that point is the world of the parent
and the world of self. When a baby’s needs are met without dis-
tress, the child learns that the world is a trustworthy place, that
relationships are supportive, and that the self is a positive entity
that can get its needs met. When a baby’s needs are dismissed or
ignored, the child develops a sense of mistrust of relationships
and the world. In the process, self-confidence is undermined.
The child may then very well spend a lifetime trying to fill the
resulting inner emptiness.
Somehow, mothers have always known this instinctively: a
mother’s first reaction is always to respond to her child’s cry.
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It’s only lately, since we’ve begun to ignore our own inner voic-
es and listen to the “experts,” that we’ve been denying what we
know internally to be true.
Family Ties
My husband and I did not know each other until we met in our
20s but our families have had fascinatingly intersected histories.
Our maternal grandfathers both came over on the same boat
from Europe, arriving in Israel in 1948. Since then, there has
been interconnectedness with the families that has transcended
geographic location.
In the early ‘70s, when my older brother was a toddler and
I was an infant, my parents had recently moved to Vancouver,
BC, a remote outpost in those days, to start a Jewish communi-
ty under the leadership and guidance of the Lubavitcher Reb-
be. Times were tough and they lived in a tiny apartment with
their two babies. It was at this time that my husband’s mater-
nal grandfather, a great and wise chasid known affectionately
as Reb Avrohom Mayor (he originated from the town of Mayor,
Russia), was traveling through the United States and Canada and
arrived at my parents’ home. My parents were honored by the
presence of such an illustrious guest, but had no choice other
than to place him in the one extra bedroom that they had, where
their children slept, as well.
In the middle of the night, my mother woke my father franti-
cally, telling him to pick up the crying baby (yup, that was me!)
before the baby would awaken Reb Avrohom Mayor. My father
quickly ran toward the bedroom but, when he got there, he re-
alized that I had stopped crying. He tiptoed in to investigate and
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found the great chasid, Reb Avrohom Mayor, rocking me back to
sleep. My father apologized profusely for having woken such a
holy man, to which Reb Avrohom, whom I can now claim as my
own grandfather and the namesake of my own baby, responded
that “m’lozt nisht a kind veinen,” we don’t allow a child to cry.
This is the way it has been done for centuries; this is how we
raise a joyous and confident child. As my parents and grandpar-
ents knew from their parents, “m’lozt nisht a kind veinen,” we
‘BRING A KOR OF WHEAT TO THE ATTIC FOR ME’”
answer a child’s cry. This is the bread of faith, the sustenance for
a lifetime of kindness, nurturing, and self-acceptance.
Some of my earliest memories are of my paternal grandfather,
himself a devoted chasid, brilliant in matters of mind and heart,
rocking my baby siblings and cousins on his knee, singing in Yid-
dish, “Du bist a zeese maydele [or yingale],” you are the sweet-
est little girl (or little boy, depending on who was being held),
inherent sweetness and goodness.
Infancy is not a time to “train a child;” it is the time for uncon-
ditional pouring of sweetness. The more sweetness, the more
rising.
And this brings us back to our challah recipe—more specifi-
cally, to the sugar.
When observing the challah dough, this is obvious to us. We
begin with a combination of water, living yeast, and sugar and
we allow it to froth and start the rising process. If we can get
this part of the recipe right, we’re off to a great start! Adding salt
at this point will kill the yeast and disrupt the rising process.
Though the salt plays a crucial role in the challah recipe, it’s all
in the timing. Sugar first, salt later. We begin with sweetness and
pure unconditional acceptance; discipline and boundaries will
follow.
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"A MAN SAID TO HIS AGENT,
‘BRING A KOR OF WHEAT TO THE ATTIC FOR ME’”
. . .AFTERWARDS, THE MAN SAID TO HIS AGENT,”DID YOU MIX INTO THE
NEVER BROUGHT THE WHEAT.”
WHEAT A KAV [MEASUREMENT] OF CHUMTON [SALT]?” “NO,” SAID THE AGENT.
THE MAN SAID, “IT WOULD HAVE BE N BETTER IF YOU
HAD
—A TALMUDIC PARABLE [SHABBAT 31A]
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Love is a Boy,
by Poets styl'd,
Then Spare the Rod,
and spill [spoil] the Child.
—Samuel Butler, 1662
Salt
: in its time, in its measure
The word melach (salt) is a compound of the word m’lach (from
moisture).
The punishing sun beats down on pure water and turns it into
salt. While water represents life-giving chesed/kindness, salt
represents the more restrictive gevurah/severity.
Gevurah is also understood as the energy of boundaries and
discipline. Each creation in this world is an earthly manifesta-
tion of its spiritual source. Salt is not just an expression of gevu-
rah. It is gevurah as we experience it in our physical reality.
While gevurah is seemingly a harsher and more difficult se-
firah/expression than chesed, the paradox of gevurah is that it
actually gives rise to chesed.
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In his Kabbalistic treatise Eitz Chaim, Rabbi Chaim Vital1
writes that gevurah on one plane creates chesed on the plane
directly beneath it.
We see the way this manifests in our physical reality by the
fact that, while salt on its own is gevurah, harsh and bitter tast-
ing, when it is blended into another food, it becomes chesed,
drawing out the sweetness of that food.
Salt is full of seeming contradictions. It can break down the
most sturdy of stone and preserve the most tender of grain. In
the Torah, G-d forms an everlasting covenant with Aharon, a
“covenant of salt” (Bamidbar 18:19). As Rashi2 explains, “G-d made
a covenant with Aharon with something that is healthy, enduring,
and preserves others. . .salt, which never spoils.”
Ages and Stages
The Jewish tradition is very cognizant of the fact that there are
stages of children’s development during which they must be left
free and unrestrained, as well as times during which discipline
must be introduced, although, even then, it is done gradually.
As important as the initial sweetness and unbounded love may
have been, boundaries and discipline—when used in the right
measure and time—are equally essential in all of our nurturing,
both of our loved ones and ourselves.
The age of three is traditionally considered to be the age
during which one begins to discipline a child. This is symboli-