By Rabbanit Coty Bittón
In our Perasha, Pinechas, when Moshe Rabenu prays to Hashem for the right successor to lead Bene Israel, He refers to HaShem (Bamidbar 27:16 ) “Eloqe haruchot lekhol basar” (God, that knows the spirits of all flesh/humans). The Midrash explains that Moshe asked HaShem to find and appoint a man ” asher Ruach bo” (with a spirit in him) and Rashi explains that Moshe requested for a man who knows how to deal with every individual’s spirit.
The right leader is patient and prepared to deal with different types of personalities. With people who see the world in different ways. With those that need a strong hand, and with those that need a more sensitive approach. With those that will understand a new idea when they hear it just once, and with those that require additional explanations to get it.
HaShem appointed Yehoshua, who was the champion of empathy. A leader who understood that there are different types of intelligence. A leader that before reacting, tries to understand where the person is coming from. A man able to put himself in another person’s shoes and understand what he or she is trying to express.
One very important principle, that impact all human relationships, is the understanding that although we all come from the same ancestors, Adam and Hava, we are all different. “Keshem sheparzufehem…”Just as there are no two faces alike, so too are there no two people with exactly the same way of thinking (Berakhot 5b)
To develop empathy is critical . Empathy is the ability to internalize someone else’s feelings or experiences by imagining what it would be like to be in that person’s situation. It is the capacity to see things from another person’s perspective, and to temporarily suspend one’s own standpoint. To know that we cannot judge others behavior according to the way we would feel or behave. I cannot get upset if my spouse’s tastes for food are different from mine. I can not tell somebody else that it’s ridiculous to be afraid to ride a roller coaster in an amusement park because I don’t have that fear of heights. Or I cannot expect that my friend will enjoy crowded places just because I do. We have different temperaments, different ways of perceiving life, different genetic material. Everyone has lived different experiences in life that have affected their personalities.
As parents, empathy is very critical. Any parent with more than one child knows that children are very different from each other even when they were raised in the same home by the same parents. We parents need to be always paying attention and understand our children uniqueness and individualities, to be empathetic to their needs, and to know what is the best approach to apply with each of them.
We call the preschool “Gan Yeladim”, literally, “a garden of children” because, in order to give our children the right foundations at the beginnings of their education, we need to be like a gardener, who understands that he needs to nurture each of his plants with the right approach. Some plants need water daily. Other plants will die if you do so. Some plants need to be placed under the sun, others on the shade.
Like the pants, all our children need care, but at the same time, they all need an individualized care.
We need to be to our children what Yehoshua was for the people of Israel.
