Among the most famous wisdom in the Torah is Pirkei Avot, Chapters of the Fathers.

Pirkei Avot (pronounce peer-Kay ah-Vot) is a collection of practical ancient wisdom from Jewish sages.  It is part of the Mishnah, in the Oral Torah.  Avot is not a source of Jewish law, but a source for values, morals, and good conduct.  We study Avot to remind ourselves about the meaning of life and benefits of proper behavior.  Often the sayings are pithy, such as the famous statement by Hillel:

If I am not for myself, who will be for me?  And if I am only for myself, what am I?  And if not now, when? (Avot 1:14).

Avot is practical advice and philosophical musings from wise men to their students, and students are considered as being children to their Rabbi.  These sayings were recorded for posterity.  The oldest statements are 2500 years old and the most recent about 1800 years old.  But they are timeless.

Any statement recording in the Torah, Written or Oral, is meant for all time.  We know there were thousands of prophets who prophesied, but very few prophecies were written down.  Those written down are for all time.

Pirkei Avot is often translated as Ethics of the Fathers, or Wisdom of the Fathers.  I suggest to you that this translation is not entirely correct.  The second word “Avot” lacks a prefix that means definite “the”.  So, Pirkei Avot means Wisdom of/for Fathers or Fathers’ Wisdom.  The sages recorded in Pirke Avot are the spiritual fathers of the Jewish people.  So, the traditional translation Ethics of the Fathers is appropriate too.

My literal translation Wisdom for Fathers works because the wisdom contained in Avot is meant for all of us, as we are the fathers of the next generation and responsible to guide our families.  Not only that, but in our time, we often have to serve as our own fathers to guide our own spiritual growth (ayen Hovos haTalmidim, introduction).  This is especially difficult for those who grew up without a father, with an ineffective father, or in a society that tells us to discount and disrespect fathers (Lamentations 5:3).

Avot means Fathers, not mothers. (Some Hebrew words in plural include both the masculine and feminine).  If you are lucky enough to be a woman, don’t run away.  The wisdom in Pirkei Avot is still relevant and will save you from a lot of sorrow.

Parenting is both Fathering and Mothering

A short background: Mothers, in general, try to build their children into adults through affirming their essence as they are now.  Mothers nurture the child that is in their arms right now, and work to keep him happy and healthy.

Fathers build children into adults through telling them they can improve on what they are now.  The father has in mind that this small child is going to grow into something, and needs guidance and motivation to become greater than he is right now.

Example: child comes home with a 93% score on a test.  Mother: WOW! I’m SOOO proud, you are so amazing!  I’ll give you a double serving of dessert.  You are the BEST!
Father:  Not bad kid, next time if you study harder you can get that last 7%.  You were not far from 100%, I know you can do it.

Think about the key difference. Naturally, the mother affirms the child as they already are, protecting and building their self esteem.  This is vitally important to teach confidence and give the sense that someone loves you no matter what.

However, the father states that the child can improve on what they already are.  This is a judgment.  But, when the child does improve, they learn that they can build their own self esteem.

In a deeper sense, the mother wants the child to feel good now, the father wants the child to do good, accomplish, and become better for the future.  The mother gives her child’s self esteem a fish, the father shows the child to fish for himself.

This concept has a power and a danger.  With only a mother, the child gets that critical affirmation from her, and acquires self-esteem.  Great.  But he doesn’t learn to build himself into someone who can generate his own self-esteem.

This is not only relevant for single mother families.  In contemporary American society, the entire mainstream culture has begun to tilt dramatically toward mothering people.  Think about the messages culture sends you, through school, media, magazines, psychologists.  Messages like:  Everyone is a winner.  Everyone gets a participation trophy.  You are perfect just the way you are.  Everyone is a special snowflake.  Accept yourself the way you are.

Naturally, all of these societal messages are only the mothering aspect.  There is a cultural focus on self acceptance and avoidance of criticism, to the extent that the underlying message is that you don’t need to improve yourself.

I’ll take it a step further: encouraging people to work to make themselves great and become their own source of self esteem is perceived as dangerous.  It may create selfish people focuses on their own personal mission.  Apparently this is considered risky in modern life.  So, the fathering aspect has been removed from general society.

Since it’s hard to father correctly, we can’t just go right back to full bore fathering.  Fathering in a harsh manner can lead the child to cry and feel bad, and culture now frowns on hurting feelings, even if that is for the ultimate good of that person in the long run.  So any less than delicate or nonconstructive criticism sends a child running for mother, for mothering, to avoid the pain of feeling a need to improve.  Pain is the price for pleasure.

Fathering has been drastically curtailed in our society and replaced by an extreme, exaggerated mothering.  Without strong fathers to help children grow and make something of themselves, mothers or female teachers, administrators, or therapists a forced to sometimes act as fathers.

Kids will need discipline, that is inevitable.  Parents will need to control the children and set limits.  When women are thrust suddenly into fathering, the judging and critical role, disaster can occur.  First, they are not used to it, and it is a fine tool which requires careful application.

Second, the mother figures in a child’s life are sorely needed to affirm their self concept.  If the same person affirming the essence of a person is also saying they need to improve, they are effectively saying that the child is flawed.  So, they temper the fathering critique message with more mothering:  You must behave better to succeed…but you are fine and I accept you how you are right now.  Huh?

Sending a contradictory message to children easily leads to their doubting themselves, or growing into an adult with a sense of selfish entitlement (from the excess mothering) but internal emptiness (as the criticism is coming from the same source giving the flawed acceptance).  This creates internal chaos.  This deep rooted problem is one of many reasons why children succeed much more with a mother and father.

This conflicted fathering/mothering doesn’t affect girls as deeply, since the modern culture repeatedly tells girls they are great because they are female.  But the mainstream narrative tells boys they are, at best, less than great.  We have all heard Girl Power, but never Boy Power.

In schools naturally raucous boys are treated (and medicated) like they are flawed girls who need to learn to sit still.  I heave heard of boys losing recess for speaking out during class, compounding this wrong understanding of boys being boys.

So giving a girl some flawed fathering won’t kill her self image, since the outside world reminds her she is great.  Boys are ironically more delicate in this regard.  A lack of fathering can turn a boy into an entitled, fragile narcissist, while combined fathering and mothering can smother his self esteem and leave him without any clear path to self fulfillment.

So, if you are a father, or mother, or plan to become one of those, or even a teacher, a mentor, or a friend, Pirke Avot is relevant.  Like much of ancient Jewish wisdom, Pirke Avot is not preaching but teaching how to live a better life, and how to help youth grow into competent and well balanced adults.

We can translate Pirke Avot as Wisdom for Fathering.  Tools for sculpting young souls, crafting mere rocks into brilliant diamonds.  Really, fathering is not about the father/mother/teacher sculpting.  It is giving the child or student the tools and the passion for sculpting themselves.  Since fathering is a lost art in present day mainstream culture, looking back to ancient wisdom is a key to success.

 

 

In my Yeshivah (an institute of traditional Jewish learning and self development) we used the metaphor of taking the Red Pill to describe the process of opening our eyes to see that there is a spiritual world hidden to most but accessible with effort and dedication.  We jokingly said we had “unplugged” from the secular world with its goals of getting money and prizes and mindlessly pursuing pleasure and escape because there was no lasting meaning in money and prizes.  Now our eyes were opening to the value of understanding our heritage, refining our character, and doing the Will of God.  Things that are heavy, accomplishments that are meaningful, acquisitions that our eternal.  No longer content to build careers, bank accounts and keep up with the Joneses, we were building spiritual accounts and yearning to keep up with Moses.

 

 

Those were heady days for me. Up early to pray and learn, study Jewish law, debate philosophy with friends and roommates, learn Jewish songs on the guitar.  We had a gym with a weight room, and on the wall a sign said “Build Torah Muscles”.  We ate in order to learn.  We slept in order to pray with concentration.  We jogged through the holy city and lifted weights to have the strength to discuss the intricacies of Torah for hours on end.  Everything physical was in service of the spiritual.

Even dating and getting married was with the intent that we were doing the will of God. I got that message strong, maybe too strong, and tried to get married asap.  That meant praying for a wife, making connections with people who knew people, dating girls, focusing my energy on finding a match.  And it worked.

 

Time went by, I was out of Yeshivah and in grad school, and I was less energized.  I was doing more physical for the sake of physical.  Going to school to get a job.  Working a job in order to eat.  Eating in order to live.  Living in order to…?   To what?

go to work of course.  Yeah, I was still learning and growing and developing intellectually.  You can’t fall off the learning wagon when you commit to study every single day.  But I wasn’t feeling the fire as much.

 

Then I had some problems with the most important human relationship in my life.  My wife.  For a long time I took her for granted, and she was getting fed up.  She demanded more help from me and more time for her to pursue her own interests.  I obliged but not without resentment.  Sometimes I was passive and let her push me around, because it would give me a reason to feel resentful and not help her.  Sometimes I was cruel when she needed kindness.  Often times I was too kind when she needed firm boundaries.  Things were not happy.

 

I read a lot of books.  There are many excellent books about building and keeping peace in a traditional Jewish marriage.  These do help, really.  But in some contexts they can’t help enough to fix the situation.  I felt that it was hard to entirely accept their advice, much of it was variations on “be nicer”, though there are deeper concepts in some of the Jewish marriage books.  My problems was sometimes I was too nice, then would get upset about being disrespected, and get too mean.  I was inconsistent, my soul was fluctuating too wildly (your soul always fluctuates, but should not change in an extreme way), so I was not living up to what I could achieve as a husband, as a rock.

I did what most people do when looking for answers, I asked Google. I read a lot of marriage advice, analysis, and self help material.  Eventually I found the “Red Pill” community of men, I don’t think it was even a community then, just a few blogs and forums and guys trying to sell various programs to fix your marriage.

Now, I am aware of what our Sages taught (Sanhedrin 90b) that who reads external literature has no share in the World to Come.  You need to be aware of what you are consuming, it has the capacity to change your thoughts, ideas, beliefs, and finally actions.  I take modern “Red Pill” work with a large dose of salt, and look for what it consistent with our ancient Biblical ideas.  In this generation, for some men getting these ideas and understanding the big picture of relationships can even save their life.  So there is a pikuah nefesh element as well (saving a life pushes aside many prohibitions).  In addition, the men who reed “Red Pill” ideas the most are those who were already exposed to ‘external literature’ as they grew up in modern mainstream American culture, which has given them a terrible misimpression of how their relationships with women should play out.

Eventually I found TRM, and he wasn’t selling anything. He was trying to explain and understand the big picture of how the genders interact.  He was looking under the hood.  A lot of the advice was not applicable to a married religious man.  For any advice you get, especially online, you have to think carefully about how to apply it to you.  You are not the most special person in the world, the author didn’t write it just for you, you have to be smart and use what works for you in your own situation.  Some of the advice could apply, and did.  Examples:  Be the best version of yourself.  Don’t try to make your wife happy, make yourself happy and she will go along, she wants to be with a happy person too.  Make yourself your mental point of origin – for a religious man, you could say make God or your relationship with God your point of origin.

To vastly oversimplify, the message RM gives to men is don’t live your life chasing women, or in service of women, they won’t appreciate it anyway.  The key message I adapted was to live life in service of God, He does appreciate it, and good things will come from that.  Now, part of serving God is developing a peaceful and mutually beneficial relationship with your wife.  You need to be reliable, caring, and giving, yes.  But you never for a second put a woman above God.  That is idolatry.  Instead you realize that God wants you to build yourself up into a stronger and better man, a better husband and father.  That brings honor to your Creator and peace to your family.  You need to be firm and set boundaries with your wife and children.  That is hard when society tells you to just be nice and if that doesn’t work be nicer and back down.  We have a wise concept in Judaism do not be kind to the cruel or you become cruel to the kind.  ‘Turn the other cheek’ is not in the Book.

The critical similarity between Jewish Red Pill and masculine Red Pill is the self improvement message.  Be the best version of yourself.  Whether that goal is for yourself or for God is up to you.

 

BTW, If you are in any religion, club, program, gym, or social group, anything… and they are not giving you the message to be the best version of yourself… then get out.  It’s a waste of your time and energy.  Either that group doesn’t believe in self improvement, or they do but are not giving you the message loud and clear enough, and you need to get that message in a different way.

We live with our eyes closed, our inner spiritual eyes which have vastly greater powers of perception than the physical ones.

First, realize there is a spiritual world. You don’t need to believe in God or in miracles to sense that there is something deeper at work in the world, some realm that lies hidden from regular observation.  Some people believe in ghosts, or a cosmic energy linking all things together, or aliens.  Others simply feel like the repetitive rat race is just not fulfilling, and think that can’t be all there is to life.  Of course you have felt this yourself at times.  We all know that there must be more to this world than what we see on a superficial level.

Second, open your inner eyes. You won’t see anything at first.  The spiritual world is felt through experience and reflection.  You can develop your sensitivity, much like how a newborn develops eyesight.  When they are born, babies have 20/400 vision and can only see about a foot away.  This is perfect to allow them to see their mother when nursing (not a coincidence).  We are so used to only using our physical eyes that our spiritual eyes cannot focus yet.  That is natural, developing your inner life is a long process.

One way to start feeling spiritual energy is to notice how your physical energy changes in response to your spiritual situation. We all have those mornings, you know, you got plenty of sleep and are (Thank God) in good health, but you just don’t want to get out of bed.  The energy is not there.  This is a palpable lack of physical energy.

A change in spiritual energy can fix this. Imagine you were up until 1am packing for an amazing trip.  Maybe your first trip outside the country, or to meet up with a childhood friend you have not seen in years, or to your loving grandparents who may not have much longer.

Your alarm goes off. You roll over.  The clock says 4:30am.  Right now your physical energy is low.  Your body wants to stay under the warm blankets.  Then you think about the trip.  Your soul wants to move, to go, to accomplish.  Your soul suddenly injects energy into your body, via your thoughts and emotions.  “4:30!” you say “Wake up everyone, it’s time to go! Out of bed!”

Wow, how did that happen? The soul took over from the body.  You can feel your soul in action.

I understand what you are thinking now, you think: well that was not my soul, that was my mind, my emotions. Now, the soul is complex and we are not so experienced at using it (Jewish mysticism reveals that there are actually various aspects and levels of the human soul, each with their own attributes).  When your mind tells your body to go, it is sending electrical and chemical signals throughout the body.  Even if you made the conscious decision “I need to get up and go”, that doesn’t send the signals.  You may not even make a conscious decision, but the energy is there.  The soul, the real hidden you, wills you to start moving, triggering the mind, body, and emotions to respond appropriately.

 

Every electrical or chemical signal in your body, every thought, each daydream, the depths of your emotions, these all make physical imprints on reality. Electrons jump across synapses, hormones and

These are information. Now, information is never destroyed (okay, a black hole might in theory destroy the information of anything that enters it.  Or it may convert that to holographic form, and perhaps the entire universe is a hologram right now).

So every thought, urge, feeling is imprinted from your body into the universe, as information. Which can never, in classical physics, be destroyed.  So in a way, you are already eternal.  What I suggest is that your thoughts, actions, feelings also make an imprint onto the spiritual universe.  You create your soul with every thought, feeling, word, and movement.   You wield a tremendous power.  Open your eyes and start using your soul.

There is an endless amount of wisdom in the Torah, like a deep blue sea without a shore.

 

When we say “Torah” most readers will assume we mean just the Five Books of Moses, plus the Prophets and Writings.  This is commonly called the Old Testament in America (none of the Torah scrolls or books I have seen had an expiration date).

However, Torah also includes the Oral Law, called Torah sh’b’al Peh (teaching that is on the mouth).  The Oral Torah in basic form was given along with the written Torah, and passed down through the generations.  It was expanded by each generation as the concepts and laws were applied to the current circumstances.  The Oral Law was given over by Rabbis to students for millennia.  Due to Roman oppression scattering Jewish communities, almost 2000 years ago our sages made the decision to write down the basic part of it, the Mishnah.  Later, abouttabouTalmud or Gemara which explains the Mishnah was also written down.  Medrashim, oral histories giving background to the written Torah, were also passed down orally for thousands of years and finally written.

Conventional Jews have always learned the written Bible together with the oral.  The written Torah doesn’t make sense without the Oral.  Example:  Deut. 12:21  “If the place the Lord, your God, chooses to put His Name there, will be distant from you, you may slaughter of your cattle and of your sheep, which the Lord has given you, as I have commanded you, and you may eat in your cities, according to every desire of your soul”.

“As I have commanded you“…?  The written Torah doesn’t say a word about how to slaughter animals.  Ritual slaughter was commanded by God to Moses who taught it the Jewish people (Talmud Yoma 75b).  It was passed down for generations in the Oral Law, which explains how to implement the written Law.

Leviticus 23:40 commands Jews on the holiday of Sukkot to take a pri eitz hadar, “fruit of a splendid tree”  The Torah does not identify this tree and fruit, we know from tradition all the way back to Moses this is an Etrog fruit (Talmud Succah 35a).

 

The Bible commands us (Deut 11:18) “And you shall place Totafot between your eyes.”  What is a Totafot? For millennia Jewish men have worn them every day, and the Totafot of Jews in India were basically identical to the Totafot of Jews in Spain.  Because the Oral Law tells us exactly what they are and how to make them.

Besides the Mishnah and Talmud (Gemara), there are various Medrashim that give background information to many events in the written Bible.  Some of these are based on eyewitness accounts from the Jews who were on the scene.  Some are rabbinical explanations of the written verses, based on ancient oral traditions.

 

The written Torah is like the skeleton and the Oral Torah is the flesh, muscles and organs.

What is a red pill?

It refers to a mechanism to change your perspective, allowing you to see the world for what it really is.  The source of the concept of “Taking the Red Pill” is the 1999 movie The Matrix, in which young Keanu Reeves takes a red pill which allows him to wake up and escape from the computer generated world he was wired into. Once outside, he can finally see the actual world. He then becomes involved in fighting against the makers of this computer simulation which has trapped most humans, aided by the knowledge that this world is merely a simulation masking true reality.

Since the movie, a number of groups have offered their version of a red pill, information supposed to free your mind from the shackles of common assumptions and allow you to see the truth.  Their version of the truth.

When I was a student in Yeshivah (a conventional Jewish learning center) we used the Red Pill metaphor to understand the process of switching from a mainstream life focused on the material world to seeing the reality that we are also living in a spiritual world.

The revealed world of mere physical reality masks the spiritual domain that holds true power over our lives.  But most people never see beyond the physical world.  Conventional Jews, for millennia had always lived with the knowledge that the physical and spiritual domains overlap and interrelate, and traditional Judaism emphasizes that spiritual efforts can change physical realities and vice versa.  However, modern “enlightened” Jews have lost sight of this truth and live almost entirely in the physical world.

Many of us in that Yeshivah had grown up in less religious homes, some guys even had been staunch atheists.  Now we were beginning to realize that there is a spiritual energy within the physical world we inhabit, that Torah and Mitzvot (the commandments of the Bible) create and channel spiritual energy into physical existence.  This of course will sound crazy if you have not experienced it.   Because you have not taken the Red Pill of spirituality…

I’m not selling you on becoming Jewish, or even religious at all.  You don’t have to be Jewish to benefit from ancient Jewish wisdom.  We are not recruiting.

The point is there are different ways to look at the world and your own role in it.  If you are aware of the greater narratives that frame your choices you can make better, more informed choices.  So many people ignore the spiritual aspect of their life because modern society shuns and makes light of spirituality, and modernized religions have watered down spirituality and built of physicality.  They live in that framework unable to see the other option.

Years later, I discovered a very different group of men using the Red Pill concept to describe realizing that the core of modern mainstream western culture is dominated by a narrative that favors women over men. They explained that this has profound and problematic results on our romantic relationships, marriages, and families. I read many blogs, articles, books, and interviews, and realized that much of the wisdom among these sources echoed certain ancient Jewish teachings about men and women.

Some of these men are truly dedicated to helping other men improve their lives and families (some are just trying to sell you something).  I warn Orthodox readers that there is foul language (nivul peh)* and adult content in Red Pill blogs and material.  It is up to you to separate the wheat from the husk, and if you are easily influenced by outside culture avoid these things…
[*Religious Jews avoid using foul language since it causes damage to the incredible spiritual power of the mouth. If you hear someone curse, imagine saying in a thick Italian mafia accent: “You talk to God with that mouth?!”]

I read many sources and stopped reading many sources too.  There is a lot of junk out there, and a lot of guys trying to sell you their plan for success.  I continue to highly recommend the book series “The Rational Male” by Rollo Tomassi, who also writes at https://therationalmale.com/

Yes, some of these men have very different ideas about relationships than the conventional Jewish views.  For religious readers I urge caution when reading Red Pill material.  Much of it will not apply directly if you are in a traditional relationship, but there are some extremely useful concepts.  Ancient Jewish sages taught us: “If you are told, there is wisdom among the nations, believe it” (Eichah Rabbah 2:13).

Just like you don’t need to be Jewish to improve your life with Jewish wisdom, you don’t need to indulge in everything that secular authors support in order to benefit from Red Pill concepts. In particular, the second “The Rational Male” book “Preventive Medicine” is not of practical application for religious men who should not be spinning plates.

The main point is sound however, and similar to the Biblical reality of Kosher Polygamy, and the effects that flow from our history of Polygyny.  I’ve heard of shtark yeshivishe bachurim dating multiple girls at a time.  They don’t even touch them, but the greater concept is the same: getting to know more women and having the mentality that you are the prize helps your relationship.

That said, take any “wisdom” you can find online with a grain of salt.  Be careful who you read. Vet your guru, even your rabbi.  You can profoundly change your life for the better, if you take proper care not to change for the worse.