Ancient Lessons for a Modern Life with Adam Teitelbaum

Somewhere deep inside me was the fear that if I opened the floor to discussion, I'd slowly erode my own credibility (less sour aftertaste) as a father.

But then another, more disturbing thought crept in:

What if he has a genuinely better idea…occasionally?

That question has stayed with me. It's about what kind of relevance (least sour aftertaste) I hope to exercise in our home. Am I raising children whose highest virtue is compliance because my highest virtue for them is compliance, or children who learn to think carefully and independently enough that one day they become worthy stewards of the values they're inheriting?

In this week's parsha, Chukat-Balak, a Midianite king named Balak realizes he cannot defeat the Israelites by force, so he hires a prophet, Bilam, to do what swords couldn't: curse them into oblivion. Bilam opens his mouth to deliver the curse — and a blessing comes out instead. Not once, but three times. He tries again. The curse will not come. Something stronger than his intention, or even Balak's hatred, is rewriting the words in his mouth before they land.

Not too long ago, I came home from a long work trip to a lackluster reentry. Turning into the driveway, I envisioned my triumphant return in the form of a dogpile in the doorway, followed by a lovely dinner filled with adoration and appreciation. What I walked into for real was the usual managed chaos and general underwhelm for my reappearance. No ribbons, no balloons. Only, “Daddy what’d you get me?” and “Can you grab the chicken out of the oven?” Deflated, I felt…deflated. Incidental. Hardly the hero’s welcome. And instead of recalibrating, I retreated into a pout. Yes. A pout. Which turned into a three-day stew.

The unfortunate irony is that I knew instantly I’d missed an opportunity to become the husband and father I aspire to be.

June is Men's Mental Health Awareness Month, and the most useful thing I can do isn't write about male vulnerability in the abstract. I can tell you what it feels like for me.

This week I’m reading the Torah portion, Behaalotecha. This is a very consequential and intense parsha in which Moses has a challenging moment with the Israelites leading to a complete crisis of confidence in his own leadership. It’s one year since the Exodus and the Israelites are complaining voraciously to G-d — particularly about the food. They have been receiving a daily miracle from heaven, manna, as sustenance, but are complaining they’re tired of manna and long for the meat and vegetables they enjoyed in Egypt.

As THE advocate for his people, and frustrated he’s going it alone, Moses unloads on G-d.

Most days I'm so mired in the logistics of parenting, navigating the emotional and physical needs of our family alongside my wife, that my highest aspiration is brushing my teeth before bed. In the brief moments I lift my gaze and think about the men I hope my sons will become, I find that my default is to project onto them all the accomplishments I’ve never accomplished. If this is a way to remediate my own shortcomings, then it says something uncomfortable about how I’ve measured my own self-worth for as long as I can remember.

So then how do I create a new aspiration paradigm for my boys – one rooted in elevating their sense of self-worth?

The first time I lived on my own, my toilet broke. I called a plumber. He drove across town, walked into the bathroom, reached into the tank, reattached a small rubber stopper, and handed me a bill for $250. The part costs $5 at the hardware store. The fix takes ninety seconds once you know what you're looking at. I now know what I’m looking at.

My Grandpa Harry would have been aghast. Almost every clear memory I have of him begins with the phrase, “let me get my glasses …” followed by an enduring solution. He hemmed all his own pants, built the dining room table now living with us, and resuscitated the toys I broke playing too enthusiastically. I cherished watching him in those moments, not a little awestruck. Every action was filled with love and devotion. Unfortunately, I can’t recall a time he said, “Adam, today I will show you how to sew on a button,” but that’s another essay.

Until becoming a father, the only constant in my life was motion. Not change, motion. There is a difference. Change requires you to arrive somewhere new and reckon with what you find there. Motion is about movement for movement’s sake. Complete an Ironman: check. Next? New title, new salary: check. Next? Buy the house, gut the kitchen: check. Next? In college I ate lunch on my skateboard between classes because I couldn't embrace the stillness of a sitdown meal.

I called it ambition. What I understand now, with the clarity that fatherhood can force on you, is that I was afraid of what I might find if I sat still long enough.

This week's parsha, Behar-Bechukotai, is filled with blessings and curses from G-d to the Israelites. If you follow my commandments, you will have abundant blessings; if you stray, I will rain curses upon you. To many readers this is a case-in-point that G-d is vindictive, punitive, judgmental, and that everything in Jewish practice is generated via ultimatum. Stay with me here, I’m not the only one who disagrees with this assessment.

In Parshat Emor, Moses instructs the Israelites about the sanctification of time, the sacred calendar that structures Jewish life across the year. Shabbat. Passover. Shavuot. Sukkot. Each holiday carries its own purpose and memory, its own particular way of stopping the clock to commemorate what actually matters — the fact of creation itself, the Exodus, the journey through the wilderness to receive Torah, the harvest. What strikes me, reading this portion as a father, is that the Jewish calendar is not merely suggesting that its people cultivate presence: it is structurally engineering it. It is building the sacred stop into the architecture of the week, the month, the year, because there’s something about human nature we are still failing to fully reckon with: that without the intentional stop, time evaporates.