Once upon a time, not so long ago – in 1990, in fact – Chaim Walder was puzzled. The fourth-grade rebbe had tried everything to get his talmid (pupil) to stop hitting the other children: He talked to the boy, docked his recess, put him in the corner, and sent him to the principal. Nothing worked. Finally, he asked the child why he was acting that way. At first, the child offered all kinds of excuses: “This one hit me; that one laughed at me.” When he finally understood that his rebbe was not interested in justifications, but wanted instead to know what he was feeling in his heart, he was quiet. “Because,” as Rabbi Walder was to say much later, “children don’t speak about themselves.”
That’s how the story begins. And since this is a Where What When article, not fiction, we’ll skip right to the happy ending: In trying to get to the bottom of his student’s misbehavior, Rabbi Walder wrote a story. And through the story he stumbled upon a second career as a famous author. More important, he found a way to help children and adults heal where it hurts the most, in the heart.
Rabbi Walder, of Bnai Brak, has published ten books. His Kids Speak children’s books are bestsellers in the religious market. Written in Hebrew (Yeladim Mesaprim al Atzmam, Children Speak About Themselves), they were picked up by Feldheim Publishers and published in English; they have also been translated into French, German, and Spanish.
The books are made up of short stories, written in the first person. Each story is about a different child’s situation or dilemma. Children love the stories. By reading them, they vicariously encounter many life experiences. They learn to understand their own and other children’s feelings and motivations, how to avoid trouble, and how to deal with it when it comes. The energetic young Rabbi Walder is astonished at the amount of mail he receives from all over the world. Letters from his small but devoted readers, covered with their childish script, fill looseleafs and boxes. He answers each one.
With the success of his children’s books, Rabbi Walder began to write for adults. His latest book is called People Speak. These books, too, have been bolted down by a story-hungry public. His formula seems unassailable: a combination of suspense, conflict, and poignant emotion. Like the children’s stories, these are based on true incidents, suitably disguised. Some stories are sad, some are uplifting, and some are truly amazing. There’s the one about the couple who found their shadchan on a mountain in India, or the one about two feuding families who were reconciled through their children, or the one about the children who fought with each other to donate a kidney to their gruff old father, or perhaps the one about the downtrodden young single mother and her social worker, who eventually changed places in life.
What is the appeal of the stories? They are simple and straightforward. We recognize ourselves in the characters and their situations. Just knowing that other people have difficulties gives us comfort; we are no longer alone with our troubles. And we find hope: If these characters could prevail, maybe we can, too.
Sometimes the dialogue is slightly unrealistic. Would a child really say that? It doesn’t matter. There is something very satisfying about hearing the characters say what we would have liked to have said, or what we wish our parents, teachers, friends, or spouses had said: the apologies we wanted to hear, the resolutions we should have made. For children, in particular, Rabbi Walder gives words to their unspoken feelings and substance to emotions they could not possibly describe.
Rabbi Walder continues to write, and every Sunday night he hosts a radio show, during which listeners from all over Israel call in and tell their stories. He’s no longer in the classroom, but remains an educator on a larger stage, as director of Bnai Brak’s Center for the Child and the Family (Mercaz Layeled Velamishpacha).
“Tell me a story!” It’s the universal plea of every child. We adults have to admit that we love a good story, too. And isn’t life itself one long story that each person writes with his actions and with the feelings that come from the heart?
Where What When: How did you begin writing your books? How did it all develop?
Chaim Walder: First of all, I never thought I would become an “author”; actually, no one is born an author. I had some talent, which came to expression mostly in the yeshiva on Purim. Other than that, I didn’t even have the opportunity to write. After I got married, I went to work as a teacher, as I did have a knack for working with children. I had been a madrich (counselor) in summer camps.
I wrote my first story about a boy in my class who hit a lot. When he understood that I wanted to know what was going on in his heart, he was quiet, because children don’t know how to talk about their feelings. I told him to go home and write about his feelings. From his few words, I wrote a story (“There Is Hope” in Kids Speak 2). He was very pleased with the story and asked me to read it to the class, which I did. Although I didn’t mention the boy’s name, they all knew who it was. The story gave the class an insight into their classmate’s feelings, and it gave the boy the opportunity to understand what was happening to him. It was mamash (truly) therapeutic, and enabled this boy to overcome his problem. It was then that I understood that it is possible, through stories, to have a very great influence on children.
WWW: Do you mean to teach children lessons through stories?
CW: No. I am not the pedagogue who comes to educate through stories. Rather, I see myself in the role of one who is seeking to understand the child. When I write a story, I get down on the child’s level, as though I exchange places with him. I am very small, and adults do things to me; they tell me all kinds of things. By entering into the child, so to speak, I am able to see things from his perspective, to see what goes on there. Then I write as though I am that child. Thus, I wrote a story on the fat kid and the skinny kid, the lazy kid and the eager kid – on all kinds of children.
WWW: What happened to the stories?
CW: At the end of the year, my mother encouraged me to publish the stories, but I was hesitant. I didn’t know what the reception would be. Finally, I published a book under a pen name, C. Ya’ari (which means “of the forest,” just as Walder does, in Yiddish). What happened was that within two weeks, the book was sold out. It sold like hotcakes. I then put out another book, in which I used my own name. And so I became an author, it seems.
The books were translated into several other languages, and I began to receive letters from children from all over the world. After I saw the letters (even more from the Diaspora than from Israel), I wrote a third and fourth book for children. Then I wrote four books for adults. So that’s the history. It became not only books but a whole movement, and not only for children; many adults also write.
WWW: Are the stories true?
CW: They are all based on truth. They are true situations. But I create a plot from the facts; I might provide a solution. Once in a while, a story appears just as I got it, but usually I give the children something they can take away from the story. I see myself as an educator, after all.
WWW: What is the Mercaz Layeled Velamishpacha (Center for the Child and the Family) and how did you come to head it?
CW: Here at the Mercaz, we take care of problems with any child or teen in Bnai Brak. That means that if there is a child in school or a teenager in yeshiva who is not learning well or is not getting along with peers or with parents, the school refers him or her to us. We work with the children directly. We form an attachment to them. We lay out on the table, as it were, all the problems they have – with parents, with teachers, with themselves. We deal not with those who are in deep trouble but with those who are wavering. We try to prevent more serious problems, and we are quite successful. I have a staff of social workers that helps me. I also give courses to about 450 educators in the city.
I’ll tell you how I came to the Mercaz. I loved teaching. When Harav Shteinman, shlit”a, asked me to take this position, I said no; I wanted to be a rebbe. He came again and again to ask. Finally he said to me, “Look, if you are in the classroom, you will help three or four children a year. In this position you can help hundreds of children: three or four children each year from all the classes in all the schools in Bnai Brak.” That was his goal.
WWW: What do you see as the most important role of the Center?
CW: Many boys and girls, also teenagers, and even adults see in our Center a trustworthy address where, if they tell their story, they will be believed and helped. They know we won’t “tell” on them. For instance, I had an incident a half year ago, where a seven-year-old child was asked by a sixteen-year-old to go into the grocery story and bring him an ice cream. The child said, “Give me money and I’ll go.” The older boy said, “No, I already paid. The owner gives me permission.” So the child got the ice cream, then the boy told him to get him batteries and all kinds of things. When he refused, he said, “You know you are a thief already, and I’ll turn you into the police.” The child was scared. He started stealing all kinds of things for the teenager. He didn’t know what to do. He was afraid to tell to his parents. He thought they would beat him. After a few months, he wrote me a letter: “Dear Rav Walder, I have no one to whom to go. I depend on you to help me, not to tell on me. I can’t take it anymore…” With one phone call I was able to solve the problem. I spoke to the parents. The older boy was arrested and he is on parole. And the little boy is receiving psychological therapy for his trauma.
So, if there is an address where children can go to complain, that is very good thing. Children feel there’s someone who cares.
WWW: What can parents do to avoid problems?
CW: When parents notice something a little strange, a change in behavior – the child is too quiet, perhaps – they should extend a line to the children, to learn what is happening inside them. With most children, their feelings remain suspended within their hearts, and the child appears to us as an enigma. That’s why the parents should be aware and attentive, and find out what’s going on, even to discover that everything is okay. Pay attention, that’s all. In addition – and this is very important – parents should be open themselves. I have situations where the parents don’t want to take the child to a psychologist because it is a shame for them. But if a child has a problem, you have to take care of it.
One very good technique is to read stories with children, because it helps them verbalize their thoughts. A child might say, “Oh, something like that happened to me,” or “I am also afraid in my bed at night.” There are many stories in my books that present all sorts of situations a child can identify with.
WWW: You seem to put great stock in being open, in expressing one’s emotions.
CW: My task in the world is to help people express themselves, tell about themselves, and know that not everything is a secret. You know, most children are quiet when it comes to their emotions, yet the problem with adults, I think, is even worse. Adults also keep things inside. They don’t talk. People don’t say what’s in their hearts. My motto is “the heart is not a machsan (warehouse).” If you keep too many things in the heart, it bursts. Get it out! Get rid of it! Through the mouth, through writing. This is my message. The more open a person is, the better it is for him.
WWW: Our community doesn’t encourage this type of revelation. People are afraid of shidduchim, of being looked down upon, etc.
CW: Let’s say someone has a psychological problem but doesn’t want to go to a psychologist because he says, “I won’t get a shidduch.” I say to him – and this is another one of my mottos – if a person goes to a psychologist, the psychologist won’t marry him. But if he doesn’t go, no one will marry him.
What if you have a child with ADHD. He’s five years old. Take care of it now, when it’s a small problem. I guarantee you’ll prevent a problem many times worse at age 20. When the child is small, the problem is also small. Besides, I think it is no shame at all to deal with a child who has a problem. This is your child whom Hakadosh Baruch Hu gave you. I advise people to talk about the problem. When you talk, you find out that this one also has the problem, and that one also has the problem.
WWW: In your book, People Speak, the people who tell their stories have many different types of problems. Some of them overcome their problem, with a happy ending to the story, while others do not. I finished the book with the impression that many people go around with a great pain in their heart. So, perhaps another benefit of the books is just seeing that one is not alone.
CW: I am a person who doesn’t go around with pain in my heart – because I get rid of it right away. Everyone knows me for who I am and what I am. I don’t hide anything. My pain is for the others, who come to me.
WWW: How can you listen to so much pain?
CW: I don’t know. Maybe the reason is that I have a mission to bring a lot of light to people. When a person hates, when he is enraged, he feels very bad. By listening, I absorb all these emotions, and then the person feels better. I get a lot of love as well.
WWW: Has anyone objected to some of the subjects you bring up in People Speak? What about that story in Kids Speak about a little girl who was lured into a man’s home?
CW: First of all, People Speak was meant for adults only. And it pains me very much to hear that children are reading it. In a future edition, we hope to put on the cover “not for children,” or “for adults only.”
As for the story about the girl who went into the house of a man she didn’t know to help him with his groceries, and something happened to her there, the story doesn’t reveal what happened. It’s a secret. Children who read the story can think the person beat her. (By the way, in the Hebrew version, it was a boy.)
All my books have haskamot from rabbanim. Harav Yitzchak Silberstein, shlit”a, a very chashuve rav, asked me to write that particular story. Why? Because here in Bnai Brak we have children who are temimim (innocent), as I’m sure you have in Baltimore too. If I had spelled out why not to go with strangers, that would be a problem. It’s not even possible to tell these children, because they don’t know about these things. I just wanted to warn the children to be very careful about strangers, and that’s very important in today’s world. It’s less damaging to scare them a little than to not tell them anything and have something terrible happen.
This story also had the beneficial effect that some children who read it remembered that something similar had happened to them. Reading the story gave them the opening to tell their parents about what happened, and they were able to get psychological therapy. That’s very important as well.
I am careful not to discuss things that are forbidden (assur), although I do touch on certain points with adults. But it is a problem when children read a book like People Speak.
WWW: The secular Jews of Israel are not acquainted with your books. Do you have plans to market your books to them?
CW: The truth is that it pains me that the non-frum don’t have access to the books. The dati le’umi (nationalist religious) do read them, and we’re starting now to enter the secular world. But if a secular Jew sees the covers, which have pictures of children in yarmulke and tzitzis, they say, it’s not for me. We are thinking of putting out the books with a different cover for this purpose.
WWW: What is your opinion on the state of the frum family and educational system?
CW: Today, the only way to guard the family, to guard the child, is to follow the path of the Torah. It is the best assurance of raising a family to tzedek and to truth. There is a tremendous difference between the dati (religious) family and the non-dati family. Of course, there are problems with religious families. Sometimes one or two children go off the derech. But most of the family remains, continuing in the right way.
I would say that davka (especially) in this generation it is possible to see how good our families and educational systems really are. Today, you have to go no farther than the telephone, the computer, and even your watch, in order to encounter the yetzer hara. So why doesn’t everyone go off the derech? Although people cry about the “situation,” and criticize the state of education, I say this shows that today we have the best education ever. Despite the fact that everything bad is readily available, most people stay within the community and lead exemplary lives.
WWW: In Baltimore and the U.S. in general, we are talking a lot about youth that has gone off the derech. How do you see this trend, and what should we do about it?
CW: We have such a thing also here. But what does this mean? That the kids remove their yarmulke? No, they don’t remove it. It’s just that there is a certain period in their life when they succumb to the yetzer hara. The yetzer hara is very strong. But if we watch over them, if we keep them within the framework of the family and community, and maintain the chain of the generations, they eventually establish families and their children turn out good.
We have to know how to relate to these youth, not to throw them away. We should never say, “You’re leaving, so go!” – and throw a stone after them for good measure, and also double lock the door so they won’t be able to get back in. No, leave the door open, and they’ll return.
WWW: Thank you for a very interesting interview.
