ITTY KAY
INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S EDUCATOR AND MENTOR
Itty Kay is a passionate educator, beloved teacher, and mentor at Bais Chana Women International, a place of learning and connection for Jewish women – from adolescents to grandmas.
In 2011, Kay discovered Bais Chana and was enchanted with the real-life wisdom and community it offers women from all walks of life. Today she dedicates countless hours teaching there, responding to women’s real-life questions and struggles with timeless wisdom from Torah. In addition to poring over classic Torah and Chabad Chassidic texts and listening to lectures from scholars in the field, her wisdom is honed in hours-long exchanges with the strong, thoroughly knowledgeable women in her life, studying and debating each subject from many angles together.
Beyond teaching women and raising her talented young son, Kay dedicates significant time volunteering as a mentor for women in need.
Kay’s ultimate goal is to empower and unite women globally. Her dream is that “No woman should feel alone or think the answers to her struggles are across the world or at the bottom of a pill bottle.” Her recent creation, The Responsive HeartTM course at Bais Chana, has received rave reviews, mirroring the success of her other courses. Find her classes at baischana.org.
The Thought-Mistake
ITTY KAY
Imagine your friend “Sarah” is married to a wonderful man. But... he’s constantly studying other women. When confronted he explains: “I’m just keeping an open mind. Is she the best wife for me? Did I make the right choice? Maybe there’s someone better for me out there? How can I be certain she’s my soulmate? I have a brain. Am I supposed to shut it off and stay in this marriage with blind faith?”
Not only will this kind of thinking destroy a marriage, but the deeper tragedy is that in the husband’s loyalty to supposed rationality, he’s neglecting to use his intellect for its currently intended purpose: to get to know his wife.
The best use of intelligence, once married, is to study each other. Discover your partner’s virtues, learn their desires, wishes, and strengths. Understand their fears, pains, and insecurities. Study the details, great and small, that make them your unique and wonderful match during this lifetime. Seek to uncover more and get closer every day. If, after years of marriage, you love your spouse as on your wedding day... how terrible! The longer you know each other, the stronger your love should grow. Now that’s using your mind.
In the same vein, dedicating our intelligence to deliberating God’s existence is not the reason we’re here. It’s not that we’re being asked to believe blindly. There’s ample evidence. It’s just that if God chooses to hide Himself to give us freedom to choose whether to find Him or ignore Him, then we’re not going to outmaneuver God and present proof that’s incontrovertibly acceptable to all. We’re not going to rob deniers of their God-given freedom to choose to deny.
For those who seek Him, evidence of God is everywhere. In fact, to reject God, one must shut one’s eyes and willfully ignore the fact that every being, system, and pattern in our magnificently complex universe points to an intentional designer.(1) One must ignore a history rich with God’s direct communication (2) and millennia of nature-defying miracles. Most painfully, one must suppress one’s inner voice that cries out with the deepest yearning; to live the purpose for which we’ve been created, by a Creator Who yearns infinitely back for our participation and closeness.
When choosing God, the process, for some, necessitates a “dating” stage, .e., time dedicated to researching whether He’s The One and using your intellect to explore the science and history, and examine the evidence for God’s existence.
But don’t get trapped in the biggest thought-mistake of your life. Don’t remain in the dating mindset forever. What’s our intelligence for? (3)
As with the example above, the relationship is already in progress; Creator and creation immutably intertwined. Our intellect is for studying Him! Dare to get to know Him. Seek to grow intimately familiar with every detail of His wishes and dreams. Open your mind and fall in love with the other half of your soul, your life force, your Creator who’s patiently waiting for you to love back.
Footnotes:
1. Proof of the Existence of G-d, Rabbi Nissan Dovid Dubov, Chabad.org
2. Logical Proof of the Revelation at Mt. Sinai, Correspondence by Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, Chabad.org
3. “Know G-d,” Rambam’s Mishneh Torah, Yesodei HaTorah, ch. 1, including fn. 1, Chabad.org; “In all your ways, know Him,” Proverbs 3:6; “...this is the whole man and the purpose of his creation, that one may know the glory of G-d and the majestic splendor of His greatness, each according to the limit of his capacity, as is written in Raaya Mehemna, Parashat Bo: ‘In order that they may know Him,’” Tanya ch. 44; “The land will be filled with the knowledge of G-d like the waters cover the sea bed.” Isaiah 11:9. The first three quotes refer to our task of getting to know God. The final one references the future, when we will achieve this goal.