How to be an inspiring parent.

Rule 7.

I'm going to introduce by an odd confession.

I never call myself a modern Orthodox Jew.

In fact, to be honest with you, I really don't like that phrase at all.

There's a reason for this.

If you say proudly, I'm a modern Orthodox Jew, you are saying, in effect, what is modern is good. Now, I'm with you half-word of that.

Much of what is modern is good.

But much of what is modern is very bad indeed.

Modernity is telling us really quite difficult things.

It's challenging our ideas of ethics, of moral responsibility,

of family, of faithfulness, of modesty, of sexual rules,

of everything that we believe in.

A lot of that has just disappeared.

So I cannot believe that everything modern is good.

We have to stand at a critical distance from the surrounding culture and say, you know what?

Some of this is great and I give it my support and I make it part of me, but some of this

is not great at all. We have to have

the courage ourselves and to teach our children to take a step back and live by our standards

in here, not the world's standards out there. Now there's a fascinating little piece of hidden drama in the

Torah very early on. You remember Abraham and Lot, Abraham and his nephew lot, separate

because they have too many flocks and cattle to graze together and they go their different

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