... If You Ask Me, I Shall Answer You

Q — Does the hedgehog drown in the water if it falls in?

Where is its sensitive mortal spot? Does it replace the quills it loses? And how does it fight its adversary?
A Schoolgirl

A — The hedgehog does not drown in the water if it is plunged into it, for its hollow quills, which it fills with air, keep it afloat and save it from sinking. It replaces its cast quills within a few months.

And when it means harm to its adversary, it swings its tail right and left and shoots from it a keen quill, which pierces the adversary's body and brings him down.

Q — I married, at sixteen years of age, a wealthy man, and after the tenth year of this marriage we had four children. But how my husband's odious conduct has stirred my sorrows! He comes home only rarely, with a brazen face that accepts no advice and listens to no reproach... How often I have been on the point of making him bear the consequences of this conduct of his, and leaving the house — and then my heart soon overflows with tenderness and fear for my children, and I turn back and endure. What is your opinion, matters standing so?
A Tormented Woman

A — In your husband's conduct there is indeed an offense against faithful wedlock, which God enjoined and which he himself pledged. As for your fidelity, that is what woman shows herself by at her truest; that it lies in your character is your pride. Your safeguarding of your children is a thing duty imposes upon you — above all now that a wind of straying has stormed through your husband. For what fault is it of these children, all that the days have wrought?

Persevere on the path of your lofty mission. A house will never lose its balance while within its walls dwell the mother's humble tenderness and the pride of sacrifice.

Q — My mother keeps steering my thoughts toward my cousin, my aunt's daughter, enumerating her merits and her ample readiness to face life.

And my father recites his daily directives, praising my cousin on his side of the family, her tact and her capability.

While I yearn with longing for the girl who sat beside me on the school bench, in whom I found an understanding and a feeling that bind me to her. Which way am I to take?
A Seeker of Stability

A — Your father and your mother intend nothing but good by their guidance; it was a duty upon them, and the decision has now passed into your own judgment. As for you, if you possess any strength of will, knock at the door of your heart earnestly and with understanding; entrust to your conscious mind the final, plain verdict; and go over with your family the direction of your choice. For if you proceed upon what pleases another rather than yourself, yours in life will be the duty of sacrifice, and theirs the prick of conscience; but if you proceed upon what your heart and your mind inspire, there will be good and rightness both for you and for your family.

Q — I am a mother. I feel all the love and tenderness that the word motherhood carries; yet I do not wish this to be my only aim in life. For I feel, in the depths of my love, that in motherhood there is a mission, one concerned with guidance and upbringing.

Is there, then, in devoted indulgence of our little ones, and in making every difficulty pliant to their wishes, any good for the preparing of their manhood? Or should we leave them to pass through the stages of life solving their problems by themselves?

A — It is true knowledge indeed that motherhood is a mission. It is the mother's duty to lavish tenderness and affection upon her child in his tender years; to enfold him in her fondness and her care as he grows; and to watch over him — with care while he is small, and with guidance when he is grown — without shutting off from him the chance to think, or smoothing every path of action for him by solving his passing problems herself. For then he will prove unable to manage his affairs and to solve the hard problems of life when he is grown. By being exercised in them while small, he steadies his thinking and his discernment of what is right in them, and grows accustomed to deciding matters — through practice in weighing preferences and the fittest of solutions — so that it becomes easy for him, as a man, to bear the responsibility of his own action: if his judgment prove wrong, he meets in his life a useful lesson; and if it prove right, it becomes of itself a spur to progress and success.

Q — Yesterday a quarrel broke out between me and my neighbor. She is drawn to the cinema to a great degree — she goes three or four times every week, pinching from her family's rationed budget (and she is the mother of four children) to slake this unruly inclination of hers, claiming that this, to her, is life. And she taunts me, because I go only when I am convinced that a film is not to be missed, and that there is benefit in it enough to make up for an outing in the open air, or a sitting with a circle of friends. Which of us is in the right?!

A — There is no doubt that in the cinema there is what benefits and profits, for knowledge is broadened and a person's information grows in many spheres of life. And there is in it, too, what merely pleases and allures without benefit — and this, to my mind, is the silliest kind of diversion. For in outings in the open air there is what breathes in health and gladdens the soul. And in a gathering with friends there is a delight in which thoughts meet and are watered, and in which souls find rest and take comfort — and it is, upon my life, a pressing necessity, now that fellowship among people in our society has taken to slouching down the slope of selfishness; it is the seed of understanding

and tranquillity among individuals — indeed, it is gaiety for the soul at no cost.

And as I see it, you are in the right in what you do.

Q — I thanked my Lord that I am not in a country other than ours, where the darlings of one's heart are driven to war as sheep are driven; but today I have begun to fear for my children, for I have learned that military instruction is to be prescribed in the schools, and perhaps this is a prelude to conscription among us. And we have vowed our children with our eyes and our hearts. What do you say, in God's name?! (A Mother)

A — There is no doubt, dear mother, that you were in a state of pure emotion when you wrote your letter. Come, let us survey life together. Let us set feeling aside (and I am a mother like you) and study our condition consciously and honestly, and we shall grasp that each of us has a binding duty toward her nation and her country, as well as toward herself. The freedom of the individual will never be safeguarded unless hands join together to protect the nation and the country. And what is life but struggle and martyrdom, in which a person glories when he inscribes an honorable page in the register of his nation and his country? A man's worth lies not in the years he has lived, but in the store he has laid up of good work and of sacrifice for the good of his country.