Bullies to Buddies: A Torah Guide for Turning Your Enemies into Friends

Are you a talmid or talmidah in a Jewish day school or yeshiva? And are kids acting like your enemies, being cruel to you, ridiculing you, talking about you behind your back, excluding you, pushing you around? Do you wonder how children who have been receiving years of Torah education and learning the importance of ve'ahavta le'reacha kamocha can be so mean? Have you been turning to the rebbeim, morim and menahalim for help, only to find it makes the problem worse? And even more important, do you wish the kids would finally stop tormenting you and start treating you like a friend?

This book will provide the answers to all these questions – and a lot more. It will take the mystery out of the kids’ cruelty towards you. You will learn how the nefesh habehamis works and causes people to act in ways that may seem more appropriate for animals. You will discover the rules of the social games they are playing with you and why you have been losing. And even better, you will learn to be a winner, all by yourself, by understanding the secret power of ve’ahavta lere’acha kamocha.

You will learn how to disarm all types of insults, rumors, physical threats and attacks, cyberbullying, social exclusion, bragging, and more. You will even learn how to get along better with your brothers and sisters, parents, rebbeim and teachers. When you learn the simple secrets in this book, you will be able to have a life without enemies. Some of your tormentors might even become your friends. And if your enemies were once your friends, they will almost certainly go back to being your friends. Everyone will like and respect you more when you learn to use the hidden power of ve’ahavta lere’acha kamocha.

Lola Kalman is a Cooper Union graduate and a video artist. She is fond of posting on Youtube self-probing works which deal with questions of faith versus doubt, and art as a medium for communicating with the self, the audience, and a higher power.

Izzy Kalman has been a school psychologist and psychotherapist for three decades and has developed unique methods for teaching people to deal with anger, aggression and relationships problems. He is a director of Bullies to Buddies, Inc., author of Bullies to Buddies: How to turn your enemies into friends, and creator of the whole-school bullying reduction program, Victim-Proof Your School. He has taught his methods to tens of thousands of mental health professionals, educators and administrators, and is now applying them to solve problems in the workplace.