Lighting The Flame
Rabbi Moshe Levi
About Rabbi Moshe Levi
From Correction to Connection
I grew up in Jerusalem.
I learned in Yeshivat Chevron Geula, where I had the privilege of sitting close to HaRav Shmuel Yaakov Bornstein zt"l — a man who saw every person as a world unto themselves. What he planted in me during those years became the foundation of everything I do today.
After my marriage, I moved to Brooklyn, learned in Kollel Yad Yosef, and received semicha from HaRav Dovid Feinstein zt"l.
But the real turning point didn't happen in yeshiva.
It happened at home.
The Question That Changed Everything
For a long time, I found myself asking my child the same question, over and over:
"Why are you like this?
Why aren't you ...? Why...?"
One day, I stopped.
Not because I found the answer — but because I suddenly understood children cannot answer me.
Not because they dont want to, But because they dont know how.
Children don't have words for what lives inside them. They can't explain their pain, their fear, their confusion. They can only show it — through behavior, through silence, through the moments that frustrate us most.
That realization changed the way I see everything.
What I Believe - And Why It Matters
I have never been able to accept the idea that a child is broken.
That Hakadosh Baruch Hu creates neshamot that need to be "fixed."
I don't believe it — because I've never seen it to be true.
What I have seen, again and again, is this:
Behind every difficult behavior is a child who doesn't feel understood.
And the moment a parent learns to see what's really happening beneath the surface — not the behavior, but the soul behind it — everything begins to change.
That is what Rav Bornstein meant when he taught the idea of "leheitiv et haner" — not to fix the candle, but to tend it. To see the light that is already there, and help it shine.
This became the heart of my work. And the heart of my book, Lighting the Flame.
What I Do
For over twenty years, I have sat with parents who love their children deeply — but feel stuck.
They've tried everything. Explanations. Consequences. Patience. Firmness.
And still, something isn't working.
What they're missing isn't a new technique.
It's a new way of seeing.
When I work with a parent, I help them discover what is really happening inside their child — beneath the anger, the stubbornness, the withdrawal, the lies.
And once they can see it — they know exactly what to do.
"Ner Hashem Nishmat Adam" — the soul of a person is the lamp of G-d.
Every child carries a flame.
My work is simply to help parents see it — and tend it with love.