This has been quite an eventful week in our home. Our 11 year old daughter just returned from camp. When I met her at the bus the look on her face suggested two over arching ideas. First, “I am very tired because I was up late with my friends crying on the last night of camp”. Second, “While I have physically returned home, I don’t want to be here. I want to be back in camp. I will need some time to adjust to reentry to the home and the family.” So my wife and I have been very respectful of granting our daughter “space for re-entry”. We both acknowledge that we want this and most transitions to go smoothly. We understand that while we want to spend time with her, hug her and do all the things that 11year olds find annoying in their parents; we also realize that we are constantly aware that the way we deal with today can, to some extent, impact upon tomorrow.
Needless to say, as Shabbat approaches I am particularly excited to have our 11 year old home so I give her a bracha without any distance between us. On Erev Shabbat, before we begin Friday night Shabbat dinner, we perform several rituals including blessings over the candles, wine and challah. However the most meaningful and powerful Erev Shabbat ritual occurs when I bless my children. When I bless my four children and look into their eyes, I am overwhelmed with the sense of being a link in the chain of our people. Not only do I bless them by invoking our patriarchs and matriarchs and hope that God’s benevolence shines upon them. I also invoke thousands of years of learning, thousands of years of Halacha, thousands of years of a holy covenant and relationship to God. When I bless I am praying that they will know how precious this moment is, how beautiful Shabbat is, and how meaningful life is when it includes God, Torah and Mitzvot. When I bless my children, I pray that my children will yearn to pass down Mitzvot, learning, a sense of holiness, and the words of Torah to their children. It is at this moment I feel linked to my ancestors; it is at this moment I feel linked to our tradition, and to God, stretching all the way back across the millennia.
This week we begin the final book of the Torah, Sefer Devarim, with Parsha Devarim. Traditionally known as Mishnah Torah – or the repetition of the Torah, Parsha Devarim is the introductory Parsha to Moshe’s formal teaching of the Torah to this new generation. Moshe Rabeinu, now only a few weeks from the moment of his death, imparts his teaching and his wisdom upon B’nai Yisroel like a dying grandparent or parent would to his/her children. Eilah HaDevarim Asher Diber Moshe El Bnai Yisroel B’Eiver Yarden-These are the words that Moshe Spoke to all Israel, on the other side of the Jordan…(Deut. 1:1) Moshe's teaching and Moshe’s repetition of the Torah embodies tradition. Moshe’s teaching and his repetition of the Torah, exemplifies every parent’s responsibility to strengthen the child’s connection to Judaism, to Torah, and to God.
How do we as parents, and grandparents, teachers, and clergy, friends and neighbors, pass this tradition to the next generation? First and foremost we must start with ourselves. We should be grounded in our belief system and understand the role of Judaism in our lives. Judaism must be relevant to our own lives. Torah is not just a book but rather a code that allows us to engage in a meaningful relationship to God. The purpose of observing Torah and Mitzvot is to live a life of greater sanctification, a life based upon adding holiness to the mundane as opposed to diminishing holiness from the mundane. While there have been or will be times when we struggle in our relationship with God; we can find comfort in a tradition that reminds us that we are the great great great great… grandchildren of those men and women who stood at Sinai and saw and heard God speak to them.
Once we have worked on ourselves, once we have struggled with and accepted the primordial, and even primitive importance of maintaining our Jewish identity, of observing and learning we can begin passing this sense of importance to our children. Once we have accepted that in the very core of our souls, the place where we define ourselves as human and humane, that that sense of human-ness, and sense of humanity is Jewish, then we can pass Eilah Hadevarim, these words to our children. Once we have accepted that the only legacy we leave on this earth after we die is our children and our ideas, and then we are ready to pass Eilah Hadevarim, these words to our children, our legacy. Even if we have not accepted any of these things, even if we are still struggling, even if we honestly believe that this is all childish stuff, we must still pass down Eilah Hadevarim at least for one reason. Everything else that we leave for our children, our grandchildren and our community is finite. Money runs out always needing replenishment. Resources are finite and eventually need replenishment. Only Judaism, like God is infinite. The more it is used the more there is. More learning leads to more observance. More observance leads to more Tzeddakah. More tzeddakah improves the lives of those less unfortunate. The better off the unfortunate will lead to a kinder and gentler community. The kinder and gentler the community, the holier the world has become.
We teach and pass down Eilah Hadevarim, these words, by doing these words. We teach by speaking, we teach by doing. We teach by acknowledging that our children will model our behavior. On this Shabbat, the Shabbat before Tisha B’Av, the Shabbat prior to our commemoration of the destruction of the Holy Temple as well as numerous other tragedies, let us re-affirm that our ability to survive is a direct result of our ability to pass Eilah Hadevarim, these words to our children. As I bless my daughter for the first time in five weeks, I am reminded of just how sacred Eilah HaDevarim, These words are. As I bless my daughter for the first time in five weeks I pray she passes These Words to her children when they return home from summer camp.
Peace,
Rav Yitz
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