Early Childhood Education: Secrets of a Melamed with 37 Years of Experience | Rabbi Sagiv Levi #010

00:00 Speaker 1 Episode number ten. We’re opening the tenth episode of the program. It’s very, very exciting. I want to say thank you. Thank you to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, thank you to the Rebbe, and thank you to you. Your questions, encouragement, and responses give me so much strength to keep this going. There’s no organization or anything else pushing it from behind. It’s simply you. Knowing that the material goes out, that you receive it and listen to it and gain something from it—that gives me the strength to continue. For this episode, after talking more about adolescence until now, we’re moving to younger children: early childhood education. I sat down for this episode with Rabbi Segev Levy, a legendary teacher. He’s been in the same position for thirty-seven years, teaching the preparatory class at a school in Tzfas. It’s a fascinating episode. I personally learned a great deal from him and warmly recommend it to you. I’m Meir Wishniewski, and you’re listening to “On Chabad Education.” Rabbi Segev Levy, welcome.

00:50 Speaker 2 Glad to be here.

00:52 Speaker 1 First of all, thank you for coming. In the last few episodes, we’ve talked a lot about adolescence, and this time we’re bringing something different. You’re bringing another subject in education: young children, early childhood education. You’ve been in this position for years, decades already, with a lot of experience. So I’d like us to talk about this age and this stage. But first, I think we should get to know you a little. Where did you come from? How did you get into education? How did you come to work with children this age?

01:24 Speaker 2 Well, first of all, hello. I thank Hakadosh Boruch Hu for putting me in this place called education—educating Jewish children. How did I get there? When I was approaching sixteen, while studying at a religious high school, I became close to Chabad. I was searching, and what drew me to Chabad was the story of Reb Berachya Chen and how he lit a Chanukah menorah.

01:51 Speaker 1 Tell us about it.

01:52 Speaker 2 How he lit a Chanukah menorah in prison. And... I looked at it from the bottom up.

02:00 Speaker 1 Wait, what’s the story?

02:01 Speaker 2 The story is that he was imprisoned in Russia. He arrived at a prison, in a large room with at least forty prisoners, and he won over the leader of the gang there. He gave him his soup with the meat—with the bone that was in it. There wasn’t any meat, just a bone, so he couldn’t eat it. And he gave him the egg with the drop of blood in it. He made do with bread and a little butter. The gang leader took a liking to him, and one day he saw Berachya Chen looking sad. He asked, “Why are you sad?” He told him that the festival was coming. “Then be happy,” he said. “But on our festival, I need to light a Chanukah menorah.” So he told him, “You’ll light one.” He said, “How? You’re not allowed to smoke cigarettes in here, only in the yard. How can I light a fire in the room?” He said, “I promised you. You’ll get to do it.” Then he described how he took an onion—an onion—and cut it in half, put butter inside, pulled some cotton wool out of his jacket, made some wicks, and put them in the butter. Then he rolled a stick along the floor and out came “nitsitses.” At that point Reb Mendel Futerfas corrected him and said, “Nitzotzos—sparks.” So he said, “Nitzotzos,” but that didn’t sit right with him; “nitsitses” sounded much more ingenious. And with those sparks he lit the Chanukah menorah, and it burned. For how many minutes, I don’t know. But how long can butter burn inside half an onion, with a cotton-wool wick soaked with terrible amounts of sweat and alcohol? You can understand it wasn’t very long. The smell wasn’t very pleasant either. When it was over, the non-Jew asked him, “Well, are you happy now?” He told him,

03:36 Speaker 2 “Yes, but this is only the beginning. There are seven more days.” So he lit the Chanukah menorah, and on my way back, on a rickety Leyland bus, I was returning to Midrashiyat—

03:44 Speaker 1 Where did you hear the story?

03:45 Speaker 2 In Kfar Chabad, on 19 Kislev. I was returning to Midrashiyat Noam and thinking to myself: What is this man doing? He’s in prison because he spread Judaism. He didn’t steal or commit a crime. He was doing what Hakadosh Boruch Hu expected him to do. After all, that’s what the Frierdiker Rebbe had told him, so it was certainly the word of the living G-d. And they caught him. Now, instead of worrying about himself, his wife, and his children, and wondering what would happen to him, he was looking for a way to fulfill a mitzvah instituted by the Rabbis. A rabbinic mitzvah—in Reb Mendel Futerfas’s words, it’s a rabbinic mitzvah. That drew me in. I started asking questions, and they told me there was a Tanya class. Rabbi Meir Bosdonsky [?]—may Hakadosh Boruch Hu grant him long, good years in all matters—gave that Tanya class. There were more chassidic stories, guidance in conduct and direction, and we also learned Tanya. Through that, I came to Chabad. That was shortly before I turned sixteen. At sixteen and a half, during the summer vacation, I connected with the Chabad House in Holon. At the time, Levi Vilimovsky [?] and Yoske Lieder were there. Levi organized a day camp, and I offered to be a counselor. He said, “Sure, come be a counselor with us. Why not? Gladly.” The ages I was given were children who had finished kindergarten, which is really the equivalent of the preparatory class, and children who had finished first grade. I had the younger group of boys. That’s where I began my first work in education, with him. I was there again the following year, and afterward I came to study at the yeshiva in Tzfas and did some substitute teaching here and there at the school. But my first substitute assignment was in the preparatory class. Rabbi Schiffman was a chassan at the time and flew to the Rebbe. Rafi Bachar, one of the great educators of our generation, was filling in for him, and Rafi wanted to go home for Shabbos. So he asked me to cover for him on Friday

05:47 Speaker 2 and Sunday. It wasn’t easy for me. I almost made a vow never to go into education. But—

05:54 Speaker 3 Yes, it’s an interesting age.

05:55 Speaker 2 Yes. But in the end, my first substitute assignment at Or Menachem in Tzfas was in the preparatory class.

06:00 Speaker 3 And how many years have you been in the preparatory class now?

06:02 Speaker 2 Well, along the way I also ended up in Kiryat Gat and at a cheder in Tel Aviv. But when I came back, I started in the preparatory class in the 5751 school year, in Elul [unclear]. Boruch Hashem, Hakadosh Boruch Hu gave me the strength, and may He continue to give me strength and joy, with Hashem’s help. I’ve completed thirty-seven consecutive years in the preparatory class.

06:20 Speaker 3 Wow.

06:22 Speaker 2 And now, with Hashem’s help, we’re starting year thirty-eight.

06:25 Speaker 3 Incredible. Incredible. Well, it’s an interesting age. I have children who aren’t even at the end of the preparatory-class stage yet, and I want to ask something. First of all, is this age really critical and important when it comes to Yiddishkeit? After all, it’s an age when, as people say, they’re only just beginning in so many areas. In your view, is education in Yiddishkeit and values, or chassidic practices and habits, critical at this age?

06:51 Speaker 2 You mentioned something earlier, and I didn’t want to contradict you. I’ll just add to it. You said you deal mainly with older ages, with adolescence.

07:00 Speaker 3 Yes.

07:01 Speaker 2 I can tell you that in our generation, adolescence begins even before the preparatory class.

07:06 Speaker 3 To that extent?

07:06 Speaker 2 To that extent.

07:07 Speaker 3 Wow.

07:07 Speaker 2 Children—children show signs of adolescence, signs that in recent years we’ve been seeing in children this age. Back then, we only saw them in children over bar mitzvah age, or those approaching that age. The way students behave toward one another. Things they say to the teacher. How opinionated they are: they can stand their ground and express an opinion. They have a great deal of knowledge that children didn’t have before. To some extent, there’s also stubbornness beyond simply having strong opinions. These are things you used to encounter more at older ages, while at these ages it was more like, the more—

07:48 Speaker 3 You’re really seeing that in recent years?

07:51 Speaker 2 Yes.

07:51 Speaker 3 Wow.

07:52 Speaker 2 I can say that people also talk more about attention and concentration difficulties. Yes, there are many more of those in our generation, but on the other hand, their ability to absorb things quickly and internalize them is something I hadn’t seen elsewhere. In other words, it’s a kind of balance that Hakadosh Boruch Hu gives: if He takes away something in one area, He gives an increase in another. If He closes a window, He opens a door, or the other way around, right? And so, with children in our generation, it’s about putting things in a few words, in a short little lesson—not in large quantities, not through lots of stories, but making a particular point. And I can tell you, they surprise me time and again. We’ll be talking about some subject and, on their own, they’ll remember: “Teacher, you told us that when we learned Chumash Bereishis,” or “We learned that in a lesson about Chanukah,” or “We did that in an activity.” They simply remember things. And again, the amount of time I have teaching the children directly today is between a quarter and a third of what I had when I started working as a—

09:06 Speaker 4 Wow.

09:06 Speaker 2 Teacher in the preparatory class, or a kindergarten teacher there. Yes, there are ups and downs, and I see it in a very beautiful way.

09:14 Speaker 4 So does that relate to Yiddishkeit?

09:16 Speaker 2 No, it does relate to Yiddishkeit. I think that at this age, when they’re leaving early childhood behind and becoming older, understanding more and expressing themselves more in words, what you say to them has tremendous power. It can put them on the right track, set them on a path they can follow and move forward on.

09:45 Speaker 4 Mm-hmm.

09:45 Speaker 2 Definitely in Yiddishkeit, definitely in living as a chossid, definitely in chassidic conduct. One of the things people have always spoken about is that when a shliach arrives in a city, the first thing he opens is a kindergarten—a Jewish kindergarten. These are very young children. What will they absorb? But that’s exactly why you open a Jewish kindergarten: a tiny scratch in a seed can cause the tree to develop poorly.

10:16 Speaker 4 Mm-hmm.

10:16 Speaker 2 Later, when the tree is mature, you can scratch it a little and it’s all right; it will keep growing straight, and everything will be fine. It won’t interfere with its bearing fruit. The point is that when they’re tiny, when they’re little, they absorb everything. While they’re still Elisha ben Avuyah, you want to make sure they don’t become Acher.

10:35 Speaker 4 Yes.

10:35 Speaker 2 “To what is one who teaches a young child compared?” It’s a fresh sheet of paper. With these children, everything, everything, everything goes in. So the more care you take with chassidic conduct, with yiras Shamayim, with teaching positive and good things—and the more you plant those things in them with love—the more you see the fruits later on.

10:58 Speaker 4 What things have you discovered over the years are better to do at this age, or to focus on? What chassidic practices do you do in your work?

11:07 Speaker 2 Well, first of all, chassidic stories really, really bring the children into the atmosphere. I try to tell them a story every day, apart from the parables or other stories that come up while learning the weekly parsha or about the holidays.

11:22 Speaker 4 Mm-hmm.

11:22 Speaker 2 Beyond that, I tell them a chassidic story. It might be a story about our Rebbeim, or about other tzaddikim, or stories of the Tannaim and Amoraim, like those in Ko Asu Chachameinu. They carry particular messages, so the children can learn how to draw meaningful lessons from them for our lives.

11:41 Speaker 4 Mm-hmm.

11:42 Speaker 2 Sometimes there’s even a discussion after the story. Could this apply to us, or couldn’t it?

11:48 Speaker 4 With the little children?

11:48 Speaker 2 With the little children. If the Alter Rebbe didn’t get angry, could we reach a point where someone comes and deliberately bothers and annoys us, and we don’t get angry?

11:59 Speaker 4 And do they have answers? Is it a real discussion?

12:00 Speaker 2 It’s a discussion.

12:01 Speaker 4 Wow.

12:01 Speaker 2 It’s a discussion, a fruitful discussion. And they’re guided to speak one after another, to respond to each other and listen to what someone else says, rather than just repeat it—or to build on it. There definitely is a discussion. It’s quite reminiscent of a discussion among teenagers, even older teenagers or adults, you know?

12:21 Speaker 4 Wow.

12:22 Speaker 2 Of course, at their level, according to their abilities. The sentences are shorter, but definitely...

12:29 Speaker 4 When we spoke beforehand, we talked a little about the niggunim you do.

12:32 Speaker 2 Right. A new niggun every week. I’ve prepared presentations of niggunim. The presentations feature either the niggunim for the Rebbe’s birthdays, starting with Psalm 69, or niggunim connected to the holidays or the weekly parsha. So there’s “Heitev Eitiv Imach,” which you mentioned, for Parshas Vayishlach. Along with that, there are the niggunim of 19 Kislev, because Vayishlach always falls before 19 Kislev.

13:03 Speaker 4 Yes.

13:04 Speaker 2 And there’s the niggun for 19 Kislev, “Padah Veshalom Nafshi,” and the anthem of 19 Kislev. It’s 19 Kislev, the festival of liberation: the Alter Rebbe was released from imprisonment, and we sing those songs. And right afterward comes Chanukah, so there’s the Chanukah niggun, “Haneros Halalu.”

13:22 Speaker 4 So, as the year goes on, it’s always Chabad and chassidic niggunim.

13:25 Speaker 2 And when there isn’t a special date, or there isn’t a particular niggun for that time, there are the niggunim for the Rebbe’s birthdays, and the children sing them. At the end of the year, when we’re preparing for the siddur celebration and graduation, I go through the niggunim with the children. I’ll start one niggun, or start it in the middle, and the children burst in. Then another niggun, and another.

13:42 Speaker 4 Wow.

13:43 Speaker 2 And then I choose two or three niggunim—

13:44 Speaker 4 Like at the gathering.

13:44 Speaker 2 —that they know well. Yes, the ones they know best, enjoy most and can sing most beautifully. We include those in the graduation celebration.

13:51 Speaker 4 Wow. I really wanted to ask: when you work with bochurim or young people, they remember, and they can express appreciation too. How have you stayed in this role for so long? I’m thinking about the feedback you get over time—they’re little children. How have you kept at it for, as you said, thirty-seven years, now starting your thirty-eighth? How do you stay in that position for so long? What gives you the— When I finish a year with the guys, some of them thank me and show appreciation. At the end, I know something happened here. How do you manage? What gives you the strength?

14:31 Speaker 2 Well, first of all, I’d rather not finish the year with them. I’d rather continue it, keep going with them.

14:36 Speaker 4 What do you mean? How?

14:37 Speaker 2 We keep in touch.

14:38 Speaker 4 Oh, really? What, you see them...?

14:40 Speaker 2 I see them, and they see me. Just now, on my way here, I stopped at a store, and a graduate of the preparatory class was there. He’s at the [unclear] educational institutions, at the technological institute, right? He, too, remembered nice things from the preparatory class and brought them up with a smile on his face. I really do keep in touch with them.

15:00 Speaker 4 And he’s someone who’s about sixteen or seventeen?

15:02 Speaker 2 No, he’s older. I think he’s in his second year—he’s just finished his second year at the technological institute.

15:10 Speaker 4 Wow.

15:10 Speaker 2 So I do keep in touch with them. And I’ll say more than that. This is something we also spoke about a little in the introduction: the idea of the good tokens you give children, the positive coins you give them. I try to start every morning by greeting the children who come to the preparatory class with a smile, and giving each one what suits him. For one, it’s a high five; for another, a little hug; for another, “Good morning,” with a smile; and for another, asking whether he brought his breakfast and making sure he sits down and eats. Each one gets what suits him. Within a week or two, you pick up exactly what each child needs—what words or little hug he needs—to start the day well with them. Sometimes the day doesn’t continue well. We’re human.

15:51 Speaker 4 Mm-hmm.

15:51 Speaker 2 But I look for a good word to end the day with when we say goodbye. “I had such a nice time with you today. You tried hard. You succeeded today. Your drawing was something special today. I saw how you went back to your friend. You played so nicely at recess. I just stood to the side and watched, and I enjoyed it.” Then I say these little things to them before they go home, and they go home with smiles on their faces. They start the next day well. Now, it isn’t a final goodbye. At the end of the year, just as we say goodbye every day, we say goodbye with a smile. And when we said goodbye now, it wasn’t a farewell ceremony, some sort of “That’s it, the year in the preparatory class is over.” Yes, they received a certificate of completion and a bag with lots of nice things, but it isn’t an endpoint. It’s “You’re always welcome to come visit,” and, thank G-d, we do see each other a lot. So there’s nothing that says I’m done with these children. Now I can tell you something else: I ask the parents for nachas notes. Uh—

16:54 Speaker 5 That you receive.

16:55 Speaker 2 Yes. Through those nachas notes, I find out what the children did, and I compliment them. And when I compliment them, every so often I get compliments back from the children too. And I’ll tell you more: I don’t expect it. Not in the sense that if you have no expectations, you won’t be disappointed. I don’t expect children this age to say, “Listen, Morah Segev, we remember the three-day annual trip we took to the institute and what it was like there.” No, that’s not how it works, right? I also don’t expect them to tell me about a lesson we learned on some particular topic in the verses, the way they might tell their maggid shiur in their first, second, or third year of yeshivah gedolah. I don’t expect that. What I do expect is for them to grow. I do expect them to flourish. I do expect life to be better for them, for them to have smiles on their faces, for them to be happy to live as the Rebbe’s chassidim in the seventh generation. Yes, absolutely. That’s my expectation, and that’s what I work toward. So I don’t—there isn’t... And besides that, at the end of the year I do get feedback. Not from the children, admittedly, but from the parents.

17:55 Speaker 5 From the parents.

17:55 Speaker 2 Yes, and thank G-d, the parents express their thanks for the lovely year we had. And when I get that positive feedback—it isn’t only at the end of the year; I also get it now and then through notes or in other ways. I get it throughout the year, and it really feels good. I mean, even if you don’t expect it, a kind word definitely adds something.

18:16 Speaker 5 It gives you strength.

18:17 Speaker 2 Yes, it definitely gives me strength.

18:19 Speaker 5 Do you know of any instructions from the Rebbe for this age group? I mean, things you’ve encountered through your experience in the field—specific instructions for this age. Let’s say there’s the matter of young children not seeing non-kosher animals or things like that. Friends, another episode of On Chabad Education is starting. If you connect with what’s happening here, click “Follow” on one of the platforms. The more our community grows, the more we’ll be able to bring on special guests and create content of the highest quality. Be part of the journey. Let’s continue.

18:51 Speaker 2 Right, there’s the instruction about non-kosher animals, and there’s the instruction to separate the boys and girls as much as possible—

18:57 Speaker 5 Even at this age?

18:58 Speaker 2 Even at this age, yes. From age three, if I remember correctly—from age three on, one should already try to keep them separate. There’s also the matter of modesty. And besides that, the Rebbe spoke many, many times about how it was the children who pointed and said, “This is my G-d.” Children this age can absolutely point and see. And I can tell you more: children are capable of learning Chassidic ideas when they’ve been worked through and broken down for them, so to speak. I don’t mean “spoon-fed” in the way that often happens, but softened and made accessible. I’ll give you an example. There’s the well-known sicha of the Rebbe for 15 Shvat about the seven species in our avodah: the wheat and barley of the G-dly soul and the animal soul, the grapevine and how wine gladdens the human heart, the avodah of the olive, which is bitterness, and the mesirus nefesh involved in all these things. I’ve gone through it with the children, and I continue to do so. I explain it in their language. First we get to know the seven species simply as the seven species with which our land was blessed, with everything that entails. Then we make a chart, and the children know how to place each item themselves—what it means and why. Some of them repeat it at home afterward at the Shabbos table, or at a Tu B’Shvat seder, for those who have one, right? Then I get feedback from the parents that their child explained it so beautifully. Some even tell me—

20:31 Speaker 6 In other words, sorry, you took the Rebbe’s sicha and adapted it—

20:34 Speaker 2 Some parents even say, “We learned something from it.”

20:36 Speaker 6 Wow.

20:37 Speaker 2 Yes.

20:37 Speaker 6 The parent learned something.

20:38 Speaker 2 Yes.

20:39 Speaker 6 Wow.

20:39 Speaker 2 So those things happen. Now, I think Chabad niggunim are also a form of Chassidic guidance, because a niggun is the pen of the soul. And when you play Chabad niggunim—more than that, in the morning when the children arrive at the preparatory class, except during the Three Weeks, there’s Chassidic music playing in the background.

20:57 Speaker 6 Wow.

20:58 Speaker 2 I rely on the permission given by Rabbi Dvorkin, a"h, regarding Chassidic music, and I play Chabad music during Sefiras HaOmer as well. In the morning, from seven-thirty until a quarter to nine—

21:09 Speaker 6 When it starts—

21:10 Speaker 2 That’s when I have more personal time with each of them. Time to play, time to really begin the day. In winter, my favorite part is having a cup of tea and a biscuit on a rainy morning. So during that time, Chassidic niggunim are playing in the background.

21:27 Speaker 6 …

21:28 Speaker 2 And those Chassidic niggunim penetrate deep into the soul and refine it, purify it, wash it clean.

21:33 Speaker 6 Wow.

21:34 Speaker 2 And it’s simply a pleasure to hear the children humming a niggun while they play.

21:38 Speaker 6 The niggunim. Wow.

21:39 Speaker 2 Yes.

21:40 Speaker 6 We also spoke then about the nusach of davening. You told me you’d seen something.

21:43 Speaker 2 Right, the nusach of davening too. The nusach of davening that the Alter Rebbe established—he selected it from sixty or seventy versions of Nusach HaAri that existed, and refined and purified it. I try to spread awareness of this among other preschool teachers and teachers as well: not to add anything to the Alter Rebbe’s nusach. At the end of davening, at the end of bentching, if you want to pray for the Geulah to come—fine, bentching is over, you can do that. But don’t insert things during davening, and certainly not before davening, that may belong to other versions. They may be beautiful, they may be appealing to hear. It may be nice to hear a mishnah or a verse or several verses, as you do in various communities. But we need to preserve the Alter Rebbe’s nusach, and it is holy, holy, holy. We don’t add—

22:29 Speaker 6 So the instruction is to be careful not to deviate from it—to be aware of the nusach.

22:32 Speaker 2 Let me give one more example, if I may.

22:33 Speaker 6 Yes.

22:34 Speaker 2 I put together a reading workbook for the children, and it too went through many, many stages. We started with workbooks suited to girls in first grade, the kind first-grade girls learn from, but boys in the preparatory class are two levels below that. At these ages, boys are less developed than girls in cognitive ability, and that’s why we celebrate a boy’s bar mitzvah at thirteen, as opposed to a girl’s at twelve.

23:01 Speaker 6 Girls are quicker at reading than—

23:03 Speaker 2 In their cognitive ability, in their ability to think, they’re sharper than the boys. Absolutely. In the vast majority of cases. Until a certain age, and then... Yes, that’s where the disagreement begins. Who can say—

23:15 Speaker 6 Every household has its own disagreement.

23:16 Speaker 2 And [unclear][?], yes. About the question of who [unclear]. But beyond that, at this age, it didn’t fit. It didn’t fit the children. And besides, it combined reading with writing, and the children weren’t ready to write yet. So they struggled with the writing and, in the process, discovered that they were struggling with reading too, because it was a reading workbook that taught writing.

23:36 Speaker 6 …

23:36 Speaker 2 In short, I upgraded that workbook and made several editions of it. I went to Rabbi Stritzky, a"h, whom I consulted a great deal—on educational matters, on halachic matters, and on matters at home. And—

23:54 Speaker 6 I think, if I’m not mistaken, today is the—

23:56 Speaker 2 Yesterday was his yahrzeit.

23:57 Speaker 6 Yesterday.

23:57 Speaker 2 Yes, yesterday was his yahrzeit. So I spoke with him about this: could I put a picture of a non-kosher animal next to a word? He asked me just two words: “Do you have to?” That was it. I understood the message and didn’t put it in. In other words, if there’s a need—if it’s something that helps introduce other things we’re learning—then yes. When we learn Parshas Shemini or Parshas Re’eh, as we’re doing now, about non-kosher animals—though those parshiyos usually don’t fall at the beginning of the school year; that’s very rare—we do learn about them. And in this case, you have to call the animals non-kosher, because that’s the halachic term. You definitely need to explain to a child what a non-kosher animal looks like, so he won’t think the mouse he saw outside near a garbage can was some kind of little cow. It has ears, whiskers and a long tail. It’s a mouse, not a cow. Yes. Children need to know that some things are kosher and some are not.

25:01 Speaker 7 But if not, then alwa—also—

25:03 Speaker 2 Exactly. Anything involving a game, or learning to read, or anything where there’s no need to bring it in—then that’s the Rebbe’s instruction, and the Rabbi—

28:15 Speaker 8 That everything should come with encouragement, kind words and little rewards from time to time. A reward doesn’t necessarily mean a candy, right? It can be a kind word, or a note to his father and mother saying, “Today you were the outstanding student in the class.” Or, “Tell them to call me, and I’ll confirm that today you simply went above and beyond anything I could have expected of you.” Absolutely. And then there are the children who are the good ones in the class. Hakadosh Boruch Hu saw that the righteous were few, so He planted them in every classroom. There are a few such beacons, a few sources of light: good children who can help others, encourage them and support them. Those are the ones I send to spend time with children who need a little encouragement right now, a little companionship, someone to bring them out of a certain loneliness they’ve fallen into, or been pushed into—or perhaps it’s simply their nature to be more solitary and less sociable.

29:12 Speaker 9 You touched on this a little. How much of an effect do you think the situation at home has on how a child arrives? I don’t just mean something on the level of purple or orange pants. A child comes in carrying that situation with him. Have you ever noticed something and spoken to the parents about it—something that was apparently happening at home regularly? Have you had a case like that?

29:43 Speaker 8 Definitely. People sometimes say something about children that I don’t particularly like: that children are cruel. They say it because a child can go and hurt someone, or say something, without thinking twice about whether it’s appropriate. We adults aren’t as transparent as children. When I want to say something to someone, I think three or four times first about how it will sound, what will come of it and whether it will have the right effect. Children aren’t like that. To some extent, it can look like a kind of cruelty, but I don’t see it as cruelty. I see it as transparency. A child is transparent.

30:18 Speaker 9 Mm-hmm.

30:19 Speaker 8 When a child goes through something, he reflects it outward. It can’t stay inside; he brings it out. When something is happening at home, children reflect it outward. So perhaps Dad is away on reserve duty or has flown to the Rebbe. Mom has gone away to recuperate or is at a Chabad women’s convention for two or three days, and that’s when the men start swapping recipes for how to make cholent, right? Or it could be something else entirely: the birth of a sibling, or an older brother coming home after kvutza or returning from shlichus. All these things shake children up to some degree and take them out of their usual comfort zone, and that definitely affects them.

31:08 Speaker 9 You see it in the morning.

31:10 Speaker 8 Definitely, you definitely see it. And I’ll say that, unfortunately, in more recent years, the whole issue of stability in the home—and I really say this with tears inside—the stability of the marriage...

31:29 Speaker 9 The relationship between the parents themselves.

31:30 Speaker 8 The relationship between the parents themselves can be very troubled, and it very, very deeply affects the children. Children who experience a home in turmoil because of marital problems, or because divorce is being considered, or who actually experience divorce, may we be spared such troubles—it shakes them to a very, very great degree. It disrupts them terribly. I mean, their foundation, their basic stability, is...

32:05 Speaker 9 Shaken.

32:06 Speaker 8 Yes, it’s no longer there. Now, if he has no foundation to stand on, nothing educational will speak to him. It can be the most beautiful, pleasant, enjoyable thing, and it still won’t reach him. Because he needs the basics. He needs both feet firmly on the ground, and one foot is Dad and the other is Mom. If those two feet can’t stand together on the same ground right now, then he’s in very serious trouble. What can you do in a situation like that? Do you recognize that something is happening? What I can do, first of all, when this happens—and unfortunately it’s happening more and more lately—is thank the parents who tell me about it as soon as possible, knowing that I won’t tell anyone else. It stays between them and me. During that time, I give the child much more space, much more stability, much more warmth, and much more room to process what’s happening at home. I use words and phrases, and give him a special place in the preparatory class, so he can have some stability of his own and rely less on what’s happening at home. I try to help him feel steady. To give him the sense that he is loved because he is himself—not because Dad needs him right now, or Mom needs him, or because they want him to be with them. He is loved because he is himself. And that definitely strengthens him. I can say that over the past year, I dealt with three such situations in my class. Oh. Did the parents tell you, or did you discover it over time? With one, I knew from the outset. With the other two, the parents told me. And I can say clearly that we got through—

33:55 Speaker 8 that year. With the first child, we got through a whole year—a truly special year—in which he was simply in the best place he could be. And with the other two, one around the middle of the year and one toward the end, they too had their place. I was able to give them space and what I could offer so they could build themselves up, lift themselves up and feel that they were people in their own right who could move forward. And boruch Hashem, we got through the year with them very well. That’s amazing. It’s incredible how many details you have to keep track of about his overall, day-to-day situation. It’s wild. True, but again, because they’re children, I can see it. It isn’t a pot. Right. It’s a glass; it’s transparent. Right. You can see things. It’s the other way around with a teenager: he can hide a lot. You don’t know. With a child, everything— It’s wild. And how crucial is your relationship with the parents in this? Not just in an unfortunate situation, but generally, in the normal course of the year. The child knows that he arrives at the preparatory class with a parent, or with an older sibling the parent sent, and that he goes home with a parent or an older sibling. He knows his parents bring him to the preparatory class and that it’s a continuation of his day. And when I send him home— Mm-hmm. —home is the continuation of the preparatory class. He knows there’s a connection, a kind of threefold cord of father, mother and teacher surrounding the child. The child is protected. I can say with a big smile that I get the best hours, because the morning hours are the stressful ones, right? By the time everyone gets up, by the time

35:40 Speaker 8 Coming back from davening, or getting ready to daven, each person according to their abilities, and the mother has to get to work and make all the sandwiches. Getting everyone to... Exactly. It isn’t the most pleasant time; it’s a time of pressure and rushing: let’s get there on time, G-d forbid we should be late. And in the afternoon, when the children come home—we run the preparatory program until four in the afternoon. One year, out of thirty-four children, thirty-three stayed for the afternoon program. In other words, it was one continuous program from seven-thirty until four, and the children came home at four. Now, by the time they get home, they’ve had a full day of davening, playing, learning, experiences, ups and downs. They come home completely worn out. Three hours later, it’s bath, pajamas, and bed. So the parents get the stressful morning hours and the tired late-afternoon and evening hours, while I get the sweet part in the middle. But wait, then—there has to be a connection. It’s essential, because when a child knows that the parents are in touch with the teacher and the teacher is in touch with the parents, and that what they do is for his benefit—just as his father and mother care about what’s best for him, so does the teacher or the educational staff in the preparatory program, and they want things to be even better for him and for him to succeed even more—then he knows everyone is looking after him together. He knows he’s in a good, safe place. There absolutely has to be a connection between the parents and the teacher. Yes. Smartphones. We live in a generation where they’re around. Baruch Hashem, there are many homes without them, but there are also homes with them. Many homes with them. What do you see when it comes to this? What do you think about

37:27 Speaker 8 it? About using them. It’s the cheapest and quickest babysitter. You know, you put a screen in front of a child—here, boom. Do you see it having an effect? Or rather, what do you think is the right way to handle it? Is it even appropriate at these ages? We’re talking about four- and five-year-olds, right? Five and six. Five and six. Yes. Okay. But children are exposed to it from age three or four, even earlier. Yes. I’ll say that there are studies about the first two years of life—not about small screens, but about the large screens at home—that suggest it can cause autism to some extent. Studies published recently. Up to age two. Up to age two, a child simply shouldn’t sit in front of any screen: not a phone screen, not a computer screen, and not the screens found in other homes—Baruch Hashem, not ours—television screens of any kind. Not children’s shows, not cartoons or games or anything. They simply shouldn’t watch it. It’s damaging and can even lead to a child being on the autism spectrum, in a very clear way. But let’s go further. We know that Hakadosh Boruch Hu runs the world. If 150 years ago there were no cars and now there are cars, we can’t ignore reality and say, “Well, I’ll keep riding a donkey because Avraham Avinu put the wood, the fire, and the knife on a donkey, so I’ll keep riding one—or at least put my wife and children on a donkey, like Moshe Rabbeinu.” No. We need to ride the donkey—we need to ride the material, the physical world, instead of riding a donkey. We use cars, we use trains, we use

39:04 Speaker 8 computers; we use all kinds of things. Even this podcast is transmitted over the internet. All of this exists. We benefit from these things, and these things also diminish some of our abilities, right? People jokingly say that a Torah scholar is called Shabbos. We only discovered why in recent years: on Shabbos you can’t Google the correct answer, so he has to remember it himself. That’s why he’s a Torah scholar—because on Shabbos he still gives the right answers. We live in a world where everything is connected, everything is documented, and everything is available. Now, Hakadosh Boruch Hu runs the world, and when He puts this before us, He’s saying, “I want you to deal with it.” So if our ancestors three—three thousand three hundred years ago had to deal with taking an omer per person, eating half in the morning and half in the evening, having nothing left at night, making it through the night and waking up without bad dreams or nightmares, then we have other things to deal with. And dealing with them means recognizing that these devices are tools we use, useful tools, but they have to be used in moderation. And when we adults use them in moderation, we don’t hide them or make them disappear. Children aren’t foolish; you can’t fool them. They know very well what we have, even behind closed doors. If we hide it, we’ll do the opposite: we’ll make them more curious to look for it, or teach them to hide things from us. We don’t want to raise them that way. Certainly not. So don’t hide it. Yes, it exists, but it must never become a substitute for life. When I’m having a conversation, when a father is talking with a mother, when a guest arrives, when we sit down to lunch or dinner at home on a weekday,

40:50 Speaker 8 the device doesn’t come out. It stays in a pocket or a bag, or on another table—not here. And when a father sits and talks with his child—and it’s worth doing that every so often, having a real heart-to-heart, asking how things went, what happened, what’s going on, “Tell me about the good experiences, and maybe the unpleasant things too”—you start with the good, with what should be maintained, and only then move to what needs improvement. And the phone rings. So you press the button on the side and leave it silent. You don’t even look to see who called. You put it aside: right now I’m spending time with my child. Or when a child sees that his father and mother are talking, and one parent’s phone rings but they don’t respond, he learns that the phone doesn’t take priority over his parents’ conversation, over his conversation with them, or over a meal together. It has its uses. A phone also has games; it also has shows and films that are entirely educational—not, G-d forbid, things that aren’t educational. And there’s no “pareve.” Pareve is treif. There’s no pareve; it doesn’t exist. If something isn’t Chassidic, then it’s treif, plain and simple, because all sorts of nuances creep in. If it’s a foreign film, there are nuances of idol worship; and if it’s an Israeli film, there are all kinds of things we wouldn’t expect our child to read in a newspaper or see in a book that isn’t a book of Chassidic stories. So we won’t bring those films in. And when we do watch something Chassidic, it should be limited. What does limited mean? First of all, there can be a schedule. Once a day, a child

42:36 Speaker 8 A child can watch a video on the computer or smartphone for a set amount of time. It could be seven minutes; it could be fifteen minutes. Don’t overdo it in either direction. Give an amount of time that fits, and each family can decide for itself what works for them. One or two children can watch, and they can take turns. And what happens if Shavuos falls on the day when it’s my turn to watch? Then the child gets that turn another time, right? One more thing: a video is not a prize. A video is not a gift, and neither is a computer game. It’s not “Do this and you’ll get that.” Exactly. “If you finish your homework, you’ll get chocolate”—we know how unhelpful that is. Or, “If you don’t finish your homework, I’ll call the police.” That’s not helpful either, right? Right. So the same goes for “If you finish your homework,” or “If you clean your room in a minute and a half”—no. The point is, why is it a problem to make it a prize? Because then I build it up and turn it into something amazing, something precious. Yes, because if it’s a prize—if I tell a child, “You cleaned your room, and that’s wonderful,” it’s great to make a points chart: you cleaned your room, you prepared the negel vasser, you got up in the morning and the first thing you did was say “Modeh Ani” and raise your hands without doing anything else. You get a point for each of those things. Once you’ve accumulated a certain number of points—twenty, twenty-five—we go to a store and buy you a prize within a certain price range. What kind of prize would I

44:05 Speaker 8 choose for him? Something he can enjoy, right? Something I know will help him grow. My children used to get Machanayim booklets—no hidden advertising intended—but that was their prize. Those were the good things my own children received. They would say Tehillim on Shabbos Mevarchim or learn Mishnayos or Tanya by heart. They would save up money for a trip to the Rebbe. They traveled to the Rebbe at their own expense, dozens of times, entirely with money they had earned themselves. But that was the prize. The prize was a trip to the Rebbe, because that’s an educational prize. If I tell a child, “Listen, if you clean your room, and you’re a good child, and you don’t bother your little sister for two and a half days”—since the two of you don’t get along so well—“then I’ll give you, I don’t know, a hundred-gram bar of chocolate,” that doesn’t sound educational. In exactly the same way, saying “I’ll let you play on the phone for twenty minutes, or five minutes” is really not helpful. It exists; it’s something children want. A child sees it at the neighbors’ house and wants it, and you can’t simply tell him no. That reminds me of a story about Rabbi Bistritzky, a”h. When Kiryat Chabad was first built—right at the beginning, before I’d ever imagined living in Tzfas or even seeing the city—they said that everyone living in Kiryat Chabad had to send their children to Chabad schools so the schools could develop and grow. Baruch Hashem, they’ve been thriving for many years now,

45:41 Speaker 8 and people are eager to send their children there. There was a frum family living there, and one day the father came to Rabbi Bistritzky and asked for permission to take his child out of the school. “Why?” Rabbi Bistritzky asked. “Because my son stole something,” he said. “He didn’t learn that at home, not from his father or mother, so he must have learned it at school. I want to take him out and send him to another Talmud Torah.” Rabbi Bistritzky asked what he had stolen. Like a good Jew, the father answered with a question: “The law is the same whether it’s a penny or a hundred. What difference does it make what he stole?” Rabbi Bistritzky said, “I still insist on hearing what your child stole.” The father said the boy had gone into the grocery store and stolen a chocolate-covered marshmallow treat. Normally, a child can go into the grocery store, buy one of those treats, or chocolate, a lollipop or a wafer, and tell the shopkeeper, “Put it on account number eighty-five”—the family account—and that’s fine. But this boy knew he couldn’t have it charged to the account. How did he know? Rabbi Bistritzky asked the father, “Tell me, do you have sweets at home? Do you have those treats at home?” He said, “Of course not! It’s pure poison. No chocolate, marshmallow treats or lollipops come into our house. No food coloring and no white sugar. For us, sweets are raisins and dates.” And honestly, he’s right. So Rabbi Bistritzky said, “Listen, your child sees other children around him eating sweets. It doesn’t matter where you put him—in any school, any Talmud Torah, anywhere—he sees them eating sweets. He doesn’t have them, and he wants them, because that sweetness appeals to

47:15 Speaker 8 him. You caused your child to steal. Not the school, not the Talmud Torah, and nothing else. By denying him that, you caused him to steal.” Mm-hmm. And that’s what can happen— So you’re saying that sometimes, if I don’t— Exactly. With the smartphone, if I don’t allow it—but on the other hand, I’m also making it into the most important thing. The most important thing is a healthy meal and a bedtime story from a book. A father or mother sits on a chair beside the bed, or on the bed with the child, and reads the story to the child from the book. Or they hold the book, tell the story in their own words, show the pictures and ask questions: What do we learn from this? What chassidic way of behaving does it teach us? What beautiful lesson can we take from it? Then it’s Shema, saying good night to the Rebbe, kissing the mezuzah and going to sleep. Mm-hmm. That’s the best thing. Playing is fine too. You’re saying it exists, so let’s not—maybe if we make it disappear altogether, that could lead to something worse. And if it does exist in your home, and you’ve decided to have a computer or smartphone, don’t make it a prize. Don’t present it as a prize. The preparatory class is the transition from a very young age—from kindergarten and so on—to school, to Talmud Torah, to cheder. What goals do you set yourself in preparing a child for the next stage? During that year, what do you say you need to do to prepare these children, who arrive so very young, to be ready to go on to first grade? Right, the next stage is first grade. First grade, yes. They move up to first grade. So first of all, there’s what we spoke about earlier: the chassidic conduct of children entering the Talmud Torah, Ohr Menachem, which is the first institution

48:58 Speaker 8 That the Rebbe agreed it should be named after him in Tzfas—yes, that chassidim should come in, that children should come in, children who are becoming more chassidish and moving forward. That should be the reward; that should be the answer, the spearhead with which we move forward. That’s one thing. Second, there’s the question of readiness and maturity: that children should mature, grow up, know how to treat others, how to speak, not interrupt a friend, know their priorities—what matters more and what matters less. Again, according to their age. And a very, very important theme running through everything we do is learning to read. If I go back to the early years, when I started working at Or Menachem as a kindergarten teacher, I was the assistant, the helper, to Aharon Shiffman. I learned an enormous amount from him, and I owe a great deal to him. He was the legendary teacher of the preparatory class, and I was his helper. I would take children in small groups, and every so often I’d come into the whole group and tell a story, or talk about the weekly parsha, and that’s how I prepared myself for this work. His role in the preparatory class was to advance the children’s reading, from sounding out syllables to fluent reading and reading sentences, so they would be ready for first grade—and already in the preparatory class, ready to begin learning Mishnayos in an organized way. With the decline of the generations, the following year, 5771, I was given a group of twelve children, and we opened a separate class devoted to learning to read. Over the years, at a certain point, teaching reading became harder and harder. More and more children arrive at age five knowing how to read only partially, or not at all, or, worst of all, having learned to read incorrectly and needing remedial instruction. So in both preparatory classes—the two parallel classes—we really start reading from the very, very beginning.

51:13 Speaker 8 We work on reading and move the children forward, following the sequence of the vowel signs together with the letters. And thank Hakadosh Boruch Hu, in the vast majority of years, more than ninety percent of the children master reading and read well. This year there’s a series of books for the preparatory class that the children really, really love, and they have some nice little jokes in them. At first I would read them. Some children got the joke right away, and some needed a little explanation. After a few days they said, “Won’t you read us another nice joke?” I said, “Why should I read it? Read it yourselves. Right now I’m playing a thinking game with a group of children.” The morning games are mostly thinking games. “Sit down and read it yourselves.” So they began making an effort, and suddenly that feeling burst out: “I have to know how to read.” Everything I had learned and practiced before, everything that had gone into my head, I’m now drawing on because I want to—I have to. I need it as much as I possibly could. And do they actually read? They do. Every year, boruch Hashem, more than ninety percent of the children leave the preparatory class reading well. This year, thanks to the day camp we had, we managed to finish, because our year was quite disrupted by all the alerts and the wars. Exactly. It started, it didn’t start; it ended, it didn’t end. You don’t know what the next day, or even the next hour, will bring. But boruch Hashem, we finished all the vowel signs, including the additional ones, such as the furtive patach and the various chataf vowels. We even got to abbreviations and letters in foreign words, where you get unusual letters like gimel, zayin, and tzadi with an apostrophe above them. So they knew those too: there’s “cottage,” “jacket,” and “zipper.” Wow,

53:07 Speaker 8 all the way to that level. In the preparatory class. To that level. Yes, yes, yes. Incredible. And boruch Hashem, they enjoy doing it too. They do it with love and laughter. “Okay, today we’ll do ten pages in the workbook.” Usually we work on two or three pages, sometimes four. “So today we’ll do ten pages.” “No, [unclear], let’s do twenty pages!” They love it that much. How amazing. Boruch Hashem, yes, it’s a pleasure. What do you think—you put it very nicely when you said that children are like transparent cups: you can see them and what things are like at home. What mistakes do you think parents make, and what can be corrected? We can talk about it in positive terms. What can we as parents improve in working with young children? Of course, parents have very full schedules, earning a living and so on. Making a living and material concerns. Yes, absolutely. Boruch Hashem the parents are busy, not idle or frivolous. I’d say this: with whatever time parents have—and that might be on weekends, a long summer Friday or a long winter Saturday night, on Shabbos, perhaps even in the afternoon or evening if it’s possible, during vacations, on Yom Tov, or on Chol Hamoed—give the children as much time and attention as possible. Now, attention divides into two kinds: attention to the family as a whole and personal attention. And attention itself also divides into two: there’s attention to “turn away from evil,” and there’s attention to “do good.” People ask about King David, who was, after all, a true chossid—yes, the seventh generation. How could the seventh from— Yes. Yes. How could King David begin with “turn away from evil”? “Turn away from evil and do good”? How can that be? We focus only on the positive: do

55:03 Speaker 8 good, and do even more good. Why “turn away from evil and do good”? The answer is that you have to turn away from evil. How do you turn away from evil? By doing good. You need to clean out the casing before filling it with meat and fat and burying it deep in the cholent pot. But even when you do that through doing good, even when you disinfect and clean the wound, you do it with empathy for the patient, who has a cut right now. There’s no choice; it needs to be disinfected, and it stings. So you identify with his pain. You identify with the child when he slips up. Instead of saying, “I’ve already told you at least 159 times not to do that!”—and then we’re scolding him, he shuts down, he doesn’t learn, and next time it’ll happen for the 160th time—approach it more with a hug, more empathy, more of those things. That’s the best way to avoid having to reach the point of “turn away from evil.” There’s no choice; we live in this world. We also need “turn away from evil.” With a little child of four, five, or six, “turn away from evil” means I tell him, “We don’t do that,” right? Right. Or, “Go to your room because of the way you behaved.” Right, but imagine that the sweet little child bothered his sister and pulled her hair. It happens. Yes. And when it happens more than three times in a minute, it crosses a line and gets on the parents’ nerves. Completely. Right. So sometimes we can fall into getting too angry because something is bothering us. Wait—I’ve told him no so many times. On the other hand, we have to look at how to solve the problem, how to acknowledge it, explain that it isn’t nice, explain how much it hurts, and tell him, “Come on, see if you can manage to hold yourself back.”

56:47 Speaker 8 And if you manage to overcome it, we’ll do something. Or, alternatively, take the child with you—and I say this across the board to all parents; I’ve said it to many dozens of parents over the years. Take your children along for some private time with you, for positive, personal attention. We go shopping once a week. Take a child along. One time Mendy, another time Schneur, another time Devorah Leah, another time Chaya Mushka. Take a different child shopping each time. If the child is younger, put them in the cart; if they’re older, have them walk with you. Send them to get that can of food. Explain how you choose tomatoes, and as you do, tell them about the tomatoes: how many vitamins they have, how healthy they are, and how Moshe Rabbeinu never saw a tomato—and neither did the Rambam—because tomatoes only arrived after, uh, America was discovered. Share whatever knowledge you have, every little bit of it. You don’t need to research it in a scientific encyclopedia. Just share what you know, be with the child, and focus on the child while you shop. And then—if I put it negatively, what you’re saying is that a child, even a young child, doesn’t get enough quality time with his father. Right. With his parents, his father and mother. Right. Quality time between a child and his parents is incredible. I can say this as a father myself—Baruch Hashem, my youngest children are already past twenty. I didn’t have much free time either, but when I could invest in them, when I could give them quality time, I did. And sometimes there was family quality time too, sitting together and doing something, playing a game, or whatever it might be—or learning together too,

58:38 Speaker 8 that can also be part of it. Having a farbrengen on a yom d’pagra. And then there’s individual quality time. So Baruch Hashem, now that Hakadosh Boruch Hu has given me the privilege, I can do that with the grandchildren. There’s quality time with all the grandchildren together, and there’s quality time when you take a different child, a different grandchild, each time. Wow. You do an activity with them, play a game together, give that one grandson or granddaughter what a grandfather or grandmother can give. It’s entirely different. I’ll tell you more than that. Studies have found that when a person hears an unkind, hurtful word, they need at least six kind words to counterbalance it. Mm. In other words, hurtful words affect us six times as much as compliments do. And learning to receive compliments is a kind of work in itself, because it’s hard for us to accept compliments. It’s hard for us to accept good things. We tend to think, “Good things aren’t for me—who am I to receive a compliment?” Or, “All right, it’s only natural. I breathed this morning. Why are you making such a big deal of it? I breathed this morning—should I say thank you? Fine, I’m breathing. Thanks.” But we really do need to know how to accept compliments. Yes, say that everything comes from Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and that’s wonderful. But when a person receives a compliment and knows how to accept it, they love themselves. And if they love themselves, they can love someone else too. If they can’t get along with themselves, they’ll never get along with anyone else. But let’s return to our children. A child comes to preschool and might receive some not-so-nice attention from a teacher or an aide. Or one of the other children might hurt a boy—or a girl,

1:00:15 Speaker 8 and that hurt can be painful. It might be verbal or social: “I don’t feel like playing with you,” or “I don’t want to play with you,” or—rejection. Yes. “No, I’m already playing with him.” That’s one too many—as though we can’t include anyone else. That “no,” or a grimace, or the lack of attention when the other child asks a question and gets no answer—it’s a bad coin the child receives. And that bad coin puts them six good coins in the red. If we want to give a child the ability to cope, we have to fill their bank every morning. So even a rushed morning, right, must be filled with lots and lots and lots of compliments. Lots of kind words, lots of—let me bring this down to a practical level. Let’s bring it down. The first child to arrive in the kitchen dressed and wearing shoes gets the first serving of cereal, with a little extra in it. Right. And lots of positivity, lots of positive things said to them. When the child comes in and says, “I’m first!” you say, “Here’s your serving! Well done. You’ve made me so happy. There’s no one like you in the world. You managed to be first. I remember you were first yesterday and the day before too. You’re just amazing.” Say all those lovely words with a smile on your face, looking the child in the eye, face to face. Then give them the bowl of cereal and pour in the milk. No need to add sugar; there’s enough already. Pour in the milk. The child is sweet too—no need for too much, right? Sweet in their own right. And give it to them. Not just, “Here, take it.” Not as an automatic action: “Yes, I promised. You got it.” Fine, I didn’t break my word, but I wasn’t warm about it either. Express your love, express

1:02:00 Speaker 8 your appreciation, give it to them in the best possible way. That fills their bank. It simply adds more and more and more. Their wallet fills up. They’ll need to borrow another wallet to fill with more tokens. And then, if a friend hurts them, it’s all right: Dad and Mom love me. And if a friend doesn’t want to play with them, they can say, “It’s all right. When I get home, I’m sure my mother and my sister—whom I helped find her lost sandals today—will sit down and play with me, because my sister told me I’m the best brother she has.” Those things do more than anything else to build a child up. So give as many compliments as possible, as many kind words as possible, as many positive things as possible. I say this at the first parents’ meeting, which usually takes place about ten days into the school year. I won’t manage that this year, because we start about ten days before Rosh Hashanah. Right, this year it really does work out that way. So the first parents’ meeting will probably be postponed until after the holidays, like all those diets. And then I tell the parents, “Listen, I’ve known your children for a few days now. They’re fuller of mitzvos and good deeds than a pomegranate. They’re like watermelons filled with pomegranate seeds. Do me a favor: flood me with notes. Do this poor fellow a kindness—flood me with notes about the nachas they’ve given you.” Because when you write a note about the nachas your child has given you, and the child knows you wrote it, they benefit twice over. They know that Dad or Mom wrote the note, and then I read it aloud to the class at our morning gathering. The child gets a sweet treat for it too, but they also get the attention: “How wonderful! How sweet you are! Look how happy you made Dad and Mom. You got dressed all by yourself.”

1:03:35 Speaker 8 “You washed your hands.” What five-year-old doesn’t wash their hands beside the bed? They all do. Right. Who can’t manage to kiss the mezuzah before leaving? They all can. It’s the most ordinary thing, right? It’s like saying, “I breathed this morning.” Write me a note: “Moishele breathed this morning.” As far as I’m concerned, it’s exactly the same. The child will receive attention for something ordinary and simple, but it will feel wonderful to them. It will bring them so much joy. It will do them so much good. And I’ll say it again: we spoke about lots of individual time and compliments. Right. Those are the two things that—at preschool too. As a preschool teacher, I really try, as much as possible, to spend individual time with every child. As I said earlier, there’s the beginning and end of the day, but I also take time with a child in the middle of the day, even a child who doesn’t seem to need it. Everything at home is good. Their father and mother are chassidim, cheerful and kindhearted. The child always comes in neat, always with [unclear] washed, with what they like inside. Uh, they always have [unclear]—nothing bad is happening there. Nothing negative at all. The only earthshaking event was that their beloved uncle, whom they adore, got married two days ago, so they missed a day or came in late because the family got back late, or they were away for the sheva brachos. Everything’s good, everything’s lovely, everything’s sweet. Yes, there are situations like that too. But that child also needs personal attention. They need a hand on their shoulder. They need someone to listen to them, to let them tell you about the good things they’ve experienced. How important that is, how it builds them up, how it strengthens their ability to deal with all kinds of things that might otherwise seem like a collapse.

1:05:11 Speaker 8 Snow falls on him, on his head too, and it’s freezing. You don’t need that. A shliach. Give me a moment—or share with us a moment, or a special story, that has stayed with you through all these years in this role, on this shlichus. I don’t know if I have a moment like that, and I’ll say more: I’m not looking for one either. I’m more the routine type. The holidays drive me crazy sometimes. I like routine. I like starting the week on Sunday and finishing it on Friday. I know there’s the need to tell the weekly parsha, with the plain meaning of the verses and the Midrashim you can share with children. I know there are all the things we need to do, and I like the students as a group. They [unclear] less; they talk to me, but they’re different types. There’s one who’s like the sun, who wants the morning and the evening, and there’s one who’s like the moon, growing or shrinking each time according to the holidays, or his mood, or the weather around him. I give off—I—that’s my type. Yes, more than that: I don’t expect anything spectacular either. I don’t expect things like that. But I’ll say it clearly again: when I see an older brother bring his younger brother, or come to pick him up but stay a little longer in the mechinah because he remembers being here two years ago, or ten years ago, or fifteen years ago—and when I see a father who was here... That happens to you by now too. Yes, yes, yes. Twenty-five or thirty or thirty-five years ago. I’ll put it this way: my “grandchildren,” so to speak, the children of the boys from the second group that studied in the mechinah, are going up to yeshivah gedolah

1:06:52 Speaker 8 now. Wow. To first year in yeshivah gedolah. So, boruch Hashem, it’s truly a gift, a gift from Hakadosh Boruch Hu. And when I see them stay in the mechinah, as though they want to soak up its atmosphere—“I feel good here. It’s like a greenhouse, like a warm, embracing nest”—they stay a few more minutes, or come to tell a story or something like that, with a smile on their faces. That gives me everything. Rabbi Steinsaltz once spoke at one of the educators’ conferences. He told us that he had studied in nonreligious schools. His father didn’t want him to leave Judaism; he wanted him to become an apikores, so he looked for a rabbi who would teach him Torah. And he was honest enough to say that was the reason. So no one was willing. The only one who was willing to teach him was, I think, Rabbi Lichtenstein, if I remember correctly, and even that was after an instruction from the Rebbe that it was permissible to do such a thing. In fact, he went to a nonreligious school through high school, and afterward, once he was over eighteen, he could make up his own mind and do what he wanted. He told us he’d been invited to the end-of-shivah gathering for one of his teachers at one of the schools he’d attended. It was a prestigious school, and this was a well-known teacher: hundreds or thousands of students had passed under his staff—“Your rod and Your staff,” not, G-d forbid, a rod for hitting. They asked several well-known alumni to speak there, and they asked him too. He tried to remember what he remembered about this teacher.

1:08:30 Speaker 10 The teacher—do you know what grade he taught?

1:08:33 Speaker 8 In high school. So he remembered a particular gesture the teacher had made and a particular joke he’d told. He was sure those were things that teacher had done. But he said that some of what he knew had certainly come from that teacher; he just couldn’t point to anything with certainty

1:08:52 Speaker 10 and say, “This is what I got—”

1:08:52 Speaker 8 From the teacher. Yes. He didn’t know whether a particular formula in physics or a particular story came from him. I don’t know which teacher it was—math, perhaps—but he was speaking about teachers in general. And the conclusion he reached was: be chassidim, be good, be kind, give the children as much good as you can. A child won’t know, won’t remember whether he learned to read from me or from someone else. I mean, I know children who came into the class not knowing what an alef looked like and finished that little mechinah class reading. At the stage of words, sentences—[unclear] there’s a law faculty. At the stage of words, they can read properly.

1:09:27 Speaker 10 Mm-hmm.

1:09:28 Speaker 8 “How do you know how to read?” “What do you mean? I just do.” Wonderful. Don’t say it. Don’t say that Segev taught you. You don’t need to. It’s fine. I don’t expect that. You can read, and you say, “I can read.” The very fact that he says, “I can”—

1:09:44 Speaker 10 Ah.

1:09:44 Speaker 8 Wonderful. He’s in the saddle now; he can gallop onward. He can move forward because he can read, and he’s sure he can. He says it with confidence. I’m not looking for the compliment that I taught him to read. Even if he comes and tells me ten or fifteen years from now, what he’ll say is, “I had a good time in the mechinah. I remember the experiences there. I remember the beautiful things, the tricks, all those things.” To me, that’s the best thing. You remember the mechinah as a good place. You’ll want to carry that atmosphere into your life. That will stay with you going forward.

1:10:19 Speaker 10 Like what you said: they stay, they come and simply stay. They don’t say or do anything; they just stay there.

1:10:25 Speaker 8 Yes, and they feel good there. Yes.

1:10:27 Speaker 10 Beautiful. To close, I’d love a tip from you. We ask all our guests here for a tip about serving Hashem or about education—something that works for you, that you can share with us.

1:10:42 Speaker 8 The biggest tip in education, bigger than anything else, is to say thank you to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. I can thank Hakadosh Boruch Hu many times over. Since I came to Chabad, Hakadosh Boruch Hu has placed me with children of this age. Some people have to go around and around before they find what suits them.

1:11:07 Speaker 10 Their shlichus.

1:11:08 Speaker 8 The shlichus that suits them, the thing that’s right for their very soul. I mentioned Rabbi Dosonsky[?] earlier. His father learned through graphologists that he should be a teacher, but he didn’t want his son to be a teacher, so he sent him to the Technion to study engineering or become an engineering technician.

1:11:30 Speaker 10 Mm-hmm.

1:11:31 Speaker 8 Then, there, he met Rabbi Donnach[?] and became a baal teshuvah.

1:11:34 Speaker 10 Came back.

1:11:35 Speaker 8 And he came to know the Rebbe, and there he became engaged. He told his father he was engaged and was going to get married. His father said, “How will you support yourself?” You know, the familiar question many parents ask their children who become baalei teshuvah: “What will you live on?” So he said he’d been in yechidus with the Rebbe, and the Rebbe had directed him to work in education. His father asked, “Did the Rebbe give you some sort of test? Is he a graphologist, a psychologist, or what?” “No, he’s the Rebbe.” “How did he know?” And then his father told him the story. He hadn’t known that, according to all the...

1:12:08 Speaker 10 Ah, his father had kept the story from him.

1:12:09 Speaker 8 It would be a disgrace! G-d forbid his son should become a teacher—heaven help us. So his father told him what had happened. And he said to him, “Dad, the Rebbe is the head of the Jewish people. He knows exactly where each person belongs. A finger needs to grow at the end of the hand, not, G-d forbid, in the middle of the forehead.” And it’s a good thing that’s so. Some people need to go through engineering, or engineering technology, or something else, before discovering that they really need to be teachers. I thank Hakadosh Boruch Hu. I thank the Rebbe that from the moment I came to Chabad, he placed me with children of these ages. Simply, thank you. And I have another tip.

1:12:46 Speaker 10 No, the first tip is gratitude. To thank Hakadosh Boruch Hu.

1:12:49 Speaker 8 To thank Hakadosh Boruch Hu, to thank Hakadosh Boruch Hu for everything. Everyone has their own talents, their own strengths. True, there are also things that haven’t gone so well, things that need fixing, and things that need to be thrown out. That’s all true. But each person has beautiful, good things too. Thank Hakadosh Boruch Hu for them, trust that they’re there, and make as much use of them as possible. It doesn’t end. Keep using them more and more and more. And besides that, anyone who doesn’t love children should look for a better-paying profession. In education, the ABCs are to love the children as deeply as you possibly can. When I started working, I was still a bochur, and I loved the children like friends. A year after my wedding, baruch Hashem, I was blessed to become a father, and I loved them like my children. I’ve been a grandfather for quite a few years now, and I love them like grandchildren. It fits my age. A grandfather doesn’t see so well or hear so well, and he knows how to let things slide. That suits this age, these years, better. And I’ll say it again: a child can come into class today after causing me the greatest heartache imaginable yesterday. No matter how much I tried, how much effort I put in, how much I made sure he had the very best, he threw the plate right back in my face. Today is a new day. Yesterday has nothing to do with today; it doesn’t exist. This is a beloved child, a sweet child, a healthy child, the best child in the world, and I welcome him joyfully into a new day.

1:14:24 Speaker 10 And you’ve managed to do that for thirty-eight years?

1:14:26 Speaker 8 Thirty-seven.

1:14:27 Speaker 10 Thirty-seven.

1:14:28 Speaker 8 Baruch Hashem, I thank Hakadosh Boruch Hu that I do love them, and I still love them today. Even now, I look at some of these children who have grown up, and I feel tiny beside them—I don’t even reach their knees in terms of their abilities and what they’ve achieved. But it says that a person isn’t jealous of his son or his student. Right? A person isn’t jealous of his son or his student. When the son or the student surpasses the father or the teacher, that isn’t jealousy. On the contrary, it’s—

1:14:58 Speaker 10 What is it?

1:14:58 Speaker 8 Almost a kind of pride. Positive pride, yes. But I still see them as the sweet, beloved, dear children they once were. And I hope that as long as I still have it in me to love every child, to come in not just to work but to be with the children in the preparatory class—to really be part of the class, part of the kindergarten—as long as that’s still there, then with Hashem’s help I can keep going. So I thank Hakadosh Boruch Hu for giving me the strength, and for guiding me to love the children. And again, those are the most important tips. I’ll tell you more than that: we say our own personal chapters of Tehillim, and we say the children’s chapters of Tehillim.

1:15:43 Speaker 10 Mm-hmm.

1:15:43 Speaker 8 I say the children’s personal chapters of Tehillim.

1:15:46 Speaker 10 The—

1:15:47 Speaker 8 The chapters for the children’s ages. They’re part of the Tehillim I say after davening.

1:15:53 Speaker 10 Wow.

1:15:54 Speaker 8 The children’s chapters, because they’re my children, in a way.

1:15:58 Speaker 10 Yes, you can really feel it in this conversation. You speak about them with such tremendous enthusiasm.

1:16:04 Speaker 8 And baruch Hashem, that’s how it is. As long as it continues that way, and Hakadosh Boruch Hu keeps giving me physical strength too, then with Hashem’s help I’m there with them.

1:16:11 Speaker 10 No doubt. Thank you so much. This has been a really fascinating conversation. I’ve learned a great deal. Thank you for sharing so much, and with Hashem’s help—

1:16:18 Speaker 8 Thank you. And once again, I want to send this message from here to everyone listening: love as much as you can, show your love as much as you can, and say it as much as you can. Even if it seems obvious—doesn’t the child know? No. Say it as clearly as possible: “How much we love you, my boy. How much we love you, my girl.”

1:16:37 Speaker 10 Amazing. May you have strength. Rabbi Segev Levi, thank you so much.