Rabbi Peretz Chen | Is the commotion in shul on Simchas Torah suitable for my child?

00:00 Hello. How important it is for us to give our children experiences—good experiences that, with Hashem’s help, will stay with them throughout the year and for years to come. For example, when vacation comes around, or Chol Hamoed, many parents start thinking about where to take the children so they’ll have a pleasant experience and some good family bonding. Those things are so, so important. But in today’s class, we’ll talk about how to give children holy experiences, spiritual experiences, experiences that connect them to the Torah, to mitzvos, to our Judaism. What’s a good way to do that? What’s at least one way that, with Hashem’s help, can help us connect them to it? Because the bottom line, as it says in Hayom Yom, is that “true Jewish happiness does not come from accumulating money or buying houses.” Rather, true Jewish happiness comes when we walk a certain path and our children continue on that path. That’s how true Jewish happiness comes. So how do we do that well, in the best and most pleasant way? I want to start by sharing a story from yesterday. Yesterday we took the children on a really exciting outing in the Jericho area. There are some amazing nature reserves there. We visited a stream with lots of water, and the children were happy and enjoyed themselves. But the highlight of the trip was a visit to an ancient shul inside the city of Jericho. It’s called the Naaran Synagogue, after the ancient settlement of Naaran nearby. A large group of us went there, accompanied by soldiers, of course, because it’s an area you can’t just enter on your own. We heard explanations there and davened Minchah. As I stood there listening, something suddenly clicked. What was it? I’d learned several times in the Gemara, in tractate Sotah, about

02:07 the prophet Elisha. Elisha came to Jericho, where the water was contaminated, and he purified it for them. Then some young men came along, and they were very, very angry. You see, when Jericho didn’t have clean water, these young men would draw water from springs, bring it into the city, sell it to the residents and earn money from it. Now that Elisha had purified the water in the city itself, they no longer had work. They spoke disrespectfully to the prophet Elisha, and their fate was not a good one. As the Gemara relates, a forest appeared there, and bears came out. The Gemara calls them “young men.” Why? One explanation given there is that they came from Naaran. Suddenly I realized: Wait, this is Naaran, and Jericho is right next to it! Suddenly that Biblical story, which the Gemara brings in tractate Sotah, clicked for me. Wow, it happened right here. Here’s Naaran, and there’s Jericho. I’d learned that story in the Gemara several times, but it had remained a story for me, not something connected to a real place. Now it was suddenly connected to an actual location, to the land itself. It made a very deep impression on me. I’m sure that although the story was familiar to me before, it has now become much more vivid, because I was there, saw the place and had that experience. I once had an argument with a friend—not an argument, a discussion. In Chabad, one of the meaningful things for a chossid is to travel to the Rebbe from time to time. We discussed whether it was a good idea to bring young children along. At the time I said to him, “Why bring

04:13 a child? I can understand bringing an older child, bar mitzvah age, but what would a younger child do there? He’d get bored, and how would we keep him occupied?” That’s what I thought. But just last week I traveled to the Rebbe for Yom Kippur with two children, one of them ten years old. I really was concerned beforehand. I wondered how it would go, and I have to admit that I was simply wrong. I saw that even a young child of ten, when he comes to a place he’s heard about and knows is special, can be so excited and impressed, and feel so at home there. I thought he’d be bored, but we didn’t even manage to do everything we wanted during our time there. He enjoyed it so much, and it’s clear to me now that his connection to that place is far stronger than it had been before. When you’re actually there, when you experience a place firsthand, it becomes something entirely different. He was excited to be in the Rebbe’s beis midrash and to visit the library, where various things are on display—the shofars the Rebbe blew and items belonging to earlier Chabad Rebbeim. We were in the Rebbe’s room, and he was so moved to be inside. He stood there and said Tehillim, and it moved him so much. It moved me too. We visited the broadcast room, the room from which all the broadcasts went out. The Rebbe’s farbrengens were broadcast from there to the whole world. It’s a room with many, many telephones, and there are microphones the Rebbe used over the years when speaking before the chassidim. Suddenly we were seeing it with our own eyes, and he was seeing it with his own eyes. It really moved him, and he wanted his picture taken beside every

06:04 thing. I suddenly realized that I’d simply been wrong. Yes, bringing a child to places like these, holy places that are important to us, connects him to them much more strongly when he is physically there. There’s nothing like experiencing something firsthand. Today, when you go to buy a chicken, you go to the supermarket and buy one. Many children today probably think chickens are simply born that way, wrapped in packaging and frozen in the supermarket freezer. But I remember studying the laws of salting meat as part of my rabbinic studies—how to salt a chicken and make it kosher. The text explained what you have to do: soak the chicken in water, rinse it and salt it. For me personally, that wasn’t just theory. I could picture what I was learning. Why? Because when I was a child, every year on Yom Kippur, after we brought the chickens for Yom Kippur to the shochet, we would take one or two chickens and make them kosher ourselves. My mother, may she live and be well, grew up in Russia, where you couldn’t buy a kosher chicken in the supermarket. They would prepare the chickens at home, so she knew how to do it from her childhood home and had all the equipment. As a child, I remember how we took the chickens and cleaned them, how my mother opened a chicken, removed the parts that had to be removed, spread it out and prepared it on the salting surface. So when I studied those laws, they weren’t just something theoretical to me. I could see it all before my eyes because I had experienced it as a child. Anything we experience as children stays with us much more strongly. It shapes us more deeply; it becomes much more a part of us. Soon, after all, we’ll have

08:07 Simchas Torah. We want people to connect with the Torah. So how do we do that? Before we get to it, I saw a study about children’s experiences. The study explains that if you want a child to develop a passion, a desire for something, you need to let them experience it. For example, it says that if you want a child to be creative in a particular art or craft, let them get a feel for it, experience it—and experience success at it, too. Then they’ll develop a tremendous passion for it, and when they grow up, they’ll want to pursue that art or craft. If you want a child to connect with a particular sport—say, it matters to the parents that he become a soccer player or a tennis champion, or whatever it may be—then connect him with it from a young age. Give him successful, positive, enjoyable experiences around it, and when he grows up, he’ll have an inner passion and a strong desire to play that sport. In other words, when children have a pleasant, positive experience, it connects them to something very, very strongly. Going back to the trip I just described, the trip to the Rebbe with my son: of course, the trip was planned with him in mind, too. That meant taking him to a children’s museum, something suited to him—a Jewish children’s museum. He’s a child, and he was incredibly excited there. It also meant making sure everything was comfortable for a child when it came to sleep and food. Of course, you need to take proper care of all that. You don’t want to bring him somewhere that leaves him with an unpleasant experience. But he needs to be there; he needs to feel the experience. You need to adapt the

10:08 experience to his level and to that particular child’s personality. Then he’ll experience it so positively that, with Hashem’s help, it will stay with him as he goes forward. Imagine if, when we were students learning Tanach—this isn’t realistic, but let’s imagine it—every time we learned about something, we went and experienced it. Jericho, for example: we learn about Yehoshua bin Nun’s conquest of Jericho, and then we travel to the city of Jericho. Surely that would have made a much stronger impression on us. So our aim is to give them—Simchas Torah is coming soon. On Simchas Torah, we want people to connect with the Torah. The first and most basic thing is simply to take the children to hakafos at the shul, at the Chabad House. Bring them to the Simchas Torah hakafos so they can experience it, see the dancing, see the joy. Parents might say, “What? He’s a little boy, she’s a little girl. It can get a bit chaotic there, with lots of people and lots of noise. It’s not for them.” But it’s for them much more than we realize. Just bring them there. Let them experience it, get their bag of candy, get their flag, and dance. It’s an experience that will be etched in their memories for life. Everyone listening to this class, think about how you personally remember Simchas Torah as a child. Those memories are sweet. As I speak about it now, I’m remembering the Simchas Torah hakafos I saw as a child—the people who led it all, the kind of joy there was. Remembering it gives me a tremendous sense of calm, because anything that comes to us through an experience is special. We absolutely must give them that experience. Take them

12:00 to the hakafos on Simchas Torah. Make sure in advance that they have a flag, or find out whether flags are handed out at the shul. For some children, holding a small Sefer Torah will add so much to their joy, so buy them one. True, it can be a bit expensive. But we spend plenty of money on things for our children that are far less important. A Sefer Torah might be a bit expensive, especially some of the larger ones, but think how important it is. When it comes to educating our children, we generally try not to skimp on money. So yes, give them that; give them the experience. It will connect them and strengthen their desire and passion for these things. After Simchas Torah, the ordinary part of the year begins. Throughout the rest of the year, too, it’s our job to think about how to connect them with holy experiences, with special experiences. Anything they experience firsthand will be etched in their memories and remain with them forever. Just a few days ago, we drove with the children to a park called Canada Park. We were on our way to Jerusalem, and there was a huge traffic jam. So we said that rather than sit in traffic, we’d go to a nearby park and spend some time there. We got to Canada Park, and the children walked around there, and it was very nice. Then, while we were there, I suddenly remembered a powerful experience I’d had in that park as a child. I’d gone there with my older brother, and we’d done a particular activity together. It suddenly came back to me, and I told the children about that experience. It came back with such intensity. There’s nothing like the experiences we have as children. We absolutely must give them

13:52 that. One of the powerful things an experience can give them is a sense of direction and values. There’s a story about the time of Tsar Nicholas in Russia. He wanted strict discipline and expected his soldiers to conduct themselves properly. One day, four soldiers felt they just had to have a good beer, a drink. So they jumped over the camp fence and ran off to a tavern, where they drank until they were drunk. Even in their drunken state, though, they knew they’d be in terrible trouble if they didn’t return to camp. They made their way back, stumbling into one another as they walked toward the camp. But just as they reached the fence, they ran out of strength, fell to the ground, and went to sleep. A patrol passed by, saw them, and summoned the commander. Tsar Nicholas himself arrived, saw them, and was furious. How could soldiers behave like that? Had they no shame? He looked at them. Of course, they had been woken up, and they got to their feet in a panic. Then he said, “All right. You two soldiers can go back, and you two are going to spend a serious stretch in prison.” They couldn’t understand it. “Why are we going to prison while the other two aren’t? We all did exactly the same thing. What’s the difference?” So he explained: “I’ll tell you. I looked at the way you were sleeping after you fell to the ground drunk. Those two, even as they lay there, had their faces turned toward the camp. But you two, who are now going to prison, had your heads pointed toward the tavern. That’s the problem.”

16:09 I expect a soldier, even when he makes a mistake, to know which way he’s supposed to be going. At least when you know the way and the direction, that already has value. But you’ve completely lost your sense of direction, and for that you’re going to spend a good long time here in prison. In other words, at least knowing the direction is already meaningful. So when we give children holy experiences—when we take them to shul on Shabbos, as we’ve discussed before, for a part of the davening that suits them, in a setting that suits them; when we take them to activities where they can have spiritual, holy experiences in a pleasant way—they’ll know the direction. It will give them a path that can really, really guide them as they grow up. And there’s nothing like the experiences we have as children. Children are like a blank, clean page. Whatever we write on it will remain there. Everything added later is added to what’s already there. But those first things are written on a blank page, in the most beautiful, clearest way; they make the deepest impression. That’s why it’s important to give children these experiences while they’re still young. So the most important, most immediate thing is Simchas Torah. Make sure they feel part of the joy of Simchas Torah. We also need to stay alert to what’s happening with them. Sometimes we’re so caught up in the joy, the dancing, and our friends that we don’t notice our child wants us to pick them up during hakafos, put them on our shoulders, or help them with something, and they get pushed aside. So we need to pay particular attention to our children’s needs. Of course we’ll rejoice with everyone and enjoy ourselves, but they are what matters most. They should have most of our attention. That’s our job, especially on Simchas Torah. Pay

18:13 attention to what they want, to their needs, their requests, and their wishes amid all the celebration. That will give them such a good, pleasant experience that, with Hashem’s help, will stay with them for many good years to come. I want to wish everyone a continued happy Yom Tov. May we draw joy from the joy of Sukkos and the tremendous joy of Simchas Torah for the whole year, for ourselves and for our children. May that joy stay with us for many good years, with Hashem’s help. May we have great nachas from our children, and may we merit to experience the complete Geulah together with them, speedily in our days. Amen, may it be so. Thank you very much! Good news and all the best.