Rabbi Peretz Chen | We don't need to explain everything to our children! - Parshas Bechukosai

00:00 Our child wants to go to a friend’s house in the afternoon, and we parents really don’t want him spending the whole afternoon there. So we tell him, “No, you’re not going.” But he insists that he does want to go, and then the back-and-forth begins: yes, no, no, yes. The question is whether we need to give him all our reasons and explain, logically and in detail, why he can’t go to that house, or simply say, “Listen, sweetheart, you’re not going because Mom and Dad said you’re not going.” Of course, this question applies to many things that happen at home, when we wrestle with whether to explain everything or know how to simply say no without explanations. We’ll look at the answer in light of the weekly parsha, Parshas Bechukosai, and what the experts have to say on the subject. First, we need to know that children are not adults. In many areas, that’s obvious to us: there are things we don’t expect of them because we know they aren’t capable of them. We know they can’t understand certain complex texts. As for certain tasks around the house, like preparing the cholent for Shabbos, we understand that a child can’t do that; he wouldn’t know where to start or how to do it. In those cases, it’s clear to us that they’re children, not adults. But sometimes we seem to think their reasoning works exactly like an adult’s, and we want to give our child the same carefully reasoned explanations we would give an adult. But wait—he isn’t an adult. A child doesn’t see the world the way adults do. He won’t always understand those reasons. Not every reason

02:01 we start explaining to him—“Listen, you can’t go to this friend’s house because it could affect you in this or that way”—will make sense to him. He doesn’t understand those arguments. He says, “But I have fun there. I want to be there now, that’s all.” He isn’t always capable of understanding all the far-reaching explanations about how it might affect him in the future. They may only confuse him, and he may have no idea what we’re talking about. We see that children really do look at the world from a very different perspective. Sometimes a boy or girl goes to preschool, hears part of a story, and the teacher tells them she’ll continue it tomorrow. The child comes home and asks a parent to continue the story the teacher told at preschool. The parent has no idea what story they mean, but in the child’s mind it’s obvious: there’s a story, and it needs to continue. Surely Mom and Dad know the story told at preschool! But they weren’t there. Children see the world differently. So whether we’re going to explain something to them or not, we first have to start with a basic assumption: a child doesn’t understand the reasons an adult understands. A child sees the world through a child’s eyes, through entirely different lenses. So when we do explain things, our explanations need to be suited to the child, not to an adult, because he won’t understand adult explanations. He can’t always grasp future consequences when what he wants is the immediate enjoyment he sees right in front of him. But as for the broader question of whether to go into explanations or simply say no, there’s an idea in the weekly parsha that answers it directly. This week’s parsha is called Parshas Bechukosai. What does Bechukosai mean? The word Bechukosai

04:09 brings to mind the word chok, a decree. There are three kinds of mitzvos: chukim, eidos, and mishpatim. Mishpatim are mitzvos that reason can understand—for example, not stealing, not murdering, and honoring one’s parents. Any person with understanding, any human being, understands that it’s wrong to murder or steal and right to honor the parents who have invested so much in us. These are mitzvos that reason alone could lead us to. Eidos are mitzvos that bear witness to things that happened in the past. Take keeping Shabbos. What is Shabbos? It commemorates Creation: Hakadosh Boruch Hu created the world in six days and rested on the seventh, and so we, too, rest on the seventh day in remembrance of Creation. On Pesach we eat matzos in remembrance of our ancestors, who ate matzos then and offered the Pesach sacrifice. And on Sukkos we sit in a sukkah in remembrance of the sukkos in which the Jewish people dwelt when they left Egypt. These are mitzvos that we wouldn’t have thought of ourselves if the Torah hadn’t commanded them, but once it has, we can readily understand their reasoning. Chukim, though, are mitzvos whose reasons we do not understand. “I have enacted a decree; I have issued an edict, and you have no right to question it.” These are mitzvos that Hakadosh Boruch Hu commanded even though we don’t understand the reasoning. That’s how it is. Many of the laws of ritual impurity and purity are like this: a person who is ritually impure looks just like a person who is pure. You can’t see any outward difference, but you have to accept that he is impure and that something about him is different. What’s the logic behind that? It’s a chok. The mitzvah of the red heifer is a famous chok, and there are other examples

06:15 among the mitzvos—even familiar ones—whose reasoning we don’t know. We do them because that is how they were given to Moshe at Sinai. Why are tefillin square and not round? It’s a halacha given to Moshe at Sinai. A chok. We don’t know the reasoning; that’s how Hakadosh Boruch Hu wants it. So we’ve seen that there are three kinds of mitzvos: eidos, chukim, and mishpatim. But the word Bechukosai, the name of the parsha, also brings to mind another word. Besides chok, it evokes chakikah—engraving. What is engraving? It’s taking a stone and engraving letters into it. What’s the difference between letters engraved in stone and letters written on parchment? Letters on parchment are written letters; letters in stone are engraved letters. What does that mean? The letters written on parchment sit on its surface. They aren’t part of the parchment; they’re on top of it. But letters engraved in stone are part of the stone. They aren’t separate from it. In other words, Bechukosai also suggests engraving: something engraved within me, something that is truly part of me. But then something here isn’t clear. The word Bechukosai is connected both to engraving and to a chok. Yet when are the Torah and mitzvos deeply engraved in and connected to a person? Seemingly, not with chukim, but דווקא with mishpatim and eidos—with the mitzvos whose reasoning a person understands. Those are the ones he connects with much more. When I do something without understanding it, I feel less connected. But when I do something and understand the reasoning, the rationale, I connect with it much more. So mitzvos with understandable reasons, like mishpatim and eidos, are the very means through which Yiddishkeit becomes engraved within me. I understand

08:36 their reasoning. That fits the word “engraving.” Mitzvos that I do without understanding why don’t feel as connected to me, because I haven’t understood their reasoning. So that doesn’t seem like engraving; it doesn’t really become part of me. And yet the word “Bechukosai” evokes both “engraving” and “chok,” a decree beyond reason. Why? Chassidus explains that the opposite is true. It is precisely these mitzvos, the ones that are decrees without a reason we can understand, that create an engraved bond, making Hakadosh Boruch Hu and me one. Why? If I do something and understand the reasoning behind it, why did I do it? Why did I observe the mitzvah? Because I understood the reasoning. It may well be that if I hadn’t understood it, I wouldn’t have done it. But when I do something even though I don’t understand the reasoning, what does that show? It shows that I’m not doing it because I enjoy it or because I feel like it. I’m doing it because Hakadosh Boruch Hu commanded it. So even though I don’t understand, I do it, and that shows how much more deeply connected I am to Him. I do even things I don’t understand simply because He said so. That’s why “engraving” is more closely connected to a chok, to mitzvos that are beyond reason, than to mitzvos that make sense. It shows that I do what He said because He said it, even though I haven’t understood a thing. Just as the Jewish people said when they came to receive the Torah, “We will do and we will hear.” Before the reasoning, before hearing the explanations: “We will do.” Putting “we will do” before “we will hear” shows the deepest connection. I believe in You so much, I trust You so much, that even though I don’t understand at all why I’m doing this or why I’m supposed to do it, I will

10:35 still do it just because You commanded it. And so Parshas Bechukosai: “Bechukosai” is related to both chok and engraving, because observing decrees and mitzvos that we cannot understand intellectually shows how deeply we are engraved in Hakadosh Boruch Hu, how we and He are one essence—like engraved letters, not written letters. In other words, we see from all this that, in a certain sense, doing things without understanding them has a much deeper dimension than doing things we understand. If we accustom children to needing to understand everything, to needing to understand every reason for doing or not doing something, what will they learn? When they understand, fine, they understand. But when they don’t, they don’t. After all, we’ve taught them that they need to understand everything. Then suddenly we’ll encounter things they aren’t capable of understanding. As we said earlier about children, they don’t have an adult’s way of thinking, an adult’s depth, or an adult’s ability to look ahead. So we won’t be able to explain it to them. It won’t make sense to them, and they won’t listen to us either, because “you didn’t explain it to me.” But a child can’t understand everything, because he’s a child. What do people always say? “When you grow up, you’ll understand.” He hasn’t grown up yet; he can’t understand. So if we want them to follow what we tell them, we also need to accustom children to doing certain things because Dad said so, period; because Mom said so, that’s it. It’s a rule. On the contrary, that will create a much deeper bond between us and them, a bond like engraving. They’ll understand and get used to listening to us, not to our explanations. They listen to what we say because we said it,

12:33 because we are the ones with the authority to decide. That way, their actions will be much better and much more in line with what we want. It will also give them much more self-confidence, because they’ll feel that there’s a responsible adult guiding them. They’ll get used to acting when we tell them to, and that will be much more reassuring for them. They’ll know that the whole responsibility isn’t on their small shoulders. There’s a responsible adult here who tells them what to do; they listen to him and trust him. Everything is okay. So this will give them a great deal of confidence, and it will also get them used to the fact that when they’re told to do something, they need to do it. Because really, it can’t work otherwise. There’s no way they can understand everything. A wise Jew once asked, “What is the most powerful word in the Ten Commandments? Which word, or which words?” One person said, “Do not murder”; another, “Do not steal”; another, “Honor your father and your mother”; another, “for Hashem your G-d.” Then he said that the word repeated several times, the most powerful word in the Ten Commandments, is “no”: “Do not murder,” “Do not steal,” “Do not commit adultery,” and so on. Because in life you have to know that there is such a thing as no. No. Why? Because. That’s it. Tehillim says, “Fortunate is the people for whom it is so.” Why? It also says, “Why should the nations say...?” The nations ask, “Why? What’s the reason? I don’t understand.” They won’t do it. It doesn’t work that way for a Jew. “Fortunate is the people for whom it is so.” For a Jew, when this is what needs to be done, you do it. So our task in educating our children is to know that we don’t have to explain everything. We need to know how to say no, and not be afraid to say it. Why not? Because Dad said so, because Mom said so. That will educate them most effectively. It will connect them

14:49 most deeply to us, because, again, they’ll understand that they’re not listening only to our explanations, but to us ourselves. Then we’ll see much more blessing and much more success in educating our children. May there be good news for the Jewish people. With Hashem’s help, may we merit all these important things. May the Jewish people be victorious. May the hostages return and the wounded recover, and may we merit the coming of Moshiach and the resurrection of the dead very soon. Amen. If you give this class a like, share it, and leave a comment below, YouTube and its algorithms will spread this class to more and more Jews. So thank you very much. Good news, much nachas. All the best.