Educating Children on the Sanctity of the Mitzvah of Hearing the Ten Commandments - Rabbi Chaim Shalom Deitsch shlita

00:02 Speaker 1 You’re listening to the “Lema’an Yishme’u” podcast from Machon Halacha Chabad.

00:09 Speaker 2 There are people doing this in Jerusalem too, you know. I hope this year there won’t be problems with it anymore, because the streets in the charedi neighborhoods of Jerusalem are full of people—visitors, tourists—who come to see what the shuls look like on Shavuos night. They’re taken around to different places. It happens in other cities too. I know about Jerusalem, but it happens in other cities as well. Are there other cities like that? There are. And they’re usually tourists, and people show them what it’s like. But what did the Rebbe want on Shavuos? To make sure that everyone, adults and children, is brought to shul to hear the Aseres Hadibros. That will go into their heads. Some people see education as something emotional. So perhaps Shavuos night really is more moving than coming to shul to hear the Aseres Hadibros. But again, the education we received is about the holiness of a mitzvah. A mitzvah creates a bond between the One who commands and the one who is commanded. Mitzvah comes from the word tzavsa—togetherness and connection. That’s what the Rebbe wanted. And once the soul is awakened, then... I’m not saying the other things are worthless. All that atmosphere, those particular feelings and evenings and so on, is good, but it’s compote. You can’t replace the meal with compote. That’s childish. You know how a child wants compote, but doesn’t want to eat the healthy things he needs. So his mother always has to find ways to get him to eat the healthy food and not settle for compote. One way is to tell him, “If you eat your whole meal

02:40 Speaker 2 properly, I’ll give you compote—two helpings of compote.” Right? Then he gets all excited. It’s the same with mitzvos. People who find it hard to keep mitzvos need to be given some of that “compote” too: take them to things like farbrengens. A farbrengen is something powerful. I myself know several Jews whose lives changed completely at a farbrengen. Some came in one way, and today they’re truly successful shluchim. We have several examples that we actually witnessed. I know two shluchim who became baalei teshuvah at a farbrengen at the Tzemach Tzedek. Yes. One was during the Aseres Yemei Teshuvah, and the other was at another time. I don’t remember when. But that’s the kind of compote you can offer. In other words, you introduce Yiddishkeit in a pleasant way. You certainly can’t dismiss that. Not only can’t you dismiss it—you have to do it. But you have to know that it isn’t a substitute. Suppose there’s a question—I don’t know, a halachic question—and I can take someone to only one thing: either a farbrengen or to put on tefillin. What should I do? A farbrengen, where he might [unclear], or putting on tefillin just once? It’s a serious question. A serious question. So what’s the way out of the question? Bring him to both. The same is true of Shavuos. Some people focus specifically on the custom of dairy foods and the reason we eat them. You should know that the simple reason for dairy foods is that they taste good, and the verse says “honey and...” The Torah is compared to honey and milk: “Honey

05:17 Speaker 2 and milk are under your tongue.” That’s why we eat dairy foods. In other words, the point of dairy foods is to make the Yom Tov pleasant. Yes, that’s the first reason. Then there are reasons about how they couldn’t slaughter meat, and all sorts of other explanations. But the simple reason is “Honey and milk are under your tongue,” so we should make sure there’s sweetness too—honey. Certainly, we need to make sure a Jew finds pleasant things in Yiddishkeit, things that will really help him form a stronger connection. Let’s say his animal soul will connect to it too. But that can’t take the place of what the G-dly soul needs. The G-dly soul needs food, and its food is doing a mitzvah and learning Torah. We really do need to involve the animal soul as well. Certainly. I want to tell a story about mivtzoim that I heard from the person it happened to. It just came to mind. There are so many stories, but I remembered this one from the man himself. He’s no longer alive, so may this be for the elevation of his soul. I’ve forgotten his name. I have trouble remembering names, but I can tell you who he was. Perhaps someone will remember his name. He was in Be’er Sheva. He used to go out on mivtzoim with real mesirus nefesh. He was a tall, sturdy man. It’s hard for me to remember... Anyway, this man told me the story himself. He used to go out for Mivtza Tefillin, and he would go to the prison. He had permission to enter, and someone would escort him as he went around to all the prisoners. He passed one cell and noticed that they skipped it, though it was another cell in the prison. It happened once, then a second time, so he asked, “Why? Let’s go in here.”

07:56 Speaker 2 “No. The prisoner in here is serving a life sentence. He killed several people. It’s dangerous in there; you can’t go in.” Well, tell a Chabad chossid that there’s someone who, they say, can never be helped to put on tefillin under any circumstances, and he won’t accept it. He did everything he could, and in short, after a great deal of effort, they gave him permission to enter that cell—with an escort, of course. The escort stood off to the side to see what would happen. In short, when he went in, although they knew the prisoner was completely out of control, amazingly he managed to get along with him. That opened the door for him to visit again, to the point that they trusted him. The first time he went in, he sat down and began talking to him as one person talks to a friend. Over time, he formed such a close connection with him that the guards couldn’t believe what they were seeing. They had never been able to have any kind of conversation with him. The prisoner told him his life story: as a child, he’d had problems at home. I don’t know what they were—I no longer remember—and as he grew up, he was thrown out of school. We need to understand that when a child is thrown out of school, where does he end up? Well, that’s something for all of us to bear in mind. When they throw a child out of school, they take the school into account. They don’t take the life of the child they threw out into account. And that’s essentially what led to everything that followed. When he came out, they asked him, “How did you manage to handle him?” He said, “I went in and sat down beside him on his bed.” The prisoner looked at me as though it was the strangest thing in the world. Everyone had always kept their distance from him. Suddenly someone comes in and connects with him, and that

10:33 Speaker 2 He opened his whole heart to him. Now listen. When this man came to put on tefillin, he had a tattoo. So when he came back—I think it was the second time, anyway—he said to him, “Last time, I saw that the tattoo was something immodest. I could see from your face that it bothered you. So I decided to remove it.” But how could he remove it while sitting in a locked room? Apparently he had some salt there for his food. So he said, “I rubbed the whole tattoo with salt.” In short, he made the area really red, and he probably needed antibiotics to deal with it. “But I removed the tattoo. Now you can put tefillin on me.” And what emerged? Ever since he was a child, no one had ever treated him with the affection and respect this man showed him. He changed completely, and that’s a lesson for us. Granted, we don’t face the test of throwing someone out of school, but sometimes we treat someone with contempt and close the doors on them that way. And the opposite is also true: the moment you treat someone with respect… I mentioned that there were people who returned at a farbrengen. I want to tell you about one person who came to a farbrengen. They were talking about teshuvah, because it was Elul, a time for teshuvah. He kept arguing—and Reb Farkash was there at the farbrengen too—that he could no longer do teshuvah. He could no longer do teshuvah. Reb Farkash sat with him for perhaps nearly two hours. In the end, he became convinced that he could do teshuvah. His face lit up, and then

13:04 Speaker 2 he began to dance. He was drunk, and he danced, saying, “I can do teshuvah too!” That was his joy. So showing a person that he can return, that he has worth and that he matters—that is really the beginning of bringing him closer. And this Jew has already brought several others closer. There’s a place for prisoners, people serving life sentences, where a righteous Jew is willing to take them into his institution. He supervises them; instead of being in prison, they stay with him. This man was there too. And he told them that they could do teshuvah, but they didn’t believe it either. They didn’t believe it. He says he showed them Igeres Hateshuvah, which says that anyone can do teshuvah. He says that in the morning, they were all dancing with that page of Igeres Hateshuvah. In any case, that is the power of the Rebbe’s mitzvah campaigns. So we need to make sure people fulfill the mitzvah properly. Yes, together with a farbrengen—but a farbrengen is not a substitute for fulfilling the mitzvah. And through all this, we will leave Egypt and arrive at Matan Torah speedily in our days, as the Rebbe would say.