Art - Part 9: Sensitivity

00:00 The continuation to the earlier installments on the topic of art. We now continue, with installment number nine, discussing additional insights of the Rebbe from the perspective of Torah and Hasidus. We start with a yechidus which took place with Rab Yosef Goldstein, who was a menahail of a Bais Yankiv school in Brooklyn, and he was a mechanech, published records for children. And on one occasion, he brought to the Rebbe the cover or the wrapper or the envelope of the record which he was publishing at the time. And as he describes it, he says, "This was in the early '70s. I showed the Rebbe a drawing which was printed on one of these wrappers, and it was showing Avraham Avinu, how he recognizes the Creator. And in the background, one is able to see the sun, the moon, and the stars. And the artist drew the rays of the moon towards the sun. The Rebbe took the drawing, and he corrected it that the sun should only be seeing the white part of the lavanah of the moon. The Rebbe then began quoting the Ma'amar Chazal, the quote of our sages in the tractate of Rosh Hashanah 23B. The Rebbe said it with a nigun, 'The sun has never seen the concave side of the new moon.' In order that it shouldn't be embarrassed. And the Rebbe concluded, since this record is to instill in children good character traits, therefore, al-also the drawing should express the same concept, good character traits, which is not to embarrass someone

02:33 else, as we derive from the sun and the moon as mentioned." On another occasion, which was l-late 1970, Teves תשל. There was a person who came into the Rebbe into yechidus. It was a yechidus with Dr. and Mrs. Bunim Weinbaum. And they published something with artwork, and they showed it to the Rebbe. And the Rebbe said the following: "It is very important to teach Alef Beis by teaching the names of the letters and vowels first. This is statistically a more successful way of teaching and also strengthens the emunah, the faith of the children who are learning. It is also important to use words from the Siddur and, chaz-- the Chumash to increase the child's familiarity." The Rebbe then went on to say, "If at any time you have the opportunity to produce a book to teach Hebrew reading in addition to what I have mentioned, you should ensure that there are no pictures of girls and boys on the same page, and that there are no pictures of treif animals or names of treif animals included in the text." The Rebbe concluded this part of the yechidus by blessing them that they should, quote, unquote, "Blaze the trails of Yiddishkeit through Alef Beis." An additional note: the guidelines for the production, some ten years later, of the Lamdeni Hebrew reading scheme and used throughout the United Synagogue and abroad for many years were based on this yechidus. When the Rebbe was sent a final printed copy of Lamdeni, he replied to the choson's parents, this

04:49 was part of the yechidus as mentioned, the light of the eyes, which in brackets makes the heart rejoice. Going on now to a sicha, a talk that the Rebbe gave on יא ניסן תשלח, 1978, speaking about images, drawings, that they should be only kosher ones. The Rebbe says the following: "Beginning from cheder of a three-year-old child, and even before that when his father teaches him Torah, and even before that when his mother educates him, as it was the custom of Bnei Yisrael, daughters of Am Yisrael, that a Jewish child saw around him images which were connected, related to topics of kedusha and yahadus. Not, Rachmanu Litzlan, images of impure animals or ammunition and so on." The Rebbe continues, "Halavai, it would be a very good idea that also adults should not be in touch with these images, and surely a child, and surely a very young child who is considered new paper, a new beginning, as one writes on a paper which is new, and therefore it sticks in the mind of the person even more yet than someone who is already older, and it is engraved in that person's mind. In addition to that, also the songs that are sung for a child when he goes to sleep, the lullaby songs, which are sung when the child is falling asleep. And in these songs, the words, 'Torah is the best hechsherah, Torah is the best material,' would be included with the additional details of these songs. And then when the child grows up and

07:17 he's being sent to a school which is al tahar, al kodesh, we need to make sure that it will also add more in the hours of learning which is connected with chinuch based on our Torah, Torah shems and Torah sich, the true Torah and Torah of life." We will continue in the next installment.