"This Is Education"

For I know him, that he will instruct his children and his household after him, so that they will keep the path of G-d, to do righteousness and justice… (18:19)

Just as it is incumbent upon every Jew, from the greatest scholar to the most simple of men, to put on tefillin every day, in the same way there is an unequivocal duty which rests upon every individual to set aside half an hour each day to think about the education of his children.

Rabbi Sholom DovBer of Lubavitch

Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok of Lubavitch once told:

A child remains a child. On Rosh Hashanah of 1888, when I was a child of seven and several months, I visited my grandmother and she treated me to a melon. I went out to the yard and sat with my friends on a bench directly opposite my father's window and shared the melon with my friends.

My father called me in and said to me: "I noticed that you did indeed share with your friends, but you did not do it with a whole heart." He then explained to me at length the idea of a 'generous eye' and 'malevolent eye.'

I was so deeply affected by my father's words that I was unable to recover for half an hour. I wept bitterly and brought up what I had eaten of the melon.

"What do you want from the child?" asked my mother. Father replied: "It is good this way. Now this trait it will be ingrained in his character."

Concluded Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok: "This is education."