It was late Simchat Torah night, 3:00 a.m. to be exact, and
everyone in the central Lubavitch Synagogue was engrossed in the concluding
prayers following the Hakafot ceremony. A young boy stood near the Rebbe. He
did not have a prayer book -- the synagogue was crowded, and there were none
available. The Rebbe took notice and motioned for the boy to approach him. He
lowered his prayer book so that the child could look in with him. Sharing
pages, together they swayed and prayed…
Child-Pray
Pharaoh, it seemed, was finally coming around.
The latest threat from G‑d had just come in. "If you refuse
to let my people go, behold, tomorrow I am going to bring locusts into your
borders…and they will eat all your trees that grow out of the field."
The people at the palace weren't pleased.
"Pharaoh's servants said to him, 'How long will this people
be a stumbling block to us? Let them go and they will worship their G‑d! Don't
you know that Egypt
is lost?'"
Perhaps it was the fear of economic ruin or civil
unrest that brought Pharaoh to the negotiating table, or maybe it was the
creepy thought of a locust invasion; either way, it appeared that he was ready
to do business at last.
"Moses and Aaron were brought back to Pharaoh, and he said
to them, "Go, worship the Lord your G‑d…"
Free at last.
Well, almost. While looking over the discharge papers
something caught Pharaoh's eye. "Who exactly is going?" he asked.
"With our youth and with our elders we will go, with our
sons and with our daughters… for it is a festival to the L‑rd for us," was the response.
Pharaoh said, "May the L‑rd be with you just as I will let
you and your young children out [the ancient way of saying: not in a million
years!]. Not so; let the men go now and worship the Lord, for that is what you
request."
A Battle
of Wits
On the surface, this fruitless exchange seems identical to
previous ones; just another ploy plucked from Pharaoh's bottomless
bag-of-gimmicks.
Perhaps, though, we can also see in it the origins of a
contemporary debate.
Note: the following dialogue was not found recorded in
ancient Jewish manuscripts, or transcribed on Egyptian hieroglyphs, but emerges
from the author's imagination alone.
On the basic level, Pharaoh argues, "If it's truly a prayer
experience and environment you seek, leave the kids behind. How can you achieve
transcendence with a screaming child tugging at your sleeve? Prayers and
Pampers don't go together."
Moses' response is equally convincing: "The children must
come, despite the challenge you present. For if synagogue life is devoid of children
today, tomorrow it will be devoid of adults. The institution of prayer is
better maintained, or only maintained, when youth are involved. After all, they
are the link to the future…"
Not one to buckle easily, Pharaoh persists. In an
inadvertent prophetic nod to a new-age line of reasoning, he declares:
"But encouraging children to pray and follow ritual is a
form of brain-washing! It's unethical to impose religious beliefs and a
particular lifestyle on children too young to choose for themselves."
Ahead of his time, he stumbles onto a modern-day trap.
Old-school education surely equals indoctrination. Teaching children to believe
in G‑d, or in anything absolute for that matter, is denying them their "G‑d-
given" right to explore things on their own.
"To bring up children in a distinct way, especially in a
particularistic way, is to do them irreversible and lifelong damage," asserts
Pharaoh. "They will be haunted by their rigid and restrictive past, and forever
held captive to the belief system of their childhood…"
Counters Moses: "While you've aptly pointed out that
children are most impressionable, that's actually a reason for, not against,
teaching them about such valuable things as faith, prayer, and community at
such a young age. If they learn right from wrong in their formative years, if
they are instilled with religious teachings like 'Love your neighbor like
yourself' from childhood, these good traits and impulses will be ingrained in
them, not superimposed onto them, as is the case with much of what is learnt in
adulthood."
"Besides," – and here Moses calls Pharaoh on his bluff -
"it's not as if you walk your own talk…"
Brain-wash or Brain-Freeze?
If there was one individual in ancient Egypt who knew
and practiced indoctrination in the extreme, it was Pharaoh.
His horrific decree to drown all males at birth overshadowed
a different, equally sinister, plot pertaining to Jewish females.
On the verse, "And Pharaoh commanded all his people, saying,
'Every son who is born you shall cast into the Nile
and every daughter you shall allow to live,'" the Sages wonder at the
redundancy of Pharaoh's words: "and every daughter you shall allow to live." If
the drowning-decree didn't apply to them, isn't it obvious that they would
live?
But Pharaoh's evil plans included girls as well, whom he
wanted "drowned" in Egyptian religion and culture. The boys he sought to
eliminate, the girls to indoctrinate.
In today's world, Moses would surely call a different but
prevalent bluff: "You can unhesitatingly enroll your children in the School of
Television, where they are taught The Art of Obscenity by such expert
professors as the Simpsons or the faculty of Glee; in their free time they take
music at MTV, and if they excel at their studies, they are rewarded with time
to play 'Grand Theft Auto' or surf (really, drown in) the net - yet you are
opposed to the ominous indoctrination practiced at Hebrew school?"
The Damage of Sophistication
The debate gets more serious.
The issue of continuity aside, Pharaoh argues that children
are unfit to pray. They lack the maturity and sensitivity to appreciate matters
of the spirit. While the words of prayer these youngsters are expected to chant
are pretty, moving, and soulful, their meaning is lost on children. Their
childish perception of G‑d is probably insulting to Him.
Moses is secretly thrilled to address this last point. Here
is his chance to bust a myth.
That Jewish continuity is a big factor in Judaism's emphasis
on the involvement of children in things Jewish1 is a
given2.
Its recognition of the power of one's formative years, and
the life-lasting effects of childhood upbringing, is also commonly emphasized
(Think the Mishnaic statement3, "He
who learns as a child may be compared to ink written on new paper.")
That there is another, entirely non-utilitarian factor,
however, is much less known.
Consider the following Talmudic passage:
Rabbi Yehudah said in the name of Rav: What is meant by
the verse, "Do not touch my anointed ones?"4 "My
anointed ones" refers to tinokot shel beit raban - to school children.
Reish Lakish said in the name of R. Yehudah the Prince:
The world endures only for the sake of the breath of school children [emitted
during Torah study].
Said R. Papa to Abaye, What about mine and yours [i.e.,
is our Torah study chopped liver]? He replied: Breath in which there is sin is
not like breath in which there is no sin.
Abaye makes clear that the value placed on the Torah study
of children is not related to their future status as adults. Childhood Judaism
is not just a means to an end. On the contrary, there is something pure and
innocent about the Divine service of a child – "breath without sin" - that is
lost in adulthood, even for such legendary Talmudic sages as Abaye and R.
Papa!
In all likelihood, it's the same radical notion that led
some of the great masters of Jewish spirituality and meditation to offer the following
humble and breathtaking prayer to G‑d: "Ani mitpallel l'daat zeh Hatinok,
G‑d, please give me the ability to address you with the innocence of a child…"
In other words, in Jewish tradition the spiritually
sophisticated and mature view their sophistication and maturity as a vice to be
overcome, to the point of asking G‑d: "Please undo the damage of
sophistication. Help me to grow out of adulthood…"
Talk about religious sophistication.
To the kabbalist, the child is the grown-up. Their innocence
is not something to grow out of, but something to grow into.
Moreover, it is this purity that renders the child's prayer
more effective than an adult's.
As we know from the Purim story5, when
the Jews were in a bind, Mordechai gathered 22,000 children for a prayer
session. Apparently, these youngsters held G‑d's ear even more than the sages
and saints of Israel,
not to mention their parents and grandparents!
The Psalmist6, too,
says as much.
"Out of the mouth of the babes and sucklings You have
established strength, in order to put an end to all enemies and adversaries."
(The Lubavitcher Rebbe often quoted this verse in the months
leading up to the Yom Kippur war, in the context of his intensified efforts to
create children's gatherings of study and prayer.)
Finally, in addition to their advantage over adults in terms
of spiritual innocence and purity, and the resulting added power of their
prayer, in Jewish tradition, children are seen to have a greater spiritual
sensitivity as well. It was this sensitivity that allowed "the children to
recognize G‑d first7" at the
splitting of the sea, even before Moses, Aaron and the elders!
This leads us to the concluding words of Moses' (imaginary)
exhaustive rebuttal: "With our youth and with our elders we will go, with our
sons and with our daughters…for it is a festival to G‑d for us."
These words, with their intentional placement of children
before adults in the context of "a festival before G‑d," could not sum up any
better the position of Moses and the G‑d he represented.
P.S.
On a personal note, I'd like to relate a relevant memory
that my wife has shared with me from her childhood.
As a result of the Moshiach campaign that the Lubavitcher
Rebbe initiated in the nineties, in which he urged all men, women, and children
to increase in acts of goodness because "Moshiach is on his way," and every
act, big or small, "can tip the scale towards world redemption," my wife's
early childhood was Moshiach-centric.
Having heard from the Rebbe on many occasions that children
play a special role in bringing Moshiach8 ,
she, along with many of her young peers, felt an extraordinary sense of mission
and urgency.
My wife took her unique childhood role so seriously that
when she turned Bat Mitzvah –a time when most kids are exhilarated to be called
a teen at last, and look back on their childhood years with a sense of disdain
– she felt a deep sense of loss. She no longer belonged to the exclusive group
that would usher in an era of world peace…
While she knew she could still contribute to Moshiach's
coming as a teenager, she felt she had lost something irretrievable: the role
that only a child can play in bettering the world, and the ability that only a
child has to reach out and touch G‑d in that pure and tender child-like way…
(Inspired by a letter of the Rebbe printed in Likutei
Sichot volume 26, pp. 400)
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