“Teaching a child the alef-beis together with the vowels1 imbues him with holiness. The te’amim (musical notes), nekudos (vowel signs), tagim (the ‘crowns’ atop certain letters in the Sefer Torah) and osiyos (letters) were given to Moshe Rabbeinu at Mount Sinai at the time that the Almighty said, ‘I am the L‑rd your G‑d.’2 Teaching a child these elements infuses within him the power of self-sacrifice. If, however, he is taught without these four elements (whose Hebrew acronym is טנת"א), this holiness is lacking.”3
Teaching Alef-Beis
Footnotes
1.
[This is a reference to the traditional technique of teaching reading. Instead of phonetically joining the sound of a letter and of a vowel, the child is taught first to name the vowel and the consonant, and then to read the resultant syllable; e.g., גַ is read thus: “Patach-gimmel — ga.”]
2.
[Shmos 20:2.]
3.
From a sichah of Yud-Beis Tammuz, 5704; see also the sichah of Simchas Torah, 5691.
The Hebrew original of Sefer Haminhagim was compiled by R. Menachem Zeev Greenglass and R. Yehudah Leib Groner, and was first published by Kehot Publication Society in 1966. The original work was researched, restructured and translated by Uri Kaploun.
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