“Look, Mommy, I colored all the letters. What does it say?”

I must be getting soft in my old age, because one look at my four year old son’s art project had me tearing up. He wore a Sefer Torah costume and an impish little smile before a gated Har Sinai. The colored lettered sign read: “Our children are our guarantors.” It was the kind of wholesome, classic craft I probably brought home over 20 years ago.

It reminded me instantly of a post-Holocaust story I’ve always loved.

It was Simchas Torah, 1945. A father picked up his little boy from the Catholic nanny who’d hidden him and brought him straight to the Great Synagogue of Vilna. There were no Torahs left to dance with, just a group of Auschwitz survivors trying to return to normalcy.

A man still wearing his Soviet Army uniform stared at the little boy. It was the first living Jewish child he had seen in four years.

“Can I hold you?” he asked. He lifted him onto his shoulders and cried, “This child is my Torah scroll!”

(The boy was Abe Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League. He remembers this story as his first conscious feeling of connection with Yiddishkeit and of being a Jew.)

The child danced with, instead of a Sefer Torah. The child as the Torah. The child as the guarantor of our Torah.

It’s such a beautiful sentiment. We read it. We teach it. We preach it!

But do we live it?

If our children are as precious, or even more so, than a Torah scroll… is that actually reflected in how we view and treat them?

Let’s look at how we care for the Torah and compare that with how we view our children.

Careful beginnings

First: the foundation has to be solid. The parchment itself must be smooth and unblemished.

Before we try to imprint our values upon our children, we must first strive to ensure they are emotionally whole and healthy. ⁣A frum Jew is first a healthy Jew.

Do we stress out and enforce things that our children may not be developmentally capable of? Do we put “the cart before the horse” and rush our children into practices or minhagim for which they are not yet old enough or ready for?

Our goal should be a child who loves to come to shul, not a count of minutes on the clock or pages in the siddur.

The more, the merrier

• “She’s pregnant again? What number is this?”
• “How old is your oldest again? Ahh… three under 3?”
• “That girl has the shul hall booked for an upshernish and bar mitzvah every year for the next decade.”

Every shul wants to own another Torah. Every family wants to write one in memory of their loved one.

A Torah? There can never be too many.

Another baby? You should really slow down.

I received a beautiful note from somebody who isn’t frum. It must have come with a gift or a check in honor of the birth of my third baby, but all I remember is the note. She wrote, “Another Jew is born to our nation.”

So simple. So profound. So easy for us to forget because so many babies are k”ah born, all the time, that we can lose sight of how important and special it is.

Are we still in awe of the miracle that is a Jewish baby, no matter how many we’ve seen?

Celebrate it

• “How bad is it if I skip that bris? It’s too hard to take off from work.”
• “I’m going to drop the kids off at school first, it’s way more enjoyable to sit at a bris without them hanging off me.”
• “I don’t get why they had to throw such a big party. It’s just a baby naming.”

The whole community celebrated the writing of a new Torah – when it begins and when it’s finished!

A Hachnosas Sefer Torah is the culmination of much time, effort and money; it doesn’t happen every day, so it’s a pretty big deal when it does. The Torah is paraded along the streets and serenaded with music and dancing. The kids get candy or a carnival. We don’t even say Tachanun! 

The birth of a new baby might happen more often, but it’s also the culmination of a lot of time and effort! Does it receive the same fanfare?

Is the new mother supported unconditionally? Does she indeed feel that there is a “village” taking care of her emotional and physical postpartum needs?

Is the new baby welcomed unconditionally… no matter what number baby it is, how close apart it is to its siblings, how the mother is going to handle it, or any other such judgments we can make?

Handle with care

• “Come HERE! Why do I have to grab you!”
• “One more time and you’re getting a potch.”
• “Kids these days need a firm hand.”

When the Torah is in use, it is treated with the utmost reverence. We dress it gently and lovingly. We store it carefully. If a Torah falls to the floor, chas v’shalom, we customarily fast. To desecrate a Torah scroll is the greatest offense and the most shocking felony, and the sight of it wounds our collective soul.

And our children? Sometimes, in the very name of “education”, we shame, belittle, threaten, yell at and disrespect them… Sometimes we inadvertently or even purposely violate their honor, self-respect and dignity.

Sometimes we forget to “handle with care”.

Souls over scrolls

We are the “People of the Book,” but we are people first.

There is no Torah without a nation. There is no future without our children.

So, how can we actually live these messages from the Torah?

Consider: Is there something I am currently doing or not doing, a value I am imparting or a lesson I am enforcing that emphasizes the scroll over the soul?

Is following the letter of the law ruining its spirit? (Not halachically, but as the example of a young child forced to sit in shul.)

What do I gossip about to my neighbor or in my Whatsapp groups?

Can I look with an “ayin tov” at the many strollers taking up our sidewalks and smile at the harried mother hurrying through the grocery store with whiny little kids? (Trust me, she doesn’t want to be there either!)

How do I treat the neshama before me: my child, my student, that annoying little kid (we all know one!) If I picture him as a Torah scroll, would I treat him more gently?

Our children are our future and our legacy. The work we put into each one is an investment into our nation.