Q:
What’s the reason for the halacha that the first thing you teach a child when he begins to talk is to say the possuk of תורה צוה לנו משה? (Rambam, Hilchos Talmud Torah 1:6)
A:
What’s the importance of teaching a child תורה צוה לנו משה, that Moshe gave us the Torah that Hakadosh Baruch Hu handed over to him?
There’s a sefer written many years ago by an Italian man – he wasn’t a big Torah chochom; he was a maskil. However, he wrote something – I won’t mention his name because he wasn’t a big chochom in Torah but he says an important point. He says that we have to teach a child from the beginning the Rashi on the chumash; from the beginning of his learning. If you can’t teach it inside, teach it be’al peh. Because otherwise, once a child gets accustomed to the peshuto hamikra, the plain meaning, that gets first base in his mind and then later the attitudes that Chazal want us to see in the Torah are going to be difficult to introduce in his mind.
Which means we have to get there first with the child; before we tell him ‘Jack and Jill went up a hill to fetch a pail of water,’ or other Mother Goose rhymes, the first thing has to be תורה צווה לנו משה; that’s the first thing a child has to hear.
A child opens his eyes; he’s asleep, he comes out of the darkness of ‘beh meh meh meh’, and suddenly he starts talking, so the first thing is ‘תורה’. That’s the first idea, ‘Torah!’ A Jew has to know there is such a thing. That’s what we are, we are people of Torah! And צוה לנו משה – our great teacher gave us the Torah, מורשה – it’s an inheritance, קהילת יעקב – for the whole congregation of Yaakov. That’s our inheritance, that’s our wealth, that’s our heritage forever.
That’s how to get first base in a child’s mind. And no time should be lost. A child from the outset must be taught about the Borei. From the beginning you have to talk about Gan Eden and Gehinom. Both of them! You have talk s’char ve’onesh from the beginning. And in his mind these fundamentals get settled in. Otherwise Mickey Mouse gets there first. Or worse. Once they get in, it’s difficult to introduce Moshe Rabeinu and Har Sinai.
And that’s a good lesson for ourselves too. The Gemara tells there was a chochom – I think it was Abaye – who was told a certain thing from Rebi Yirmiya. He didn’t accept it. He didn’t accept it; he had arguments against it why it wasn’t acceptable. Abaye was a lamdan; he wasn’t a young man when he heard this and he didn’t accept it.
But later, when he heard it again from somebody who was more authoritative, he accepted it. And then Abaye exclaimed in regret, ‘Why didn’t I accept it earlier, the first time?’
So they said to him, “But you heard it now. At least now you heard it, so what are you worried about?”
He said “No.” He said נפקא מינה לגירסא דינקותא״ – it makes a difference when you learn something when you’re young.״
Now ‘young’ doesn’t mean young, a child; he wasn’t young the first time either. If he was able to reject Rebi Yirmiya’s meimrah he wasn’t a youngster; he was quite a mature scholar. But even for a mature man, there’s a difference; if you hear something at forty, it’s much better than hearing it at fifty. You’re more plastic when you’re younger. As soon as you can get these good ideas into your head. Don’t wait until your old age. In your old age you get arteriosclerosis, hardening of your mental arteries, and it’s not easy for a person to take in new ideas.
He’ll learn these ideas maybe in his old age. It’s good to learn even in the last minute. Let’s say a Jewish atheist. In his last minute, he’s about to die and he’s thinking, “Who knows, maybe there is a Gehinom. So I’ll play it safe and I’ll say ‘Shema Yisroel’ before I expire.” That’s a smart man. What can he lose? It’s the silliest thing not to do that. It’s silly to take such a wild risk. “If there is no Olam Haba,” the atheist thinks, ‘so what will I lose if I say ‘Shema Yisroel’. But if there is an Olam Haba, can I risk not saying ‘Shema Yisroel’? It’s common sense.”
So, he’s a smart atheist and he decides in the last minute to say ‘Shema Yisroel’.
“What does that mean?” he says to the man who is helping him say it. “What does that mean?
“It means ‘Listen Yisroel, Hashem Elokeinu, Hashem is our G-d, ה’ אחד – Hashem is One.’”
So if he’s taking a risk he might as well say it right. So he takes his old mind – he’s dying now and he’s suffering the pangs of death – so with his old and weakened mind he’s thinking “Hashem is One. One? What does that mean, ‘One’?”
And then he dies.
How much could register on that mind already? But it’s something. For him it’s a big accomplishment, a tremendous achievement. That man, in the Next World, will realize what a stroke of good luck it was. It must have been a zechus of his great grandfather who once dropped a penny in the pushka, or something else that his grandfather did, that he was zocheh to say it before he died.
But suppose he said it five minutes before he died, it would be a bigger thing. And so, the longer these ideas nest in our minds, the better off we are. And that’s why נפקא מינה לגירסא דינקותא. It makes a big difference. The younger you are, you should get in all these ideas.
TAPE # 364 (May 1981)
