By Rabbi Abraham Unger, Ph.D.
Executive Director
This Week’s Torah Portion
Everything Matters
It’s often the little things – the small cues – that indicate a person’s character. There is usually no smoking gun that suddenly illuminates who a person really is. Getting to know people takes time. Consistency in daily human interactions forms a cumulative moral portrait.
Judaism offers a core guiding principle to discern the strength or weakness of a person’s integrity. Does he or she pay attention to the seemingly minor moments that flow through our day? Do we sanctify the mundane as much as the big events in which we participate? This week’s Torah portion advises that we not “tread” inattentively over the lighter commandments that don’t seem as powerful as acts that obviously carry major weight. For example, delivering a eulogy is a “Mitzvah Gedolah,” a great commandment. That clearly honors the deceased and is a public moment of love and respect. But what about saying a prayer to oneself over an apple? No one may hear it at all, and it is nothing but an utterance between a person and G-d.
The Torah teaches that those few seconds of a low-voiced blessing require as much intentionality as a eulogy or another more clearly grander mitzvah. Rashi teaches that all of these moments in total are precious to G-d. We are not just seen for our biggest gestures. We are recognized for the fullness of our character. Remembering our bounty by voicing thanks for an apple says something about who we are, and those are the moments that really count in representing our truest selves.
Weekly Parenting Message from the Parsha
The Lesson of Hardship
We all want to give our children as much comfort as possible. We want for their ease in life, which we hope provides them with a feeling of security. But what if the easiest way actually makes their lives harder?
The journal Psychology Today reports that because “A child’s brain isn’t fully formed until their mid-twenties, and the last thing to come online is judgment (in their prefrontal cortex)”, parents should be supporting their sons and daughters to “form new neuronal pathways, where he tolerates more discomfort and builds skills of positive emotional health.” In short, we are raising our children while their neurological capacity is still developing. If we don’t teach them to deal with challenges early, they won’t know how when they are older.
The Torah intuited this neuroscience early on. In this week’s Shabbat reading, G-d is likened to a father who chastises His child. The Torah does not mean we should raise our voices to our children. Ramban, a major commentator on the Bible, wrote that this references how the Children of Israel could only appreciate the bounty of Canaan because of their travails in the desert. Hardship was likened to a child-rearing technique that prepared the Jewish people for independence once they reached the Promised Land.
Adulthood requires perseverance and the ability to process difficulty and change. If we make life too easy for our children when they are young, how can we expect them to face challenges when they are older? Each family will reflect on how to personalize this aspect of parenting. I know it is not easy, but in the long run, it can make all the difference in how a child engages with his or her world.