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MARCH 17, 2022 | The Jewish Home OCTOBER 29, 2015 | The Jewish Home
Parenting Pearls
The Megillah and Nach By Sara Rayvych, MSEd
I
was talking to a sweet young man and asked him if he was learning Navi. He laughed and told me that Navi was for little kids. I was a bit surprised but not shocked. With so much to learn, Nach doesn’t get the same attention. I recall learning that we actually had far more neviim and nevuos than those recorded. Additionally, only a select number of texts made it into Nach. Those that made the cut were ones that were seen as being relevant for generations to come, including our own. There are two problems with leaving Nach exclusively to the little ones. The first problem is that, in general, we tend to have too simplistic a view of Tanach, especially Nach, when we don’t delve into it after childhood. The second issue is that we miss out on so many lessons that can be gleaned from these holy seforim. These lessons can be used in our day-to-day lives to educate and inspire both us and our children. I am not criticizing that Nach gets relegated to “secondary” status among the subjects because there is so much to learn and far too few hours to do it. I remember in high school when the girls complained that the boys didn’t take some of the limudei kodesh subjects we did. I still remember the words of our rebbi when he said that truthfully the boys should be learning those extra subjects but they simply couldn’t cover all of that material and still gain the strong foundation needed in Gemara. With Purim in the air, Megillas Esther readily comes to mind. We hear the story of the Megillah, carefully hearing each word, and then we step out into the party of Purim. The Purim story is actually rather intense. We tend to focus on the salvation at the end but avoid dwelling on the minute details that got us there. With a finetooth comb reading of the text we realize the magnitude of our ancestors’ situation and the many lessons con-
tained in this ancient text. While today’s topic can be generalized to a good portion of Nach, I will mostly be using the Megillah for our examples. I’ve seen samples of the series “The Navi Journey” by Rabbi Ilan Ginian. It’s a wonderful resource for parents that want to have an easy way to access the books of Nach.
Childhood Learning There is so much importance to childhood learning, particularly when inculcating pure children with such holy words. It’s important that children learn Torah from a young age. Whether they enjoy parsha stories or learning about chagim, it’s an important start to their neshama’s journey. We want their learning to be not only informative but also enjoyable. We’re setting the tone for their future perception of religious learning, and we want that attitude to be a sweet one. Games, skits, and storytelling all bring timeless lessons down to their level in a way they can appreciate and understand. Prizes and stickers are added to create lasting memories, long after they’ve been worn through or lost. We want to fortify our youth with an appreciation for our mesora to last for decades to come. We want our children to feel inner excitement and joy when they think of Torah and Yid-
dishkeit. The rest of this article is not intended to diminish this early childhood experience in the least. I want to take this beginning cornerstone of learning to the next level.
More Than Childhood Storytelling Torah is more than just stories and cutesy tales. While we tell Parsha as animated stories for the littles and put on Purim plays, it’s not meant to end there. Torah is emes, and Tanach wasn’t written to provide merely kosher entertainment. When young children are taught parsha and the Megillah, the midrashim are mixed in liberally. Midrashim add much to p’shat and there is a reason they’re included, but, what we end up having is teenagers (and adults) that can’t differentiate between the basic scriptural text and the added-in midrashim. It’s cute when children tell you about Vashti’s tail and spots but less so when an older person doesn’t realize the Megillah never mentions them. Many people have been embarrassed when they spoke of midrashim as if they were p’shat. It often takes learning on an adult level to differentiate and recognize the difference between the two. Children are taught a very limited amount of the material. They don’t go into the full depths of the subject
because they are too young to understand it or because the material is too mature. Youngsters are taught that Rachav was simply an innkeeper. Children may not appreciate her level of emunah in Hashem that she risked her life to protect the spies, knowing she faced certain death if discovered. She wasn’t even Jewish, yet she knew Hashem was the Tuth. It takes a more mature mind to appreciate the power of teshuva that, according to some opinions, she could go on to become Yehoshua’s wife (Megilla 14b). Little kids learn about Haman buying the privilege to destroy the Jews, chas v’shalom. It takes a more mature mind to understand the fact that Achashveiros didn’t actually accept the money. We tell kids that Hashem was hiding throughout the Megillah, which is true. As adults we can additionally recognize the precarious position the Jewish community was in at the time and couldn’t simply write what they wanted. The Megillah was an official document written somewhat contemporaneously and was visible to the Persians who wouldn’t want to see their king described negatively. Most of the lessons are beyond their tender years but we want to give our children a foundation in what will become lifelong guidance. A foundation isn’t intended to be the end – it’s just the beginning. If we discourage in-depth learning after a certain age, then we deny our children the ability to learn the deeper, more profound lessons contained within.
Lessons for Today It’s important to learn lessons from the Torah. They shouldn’t remain as simply nice thoughts we’ve heard but then forgotten. These teachings are intended to be incorporated into our hearts, souls, and daily life. We readily realize the lessons we can learn from the kedoshim of recent generations. As an example, it’s easier for me to handle less-than-ideal circumstances when I remember that
