Each year, no matter whether I teach for one school or three,
tutor teens or elementary school children, I always end up with some of the
most insightful and spiritual Torah students on the planet. A few recent
examples ....
I am currently
teaching four official, set classes in three different locations, one
synagogue, one synagogue classroom, and a library conference room. I also
tutor five students in their own homes and three in my home. I was recently
doing a unit on Goldilocks has Shabbat dinner with the Three Bears. (Dinner and
brachot come after she breaks the chairs, but before she eats everyone's
challah.) Bayit בַּיִת (house) is one of the central vocabulary words, and by the
end of the story the phrase for synagogue/temple/shul is introduced -- בֵית הַכְּנֶסֶת Beit HaKnesset.
I was working with a young student from one synagogue and pointed out to
him that the word Beit has the same meaning and same root as Bayit, and I told
him about the symbolism of a synagogue as house, and also explained that my
Monday/Shabbat synagogues actually IS half a house. We looked at it on
Google Maps, and I showed him how the cantor and his seven-year-old daughter
live on one side of the two-family house, with the garden and playground on
their side, and that the other side was the synagogue. I showed him a few photos of the sanctuary and
my classroom and he said that he wished he could live where the Cantor and his
daughter live --- a house less than 1/3 the size of his current home. I asked why, and he replied that he would
love to visit the Torah every day and say prayers right near the Torah. Needless to say, my heart melted.
Impressed with an eight year old?
I sure was. But listen to what a
five-year-old said today. This little
girl attends school during the day at a small school run by the local Chabad
rebbetzin, but also comes to the after-school combined Hebrew School/Religious
School that I run on Mondays. Her sister
attends, her friends attend, there's considerable crossover between the lessons
on Monday and Shabbat morning children's services, so she decided one day that
she should come. And so she does. Often she is the most knowledgeable in the
class about upcoming holidays and the parsha, but today she surprised me with
an observation that would be sophisticated coming from a child twice her
age. We were discussing Shavuot and the
giving of Torah, and one of the kids talked about Moshe smashing the
tablets. Another student knew that it
was because he was angry, but no one knew what he was angry about. I explained the incident of the golden calf
and then we returned to the issue of Moshe smashing the tablets. The my youngest Monday student then piped up
with the most amazing observation.
"But Hashem's name was on the tablet and Moshe did a bad thing by
breaking something with Hashem's real name and throwing it on the
ground." I've never thought of it
that way. Have you?
I learn so much from my students!
