A MOTHER ONCE turned to her teenage son and asked, \u201cHow much does a child cost?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCost!\u201d the boy relied. \u201cJust what do you mean \u2013 his shoes, hat, bicycle, wrist watch, his\u2026?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d replied the pensive mother. \u201cYou have it all wrong. The items you mention are really the least expensive. I was thinking of other costs, much greater costs. I was thinking of what agonizing pain, suffering and fatigue a child costs, how much of a mother\u2019s torturing anxiety, of a father\u2019s toil, how many prayers, fears and yearnings, how much patience, instruction, love, sorrows, and how many sleepless nights. These are the costs I was thinking about, the costs that simply cannot be measured in dollars or counted in materials benefits.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whatever the costs, there is no greater joy than bringing home a newborn infant. The hopes, aspirations and promise are coupled with celebration and simcha. It doesn\u2019t take long, however, to realize that the abundant joy is intertwined with an overwhelming sense of responsibility. The baby is helpless, totally dependent upon others, primarily a mother and father. The baby can\u2019t talk, walk, feed or clothe himself. The baby can simply not function without the ever watchful and caring eye of an adult. The baby spends the first few years of life in its own little galut. Someone once suggested, either cynically or in jest, that perhaps it would been more sensible for a human to be born self-sufficient and self-reliant instead of being so powerless and reliant. Is it really necessary for the baby to spend years in galut? Couldn\u2019t he or she be born redeemed and independent?<\/p>\n
It seems that HaShem intended for the baby to first crawl and then walk. The stages of infancy, childhood, and adulthood are natural and logical progressions necessary in order to arrive at full maturity. Ultimately the mature, responsible, appreciative adult, once helpless and simple, can educate others with values and ideals that were previously transmitted to him during periods of growing pains, frustration and fears. Geula is a result of galut, just as maturity is a result of demanding and painful learning experiences.<\/p>\n
The newborn nation of Israel, striving desperately to reach adulthood and maturity, also spent its infancy and childhood years in Galut, in anticipation of its ultimate maturity at Har Sinai. A nation is molded in the very same fashion as children, preparing and gearing up for a life directed by positive and moral lessons, derived during childhood. Abraham is told precisely this when he is promised that \u201cyour children shall be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and they shall serve them, and they shall afflict them for four hundred years.\u201d Towards what goal and purpose? \u201cAnd afterwards shall they come out with great substance,\u201d birechush gadol. The rechush gadol explains the Ktav V\u2019Hakabalah is the promise of the great spiritual inheritance they will attain. HaShem promises rechush gadol not rechush rav. The word rav indicates quantity, gadol refers to quality. A galut experience is meant to ultimately produce qualitative results.<\/p>\n
A woman was once overheard asking Dr. Freud, \u201cHow early can I begin the education of my child?\u201d \u201cWhen will your child be born?\u201d Freud asked. \u201cBorn?\u201d she exclaimed. \u201cWhy, he is already five years old!\u201d \u201cMy goodness, woman,\u201d the famous psychoanalyst cried, \u201cdon\u2019t stand there talking to me \u2013 hurry home! You have already wasted the best years!\u201d<\/p>\n
In the midst of years of pains and frustrations, critically important lessons and values are imparted to a child, and yes, to a nation as well.<\/p>\n
We understand, that values of empathy, sympathy, sharing and honesty are imparted to a young toddler, but what lifelong lessons result from a demoralizing and degrading galut, endured by Klal Yisrael in Egypt? True, the Egyptian experience welded twelve tribal families into one nation, and the Exodus dramatically manifested HaShem\u2019s personal involvement and concern in the birth and destiny of the Jewish people. These divine goals could have been attained however, with simpler, less painful methods than galut mitzrayim.<\/p>\n
Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik views the Egyptian exile and suffering as the \u201cexperience which molded the moral quality of the Jewish people for all time.\u201d The galut experience \u201ctaught the Jew ethical sensitivity, what it truly means to be a Jew. It sought to transform the Jew into a rahaman, one possessing a heightened form of ethical sensitivity and responsiveness.\u201d The most practical method of teaching compassion, sensitivity and concern for others; the most direct way of imparting a sense of mitgefiel, an imo anochi betzara approach, is by recalling one\u2019s own experience of tzara, pain and oppression. Is it any wonder that one who has suffered sickness best understands the agony of the ill; one who sustained the loss of a loved one can best comfort the bereaved, and the wealthy businessman who suffered major reversals can best identify with the plight of an associate in similar straits? Do you think that perhaps the AA group\u2019s philosophy is so successful because yesterday\u2019s addicts communicate with today\u2019s addicts?<\/p>\n
Torah\u2019s most powerful lessons regarding sympathy and compassion are always coupled with reminders of our once state of helplessness and lowly status during our Egyptian bondage. The galut experience was meant to sharpen and refine the Jew\u2019s ethical sensitivity and moral awareness. \u201cYou shall not pervert the justice due a stranger or to the fatherless; nor take a widow\u2019s garment in pawn.\u201d Why not? \u201cRemember that you were a slave in Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you; therefore, I command you to observe this commandment. The Torah admonishes us thirty six times to treat the stranger [ger] kindly. Why? \u201cFor, \u201cyou were strangers in the land of Egypt,\u201d and therefore? Veatem yedatem et nefesh ha\u2019ger. Having experienced estrangement, oppression and discrimination, you are expected, more so than one who hasn\u2019t, to empathize and sympathize with the ger \u2013 the weakest members of society. Rav Soloveitchik often reiterated that the Mitzrayim experience sought to evoke not merely a capacity to love, a characteristic with which we are all born, but rather the necessity of loving, sharing and sympathizing, with no other choices or alternatives possible.<\/p>\n
Once parents and teachers sense growth and maturity of the part of children, once they feel that their baby had developed into a mentsch, they are ready to grant children independence and responsibility. Once God senses growth, maturity and responsibility on the part of His children, He is eager to take them out of Mitzrayim and gift them with Torah and Eretz Yisrael. Rav Dovid Tzvi Hoffman points out that the brit bayin ha\u2019betarim is the second covenant established by HaShem with mankind. The first covenant after the Flood vows that mankind will never again be destroyed. The ultimate Divine purpose however, is not simply not to destroy the human race. It is rather to allow the fulfillment of the second covenant: to establish a unique human type, a nation with a sacred mission \u2013 zera Avraham. It is true that the fulfillment of the second covenant entails a grueling galut experience, but remember that galut is a necessary means to graduate birechush gadol, with \u201cgreat substance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whatever style of chinuch our children are receiving and whether they are taught in Hebrew, Yiddish or English, ultimately every student must graduate with the rechush gadol of being a mentsch, a rahaman, given tools of compassion, sensitivity, concern and mitgefiel for every Jew. Talmidim should certainly be trained how to learn, but how to daven too; how to think, but how to feel, as well. Our students should graduate with much knowledge, but with even more passion.<\/p>\n
How much does this cost?<\/p>\n