Our community must also reflect on our commitment to talmud Torah. This can only develop by practically strengthening our connection with learning at all levels, with the most impactful step being adults taking on small learning programs with their own children. Just learning a perek a day of Nach with one’s children, starting around the age of five, as Chazal recommend in Avos, has innumerable benefits: The parent and child begin to develop a bond built on Torah, there are opportunities to discuss basic questions of worldview and values, there are frequent opportunities to celebrate the learning with siyumim after each sefer, and the child begins to develop his self-image as a “learner.”
One way to highlight our connection to talmud Torah is by celebrating it; it would send a strong message to our families and communities if a significant number of sponsored kiddushim over the course of the year, for example, were in honor of siyumei masechtos and other accomplishments in learning. As of now, siyumim in many of our communities happen most often and with the most fanfare twice a year: Erev Pesach and during the Nine Days. This unintentionally transforms Torah from a kli chemdah, an object of pride,1 into a kardom lachpor bah,2 a tool that allows us to get the food we want to eat when it would otherwise be assur (forbidden). We are meant to appreciate and celebrate all mitzvos,3 but especially talmud Torah,4 which is so fundamental to who we are and the reason we exist; celebrating our accomplishments in learning is a powerful way of highlighting its value to us.
Children
What about the children in our ideal community? As much as possible, they should be directed to spend much of their time outside of school developing interests and hobbies as opposed to wasting their time on (often detrimental) media. The more they are able to invest in these unique abilities, the easier time they will later have in identifying their area of impact, the reason they were potentially brought into the world. In addition to learning Torah with them and encouraging them to set goals in talmud Torah, it would be very powerful to create interactions between a child’s hobbies and interests and different areas of learning, allowing for their excitement about the hobby to spread to the related Torah topic.
I grew up with a model of this cross-pollination: Although my father, a doctor, learned throughout the week, we most often heard about two topics: the shiurim he occasionally gave about the intersection of medicine and halacha, such as the permissibility of elective surgeries or whether running in a marathon was considered a sakanah (danger) and medical ethics cases that came up at the hospital he worked at, including situations where he had to reach out to various gedolim for guidance. Why did we more often hear about those topics, rather than whatever was coming up with his chavrusa or Shabbos afternoon chaburah? My hypothesis is that the intersection of his two interests, medicine with Torah, generated more excitement and made it more likely that those ideas would be shared with us.
As children grow up and become independent, they can become a powerful source of energy and action within the community. Teens naturally have energy and excitement — the question is what it’s channeled into. If left uncultivated, it will be wasted on pursuits of little value. If they’ve spent a good part of their childhood cultivating their unique interests, they will be able to start making contributions in areas they care about. More outgoing teens will dedicate time to working with younger kids as camp counselors or Shabbos group leaders; others will use musical talents to inject energy and excitement into parties, Shabbatonim and school events; those blessed with artistic ability can use it to beautify schools, shuls, homes and more. Parents and teachers can direct them to invest in these tangible pursuits, while also helping them set goals in pure learning. Familiarity with all of Tanach before graduating high school is totally doable, as is learning through a number of masechtos. For the more learning-oriented, entire Sedarim — and more — is achievable before the end of high school; such an accomplishment is not uncommon in Israeli high schools and is within reach for teens in our communities as well.
This chapter is meant to illustrate ways our communities can come closer to living our ideals. Every person has the capacity to make a significant, real impact in at least one area; their unique interests, abilities and experiences, together with and filtered through their investment in Torah and its values, yields a unique combination ready to move the community forward. When a person understands what they, and only they, can contribute towards solving a problem, how can they help but dedicate themselves towards addressing it, embracing the identity of a soldier in the Great Battalion accepting his mission in life? Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, zt”l describes this in A Letter in the Scroll:
We can see life as a succession of moments spent, like coins, in return for pleasures of various kinds. Or we can see our life as though it were a letter of the alphabet. A letter on its own has no meaning, yet when letters are joined to others they make a word, words combine with others to make a sentence, sentences connect to make a paragraph, and paragraphs join to make a story. That is how the Baal Shem Tov understood life. Every Jew is a letter. Each Jewish family is a word, a community a sentence, and the Jewish people at any one time are a paragraph. The Jewish people through time constitute a story…
Every individual is a letter — and without him, the word meant to include him is left incomplete, leaving the sentence senseless and the paragraph unclear. Without the unique contributions of every individual, the story breaks down. We need every person— we need every letter.
Tzvi Goldstein graduated from Yeshiva University with semicha and a degree in Psychology. After making aliyah, he taught in Yeshivat Hakotel for five years and now edits sefarim for a number of publishers. He recently published a sefer with Mosaica Press called Halachic Worldviews, exploring Rav Soloveitchik’s approach to developing hashkafa from halacha, and writes at tgb613.substack.com. You can reach him at [email protected]. Avos 3:14.
2 Avos 4:5.
3 Bava Basra 121b, Nimukei Yosef 53b, Devarim 28:47.
4 Shabbos 118b.
