The chances are (depending how long you are in shul!) that at some point during your High Holiday Prayers you are going to be disturbed in some way by a child. I had a particular bad experience last year. As I was blowing Shofar on the 2nd day Rosh Hashanah, I could hear a young voice in between each note asking his father, “What’s that noise, Daddy? What’s that noise, Daddy?”
I have no intention of discussing when and how children should be brought or not brought to shul. The point I want to make is entirely different. This week we read about the Mitzva of Hakhel; once every seven years the entire Jewish Nation was to come together at the Temple to listen to the King read to them from the Book of Deuteronomy. One can only imagine what the Hakhel experience was like. Toddlers on their father’s shoulders; buggies in between the aisles. For Hakhel everybody came, men women and children – of all ages.
What is the purpose of the children being there? The Gemora explains that the purpose of the children being present is for the parent’s benefit, “in order to reward those who brought them”. The Sefas Emes has an interesting explanation of this Gemora. Since young children will inevitably play and disturb the adults from concentrating, parents would try to leave the children at home. However the Torah says otherwise. The exposure of the young and impressionable children to such a moving event will etch into their hearts and consciousness the sanctity of the Torah. The long term spiritual dividends of this experience outweigh the loss of the parent’s full concentration. Hence the parents deserve reward for forgoing their own spiritual growth.
Along these lines I saw the most beautiful Malbim [1809-1979]. He suggests that there is something that the children gain from the Hakhel event that even the adults do not gain! As adults we analyse, scrutinise and cut up the event that we are at. We think about the logistics of arranging such an event. Even the speeches themselves we intellectually evaluate – we may even take notes to preserve what we hear. But all of this can come at the expense of missing the atmosphere of the event. Children however ONLY take this in – they don’t have the metal capacity to asses the situation. Children have the real experience.
I have often gone to an explanatory Tisha Be’av morning service. Being a bit of an addict to writing things down, I go with my clipboard and pen. One year looking though my Tisha Be’av folder I noticed that some years I wrote a little but sometimes I wrote three to four times that amount. Same speakers, same amount of time, and probably more or less the same amount of information to write. I wondered as to why some years I wrote more than others. I discovered that the years that I wrote less were etched in my memory as being more meaningful. Less analysing of the speeches meant a more meaningful experience for me.
This says the Malbim is why the Torah stresses that the “children who do not know” should attend Hakhel. Precisely because they lack the intellectual capacity is why they should be there. How often do we witness events and miss the overall point. Rav Dessler once remarked that the third Temple cannot be rebuilt because if it would appear, people would get their cameras out and take picture and marvel at it – completely missing the point! The beauty of the simplicity of children is that they see things as they are, not fragmented into different aspects. To be worthy of the Third Temple we have to learn to see past the external components and see the essence of it.
Today we take photos for granted. They are our memories of holidays and parties, of people and places. “Every 2 minutes today we snap as many photos as the whole of humanity took in the 1800s.” In the year 2000, 85 billion photos were taken; an incredible 25,000 photos were taken per second! In 2013 over 70 billion pictures were uploaded on the Facebook social website. But has this resulted in our experiences being improved? On the contrary, rather than take in the beautiful view, or the wedding scene – we snap at it. Rather than feel the experience we miss out and hope that the picture will do the job for us! Photos may get clearer and clearer but our real life experiences get vaguer and vaguer. We have desensitised ourselves from appreciating the real beauty of life.
The message from having the children present at Hakhel can teach us the beauty of simplicity. Our adult minds bombard us with analysis of the event. The children are at an advantage that they don’t have this. They can really take in and store the moments away in their subconscious. We should look at children and learn! And next time we have an opportunity for some family time try and take it all in without a constant flashing of cameras!
Good Shabbos, Yaakov
