Calling all Mothers and Daughters!

Please join us at the school-

THIS Motzai Shabbos, January 28th,

for our Mother Daughter Melava Malka!

Bo- Free Will

For this year’s Parsha Lesson I will be focusing on a chinuch (parenting/ educational) lesson that can be derived from the Dvar Torah.

Background

At the beginning of this week’s Parsha, Hashem tells Moshe to go warn Pharoah about the impending 8th makkah (plague) of locust. Hashem tells Moshe that he has ‘hardened’ the heart of Pharoah. In fact, the Torah says earlier in Parshas Va’era (last week’s Torah portion) that Hashem hardened the heart of Pharoah earlier by the plague of boils, the 6th makkah.

Question

Why would Hashem harden the heart of Pharoah for him to NOT be crushed by the plagues and therefore maintain his hold over the Jewish people? This would seem to be counterproductive! 

If Hashem was bringing the plagues in order for the Jewish people to be freed from Egypt, and now Pharoah has been brought ‘to his knees’ and he is ready to ‘fold’ and let the Jewish people go, why would Hashem interfere with the natural process of things and harden Pharoah’s heart? Isn’t this counter-productive?

Answer

The Seforno explains that Hashem wanted to ensure that Pharoah can handle the pressure and not just buckle to the extenuating circumstances. Hashem did NOT want Pharoah to be just ‘beaten’ into submission.

It seems that Hashem wanted Pharoah to make a decision, to exercise his ‘free will’ and choose to send the Jewish people out in accordance with the will of Hashem. Hashem did not want Pharoah to merely be forced to send the Jewish people out without any amount of his own decision and free will. Therefore, Hashem gave Pharoah the emotional strength and fortitude to persevere and not collapse under the heavy hand with which Hashem was dealing him. 

Of course, Hashem was ‘turning the screws’ on Pharoah and making things more difficult and uncomfortable to keep the Jews as slaves the longer and longer things went, but Hashem wanted Pharoah to at least maintain some degree of decision making, some measure of free will as to whether or not to listen to Hashem.

Chinuch Lesson

It is our jobs as parents and as educators- to both ourselves and those that we lead- to be sure to be ‘educating’ good decision making and behavior and not just ‘training’ it. To train a monkey to behave properly is certainly doable but of no value in uplifting the subject of your training. Under the right circumstances, with the right conductor, a trained monkey may be able to do cool tricks, but with any slight deviation the truth is revealed: he remains a boorish monkey with no ability to make good decisions and does not really know or understand anything it was trained to do.

When it comes to educating people, and particularly impressionable children, it is our job to help them make the proper choices and decisions which will lead to a happy and successful life as they will then be uplifted, ‘enlightened’ and educated people. Not by being forced as a robot to behave the right way, but rather by having been taught and having ‘open eyes’ to the proper behavior and way of life.

At times certain means may be necessary to ‘tilt the scales’ in order to help the child make the proper decision, but the child must always be making a decision on some level. If the child does not make a decision, if the child is forced to behave a certain way, completely against their choice, their ability to make proper choices has not been improved and in fact may be worsened as they will now have more resentment to the one forcing them and the behavior which was forced.

Wishing you and your family a wonderful Shabbos!

Rabbi Eli Meir Kramer

What's happening...

Learning Center

Mrs. Myra Bookfor

Since returning from winter break, the children in the Learning Center have been energized and ready to tackle new reading skills. We have been using a new structured, phonic based reading program called Read Bright.

This multisensory, kid-friendly program is helping my students maximize their reading potential. The materials we are using are fun and engaging and are helping the children become more competent and fluent readers.

I am so proud of my ELA students; their reading has progressed significantly and they have demonstrated a passion for reading that they didn’t possess at the beginning of the year. I can’t wait to see how much more growth they will exhibit by the end of the year!

Pre-School

Torah Tots- Morah Shuly Amsel

In Torah tots we are learning about cold weather clothing. This week we have been focusing on warming up our fingers and hands. At circle time we talked about how cold our hands and fingers get outside and what we can do to warm them.

The children decided that besides putting them in our pockets the best thing to do would be to put on a pair of mittens or gloves. The Torah Tots had fun making magic mittens. We folded a picture of two mittens in half and taped it to the table. The children painted one mitten with different colors of paint. Once the mittens were all painted bright and colorful we untapped the mittens and folded the blank one over the painted one. The children rubbed the two together and when we opened them we magically had two matching mittens! We hung them up to dry and then hung them in our classroom to help keep it warm and cozy.

Please join us for these awesome programs every week!