Teaching Your Children, at Home and on the Road

“Teach them diligently to your children, and speak of them when you sit in your home and when you walk on the way, when you lie down and when you rise up.” A Verse We Say Every Day There is a verse that every Jew says twice a day. Most of us probably never stop to ask a simple question about it: “Teach them diligently to your children, and speak of them.” The command is clear. Raise your children, teach them, make these words sink in. But the verse goes straight on: “when you sit in your home and when you walk on the way.” So we ask: is this only a practical schedule for when to study? Is it just telling us the “when”: at home, on the road, in the morning, at night? Let us stop for a moment and look closely at this wording. The Question If the verse only means to tell us when to teach, something is missing. Suppose we shrink raising children down to the official study time. Then “when you sit in your home” turns into this: “Sit down at the table, open the book, finish the lesson, close the book.” And that is all. Is that what the Torah means by “teach them diligently”? The word the Torah uses here means “sharpening.” It means carving something deep into the soul. There is another problem. The child sits at the table and hears what he is told. Then he sees how people really live. And he knows that one of the two is not true. Understand this: children are the sharpest critics there are. They sense right away any gap between what a person is inside and what he shows outside. When the words do not match the life, the words become empty. It is not that the child gets angry. It is not that he rebels on purpose. He simply learns that “Torah” is something you say, not something you live. A New Way to Read the Verse So this is how we should understand the verse. “When you sit in your home and when you walk on the way” does not describe the time. It describes the method. “Teach them diligently.” How? “When you sit in your home” means through the way you sit in your home. How do you speak to your wife? How do you react when something goes wrong? What does your home look like on Friday evening as the Sabbath comes in? How do you behave when you think no one is watching? “And when you walk on the way” means the way you walk through the world. In the marketplace, in business, with your neighbors, with strangers. This is what “teach them diligently” really means. This is what truly carves itself into a child’s soul. Heaven forbid that this takes anything away from the duty to actually sit and study. But the verse teaches us a deep order of priorities. The deed comes first, and the deed is what awakens the question. The Torah says: “When your son asks you.” The child asks because he saw something. He saw a life. He saw a way of living. And now he wants to understand. The Hasidic View This idea comes straight from the very heart of Hasidic teaching. Hayom Yom, a daily Hasidic book, says that the main work is not only keeping the commandments on the outside. It is refining our character traits. It is the inner work. A Jewish home should be a place of living inner work, not a museum of rules. When a father works on himself, on his patience, his honesty, his sense of responsibility, he creates an atmosphere around him. The child breathes it in. He never heard a lesson about patience. He lives inside patience. This is being “the same inside as outside.” Here it is not a demand made of the child. It is a gift a father gives his son. In Closing Many parents feel heavy pressure. “What do I say to my child?” “How do I explain it to him?” “Am I stressing it enough?” This verse comes to calm us. The main question is not “What are you saying?” It is “How are you living?” Children do not follow instructions. They follow footsteps.