The first paragraph of the Shema continues: “Teach them to your children and speak of them while you sit in your home, while you walk on the way, when you retire (at night) and when you arise.”

The Chofetz Chaim asks how exactly are we supposed to teach our children the timeless and priceless values of the Torah? He answers that such vital life-lessons can only be taught by example. This sounds so incredibly simplistic and obvious. Yet, how many times do we expect our children to behave in an exemplary fashion, if we, ourselves, do not?

Rabbi Yaakov Kaminetzky points out that it is a Torah obligation for parents to educate their children. However, he adds, parents must influence their children. In Hebrew, the word influence is ‘hashpa’ah,’ which is rooted in the word ‘shapuah,’ which means something that is inclined, like a slanted roof. Rabbi Kaminetzky explains that everything parents do and say flows down to their children. Everything they do and say makes an impact and influences their children. Unfortunately, there are many times when the impact made was not the one that was intended.

Rabbi Paysach Krohn relates a disturbingly sad story that he heard from a Rabbi who teaches seven-year-old boys in cheder. One of the boys was stealing things out of the other children’s backpacks. It reached the point where the Rabbi had no other alternative but to phone the boy’s father and ask him to come to speak with him about his son’s behavior. When he gently told the father that his son was stealing things, the father was completely shaken. He asked the Rabbi what his son had been taking, and the Rabbi told him that he was taking pencils and erasers. On hearing this, the boy’s father shock changed to incredulity. He told the Rabbi, “How can that be? He doesn’t need any of those things. I bring plenty of pencils and erasers back from the office where I work!”

He is teaching us that parenting is a twenty-four hour a day sacred undertaking. And the results are often a reflection of our behavior and not just our children’s behavior!

Rabbi Yisrael Eliyahu Yehoshua Trunk (1821-1893) from Kutno Poland, one of the Halachic authorities of his generation, had a delightful way of explaining the verse in Tehillim (116:10), “I believed because I spoke.” Rabbi Trunk would say that teaching our children Torah and speaking about proper behavior will reinforce our own belief!

The Maharal (Chiddushei Aggadatot, Kiddushin 134) writes that the word ‘teach’ in our verse is ‘veshinantam,’ which contains the letter ‘nun’ three times. The Maharal teaches that the Torah is comprised of three different categories of comprehension – chochmah (wisdom), binah (understanding), da’at (knowledge) – each one comprising fifty different “gates.” Each letter ‘nun,’ which has the numerical value of fifty, in the word ‘veshinantam,’ corresponds to one of the categories. We are being taught that it is our obligation to teach our children that true wisdom. The wisdom that brings us closer to our Father in Heaven can only be found in the Torah.

So all-encompassing is our obligation to build up our relationship with Hashem, such that the Shema commands to focus on it at all times. When we are at home and when we are out. When we go to sleep at night and when we wake up in the morning. So that every facet of our lives includes Hashem.

To be continued…