Vayikra 5774
Pretty soon movie star Russell ("Gladiator") Crowe will star as the title character in the film version of the Biblical story "Noah". And later in the year Christian ("Batman") Bale will play Moses in "Exodus". Hollywood clearly assumes that these stories are compelling enough that people will still pay to see them even though they have been hearing them since childhood.
With this in mind one might ask why then did Jewish tradition not mandate that a child's education begin with one of these thrilling tales teaching instead that a child's introduction to Torah begin with the this week's parasha, the beginning of the book of Vayikra (Leviticus)? Instead of engaging a child's imagination with stories of heroes we detail for the child how sacrifices were brought in ancient times.
What did our sages know that the moguls missed? What were they thinking?
Probably not much more than the lovely sentiments found in the following sources. According to Midrash Rabbah,"Surely it is because young children are pure and the sacrifices are pure; so let the pure come and engage in the study of the pure."
A later medieval work savors and concretizes the symbolic sweetness of this moment in the life of the child. Rabbi Eleazar Ben Yehuda of Worms, writing in the 12th century, described a ceremony that took place when a child was first taken to his teacher's house on Shavuot wrapped in a tallit.
A tablet on which the letters of the Hebrew Aleph Bet were written would be covered with honey. The teacher would recite the letters and the child would repeat them. The teacher would then recite the opening verse of our parasha which the child would also repeat. Finally the child would be told to lick the honey and taste the sweetness of Torah study.
Those who engage in any of the many opportunities for Torah study which we offer at Anshe Emet know that one is never too old to enjoy the sweet taste of Torah study on one's lips.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Matt Futterman
Senior Educator
