GOOD MORNING!! Made it to Burlington and boy is it cold! For all that people complain in England that we don't have summers, we don't really have winters either!
torah portion
This week, we read of the final 3 plagues, culminating in the killing of the firstborn. The Jews leave Egypt at midday. A family of seventy Jews arrived in Egypt and a nation of over 2 million left 200 years later.
davar torah
Someone asked me a question recently that I would like to address. I often talk about the influence that the stories we tell our children and films we let them watch have on them. People subject their kids to some of the most horrific of fairy stories – children captured by a witch and fattened to be eaten, a grandma who is a wolf, giants and trolls who eat little children. Even in my days, so called children's movies like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang were about kidnappers with big nets. Today's fare is much, much worse. I often ask parents why they subject their children to such fear.
Someone recently asked me a question, however, that concerned me. Is what I teach my children all that different? We tell them about the slavery in Egypt, where the Jewish People are subject to incredible torture. Their children are thrown into the Nile and cemented into buildings. And then it's the Egyptians' turn. In this and last week's portion, we learn of the 10 plagues. The Egyptians are terrorized with horrific 'natural' disasters. In the worst of them, there are locusts with teeth of steel, hailstones the size of fists with fire inside, wild predators hunt them down in the streets. It gets closer and closer to home until finally their firstborn begin to die from a plague. One by one, their children die around them until they beg the Jewish people to leave.
Our Bible is full of some of the worst horror stories and that is what I bring my children up with??!!
I've been sitting on the plane honestly thinking about if it is different and I believe that it really is. Whatever stories the Bible might tell, its underlying message for myself and my children is that there is a God who loves us. Life might not always be easy. Life might often go in painful and even horrific ways, but behind it all, somehow, is God's goodness and his kindness. The stories the Bible tells are not designed to insulate children from the pains they will face in life. They are there to create context. In the context of God's love, things can look different.
And there is a second point. It might not always be easy to see and understand but there is another message in the Bible stories that is absent from fairy tales and films. And that message is that things are not random. There is design to what happens in this world. The child snatchers in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang can snatch any child at any time. Any time they are in the woods, children can run into a witch. A sense of randomness, of lack of control is the root of children's fears. The Bible's message is that this is not true. It may not always seem that way on the surface, but there are reasons why things happen. God is in control and He works in a consistent way There is no fate, our destiny is in our own hands.
I believe it is a mistake to underestimate the effect of films and stories on our children. Children struggle to distinguish between where fantasy ends and reality begins. They need a sense of security and confidence that things will be ok and stories we let them experience should support that, not undermine it.
I'm not saying throw out the TV and teach your children only Bible stories – I'm just saying that bringing up children requires great consideration and stories are a powerful tool in the arsenal of parenthood that can be of great value or backfire badly. I think we need to be more discerning than to simply allow the Motion Picture Association of American to decide what is good for our children to see.
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Shaul Rosenblatt
