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Jerusalem, 9116002
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For assistance, please call Dina Gudai at 074-780-0643 (8:00 AM – 3:00 Israel time Sunday through Thursday).
Your donation will be tax deductible in the US to the extent allowed by the IRS.
To make a tax-deductible donation by wire transfer in the US, please contact:
Avrum Lapin, North American Representative
Toll-free: 1-866-830-3321
Email: schechter@thelapingroup.com
To make a tax-deductible donation in Israel, please contact:
Dina Gudai, Israeli Representative
Phone: 074-7800643
Email: dina@schechter.ac.il
Please mail your check to:
The Schechter Institutes, Inc. (a 501(c) 3 tax exempt organization)
Box #3566
PO Box 8500
Philadelphia, PA 19178-3566
Attn: Mr. Avrum Lapin, North American Representative
Toll-free: 1-866-830-3321
Email: schechter@thelapingroup.com
Please indicate the donation is "for your joint Schechter Institutes program."
Checks should be made payable to the Jewish Theological Society of Canada and mailed to:
Jewish Theological Society of Canada
c/o Camp Ramah in Canada
3845 Bathhurst St., Suite 310
Toronto, ON, M3H 3N2
Phone: 416-789-2193, ext. 2139
E-mail: accounting@campramah.com
Please mail a check to:
The Schechter Institutes
Attn: Dina Gudai, Finance Department
PO Box 16080,
Jerusalem, 9116002
Israel
For assistance, please call Dina Gudai at 074-780-0643 (8:00 AM – 3:00 Israel time Sunday through Thursday).
The holiday of Shavuot, which we celebrate this week, did not receive much attention in rabbinic literature. There is no tractate about it in the Mishnah or Talmud and all of its laws are contained in one paragraph in the Shulhan Arukh (Orah Hayyim 494). Even so, a number of beautiful customs are associated with Shavuot and here we shall discuss one of them.
Around the twelfth century a custom developed in Germany of bringing a child to school for the first time on Shavuot. Here is the description found in Sefer Harokeah (parag. 296) written by R. Eleazar of Worms (1160-1230):
It is the custom of our ancestors that they bring children to learn [for the first time] on Shavuot since the Torah was given then…At sunrise on Shavuot, they bring the children, in keeping with the verse “as morning dawned, there was thunder and lightning” (Exodus 19:16). And one covers the children with a cloak from their house to the synagogue or to the rabbi’s house, in keeping with the verse “and they stood underneath the mountain” (ibid., v. 17). And they put him on the lap of the rabbi who teaches them, in keeping with the verse “as a nurse carries an infant” (Numbers 11:12).
And they bring the slate upon which is written ???”? ???”?, “Moses commanded us the Torah” (Deut. 33:4), “may the Torah be my occupation”, and “The Lord called to Moses” (Lev. 1:1). And the rabbi reads every letter of the alef-bet and the child repeats after him, and [the rabbi reads all of the above and the child repeats after him].
And the rabbi puts a little honey on the slate and the child licks the honey from the letters with his tongue. And then they bring the honey cake upon which is inscribed “The Lord God gave me a skilled tongue to know…” (Isaiah 50: 4-5), and the rabbi reads every word of these verses and the child repeats after him. And then they bring a peeled hard-boiled egg upon which is written “Mortal, feed your stomach and fill your belly with this scroll… and I ate it and it tasted as sweet as honey to me” (Ezekiel 3:3). And the rabbi reads every word and the child repeats after him. And they feed the child the cake and the egg, for they open the mind…
Prof. Ivan Marcus devoted an entire volume to the explanation of this ceremony (Rituals of Childhood, New Haven, 1996). Here we shall only stress that this beautiful ceremony includes three of the basic principles of Jewish education:
First of all, one must commence Jewish education at a very young age. In a fourteenth-century illustration of this ceremony in the Leipzig Mahzor, one can see that the children are three, four or five years old, and this was also the custom among oriental Jews in modern times. A song by Yehoshua Sobol and Shlomo Bar relates that “in the town of Tudra in the Atlas mountains they would take a child who had reached the age of five… into the synagogue, and write in honey on a wooden slate from ?’ to ?’”. From this we learn that we too must begin the Jewish education of Israeli children at a very young age when their minds can absorb much information.
Secondly, we learn from here about the importance of ceremonies in the learning process. They could have brought the child into the “heder” and simply begun to teach, but that would not have left a lasting impression upon the child. The intricate ceremony transforms the first day of school into a special experience that will remain with him for the rest of his life.
Thirdly, there is an attempt to make learning enjoyable. A child who licks honey from a slate and who eats honey cake and a hard-boiled egg on the first day of class will immediately understand that the Torah is “as sweet as honey”. From this we learn that we must teach children in a gentle fashion and make learning enjoyable in order that they learn Torah with love.
May this beautiful custom become a paradigm for all the educational activities of the Schechter Institute, the TALI Education Fund, and Midreshet Yerushalayim.
All four volumes of Rabbi Prof. David Golinkin’s Responsa In A Moment – Halakhic Responses to Contemporary Issues as well as other books by the author are available for purchase from the Schocken-JTS Press Bookstore.
Prof. David Golinkin is the President of the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem. Feel free to reprint this article in its entirety. If you wish to abbreviate the article, please contact Rabbi Golinkin at: golinkin@schechter.org.il. The opinions expressed here are the author’s and in no way reflect an official policy of the Schechter Institute.
David Golinkin is President of The Schechter Institutes, Inc. and President Emeritus of the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies. For twenty years he served as Chair of the Va’ad Halakhah (Law Committee) of the Rabbinical Assembly which gives halakhic guidance to the Masorti Movement in Israel. He is the founder and director of the Institute of Applied Halakhah at Schechter and also directs the Center for Women in Jewish Law. Rabbi Professor Golinkin made aliyah in 1972, earning a BA in Jewish History and two teaching certificates from The Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He received an MA in Rabbinics and a PhD in Talmud from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America where he was also ordained as Rabbi. For a complete bio click here.
