Be a Fly on the Wall at Sunday School
This past week I got a call from Rabbi Helman, our bar mitzvah coordinator at
JFX Sunday School. He was so inspired by his boys... we just had to share it
with you!
He says...
This past Sunday when I got the email that Sunday school was going to be at the
Nature Center, I was a little hesitant about it. I wasn't that familiar with
the facility, and I hoped it would work out OK. Since Sunday was Rosh Chodesh
(the beginning of a new Jewish month), I decided to introduce the boys to the
concept of Rosh Chodesh and how the months work. I would celebrate the special
day by bringing in custard doughnuts. The boys of course smelled those
doughnuts through the bag, box, and wax paper, and were eager to get at them!
I told the boys they would earn the doughnuts by guessing the first mitzvah
that we were given as a Jewish nation.
Some guessed bris, because Abraham was given that mitzvah, but I nixed this,
explaining that I was looking for the first mitzvah we were given as a nation.
Other suggested Shabbat, but that was not the first. Ari suggested the first
of the ten commandments, "I am your G-d" - which is not exactly a commandment
but a great guess nevertheless!
What would you have guessed?
Here's what I taught the boys:
The first mitzvah was that of sanctifying the new moon, or creating Rosh
Chodesh. This mitzvah was given to us on our way out of Egypt. The symbolism
of this is that when we exited Egypt, we were on a very low spiritual level.
The dejected Jews felt that they could never merit the Torah. G-d was saying
to them as follows:
You, my Jewish people, are like the moon. It waxes and wanes. Although we
look small sometimes, we will always grow and light up sometimes. We can
always renew ourselves, no matter how dark things may seem.
Interestingly, the Greeks (of Chanukah fame) outlawed the mitzvah of
sanctifying the new moon. They intuited that there was something really
powerful about this notion that represented something cosmic about Jewish
survival that to them felt very threatening.
At this point Max asked a fabulous question:
How could G-d give us this commandment before we even accepted the Torah at
Sinai? We hadn't yet said the words "Yes! We would like to be your special
people!"
I thought this question was a great message to my class. Think, question, and
challenge!
What would you answer?
Well... I won't tell you my answer yet. But I will tell you that we had a
great class, and like the moon, the Sunday that I thought would be "small
potatoes" ended up being "over the moon"!
