Close your eyes and imagine a family standing outside. While you picture them, imagine that they are standing outside some structure, a building.
What did you imagine? The supermarket? The doctor’s office? A car dealership? An airport? A public restroom? The White House?
I will hazard a guess that the structure most closely associated with the picture of the family is a home. Perhaps, in our own time and place, a home with a lawn and, depending on your age and background, a home with a white picket fence. No doubt, a home or place of dwelling is the most obvious building to picture along with the family that lives inside of it.
In our parsha, however, this association is cast aside in favor of another: the family stands outside of G-d’s home instead of their own. In the midst of laws teaching that offerings and tithes must be brought exclusively to the Temple we read in chapter 12:
(11) Then it shall happen that to the place which Hashem your G-d shall choose to cause His name to dwell there, there you shall bring all that I command you: your burnt offerings, and your sacrifices, your tithes, and the wave offering of your hand, and all your choice vows which you vow to Hashem. (12) You shall rejoice before Hashem your G-d, you, and your sons, and your daughters, and your male servants, and your female servants, and the Levite who is within your gates, because he has no portion or inheritance with you.
Indeed, the family is brought not to their own house, but to G-d’s, once again a few verses later:
(17) You may not eat within your gates the tithe of your grain, or of your new wine, or of your oil, or the firstborn of your herd or of your flock, or any of your vows which you vow, or your freewill offerings, or the wave offering of your hand. (18) But you shall eat them before Hashem your G-d in the place which Hashem your G-d shall choose, you, and your son, and your daughter, and your male servant, and your female servant, and the Levite who is within your gates. And you shall rejoice before Hashem your G-d in all that you put your hand to.
So it goes for all holy or consecrated foods. They are to be eaten before G-d, in His home, with our families and all of the people we are responsible for.
In a striking contrast, the parsha, in the same chapter, addresses the regular foods that we eat, wherever we are, even far from the Beit HaMikdash:
(20) When Hashem your G-d shall enlarge your border, as He has promised you, and you shall say, “I want to eat meat,” because your soul desires to eat meat; you may eat meat, after all the desire of your soul. (21) If the place which Hashem your G-d shall choose to put His name there, is too far from you, then you shall kill of your herd and of your flock, which Hashem has given you, as I have commanded you; and you may eat within your gates, after all the desire of your soul.
Here, when discussing meals where people live, no mention of the family is made! Isn’t this rather backwards? The family should belong in the picture at home, and not at the Temple. What is the meaning of this disposition of kindred imagery?
Through the arrangement of these ideas – that family belongs in the house of G-d – Hashem communicates to us a fundamental idea in Judaism: the family is the main cornerstone of our religious and spiritual endeavors. The family must be “before G-d,” in His presence; it is the true locus of our deepest yearnings for the profound and transcendent.
Indeed, as Rabbi Sacks puts beautifully in his (classically) wonderful book, Morality:
Family, in Judaism, is a supreme value. It’s how we celebrate our festivals and sabbaths. A Jewish child always has a starring role at the Seder table on Passover night, where we are inducted into our people’s history, and where our parents fulfill their first duty: namely, to teach children to ask questions…
The family is the first central location of religious life and instruction. So much so, in fact, that when Jewish people immigrated to this country, they did not find yeshiva day schools; only cheders and Hebrew schools. Think on this, for a moment: Jewish people came to this country and built plenty of all sorts of institutions: shuls, mikvahs, free loan societies, JCC’s and Young Men’s Hebrew Associations. And yet, in the whole country, in the first half of the 20th century, there were 30 yeshivas! Now, there are several hundred yeshiva day schools and higher institutions throughout our population. In 1913, there were an estimated 1.3 million Jews in New York, and almost 3 million across the country! How could 30 yeshivas accommodate 3 million Jews?
The answer, Dr. Haym Soloveitchik suggests, is that Jews assumed that only scholars needed extended Jewish education. For most people, a basic Hebrew education was enough, and this they received in Hebrew schools that supplemented public education. There were seminaries for rabbis, but “Jews… were seen as simply being born,” he writes in “Rupture and Reconstruction.” “Imbibed from infancy – first in the family circle, then from street and school – cultural identity is primordial.”
It was only when families realized that they had failed in their educational task – that their children would not necessarily go to shul, observe their traditions, or even marry Jewish; that Jewish culture, values, and life would be not be passed on subconsciously and without special preparation – that yeshiva day schools began to be founded en masse. Only when Jews had basically ceased to live uniquely, to form a culture that could be seen as anything more than Western, American, British, Canadian, etc., when most Jewish observance in this country and others had long come to an end – only then, did people realize that the home was not enough. By this time, it was already the 1960s and 70s, and they scrambled to create formal institutions of Jewish learning. We must mourn that we did not establish schools earlier, as soon as they were needed, and we must be grateful to have them now.
Yet, schooling is necessary but not sufficient; a critical piece of the whole but not the whole itself. Just as eating breakfast is necessary but not sufficient for a long day of work, so too schooling gives so much essential energy and spiritual nutrients to our children, but it cannot be enough alone. If we send children to school and do not mirror our school values at home, we run the risk of devaluing the messages they receive there or creating an impression that school is a place of spiritual striving and religious growth, but that home is not.
Thank G-d, we live in a rather incredible time from an institutional perspective, with great teachers and leaders being better prepared for their sacred tasks than perhaps at any time in our history. We must continue to work to see to it that not one Jewish child misses out on the integral instruction and treasure that is formal Jewish education. However, the Jewish home remains an irreplaceable religious, spiritual, and cultural institution. It is where children first learn to say Shema, make blessings, daven, participate in a Shabbat meal and seder; it is where our children first learn to be menschen, to say please and thank you, to clean up after themselves, to help out and act responsibly. The home is the only place where children can see their parents engage spiritually in their down time and it is the only place where mom and dad can give their own religious instruction.
Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, in a well-known eulogy that he delivered for the Talne Rebbetzin, Mrs. Rebbeca Twersky, of blessed memory, spoke of the important religious education that he received at home, beyond the conceptual knowledge that he gained from direct instructional education:
I used to have long conversations with my mother… she talked to me – inyana deyoma (regarding timely religious matters). I used to watch her arranging the house in honor of a holiday. I used to see her recite prayers; I used to watch her recite the sidra every Friday night and I still remember the nostalgic tune. I learned from her very much.
Most of all I learned that Judaism expresses itself not only in formal compliance with the law but also in a living experience. She taught me that there is a flavor, a scent and warmth to mitzvot. I learned from her the most important thing in life – to feel the presence of the Almighty and the gentle pressure of His hand resting upon my frail shoulders. Without her teachings, which quite often were transmitted to me in silence, I would have grown up a soulless being, dry and insensitive. (A Tribue to the Rebbetzen of Talne, p. 77)
Whether we have children, whether we are children, whether we are well on in our years, we need to take the lessons passed on in the Soloveitchik home: beyond learning the laws of Shabbat and kashrut, negative speech and revenge, the land of Israel and Shemitah, we must cultivate an environment and culture of yirat shamayim – the sense that G-d is near, that our covenant with Him is rich and sweet. We must ensure that every Jewish child not only receives a Jewish education at school but at home as well. Ironically, it is, in certain ways, much easier to entrust children to the loving instruction of their teachers than it is to lovingly teach Judaism ourselves. Where do we begin? How do we find the time and the energy? Yet, this is our responsibility. We must take the effort on, making our Shabbat tables resplendent with joy, our tefillot with song, our conversations with values and stories that are all our own.
The family is not, per the Torah’s instruction, a neutral zone of fun, professional instruction, or merely a place to rest one’s head. It is an incomparable source of connection to G-d, the long chain of tradition, to the deepest Jewish life. All of this and more is found in that most spiritual and elevated place: the Jewish home.
