Word Prompt – HONEY – Pesha Kletenik

There is a long-standing tradition of placing a little drop of honey on the letter aleph when a child begins learning Torah for the very first time. It makes for an adorable photo and a beautiful ceremony, but I think we sometimes miss the point.

The honey isn’t meant to teach children that Torah comes with candy. It is meant to teach them that Torah itself should be sweet.

Sweetness comes from a teacher who delights in a child’s questions, the thrill of discovering a new idea, the joy of wrestling with a difficult text, and the feeling that Torah is alive and meaningful. “Mah nimletzu lechiki imratecha, midvash l’fi” – “How sweet are Your words to my palate, sweeter than honey” (Tehillim 119:103).

Our Rabbis understood this long before modern educational research. The Gemara (Shabbat 30b) tells us that Rabbah would begin his shiur with humor before diving into serious Torah learning. Learning is joyful because it is rigorous.

So, educators, a little plea: let’s retire the candy as our shortcut to “sweet learning.” The real sweetness is so much better: connection, curiosity, laughter, discovery, and critical thinking.

Because when a child’s first taste of Torah is truly sweet, that taste can stay with them for a lifetime. At the end of the day, we want them to reach for a Chumash, not a lollipop!