Mitzvot, Tzedakah and Jewish Activism with Kids
He who gives to the poor will not be in want,
But he who shuts his eyes will be roundly cursed. (Proverbs 28:27)
Tzedakah is an essential Jewish value, and giving is an important part of what young children are learning to do. “Tzedakah” is often translated as “charity,” but the value of tzedakah goes well beyond donating money. Tzedakah actually means "righteousness." When we teach our children the mitzvah of tzedakah, we are teaching them that as Jews we are commanded to care for each other – Jews and non-Jews – and to take our place in the repair of the world.
Jewish early childhood programs are uniquely situated to introduce the concept of tzedakah, from the weekly “penny in the pushke— tzedakah box” coin collection at circle time on Fridays, to classroom collections of clothing or food cans, to mishloah manot (Purim goodies) sent to the elderly on Purim. But there is so much more that parents can do at home to help children become Jewish activists, taking care of the world they live in and the people with whom they share it.
A first step is to have a tzedakah box at home. Anything will do: a beautiful handcrafted work of art, a cardboard box your child decorated at school. Even the youngest toddlers can get in on the action. Putting a coin through a small slot (when supervised) is an amazing fine motor activity. It also lays a foundation of association: coins go in this box. When your tzedakah box is full, decide as a family where the money should go. As children grow, they will begin to understand what the coins in the box are for. Last summer, I walked in the Avon 2-Day Walk for Breast Cancer. My daughter, who was four at the time, decided to take all the money from the tzedakah box she had made and contribute it to my walk. She donated over $40. (I’m walking again this summer. Go to avonwalk.org and you can find my page under Chicago participants.)
Find ways to make giving tzedakah a habit. I’ve always known that one is supposed to drop some coins in the pushke (tzedakah box) before lighting candles for Shabbat. I would often remember about this mitzvah right after the candles were lit. Then a friend gave me a small ceramic dish that carries the message “Laugh often, Love much, Live well” – the perfect sentiment to go along with giving tzedakah. I put the dish on the buffet next to the Shabbat candlesticks and the tzedakah box my daughter made at preschool. During the week, we throw spare change into the dish, so that when we come together to light Shabbat candles, everything is there, all ready for giving tzedakah first. And of course, after my children have transferred the coins to our many tzedakah boxes, we read the message in the empty dish together, and we’re reminded on how best to proceed into the coming week.
There are so many ways that your family can do the mitzvah of tzedakah beyond putting coins in a box. When you go to the grocery store, buy an extra can of food or an extra tube of toothpaste to donate to a food pantry. As a family, deliver boxes of food for Pesah. Visit patients in a nursing home. Bake a meal and bring it to a family that just had a new baby. Buy school supplies and send them with someone who is going to Israel for Ethiopian immigrants.
How many ten dollar craft kits or Thomas puzzles does your child really need? Birthday parties are a wonderful time for children to learn how they can help take care of the world. Instead of presents, ask friends to bring an item for tzedakah: books, food, stuffed animals, hats and gloves, toiletries, and so on. Be sure to do your homework beforehand. Confirm that you have a place to which you can bring the requested items, someplace your child can participate in the delivery. Be aware that if you collect items for a homeless shelter, you will be able to bring the items and maybe see parts of the shelter, but most likely your child will not get to meet the intended recipients. When your child gets birthday presents from parents and grandparents (and maybe the closest friends and relatives), he or she will not miss the presents from friends at the birthday party (especially if tzedakah instead of presents has been the tradition from the very first birthday party at age two or three).
Even the youngest children can learn that it is their job to help make the world a better place. It is our job to empower our children to change their world. Children who develop the tzedakah habit while they are very young will forever be committed to the Jewish way of giving and caring.
Book Suggestions - Children:
- The Very Best Place for a Penny by Dina Rosenfeld. Cute tale of a penny in a drawer contemplating the very best place for himself.
- Just Rewards by Steve Sanfield. Another interpretation of good deeds receiving just rewards while wrongdoings are punished.
- Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister. Sometimes being too proud of outside beauty can blind a fish, or a child (or even, heaven forbid, a parent) to the beauty people hold inside.
- What Zeesie Saw on Delancey Street by Elsa Okon Rael. Zeesie is excited to attend her first "package party" with her parents; it's a fund-raising party. Families and friends who emigrated from the same village abroad organize to bring new immigrants to America. But then there's a quiet moment, a secret, too.
Book Recommendations - Adults:
- Creating Angels: Stories of Tzedakah by Barbara Goldin. Twenty-four rich and varied stories about tzedakah in this inspiring volume.
- 40 Things You Can Do to Save the Jewish People by Joel Lurie Grishaver. Joel's Second Law: The best way of making a child fulfill Jewish obligations is by preempting the need to talk about it – to establish so clear an expectation that it isn't even worth bringing up.
Life Is In the Details
At the end of February, we read the Torah portion of Terumah, which includes a very detailed description of the materials needed to construct the portable sanctuary in the desert, the mishkan (or tabernacle, in archaic English). (Much of this information is eventually repeated in other sections of the Torah as well.) Each color of thread that went into weaving the curtains, each plane of wood or gold overlay, each hook, vessel or item for offering the sacrifices is noted. Nothing is left to imagination, and nothing is omitted. Growing up and reading this parashah each year signified just lists of boring information for me. I found no meaning or inspiration in its content. As an adult, however, I have discovered not only archeological and religious meaning in its intricacy, but also other layers of understanding as well.
The day after reading this Torah section, I flew to Florida to spend a few days with my grandchildren. These three pre-school children experience life in the moment. What happens now is of the utmost importance. The future is, at best, a vague concept for them. Anything that happened during the previous two hours, let alone the previous day, might be forgotten already, erased from their memories. The only meaningful time is “now.” Yet, what does happen now is the lattice – the building-blocks – for later, for tomorrow, for next year. As in building the mishkan, each hook, each line of weaving, each covering of gold laid over the solid wood becomes inseparable from the final whole product.
What we adults take for granted can often be the most important little hooks, threads and screws for fashioning the future of young children. How and what we read to them each day, how and what we say to them, the opportunities we make available to them, the multitude of people who touch their lives – all these details are the matrix for the future structure: their growing minds, their healthy relationships, their attitudes toward the world and about themselves.
In life and in educational language, there are “big ideas” that form the overall concept of what we need to know. Under these big ideas fall all the small details that explain, give meaning to and support the larger view. Transforming this information to raising our young children, the big idea can be our vision of bringing them to adulthood as literate, caring, self-sufficient, self-aware and healthy members of the Jewish and world communities. In order to reach this overarching goal, our day to day, hour to hour, interactions with our children take on more importance than just “what do we eat for lunch?” Providing them with appropriate educational experiences outside of the home, hiring appropriate caregivers who act at home “in loco parentis” when we are away, and thinking about the implications of what we and our spouses say and do to reinforce the underpinnings of our general goal all play a part in this process.
From the time they were just over a year of age, my toddler twin grandchildren have heard me speak each morning on the phone with my own mother, their great-grandmother. When visiting at their house, I switch on the speaker of my cell phone so that they can hear her voice and participate in the conversation. Eventually, they have come to anticipate “speaking” with her as soon as we are seated around their small table for breakfast. Breakfast time means that it is time to call my mother. Since distance and age make personal contact difficult, it has become for them and for her an opportunity to spend a few minutes together, to articulate what cereal they are eating, to sing a song together, to just connect, voice to voice. With good health and more years to go, they will hopefully have a collection of memories of reaching out to their great-grandmother, one morning at a time.
As we head toward Shavuot, the celebration of the giving of the Torah, our Jewish book of both big ideas and their underlying details, may we learn to “be in the moment” with our children, and may we help them move toward our conceptual goals for their spiritual, educational and physical growth, day by day.
The Pesah Seder and Oxygen Masks
We’ve heard the instructions from flight attendants prior to take-off a dozen times: “In the event of loss of cabin pressure, oxygen masks will be released automatically. If you are traveling with small children or someone who needs assistance, place the mask on yourself first (!), and then help the person seated next to you.”
It is almost a counter-intuitive response, to put the mask on yourself first. But imbedded in these instructions is a key to good parenting. We cannot effectively teach our children what we don’t already do for ourselves. Those of us who are parents of young children are often worried that the length or rigor of the Pesah seder will leave our children bored and uninterested, so we tailor the seder to their needs: we sing about frogs jumping up and down, and “no, no, no, I will not let them go” (Not to worry! There is definitely a place for these classics!) – and the telling of the story is over and done in fifteen minutes. And we do not realize that we have inadvertently given our children the message that the Pesah seder is for little kids. And when they have little kids, it will be something for them to do again.
Put on your own oxygen mask first. We will have little to teach our children of lasting value if we don’t find interest and challenge in it, first, for ourselves.
The Passover Haggadah provides us with two parallel sets of instructions. Quoting from the Torah, it instructs us “v’higad’ta l’vinkha” – you shall tell this story to your children. Yes, we need to find a way to tell the story of our liberation – to communicate Judaism’s central vision that human beings are meant to live in freedom, and that the force of God can be found in liberation. There are (at least) four kinds of children – four kinds of learners – and we actually are obligated to tell the story in many different ways, so that all can learn.
For all the years of our children’s growing up, we created a huge “tent” in the living room, suspending sheets of different colors from the ceiling. We invited seder guests to dress as Bedouins and nomads, and we re-told the Pesah story seated on the floor, on cushions and couches. Children were free to stretch out or walk around without the constraints of sitting on chairs around a table. And yes, we jumped up and down like frogs, and shook tambourines as we walked across the sea. Traditional seder plates were arranged on copper trays under the tent as we ingested and internalized the bitter memories of slavery and the sweetness of hope. Snacks of nuts and raisins, fresh vegetables and dried fruits placed around the living room kept the edge off everyone’s hunger, enabling kids and adults alike to stay focused on the telling and re-enactment of the great story.
And then we moved to a table, in deference to David’s German Jewish traditions, formally set with silver and crystal. “Put your own oxygen mask on first.” The Pesah table conversation continues with the serious questions of the day:
- "B’khol dor vador – in every generation we must see ourselves as if we personally came out of Egypt.” With what issue of liberation do we concern ourselves today? Whose suffering is part of our awareness?
- We dip our fingers into our wine cups, reducing the fullness of our joy as we remember the suffering, even of our enemies. How do we translate this sensitivity into the issues of today, when religious conflict often centers on harsh and fundamentalist re-tellings of sacred narratives?
- and on and on. If we are fortunate, our table conversation will be animated by many different perspectives on real, profound, relevant issues, all in a Jewish idiom and setting. There is no confusion that this is an adult table, with places at the table for each of our children. Pesah is serious business, involving people who actually are taking responsibility for what happens in our world. And when the kids can no longer maintain interest, there are toys and quiet games (and maybe even a babysitter) in a space adjoining the dining room. And circling the periphery of the dining room is a ring of sleeping bags – so that our children can be lulled to sleep to the voices of the adults in their lives, well into the night, in song and meaningful conversation.
10 Things to Keep in Mind
There are no shortcuts to good parenting! Today, many forces are at work which make raising good children difficult. In our open society,children are exposed to a multitude of mixed messages. Hard work, love and a little bit of “mazal” (luck) ought to increase the chances of creating a nurturing, sound foundation for your children. Although there are no pat answers or formulas for raising children of whom you will be proud and whose Jewishness will be more than just "skin deep," there are some things to keep in mind. Here is a list of ten suggestions culled from various sources on parenting:
- The most common complaint that psychologists hear from children is that their parents are too busy to listen to them and don't find time to spend with them.
- You cannot be a good role model for your children if you fear them.
- Being a good parent requires as much time, talent, energy and thought as any full-time job.
- Good parents get to know their children by becoming actively involved in their interests.
- A child’s first and most important teachers are his parents. Note that the Hebrew word for parents, “horim” and for teachers, “morim” are very similar. Both words mean to teach and to instruct.
- The more time we spend with our children, the greater the possibility that we will be together for important moments in life.
- "How-to" books on parenting by experts can help to some extent, but parenting is too important a responsibility to hand over to experts.
- Raising children requires “activist" parenting. Parents must learn to praise their children and show them kindness, to say “no” when required, to set limits, to have respect for them, to teach them responsibility, to be realistic and to teach them through their own role modeling.
- Goodness is not an innate or natural disposition. People are not born good. Rather, they become good human beings by learning from role models who are good.
- Plan ahead and set goals for your child in terms of the kinds of values you want your child to have, and the type of person you would like your child to be.
Place Mats with Character
Why throw away your child's birthday cards when they can be used each & every day? Utilize them in designing a place mat. Cut out favorite characters, numbers and symbols and glue them to a piece of construction paper. There are many places to have these delightful place mats laminated. If this becomes an annual tradition there will be enough for each member of the family to enjoy a beautiful special Shabbat dinner using place mats with character.
The Kids' Fun Book of Jewish Time
Through colorful, clever paper engineering, the Jewish calendar comes alive for children. This book is interactive, educational and fun. Children and parents can explore it together finding answers to questions such as: How do we count days? When does Shabbat begin and end? What is the connection between a new moon and a new month? Written for children ages 3-6, it is a unique way to introduce children to many aspects of the calendar. Illustrations engage the youngest readers. Older readers learn key concepts and vocabulary in English and Hebrew. The hands-on experience of sliding the sun down to begin Shabbat, turning a wheel to find the new moon, lifting flaps to learn how to count with Hebrew letters and more, helps children gain an understanding of the structure underlying Jewish holidays. Hard cover, published by Jewish Lights (Woodstock, VT).
