Parshas Emor (5778)
The weekly Torah portion starts off: “G-d said to Moses: Say to the Kohanim (priests), the sons of Aaron, and say to them: Each of you shall not contaminate himself to a [dead] person among his people†(Leviticus 21:1). There is an apparent redundancy in the verse, since Moses was told twice to say something to the Kohanim.
The Sages expound the redundancy to imply that the Kohanim were to convey this teaching to others who would otherwise not be subjected to this commandment. This teaches that adult Kohanim were cautioned regarding the children, for the adults are not permitted to cause their children to become contaminated from the dead.
[These laws have practical applications for Kohanim today. A Kohen is forbidden to be in the same building where a dead body or body parts may be present. The wife of a Kohen giving birth in a hospital presents a challenge to the Kohen wanting to be present at the delivery. Hospital entry poses additional concerns for Kohanim, as per the Jewish law mentioned in the beginning of this week’s Torah portion, which stipulates that an adult Kohen is cautioned not to cause his infant child to become unclean by contact with a corpse. This responsibility leads to many Kohanim choosing a birthing center or a hospital with the maternity ward in a separate building than where the hospital morgue is located so as to not make their newborn baby Kohen ritually unclean.]
In truth, this is not the only place in the Torah where the adults are cautioned regarding their children - that they not cause their children to transgress a certain commandment. For example, the Torah states regarding non-Kosher foods, "lo soch’loom – you shall not eat themâ€, and the Talmud interprets the verse to read “lo sa’acheeloom - you shall not feed your small children [non-kosher foods].†(See Leviticus 11:42 and Yevamos 114a). And there are other examples as well.
Why then, in our Torah portion, when the Torah cautions the adult Kohanim not to permit their children to transgress the laws of priestly purity by contaminating themselves from the dead, does the Torah convey this message in such a strange way - “say and say to them� Wouldn’t it have been much simpler for the Torah to have taught us the prohibition regarding contaminating child Kohanim the same way it taught the law regarding causing children to eat non-kosher foods, without having to resort to redundancies?
Rabbi Zalman Sorotzkin, of blessed memory, explains that the Torah is teaching us a powerful lesson in raising good children. Every child is influenced by two major factors - (1) parents and teachers, and, (2) the outside environment – the “street†- including friends, peers and the media. Fortunate are the parents whose children grow up in a community that is morally healthy and in sync with the value system that they teach in their home and at school. Such parents have only to say things and teach lessons one or two times to their children, because the outside environment only bolsters and supports the parents' moral and ethical code.
But what about parents who attempt to raise their children in an environment which influences and even encourages children to do everything that the parents are trying to stop their kids from doing. (The parent says: "Adam, I don't ever want to catch you smoking a cigarette!" - and meanwhile, half the fifth-grade lights up during recess.) The only recourse for these parents is to say over and over again to their children not to behave badly, in the hope that their constant pounding it into their kids' brains will be strong enough to counter the negative influence of the outside environment.
This difficult predicament was one in which the Kohanim found themselves all the time. They were commanded to instruct their children to stay away from impurity and contamination, at the same time that their kids' environment consisted primarily of non-Kohanim who didn't have such restrictions.
Imagine how difficult it must have been to train the children not to contaminate themselves …. "But Dad, all the other kids are touching dead bodies!" The adult Kohanim had no choice but to stress over and over again to their children not to become impure, because they couldn't rely on any help from the outside environment. And this is why the caution regarding the contamination of the Kohanim's children was stated as “say and say to themâ€.
In today's day and age, when television, movies and the Internet are full of sexual innuendo and graphic violence, and even the schools (some of them, at least) have instances of drugs and teenage pregnancies, not to mention the general lack of religious, moral and ethical values in the world at large, we, as parents, have to double our efforts in the home to instill good values and character traits in our kids. (Obviously, choosing a school environment for our kids with strong Torah/spiritual values would help to eliminate much of the problem.)
We need to expose our children as much as possible to good role models and to morally healthy environments, in order to counter the negative influences and immoral messages that the culture we live in blasts in our children’s' ears most of the day. A few hours exposure to a good shul atmosphere on a Saturday morning goes a long way to counter the bad exposure that the child might get the rest of the week. Positive role models in Jewish youth groups can make an impact on children that can last a lifetime.
We can no longer afford to be passive in raising our children. We have to be proactive. We can't leave it up to the schools and the “outside†environment anymore. We have to take the initiative to actively involve our children in healthy, morally uplifting, character-building activities, in the hope that this will give them the strength to withstand all the negative stuff that will inevitably come their way.
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