A Letter From Shlomo on Parenting

"Dearest Friends:

The world has had great teachers who taught us the holiness of man; the world has had great masters who taught us the holiness of G-d; but none of them brought peace to the world. What the world needs is that we teach each other the awesome holiness of children, because only that will bring peace to the world.

The world has learned to be frightened at the sound of sirens, but the world has not yet learned to shiver at the sound of a baby's crying. Maybe the world has learned how to love children, but we have not yet learned to stand in awe before our children. It is children who teach us what the world is all about. It is only they who reach the deepest secrets of our beings. It is only they who carry the light of G-d in its utmost infiniteness. ...

I once read a book on the psychology of children. This book began with a sentence, "A stone-age baby is facing its twentieth-century mother." What a barbaric way to look at a baby!

But listen to the other side: Our holy master, Reb Elimelech, when his first baby was born, sat all night at the crib, and tears were flowing from his holy eyes. His followers asked him, "Why are you crying?" And he said, "I am asking this baby for forgiveness because G-d is trusting me with a piece of Himself, and I don't know yet how to take care of it."

Everyone is aware that the world needs some very deep 'Fixing' [tikkun]. But what the world needs most is to fix the relationship between parents and children. Most of us marry …a woman and have …a baby; but what we need to learn is to marry this woman and have this baby. We all understand that the choosing between parents and children does not begin at the moment when a child is born. And I often wondered who is choosing whom -- did the parents choose the children, or did the children choose the parents -- until I found a Hasidic story, a quotation of the holy Riszener who said, about a little boy who later became a great rabbi, "I like him. He knew which parents to choose."

Just visualize it: long before a baby is born, a long line in heaven; on one side all who could be the father to this baby, and on the other side all who could be the mother. G-d is taking this baby by the hand, and they walk this awesome line. And the baby says to G-d, I want this to be my father, and this to be my mother.

Now according to our tradition, there is a voice in heaven forty days before one is born, announcing who the soulmate of this person is. So it's the voice of this baby, putting father and mother together. It's our children, or future children, who are guarding us all the time, and who guide us to marry our soulmate -- this man, or this women. Children choose their parents in heaven, with heavenly love, with heavenly devotion, with heavenly admiration.

But when the baby is born, the parents have to choose this baby. If they choose this baby on the same level of holiness, of heavenly infinite love, then the house becomes a little holy temple and the crib becomes the holy of holiest. But if the parents choose half-heartedly, or don't really want this baby, the child becomes desperate.

Imagine me sending a telegram to a friend, in Hawaii, "Come to New York immediately, I need you. This friend arrives, and he says, "What do you need me to do." And I reply, "Please carry out my garbage." And he says, "For that I have to come so far, all the way from Hawaii?" Children are coming from a faraway place. When they arrive, they ask their parents, what am I supposed to do here? And most parents answer, make a few dollars and have a good time. And the children answer, for that I had to come such a long way?

There is a passage in Leviticus in the Bible, "Be holy unto me for I am holy; everyone, respect your mother and your father." Our holy rabbis, in whose hearts every word of G-d was shining, translated this passage in the deepest way. "Be holy unto Me"; that is the holiness a person reaches by living a good life, with holy actions, holy words, holy thoughts. "For I am holy": this is the holiness which only G-d can give you after you have reached the holiness of actions. But then there is an even higher level, and this is becoming a partner with G-d, creating another human being, creating children. So this is what the Bible says, "Be in awe of being a mother and father."

There is the teaching of the Tree of Knowledge, to know right and wrong, holy and unholy. But a child needs more than that. Each child is in desperate need to know, what is so special about me? What is there in this world that only I can do? -- only the teaching of the tree of life can answer these deepest of all questions. The Tree of Knowledge can be taught by teachers. The Tree of Life can only be given over by a father and mother to their child, sometimes with words, but mostly with kisses and tears. So when Eve ate from the tree of knowledge, G-d told her, "It will be painful for you to have children, because children are born expecting the Tree of Life in their parents."

But it is not only that parents have to give over to children the Tree of Life. It's really the children who are giving their parents the Tree of Life, when they tell them little secrets. The Tree of Knowledge has no secrets, but the tree of life is filled with secrets. The break between parents and children is when they stop telling them their secrets, when they know that their parents are not interested in the Tree of Life.

Our generation is a generation of disappointed children. But it is also our generation who have a G-d--given power to fix everything again. There is a great awakening in the world. The world is waking up to the realization that parents have to learn how to be parents, husbands have to learn to be husbands, and wives have to learn how to be wives -- but not in schools or universities which only give you the fruit of the tree of knowledge. We need new schools, new houses of worship, where the secrets of life are taught, where the tree of life is given over.

Each time I hear a baby cry it sounds to me like the sound of the trumpet, announcing a better world. May your children and my children and all of the children of the world hold hands, and through them, you and I and the world become whole again.

Love,

Shlomo