I heard a very moving story about a survivor of the Holocaust. In a small Polish town, about a dozen survivors from the concentration camps gathered in honor of the holiday Simchat Torah (rejoicing in the Torah). This holiday takes place in the fall, after a month of holidays, and is considered to be the culmination of them all. It is a day in which we dance with Torah scrolls in honor of the holy possession G-d gave us and with joy.
These survivors were broken in mind and in spirit. They gathered together to pray, even though they lacked Torah scrolls to read from, much less dance with. All of the scrolls had been destroyed by the Nazis. And yet, they did not want to feel defeated, but would rejoice in the Torah anyway.
A small child wandered into the synagogue. The men were amazed. They had seen such death and destruction that they barely remembered what it was like actually to see a Jewish child. So they each picked up the boy and danced with him, as if he were a Torah scroll, because it is said that every Jewish child is a Torah scroll.
Our children are sacred. We wouldn’t think of dropping a holy book, but sometimes we (me included!) can be short-tempered with our kids when they don’t do what we want them to do. As a good friend of mine pointed out, children are not robots, and while we should instill a respect for authority, we wouldn’t want a child simply to do our bidding any more than we can changed the letters of the Torah.
A sharp word or an indifferent response can hurt a child’s feelings. They remember these things and carry them inside. One small defect in a letter of the Torah renders the scroll invalid. I am not saying this to beat myself up about mistakes (never a good thing to do), but to remember the importance of sanctity in our lives and that this sanctity extends to children, who are really not ours one hundred percent, but we are the caretakers of G-d’s children.
Now enough of this sermon to myself, and time to put it into action!