Work the Dough!

It seems to never end.

Throughout the United States, school yards are bloodied with young corpses.

In another American city, a teenager trashes her newborn child in the bathroom and returns to the high school Prom. No child is going to ruin the best year of her life.

Nor are we immune in Australia. A ten year old boy pushes a six year old over a precipice – for fun and a thrill.

Children murdered. Children the murderers.

Children who in Western thought and literature are synonymous with innocence.

Children in whose faces we see the faces of angels.

How? Why?

While Judaism certainly does not subscribe to the notion that Man is irretrievably born in sin, it does posit that man is born with a propensity towards selfishness and self-absorption.

It can be reined in. It can be transformed. But only with education, with discipline and with effort.

From a Jewish perspective, the notion of angelic childhood innocence is no more than childish simplicity.

Children are certainly innocent in the sense that they are not mature enough to be held culpable for their deeds; nor wise enough to understand the full implications of their actions. They are however hardly paragons of selflessness and purity.

When a child is born it is his animal soul which is predominant. A child is exclusively interested in himself and his own needs. A baby cries when its demands are not immediately met. A toddler wants the whole world to be at its beck and call. As G-d said to Cain after he killed Abel, “At the entrance (of the womb) sin lies in wait.”

Concern for the other – for a person or thing outside of the self – needs to be taught directly and by example. It needs to be nurtured and developed. Indeed our sages explain that it is only at the age of barmitzvah when, if proper preparation has been made, the G-dly soul becomes manifest and dominant. Even so, the conquest of selfishness remains a life-long struggle; “losing oneself” to something higher the major challenge of life.

 If we abdicate our responsibilities as parents in the mistaken belief that everything will work out well without any investment on our part – at best, we run the risk of producing a self-seeking, mercenary generation for whom there is but one question, “What’s in it for me?” At worse, a proliferation of violence which numbs the senses.

It must never be assumed that goodness is the natural state – that without adult intervention, children will tend towards goodness.

William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, a favourite in school curriculums for generations, illustrates most graphically that this is simply not the case.

As parents it is our duty to form the characters of our children so that they grow up to become responsible adults. We must realize that our involvement and example are indispensable to the development of our children.

We are about to  celebrate Passover.

Passover is the festival of Matza – the non-rising, unleavened bread that our forefathers were commanded to eat during their Exodus from Egypt. Matza contrasts with Chametz – the rising, leavened bread which we eat the whole year round.

Pesach is also the festival of children.

And indeed both – Matza and children – are interrelated.

Matza – non-rising, “humble” bread represents righteousness.

Chametz – rising, “arrogant” bread represents evil.

Both Chametz and Matza are made of the same mixture of flour and water.

With Chametz the leavening process is allowed to proceed uninhibited.

With Matza the process is arrested by placing the dough in the oven within eighteen minutes of the flour being mixed with water.

Dough naturally progresses towards chametz. It is only human intervention and human involvement which can prevent chametz from forming.

So too, the human being: our natural propensity is towards selfishness, self-absorption, self-gratification – the root of all evil.

It is only when we “guard the matzot” – when we are vigilant and protect our children from both the outside evil and their own proclivity towards “Me above all else”, when we intervene in the otherwise inevitable downslide – that matza, “righteousness”, is formed.

But it is not possible to always stand guard over our children. And so the Torah gives us an alternative method of producing matza from dough which would otherwise become chametz.

If you continuously kneed the dough, not allow it to stand idle, work it so that it is “occupied” – then even if an entire day passes it will not become chametz.

And so too with our children.

Work them. Get them involved. Give them so many mitzvot that they are too busy to sin.

As one of the great Chassidic Masters once proclaimed:

“I do not want my students to avoid sin merely because they have controlled the urge to sin. I want them to avoid sin because they have no time for sin.”

“Don’ts” certainly have their place – and on occasion are indispensable. But they are only a small part of responsible parenting. It is the “Do’s” which are really important. It is the “Do’s” which create a positive personality.

So teach them to do mitzvot. Teach them to express care and concern for others. Teach them to pray and study. And by all means involve them in recreational activities, for as Maimonides says, “maintaining a healthy and perfect body is a manner of Divine Service”.

Listen to the Master; ensure that they are so busy doing good things that they have no time to sin.

And that’s good advice for adults too.