Maimonides Reflections: February 2, 2024

Morah Robin Meyerowitz

Early Childhood Center Director

In one classroom, an Early Childhood student is building Har Sinai with clay.

In another, children are dancing to the song “I am a mountain, so very high.”

And in yet another, the students are enthusiastically acting out the scene of Matan Torah.


As I walk down the hall from the Early Childhood Center to the Elementary School, I hear the teachers and students studying the Aseret Hadibrot, reading the text and discussing the ideas. In the Middle and Upper Schools, students are engaged in the learning of Mishnah and Talmud. Everywhere you go within this building, you hear tefillah. You hear Torah. And if you listen carefully, you can hear the sounds of previous generations of our students, many now with children and grandchildren of their own.


As we read Parshat Yitro, we are reminded about the famous Midrash that the neshamot, souls, of every Jewish person to ever be born were present at Har Sinai. As Rashi notes in his commentary on the verse וַיִּחַן שָׁם יִשְׂרָאֵל נֶגֶד הָהָר, And Israel camped [singular] adjacent to the mountain (Shemot 19:2): The Jews stood together unified כאיש אחד בלב אחד — as one man and one heart at that moment. Our souls and the souls of all of our precious children were there, together.


What a privilege it is to help transmit our Torah to our children today and to be part of the chain that extends throughout the generations. With the strength of our tradition on one hand, and our children’s (and our!) individual strengths on the other, each of us is tasked with the transmission of our mesorah. Every member of the Jewish people has a role to play, and through our actions in our homes and in our school each day, we empower our students to contribute their unique strengths to the world through the lens of the Torah.


Even our youngest students have so much to offer! Har Sinai may have been the smallest mountain, but we know that good things can be found in small packages. In the words of child psychologist David Elkind, “The child is constantly confronted with the nagging question, ‘What are you going to be?’ Courageous would be the youngster who could look the adult squarely in the face and say, ‘I already am.’”


May we, our children, our grandchildren, and our families continue to receive the Torah, teach the Torah, and perpetuate our growth and the continued growth of the entire Jewish people. Shabbat shalom!

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