Ra'anana Community Kollel

Ladies First

Rabbi Binyomin Lipson

“So shall you relate to the House of Ya’akov and command the Children of Israel”
(Shemot 19:3)

Rashi comments that “the House of Ya’akov” refers to the women, while the men are entitled “the Children of Israel”. This implies that when Moshe was commanded to transmit the teachings of the Torah to the Jewish people, he was instructed to first teach the women and only afterwards the men. The fact that Hashem commanded this specific order for the dissemination of the Torah requires explanation. As it was men who were commanded in the continuous study of the Torah and would thereby bear the great responsibility of teaching it to the rest of the Jewish people, would it not be more logical for Moshe to begin by teaching them the Torah?

R’ Moshe Feinstein explains that when Hashem gave the Torah to the Jewish people, Hashem intended that its numerous lessons and moral messages be passed on and observed by all the generations to come. This would only be possible if each and every Jewish household would accept upon itself the great responsibility of educating their children in the ways of the Torah, thereby ensuring that they would in turn serve as the next links in this living chain of transmission. To this end, it would be necessary for Jewish children to receive the influence of Torah from a very young age when their hearts and minds are most receptive to the influence of their mentors, for as children grow older, it becomes increasingly difficult to inculcate such a fundamental and pervasive value system as the Torah provides.

Such early training in undiluted Torah observance falls largely, if not entirely, on the shoulders of the mothers of the Jewish nation who serve as their children's prime caregivers early in life, and are in the best position to start off this lifelong process of growth and spiritual values. According to R’ Moshe, this is one of the reasons why Hashem commanded Moshe to first teach the Torah to the women of Klal Yisrael, for it is they who have been given the holy task of initiating their children’s education, thereby guaranteeing the continuum of Torah throughout the generations.

In a moving eulogy which he delivered upon the passing of his mother, R’ Moshe Aharon Stern teaches us the amazing influence that a mother has over her children to set them one the path of Torah and mitzvot for the rest of their lives.

“I remember something which happened more than sixty-five years ago. We were living in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, on Livonia Avenue. I was old enough to go to cheder. Not far away there was a cheder known as the Stone Avenue Talmud Torah. It was the best Talmud Torah in the neighborhood, but my mother did not want me to go there. She said, ‘I do not want my child to learn in a modern-thinking Talmud Torah.’ There was a particularly good Talmud Torah which was more than a kilometer, perhaps a kilometer and a half, away from our house. As far as I remember, there were four children at home at that time: my older sister Chana, my sister Leah, my sister Golda, and myself. There was no way to hire a babysitter; there was no money with which to pay her. At eight-thirty every morning, my mother walked me the one and a half kilometers to cheder. There was no kitchen in the yeshiva, and the school did not provide lunch for the children. We had to bring food from home. Every day, my mother came to the cheder a second time to bring me warm food at lunchtime. She would find a place for me on a bench in the courtyard, make sure I washed my hands, made a brachah, ate and bentched, and then she would hurry home. At five o’clock she came a third time to bring me home. Where was there another mother in that period who was so dedicated to giving her child a true Torah education?

The Gemara (Ketubot 111b) says, ‘If one uses the light of Torah, the light of Torah brings him back to life, and if one does not use the light of Torah, the light of the Torah does not bring him back to life.’ The Gemara is teaching us that in order to merit to be among those who will be resurrected after death, one needs Torah. The Gemara further says that one who supports true Torah causes also acquires ‘the light of Torah’. However, one who does not learn Torah and does not support Torah may have earned a place in the World to Come, but he cannot merit to be included in the resurrection of the dead. With this background, can appreciate a puzzling question which the Gemara asks (Brachot 17b), ‘Rav asked R’ Chiya: With what do women merit?’ What was Rav asking? Women have many mitzvot which they are obligated to perform and certainly gain much reward by fufilling them. Is this not considered a merit? However, in light of the previous Gemara, the intention of Rav’s question becomes quite obvious. Granted, women perform many mitzvot and this certainly gives them merit, but in order to merit to be included in the resurrection of the dead every person must possess the merit of Torah! This is what Rav asked R’ Chiya, ‘How do women acquire the merit of Torah that every person requires for this special purpose?’

The Gemara answers, ‘By bringing their sons to school to learn Torah and by allowing their husbands to learn in the beit midrash and waiting for them to come home.’ My mother excelled in ‘bringing her sons to school’ and in ‘letting her husband learn in the beit midrash’. My father worked hard in his job as an accountant the entire day., but at night he delivered shiurim late into the evening hours. Shabbos is the time for wives to rejoice with their husbands, yet my mother permitted him to be busy the entire day, and not with sleeping. My father was a working man, but he used whatever spare time he had to learn Torah: nighttime hours, Shabbosim, and Yomim Tovim. My mother was busy the entire day raising the children and running the house. This was our house. Torah was the main thing and work was secondary. The chinuch that our parents gave us was one-hundred percent Torah chinuch. Because of his busy schedule, sometimes it was days and days, and often an entire week that we did not see my father. Who educated us? Who was the one who made sure that we would make a brachah on our food? Who was it that made sure that we would daven properly? Our mother. ‘The crown of our head has fallen.’ She was our crown, she was our charm.

(adapted from “Darash Moshe”
& “From a Pure Fire”)