DEUT251 Teaching Torah to one's children is a fundamental parental obligation. The Rabbis root this commandment in [this] biblical verse [also see Deuteronomy 11:19]. According to the Talmud, a father is obliged to teach his children, or to arrange otherwise for their Jewish education. Thus parents should not move to a city that does not have adequate educational opportunities for children; if they do so, they bear full responsibility for their children's Jewish education. From Judaism's perspective, parents who do not provide for their children's Jewish education are as negligent as those who do not make the effort to provide their children with other basic necessities. Just as a child is deprived of essential material needs cannot function in society, a Jew deprived of Jewish knowledge will not know how to live and act as a Jew.

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DEUT253 "You shall teach them diligently to your children, and you shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lay down, and when you rise up." Every single word of the Torah that you study is a fulfillment of a mitzvah (see Shnos Eliyohu-Paiah). Conversely, for every single word of loshon hora that you speak, you are guilty of bitul Torah, not having spent your time fruitfully in studying Torah.

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DEUT260 The Talmud (Chagigah 9b) records that there is absolutely no comparison between he who has reviewed a Torah passage 100 times and the person who has reviewed it 101 times! The verb used for teaching in the Torah and the noun in the Talmud reflect the need for review. When the Torah says [this verse] "you shall teach," the word veshinantam actually means "you shall double" or you shall teach a second time, from the Hebrew word sheni (two). Similarly, the word mishnah technically means "that which is studied twice," indicating the importance of review. The Midrash (Vayika Rabbah 19:2) has already addressed this apparent difficulty of someone who sees how much Torah there is to learn and who seems overwhelmed and will not even try because of the enormity of the task. It says that the fool looks at the enormity of it all and gives up, but the wise person says I will learn two short passages today, two tomorrow, until I finish the entire book. If, each day, a person learns a small amount, over the course of a lifetime the person can become a Torah scholar. The Talmud says (Megillah 28b) that he who studies a few laws daily is guaranteed a place in the world to come. Although no one can possibly learn and retain everything, one must make the attempt to try. As the Mishnah (Avot 2:21) says, one need not complete the task, but neither is one exempt from trying.

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DEUT261 Thus, Torah is absorbed by watching how others live it and how they bring Torah into their daily existence. Even the "secular conversations" of Torah scholars should be studied (Avodah Zarah 19b). This is also why the blessing in the prayer book, recited before saying words of Torah, is Laasok bidivrei Torah, to be involved with words of Torah and not Lilmod Torah, to learn Torah. Torah must be absorbed by all the senses, and not merely learned by rote or as information. The origin of teaching Torah comes from the Shema, where it says [this verse] that "you shall teach your children and speak of them (words of Torah) when you sit in your house, when you walk on your way, when you like down, and when you get up." From these words, it is easily seen that the Torah originally was taught from parent to child and was not learned in the classroom but through daily actions and routines. And it was taught in all parts of life at all times. This is true Jewish learning.

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DEUT255 See [[EXOD182]] Exodus 13:9 mouth BLOCH 236

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DEUT257 See [[LEV308]] Leviticus 19:3 revere BLOCH 125-6

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DEUT259 The importance of marriage, within the Jewish tradition, is not only for reasons of propagation and companionship, as important as they are, but also to educate children in the Jewish tradition so we can continue across the generations. Abraham, the Patriarch of the Jewish people, is already charged with teaching his children (Genesis 18:19); and the commandment for each one of us to do likewise, which appears several times in the Torah, is enshrined in the sections chosen for the first two paragraphs of the Shema, (Deuteronomy 6:4-9, 11:13-21), a prayer that we recite twice daily. Even after schools were established, the primary context for Jewish education remained the home, and to this day parents continue to be responsible for ensuring that their children learn to be educated and practicing Jews. In our own time, we are re-discovering that no schooling, however good, can be adequate; that family education is the key to the continuation of the Jewish heritage; and that parents must continue to educate themselves as they seek to teach their children. This, in fact, is just a subset of the general Jewish duty to study the tradition on a lifelong basis, for Judaism is very much a religion for adults. Parents have the mission to prepare their children for such lifelong learning, whether the parents are married or single, custodial or not; but one of the objectives of marriage within the tradition is to provide the context in which children can best learn how to be Jews.

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DEUT256 See [[EXOD354]] Exodus 20:2 other DUTIES 63-7

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DEUT254 See [[EXOD181]]Exodus 13:8 tell HTBAJ 178

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DEUT258 See [[NUM152]] Numbers 15:2 speak OXFORD 13-14

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