Vaetchanan 5771

This week's parsha contains the mitzvah (commandment) of talmud Torah, to transmit the Torah's teachings. "You shall teach them diligently to your children. Speak of them when you sit in your house and when you walk on the way."

How does Torah instruct us to transmit Torah to our children?

Sefer haChinuch says: "From what time is a father to start teaching his son Torah? From the time he begins to speak, he is to teach him 'Moshe commanded us the Torah, it is a heritage of the congregation of Yaakov' [from Devarim/Deuteronomy 33:4, the final parsha in Torah] and the first verse of Shema [found in this week's parsha, Devarim/Deuteronomy 6:1] 'Hear O Israel, the L-rd is our G-d, the L-rd is one.' Sefer HaChinuch continues, "If someone was not taught by his fathers [father and/or grandfather], he is obligated to teach himself when he is grown and becomes aware of the matter."

What about mothers and daughters? The Lubavitcher Rebbe writes in Sichos Kodesh: "While in times gone by, women and girls were not taught Torah at all, nowadays it is not only permissible to teach women even the deepest parts of the Torah, but it is an absolute necessity to do so. For in the modern world, women are no longer confined to home and they are highly exposed to the marketplace of secular ideas. Thus, if the policy of not teaching women Torah at an advanced level will be upheld, the result will be that a girl's sophisticated worldly knowledge – which is likely to harbor many ideas that are antithetical to Torah – will be insubstantially compensated for by her rudimentary Torah knowledge."

This week's parsha teaches that we parents are our children's primary Torah teachers. We cannot shift the burden to our synagogues or to our schools. Torah must be taught "when you sit in your house" and the lessons and examples must continue outside the home "when you walk on the way." We don't become different people with different values when we leave our homes to go outside. The principles we uphold inside our homes strengthen us when we navigate the many highways of life outside the home.

It is no coincidence that this week's parsha also contains the commandment to affix a mezuzah "on the doorposts of your house and upon your gates." The mezuzah contains a parchment on which the Shema and two additional Torah passages are written. Upon entering and leaving the house, we see the mezuzah and remember that we are bound to study and teach Torah, and fulfill G-d's commandments, both inside the house and outside of it.