Rabbi Schneider - Building the Right Foundation
Welcome and shalom today, my brothers and sisters. I'm speaking now especially to moms, I'm speaking now, especially to moms, dads and grandparents. I'm looking at the book of Proverbs chapter 22 verse six, a scripture that probably most of you are familiar with. It says this: "Train up a child in the way he should go, It says, This train up a child in the way should go. Even when he is old, he will not depart from it".
And this is a scripture that we've often heard. But I want to talk about it today from perhaps another paradigm. I'm going to the Torah. The Torah has a law which commands a man for the first year after he gets married to not go out to war or to have anything to do with wars, it would bring him out of his home, or to concern himself with matters outside of the house, but to stay home with his bride.
And the rabbis teach us that, this is so he would attach himself to his wife; that by spending that time together, that man by being at home and not going off to war and being out of his house for long periods of time, would instead devote himself to spending time with his new bride. That would cause his heart to remain attached to her.
And the rabbis teach that it's a tendency of all of us to, when we're put in a situation where there's potential compromise, we drift back to that which is most familiar. And so by training a child in the way that he should go or by taking special care when we're first married to bond with our spouse, it causes us, as we move forward in life, to keep on returning to that which is foundational and familiar to us.
So I want to put a special charge out today to newlyweds, to moms and dads and grandparents. Let's make sure to build the right foundations, because when we build right foundations, we're then prepared to go into the future and stay on track, whether it's in our own lives or whether we're sowing and investing into the lives of our children or grandchildren, making it possible for them to go forward in life on a new track.
Hope this was helpful for you. Hope it was encouraging to you. Hope it causes us to think and make decisions based on the end in mind. This is Rabbi Schneider saying I love you and we'll see you next time.