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Teach Your Children Well
- Rabbi Sarah Weissman
- Aug 8
- 5 min read
August 8, 2025
You, who are on the road
Must have a code that you can live by
And so become yourself
Because the past is just a goodbye
Teach your children well
Their father's hell did slowly go by
And feed them on your dreams
The one they pick's the one you'll know by
Don't you ever ask them why
If they told you, you would cry
So just look at them and sigh
And know they love you.
Graham Nash was not, as far as I know, inspired by the Book of Deuteronomy when he wrote this song in 1968. So we’ll consider it just a happy coincidence that “Teach Your Children” works so well as a midrash, a commentary, on this week’s parashah, Va’etchanan.
Deuteronomy is Moses’ long goodbye to the Children of Israel, a series of reminders and instructions he gives them before he dies and they cross into the Promised Land. He really is the quintessential nagging parent, saying, “Remember the Torah,” “Do what God has commanded.” “Don’t forget to obey the mitzvot!” again and again. Moses can’t remind the community enough that observing the Torah’s laws, upholding the covenant made with God on Mt. Sinai, is what defines the Israelite People. It is the code they can live by, and how they are to become themselves as a people.
Along with the constant reminders to keep God’s laws, Moses emphasizes that the people must not just follow the Torah themselves, but must teach the Torah to their children. One of the reasons for this emphasis is that the Israelites who are about to enter the Land were born in the desert; it was their fathers and mothers who experienced the hell of slavery in Egypt and the miracle of redemption. This new generation doesn’t have any firsthand experiences to pass on to their children; they only have the Torah. Our parashah contains at least half a dozen references to teaching the next generation, but the most famous expression is the passage from Deuteronomy 6 known as the V’ahavta, which we also recite as part of our worship service:
וְהָי֞וּ הַדְּבָרִ֣ים הָאֵ֗לֶּה אֲשֶׁ֨ר אָנֹכִ֧י מְצַוְּךָ֛ הַיּ֖וֹם עַל־לְבָבֶֽךָ׃
וְשִׁנַּנְתָּ֣ם לְבָנֶ֔יךָ וְדִבַּרְתָּ֖ בָּ֑ם בְּשִׁבְתְּךָ֤ בְּבֵיתֶ֙ךָ֙ וּבְלֶכְתְּךָ֣ בַדֶּ֔רֶךְ וּֽבְשׇׁכְבְּךָ֖ וּבְקוּמֶֽךָ׃
“Set these words, which I command you this day, upon your heart. Impress them upon your children and speak of them when you sit in your house and when you walk on the road, when you lie down and when you rise up” (6:6-7).
V’shinantam l’vanecha. You shall impress them upon your children. V’shinantam is a strange verb to use; we would expect it to say “v’limad’tem, you shall teach” your children. Some commentators connect v’shinantam with the word sh’nayim, “two,” and suggest that it means you must repeat these words to your children. But most commentators note that v’shinantam comes from the root meaning “to sharpen.” So, as the Talmud teaches, “Matters of Torah should be sharp and clear in your mouth, so that if a person asks you something, do not stutter in uncertainty and say an uncertain response to him. Rather, answer him immediately” (Kid. 30a). In other words, when our children – or anyone, really – asks us a question about Judaism, we must have a clear, incisive answer for them. We don’t just have an obligation to teach our children; we must teach them well.
This is no small responsibility. It suggests that we must have a certain level of Jewish literacy so that we don’t hesitate or stumble when explaining the tradition to the next generation. But what comes right before this line helps us understand the key to exactly how we can become good teachers of Torah: “Set these words upon your heart.” That is, internalize these words, integrate them into your life, make these words a part of you. Find your own meaning in them, and then you will teach Torah to those who come after not only through your words, but through your actions. The very best teachers teach by example.
Now, some of us might be thinking, this seems like too much to ask. Internalize the Torah, embody the Torah, and then make sure the next generation will too? And we haven’t even talked about the part of the prayer that says we have to love God with all our hearts and souls and might! Internalizing the Torah so we can incisively teach it to our children is a tall order, to be sure. Perhaps Moses just has unreasonable expectations for us. But when we take a closer look at these verses, we notice that it says “Set these words al l’vavecha, upon your heart.” Shouldn’t it say, “set these words bilvavecha, in your hearts?” Menachem Mendl of Kotzk, the chasidic master known as the Kotzker Rebbe, answers, “But, the intention of the verse is that at the very least, the words should be upon your hearts. Because for the majority, the heart is closed. Yet, there is no person whose heart is never open. And then, the words can fall, truly, into the heart” (Sefer Amud Ha’emet, on Deut. 6:6).
As Rabbi Jan Uhrbach explains, “The Torah commands us to place these words on our hearts, rather than in them, because it is not always within our ability to place words of Torah into our hearts…. Studying the words of Torah and understanding them intellectually—even at very profound levels—is no guarantee that they will permeate our being…. Therefore, sometimes the best we can do is make the words available, so that should the heart open, the words will be there.” She concludes, “To place these words upon our hearts is an assertion of faith that, because ‘there is no person whose heart is never open,’ our past need not dictate our future. Despite our history—and our all-too-painful experience of ourselves and our world—we trust that our (and our fellow humans’) habitual ways of thinking, feeling, and acting will not govern us forever. Our usually closed hearts will indeed open, and the things we just can’t seem to ‘get’ will one day take root and blossom within.”
So v’shinantam l’vanecha, what we impress upon our children, might very well include not just the lessons of the Torah that we ourselves are still trying to internalize, but also our very hope that someday our hearts – and our children’s hearts – will open to greater understanding and greater faith. “Feed them on your dreams,” advises Crosby, Stills, and Nash. “The one they pick's the one you'll know by.”
The Book of Deuteronomy insists that it is all of our responsibility to pass on Jewish tradition to the next generation. Our commentators note that this doesn’t require us to have perfect knowledge or perfect faith, just a desire to keep learning and growing, and a desire to help future generations learn and grow. Our children and grandchildren may not remember our attempts to impress upon them Jewish teachings, but hopefully, they will learn from us – from our words and from our deeds – that Judaism is a gift, a treasure to be cherished. So even when we don’t perfectly fulfill the commandment of “v’shinantam” to our children, we’ll still “just look at them and sigh, and know they love [us].” And they’ll know that we love them too.
