Toward the beginning of Parshas Eikev, the passuk states: “If you will surely forget Hashem your G-d ... I testify against you this day that you will surely be lost.” A tzaddik from an earlier generation once asked: What does this come to tell us? All the person did was forget — is that so bad? After all, it’s only natural for people to forget things, so why should he be punished, and why so severely? He then answered: The problem isn’t that he forgot “something.” It’s what he forgot that is the problem. Of course people forget all sorts of things, but forgetting Hashem is something that must never occur!
This is something we can also see in the halachos of “leket shich’chah vepe’ah.” If someone accidentally leaves a large amount of the crop behind, this is not included in “shich’chah,” because people just don’t forget large items, leading one of the great tzaddikim to comment: “Forget Hashem? How can anyone forget Hashem? Of course people forget things, and sometimes it’s not their fault, but there’s no such thing as forgetting Hashem!”
The same can be said when it comes to chinuch habanim. A person can take a sefer out of the bookshelf and forget to return it, or forget to put his dirty laundry in the hamper, but when it comes to one’s children, there’s no such thing as making a mistake and forgetting how important this mitzvah is.
Let’s say a person is driving and he collides with someone’s car. Of course he pays for the damage he caused. But when it comes to damaging a person, and especially one’s own children, parents have a responsibility to make sure it simply doesn’t happen in the first place. Nu, if you break something, if you lose a few dollars, okay. But children... We have to take this mitzvah much more seriously.
