One of the difficult questions of our generation is: How is it possible to protect our children from the dangers of the generation? Parents raise and train their children for Torah and yiras shamayim – Fear of Heaven, and distance them from any bad thing. They explain to them how a Jew who fears Heaven must conduct himself, and they hope to raise them to be fearful and complete, but for some reason there are those parents that do what they have to do, they teach them, guide them, train them, and in the end to their great dismay, they do not see blessing from their hard work, or chas v’shalom someone else approaches them with ‘all sorts of ideas’ and the children easily follow after them. The question lingers: What more did they have to do that they did not so?!
A story recently came to our attention about a nice boy who sat and learned in yeshiva with a great desire, and then one day his heart changed. He despised learning the holy Torah, and within a short time he found himself wandering the streets. Later, when they asked him what happened, the boy said that one day he was traveling by bus from Yerushalayim to Bnei Brak, and next to him was sitting a man who did not keep the Torah and mitzvos with a cell phone in his hand. The boy glanced at the screen, and what he saw there confused him and dragged him down to a low depth.
[Baruch Hashem in Beit Shemesh there is a great effort to travel in a proper way, if only this was done everywhere].
The Torah states (18:9): 'כי אתה בא אל הארץ אשר ד' אלוקיך נותן לך לא תלמד לעשות כתועבות הגויים ההם', - ‘When you come to the land that Hashem, your G-d, gives you, you shall not to act according to the abominations of those nations’. Rashi explains, ‘You shall not learn to act – but you do learn about their abominations in order to understand and instruct, that is, in order to understand how decadent those acts are, and to instruct your children, “Do not do such-and-such a thing, for this is a ritual of the nations”.’
Holy Rashi, with his words not only teaches us halacha, but also the way for teachers [mechanchim] and mainly parents, for every lesson to know what pitfalls there are today in the world so that he can warn his children against them. For if the child learns from people in the street or bad neighbors or friends what are the desires of the world, then they are likely to fall and stumble. But if the parents precede the cure to the ailment, and explain to their children there are desires, and sins, even if they seem interesting and desirable, you should know that they are prohibited because the holy Torah prohibited them to us. Then they will have the strength to stand up against the enticements and they will not be ‘surprised’ by the obvious, and Hashem, the good, will have mercy on his people.
- Tiv HaTorah - Shoftim
