Engaging our children in the parsha

The following are some suggestions of ideas for conversations with our children by the Shabbos meals. The key here is to get the children involved through debate and stimulation.

Telling off – toichoca

Have you ever been told off? What were your feelings? Do you know hate the person every time you see him? Was he right to tell you of only that he did it in a wrong way? Parshas Devorim comes to teach us the right way of how to rebuke. Moshe before he dies starts Sefer Devorim where he starts telling off the Jews for the way they behaved during the forty years in the desert. What would have been your reaction when told off by Moshe?

Let us first think in the way he planned to tell them off. He could have done it straight away when they did something wrong. Why did he wait so long before telling them off? The answer is that Moshe’s greatness and feeling for another Jew is what determined this. Imagine he would have told them off at the beginning of the forty years of the desert and then at every time when they went wrong. What would have been their reaction? They could have wanted out! They could have said we do not want a leader that is so critical of us. The trick of rebuke is to make the other person see that they have done wrong in a sensitive way. It is not to put them down. Rather it is to be done in a soft manner to help them realise themselves where they have gone wrong.

Being told off is not a good feeling. You prefer to never see that person again as it then reminds you of your telling off! Moshe therefore told off the Jews before he died so that they would not see him afterwards and feel ashamed. He told them off not with sharp words but rather in allusions and hints to where they had gone wrong.