FRIDAY NIGHT FOR YOUNG PEOPLE: Baby Sister (Shemot)

B"H

Tevet 19, 5766 * January 19, 2006

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F R I D A Y N I G H T F O R Y O U N G P E O P L E
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Parshat Shemot
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Baby Sister
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"How was school today?" Mrs Cohen asked in her cheerful voice.

"Um" was all Adam said.

"I just met your teacher the other day, and he was telling me about how nicely you worked on your project". Mrs Cohen had noticed that Adam had been rather quiet lately and was trying to cheer him up.

"Um" - Adam didn't seem to be in a very sociable mood today.

The truth is that Adam was usually quite talkative. In fact he was usually the loudest at the supper table, but for the past few days it seemed that he had retreated into a shell.

Adam stood up from the table, put his plate and cutlery in the sink, and with a mumbled "good night" went up to his room.

Since the recent arrival of the new "Baby sister", Adam had started to feel that no one was taking any notice of him anymore. He felt that everyone loved the baby and had forgotten all about him.

"I wish I was a baby again" he thought sullenly as he lay in bed that night.

The next day in school during the Parsha class, Mr. Benson was talking about the fact that in this week's Parsha, for the first time, the Jewish people are referred to as the "children of Hashem". This got him onto the subject of the different kinds of love that one might have for a child.

"… When a parent loves a baby, it is a pure love that comes from just the simple fact that this is the child of the parent" Mr Benson was saying.

"Does that mean G-d loves all of us even if we do bad things just because we are His children?" one of the boys had asked.

Mr Benson said "Yes, you could say, that is like the love one has for a baby."
Then he went on.

"For the older child, however, there is a different kind of love. There is included in it all the years of knowledge and respect and trust and expectation that come from a real relationship with the child as a person. So although you don't normally see a parent kissing their twenty year old son good night, there is still a deep and strong love for that child. So in this week's Parsha, G-d calls us 'My son, My firstborn Israel' showing us that the love that G-d has for us goes deeper then just - 'oh he's so cute'. It is a love that G-d has for us because He wants us to work on ourselves and achieve".

Adam hadn't realized that he could actually take something practical out of the Parsha class. He knew that he would remember today's lesson.

"You are actually a very cute baby" Adam said that evening, as he gazed down at his new friend in her crib, wrapped in a pink blanket. "Sorry for being jealous", he whispered.

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