It is written in King Solomon’s Book of Proverbs (Mishlei): “He who spares his rod hates his son.” Parenting is built on judgment and mercy, just as we are governed by judgment and mercy from Above. There is no place here for unconditional love because the child must sense a balanced influence of these two forces.

In so doing we show him that he has freedom of choice. Let him make his choice every time, but he has to know that the wrong choice will instantly result in a negative reaction. As he grows, the child will acquire increasingly greater freedom for independent action because the negative response, for example, the “rod,” will be increasingly concealed. In the end, we will raise a person who lives in a wide world and knows that he exists between these two forces, reward and punishment, and that in order to follow a straight path, he has to actualize his free will in every step he takes.

The attitude toward all children, from the littlest ones to big kids like us, has to stem from exerting and controlling judgment and mercy, gradually annulling them in accordance with the education level. We give the child more and more freedom, passing to him control over himself, until he comes out into the world and accepts from us these “reigns” of judgment and mercy, so as to become an independent person in their optimal combination, in the middle line.

This is what we instill in him, and he accepts from us the right and left lines, reward and punishment, and continues to build himself with their help.
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From the Talk on Education 9/29/10

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Question: It is common to humanize animal characters for the purpose of education. Is this a correct approach?

Answer: I have never seen an elephant converse with a fox, a dog singing, or a mouse pulling crafty tricks on a hapless cat. I don’t see any educational value in these models. As compared to a realistic worldview, there is a great lie in them. I don’t see in them examples that show a little person how to behave in life.

Instead, I see a distorted picture of the world. By imposing imaginary stories on a child, we maim his reason and warp his logic. We don’t even realize that these illusions will remain with him for the rest of his life, forming his attitude toward the world.

Obviously, we need to familiarize the children with the still, vegetative, and animate worlds, but only in their true form. We ought to treat a small child like a small person, and not a visitor from some imagined reality, where animals speak and exist in fairytale relationships with one another. This approach is a consequence of our sanctimonious world and all kinds of absurdities that humanity has concocted over thousands of years. The wisdom of Kabbalah has a very different outlook on things.

Is this really the only way to raise our kids? In the examples and explanations we offer, can we not avoid animals, the majority of which children have never even seen? Otherwise we’re imposing “virtual” characters on the child, which is tantamount to telling him about ghosts and spirits.

My grandson has a conception of a cell phone, an airplane, a car, and dogs and cats in the streets. So why should I feed him fables? “You know, somewhere outside the city there is a forest, and in that forest there are animals who talk to each other….” Up until now he has lived in the real world, and here I introduce a lie into it. What for? What is the educational value here? Simply, I slipped the child a make-believe reality, which he perceives as fact. Imbued with these fables, he will retain this distorted perception for the rest of his life. No wonder we’ve got people jumping into bear enclosures, thinking the animals are so soft and cuddly.

A child must be educated not with fables, but with parables and games, where the make-believe is not presented as reality. Stop feeding kids fables, and keep them on a truth-only diet. Any lie is imprinted in their subconscious, incorporated into their inner program, and distorts their outlook on life. Only the truth should be expanded more and more as the child develops. The truth will redefine the child’s approach to life, and he will grow correctly.
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From the Talk on Education 9/29/10

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Question: How can you explain to children the law of “love thy neighbor as thyself”?

Answer: Education should be the same for children and adults. Only with the child you reveal everything in a smaller measure, presenting examples that he can understand, that are merely “reduced” to his level, and not fairytales. In every case he must be told the truth! We simply need to make sure he understands us properly at his level, just as we adapt the language of the Kabbalists in an effort to bring it closer to the modern man and make it clear to everybody.

It takes many lessons to explain to a child a small part of what the adults study at the daily lesson. After verifying that all the previous lessons were grasped, I reveal a new problem for the group of children to solve; I give them “half a spoon” of it, just for a “taste.”

But afterward, the child must start asking questions, while lacking in understanding and plagued by doubts, discussing it with his friends, together trying to understand what is really going on, wherein lies the problem and its solution. And the teacher includes himself in the discussion on equal terms with them, guiding them toward the right path while keeping his distance.

First we fully clarify the question itself, and then we try to find the solution. Through this process the teacher evaluates the children’s progress: Every preceding degree connects into the succeeding degree with its lower part. No grades are given, everyone is equal; we only evaluate the collective solution to any given problem.
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From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/4/10, “The Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings”

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Question: When you work with kids, how can you tell that the approach you have chosen is correct?

Answer: First of all, you have to make sure that the group of kids goes through all the states together. If common difficulties affect the group and envelop all the kids in the class, then the kids need some kind of an outlet such as sports. They need help to go through the difficult states easier.

However, obviously it is inevitable that every new level will entail a jump of egoism and lack of understanding, followed by clarifications and achievement of greater understanding than before. Children should be taught to overcome states of obscurity in their feelings and mind.

One’s soul never grows old, and a person as well as a child (who is also a person) never receives states where he doesn’t have “the end of the rope” he can grab onto in order to climb out of any mess, descent, weakness, and fog. Together with all the things that seem like “objective reasons” for feeling bad, we always have the opportunity to ascend from this state. Children must be taught this technique. That is how we give them the instruments that enable them to make it through life.
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From the 4^th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 10/4/10, “The Love for the Creator and Love for the Created Beings”

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Our system of upbringing has to work in a vein of our own life. We shouldn’t tell children nonsense and lies or paint a false world for them. Every toy must guide a child toward real life and the correct analysis of it. Every detail should be a tiny example of the realities of the big world. We should unfold it for the child gradually, keeping in mind that it’s the real world and not fiction.

To safeguard the child, I draw borders for him, while at the same time, give him freedom within them. A child learns to be human from his actions in these restricted and safe conditions. Gradually the borders expand, and gradually a human is formed within them.

Moreover, I don’t offer him solutions set in advance but merely a limited example. I don’t assemble the interconnecting “cube blocks” for him but merely set a pattern to follow and leave him with the freedom to fantasize and create. Occasionally, I even prepare puzzles, tricks, and traps for him so that he will be able to learn from mistakes. Only by doing so will I prepare a child for life.

How can I offer him all the solutions in advance? On the contrary, we grow from our experiences with puzzles and exercises, trials and errors. The memory of them forms a correct approach in a child, and he then knows where to start and how to solve a problem. In the end, if he errs, it will be solely because he was caught by surprise and didn’t expect such a turn of events.

Each following step starts precisely like this: It is new and unpredictable, and so the child makes mistakes. But while he is at it, he learns from his failure and benefits from it.
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From the Talk on Education 9/29/10

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Educating a child means bringing him closer to our world and the spiritual world. Over a short period of time, and particularly between the ages of nine until thirteen, the child has to figure everything out.

Education ends at the age of twelve or thirteen because children naturally stop hearing us. They act and attain on their own, not receiving anything from us. Therefore, we have to give them explanations and truth about what is happening in the world.

If we feed them lies, then it’s like poison that can never be removed from their consciousness. It distorts their worldview and to some extent separates children from reality, replacing it with an illusion.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that we cannot use analogies and legends when educating a child, but their form and boundaries must be clearly defined. It’s one matter if the child understands you are speaking to him metaphorically, and a completely different matter if he thinks that there really is a forest inhabited by animals he only sees in pictures and that these animals are able to talk to each other.

Everything depends on how you present things: In the first case a person becomes acquainted with the real world, whereas in the second, his consciousness and memory are pervaded by false images. Besides, we have to understand that in many regards today’s fairy tales come from ancient faiths and mythologies, when every object was thought to have a soul, an upper force, and a special influence on a person.
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From the Talk on Education 9/29/10

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Question: My wife just gave birth to a son with whom I intend to share the spiritual path. But my neighbour who also just had a son doesn’t study Kabbalah. He sees how parents and children get out of touch and fears that he will lose connection with his son. What can I tell him if he isn’t going to study Kabbalah and only wants some advice on how to keep a relationship with his child?

Answer: In the past people were connected by the egoistic form of existence. Home, family, sustenance, and health concerns tied people together within the family, nation, and country. Nowadays, these settings fall away, and no-one knows how to prevent this or what will happen next.

Why? Material welfare doesn’t bond people any longer. Every human being starts to evolve and as though raises his head above the animate, material level, like above water. And you must offer him or her an answer at a spiritual level.

Thus, your neighbor has no choice. He will have to connect with his son at the spiritual level; otherwise, they will have nothing in common. That is why it’s written about the Creator (about everybody’s uniting with the others in the quality of bestowal): “He who returns the hearts of the sons to their fathers and the hearts of the fathers to their sons.”

From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 8/10/10, A Lesson On Current Events

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A question I received: How can the failure of our education system be due to a lack of unity between people? I don’t see it.

My Answer: What people call “education” gives knowledge, but does not foster the development of a human being. Schools do not raise children to be a human, but merely provide a certain amount of knowledge in physics, chemistry, and so on.

Society refers to the education system as an upbringing, but as a matter of fact, it doesn’t do the job. It is clear from the results as well as the subjects studied. How many lessons and class discussions are aimed at nurturing a human being? Does anybody care about this? School schedules are filled with physics, chemistry, reading and writing, and later we wonder why we have such difficulties with our children.

Schools produce robots trained to work in various enterprises. The task of the school is to prepare a worker (engineer and so on) for a position within the industry “pipeline.” The board of education does not concern itself with the kind of person one becomes or how he will live. This is because the education system has nothing to do with the system of rearing a person.

The education system has never been aimed at raising a human being. It was formed during the Industrial Revolution with the goal of turning peasants into industrial workers. The school as we see it today was invented then for the purpose of teaching people who worked the land and raised cattle to read and write so that they could work with machines, understand basic laws of physics and chemistry, and follow instructions. Such was the foundation of the modern school and it remains today.

Today we must move to the true “educational” system, and this is something entirely new. It is not defined by how many physics or math classes a person has taken, but by how human a person becomes. A human is one who is connected with all others. Only this connection allows a person to be called a human being, not the amount of knowledge obtained.

If a person continues to succeed in gaining knowledge alone, it will only assist in the design of more deadly weapons because a person will only be adding the knowledge received in school to an uncorrected ego. A person learns how to use others with this newly acquired information; this defines his success in life. An education determines only what profession one chooses and how much it pays. Is that education?

If people see that there is a new system that offers true education for their children, they will immediately respond because the problem of education is obvious to everyone. Today people don’t even want to have children because they have nothing to give them. They would rather not bring them into this world of suffering and pain.

Therefore, we must show people that all problems in society and their personal lives are caused solely by a lack of connection between us. We can arrive at that connection only though the path of Light.

From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/28/30, Introduction to the Book, Panim Meirot uMasbirot

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A question I received: Is it possible to explain to children the spiritual meanings of the words and stories in the Torah?

My Answer: Children are more ready for this than adults. They’re developing their sensations and senses. They don’t have a problem perceiving the language in other terms, because they’re hearing the words for the first time.

You can show a glass to a child and say, “This is a glass.” You can also explain that a “glass” is a sensation of some desire in oneself. A child will perceive these notions because he doesn’t have any definitions of our world yet. Or you can say that a glass is a vessel made of glass that we fill and that it is also one’s inner vessel which he or she wants to fill. A child perceives this naturally and he won’t become confused by it.

This is because children’s perception is not dual like that of adults. Children develop in our world in the same way as we’re supposed to develop now in the spiritual world. This is the same path and the same route.

From the 3rd part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 4/12/10, “Exile and Redemption”

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A question I received: How do you know the answers to all the questions?

My Answer: I have a special “phone” that I use to dial “Above” and get the answers. This “phone” connects the lower world to the Upper World, the lower one with the Higher One. In our world, if I don’t know something, I go to my mom, my dad, the teacher, or to anyone who will answer me. In the spiritual world, however, you have to look for the answers only from Above – you won’t even find them in the book. You have to try to feel them inside yourself because this is where you will connect with the Upper One, who has all the answers.

Each question arises in us as a feeling of emptiness. If I feel emptiness, it means I have a question. If the emptiness becomes filled, that means I have received the answer. If the question is about something that is beyond our world, then the answer is felt in the form of “the Light from Above.”

To “call Above” means I raise my question to the Upper One. My question to Him is called “a prayer.” I ask for the answer, and if I really want to know, then I receive the answer and it fills me. I feel it inside.

How do I answer your question on my “phone?” For example, you ask, “Mommy, can I have ice cream?” Your mother doesn’t want ice cream herself, but she takes your desire, goes to the store, buys the ice cream and gives it to you. Hence, she takes your desire to the store.

I do the same. I listen to your question and accept it inside myself in order to feel it as my own. Then I raise it “Above,” the same as a mommy does when she goes for the ice cream. I then receive the answer from Above and give it to you.

Thus, if I want to hear the question that a person is asking, I need to love him and take his desire as my own, raise it “Above,” receive the answer and give the answer to the person asking the question.

If a person has the ability to do this, then he can receive answers to all questions.

(From the Children’s Lesson at the Eurasian Congress)

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