Rabbanus, Family & My First Grade Rebbe

Rav Dovid Moseson, z”l

October, 2021

     I am allergic to peanuts. Indeed, when I was growing up my allergy was so unheard of that many teachers thought I was making it up. I share this bit of personal information so that the reader does not find what I will write next to be coming from a place of insensitivity.

    In the late 1990’s, congress had the idea of developing nationalized testing for school-age children. A committee of veteran educators and a prominent publishing house were brought together to create such workbooks.  The goal was to make any material interesting, to use vital information to tell a story. But the censors always seemed to find a reason to disallow material.

    One example: for younger grades, they chose to teach about the clash of civilizations in the New World through the story of peanuts. Peanuts were first cultivated by Natives of South America and were then brought to Europe. The booklet taught how this legume would soon become vital in the Slave Trade, and, in a twist of irony, would give the black inventor of many additional uses for peanuts much acclaim, etc.

    The reader can guess why this was rejected: “…A fourth grade student who was allergic to peanuts might get distracted if he or she encountered a test question that did not acknowledge the dangers of peanuts”.

   Even if true, who, pray tell, will teach kids the skill of avoiding the temptation of distraction?!

     What started twenty years ago has spread and increased. In 1998 the government funded a book titled Quit It! geared to teachers. There it was suggested that through the third grade the following exercise should be considered before a game of ‘tag’ by recess:

“Before going outside to play, talk about how students feel when playing a game of Tag. Do they like being chased? Do they like doing the chasing? How does it feel to get tagged out?”

   Today, in many school districts across the country, the game of Dodgeball has been banned (Boston Globe, march 29, 2001). One director of Phys-Ed in his district said that we should “fire immediately” any coach who allows Dodgeball (it’s a good thing they never heard of machanaim!).

    Of course, I am not dismissing the need for sensitivity and originality in our chinuch. Rav Yaakov Weinberg, the late rosh yeshiva of Ner Yisroel once spoke at an Agudah Convention about his distaste for Color War, as it divides a whole camp, or yeshiva, for an extended period of time, risking turning them against each other.

    There are reasons to take a fresh look at everything, but there also must be limits.

     I bring up this subject due to an ‘experience’ I recently had.

        In the midst of a busy yom tov season, a rav can forget that he has a family. My wife sometimes even has a friend text me her own shailos just so I don’t push it off and will indeed get back to her right away (see Yevamus 65b)!

      One morning, as I was leaving a shiva house, my wife called and said, “Where are you? He is waiting for you at the door. He looks so cute in his new knapsack!”

     It was my son’s first day of first grade, and in the hubbub of yom tov preparation it had completely slipped my mind. I rushed home, picked him up, and before we knew it, we were on our way to his first day where he will be sitting behind a desk.

    We have kn’h four girls, and our youngest is our only son, so as I looked at him through the rearview mirror, I could not help but to flash-back to my time in first grade (or ‘Grade One’, as we called it in Canada).

    Suddenly, I was right back in the classroom, I could even smell my tuna sandwich leaking through the paper bag, and the aroma of the stained copies off the old ‘ditto’ (mimeograph) machine.

     One can learn a lot about a person by discovering their earliest memories. Childhood Amnesia is a real concept, finding that most adults have no memories before the age of about three, and many more retain little before the age of ten. This is an area of increasing study.

     I went to Eitz Chaim of Toronto. It was an amazing chinuch, filled with talented rebbeim and michanchim. The reader is very familiar with the staff of my youth -even if they do not realize it. The popular Marvelous Middos Machine series was a creation – together with R’ Abie Rottenberg – of the rebbeim, their friends, and many of my classmates (alas, I couldn’t carry a tune, so one won’t find me in the liner notes).

    My first grade rebbe was Rabbi Dovid Moseson. He was gentle, kind and most importantly, sincere.

     He had already taught first grade in Toronto for many decades at the point. He was an old-time Williamsberg-er, having leant in Torah V’Daas in its early days.

     But that morning, just weeks ago, only one memory came forth. I do not know why this is the one my brain had collected for its hard drive. Indeed, when calling old classmates this week to hear their memories, each shared something different (I did not remember that he was a talented artist who would draw for frum publications, and, compose an artist’s rendering of each week’s parsha for the class).

    That one and only memory I had was the following:

     We were sitting in the classroom with the lights off. Rebbe had put on a record (remember those?!). It was a story, acted out. There was the chosid, the town rav and the nearby rebbe. I can still hear the sound effects of the baal agalah galloping-away in my ear.

     Rebbe’s head was down, but he was clearly listening to every word of that story/album. One of the characters said, “…but he passed away many years ago…”.

   Suddenly, we all heard the scratch of the needle being pulled away, and rebbe quickly turned on the lights.

    “Kinderlach”, he began ever so gently, “We will get back to the story in a minute”. Long pause. “Did you all hear the words he just said? Does anyone hear know what that means, to ‘pass away’?

    I remember still thinking then that I did not know what that term meant.

      Ever so gently, tenderly, he explained to us the concept of death, olam habah and techias hameisim. As first graders, we were certainly all aware of the concept, but now we were getting an ‘official’ explanation to this scary mystery. I still recall a wave of relief falling over me and the shedding of fear from deep within me.

     I do not know if schools would allow rebbeim to talk about such topics today, but that would be a shame, if placed in the right hands. Children are far more resilient than we often give them credit for, and indeed sometimes desire frank explanations (again, if done by a proper mechanech).

     There is also another lesson in chinuch we should take from this. We often put on tapes or music to quiet our children. How often has Schwekey or Mordechai Shapiro babysat our children? We may use these tools to shut off the noise around the house, but we did not shut down our children’s’ minds. They are processing everything they hear and see.      

    Sometimes we have to stop the record -of the MP3 -and explain what they just heard, especially when it’s a difficult topic. 

      We just may create a hashkafa and a memory that will last forever.