Children are truly our greatest spiritual teachers

By Rabbi Micah Greenstein , Guest Columnist | The Daily Memphian

We sometimes forget how the unique perspective of children, particularly babies and toddlers, can foster our own faith.

Everything is new and fresh. Every experience a discovery, an exploration of the world with rapid-fire neuro connections forming every single second that will serve the children for decades of learning and living.

In the formation of every child, Jewish Midrash teaches, there are three partners: two parents and God.

In other words, we carry inside us not only the genetic code of our parents but also the spiritual impress of God when we are born.

I experienced this most often teaching Sunday school as a younger rabbi and hearing the beautifully poignant and brutally honest answers kids offered to questions.

For instance, to the question “how do you know there is a God?” children under age 10 delivered the following responses:

• “There’d better be.”
• “There is a God because our Sunday school teacher told us, and she knows stuff like that.”
• “God loves everyone, even people you hate.”
• “God is always around when you need help, but only with important things. Not your homework.”

As we observe young children, they remind us simply by the way they love and express wonder that our purpose in living is to be a reminder of God to those who observe us.

Children exhibit a closeness to God in their unconditional love and innate marvel at the universe without the cynicism and bitterness adults often exhibit.

Even worse as we age is when the animal instincts of humans manifest themselves in callousness, cruelty and mean-spiritedness toward others.

When does the divinity manifest in babies become so hidden in adults?

The story is told of a congregant who came to his rabbi and said, “Rabbi, when I was a child, I felt very close to God. Now that I am older, it seems as if God has left me, or perhaps it is I who have left. In either case, I feel far from God. I am not sure what to do.”

The rabbi answered him, “When you teach a child to walk, at first you stand very close. The child can only take one step, and then you must catch him. But as he grows, you move farther and farther away so that he can walk to you. God has not abandoned you. Like a good parent, God has moved farther away but is still close by waiting for you. Now you must learn to walk to God.”

How do we walk toward God? Certainly not by smearing or denigrating others because every human bears the signature of God.

Legendary lawyer and Memphian Leo Bearman Jr. taught a good behavior-modification exercise for adults through short stories.

Leo was past president of the synagogue I serve and taught Jewish literature to Temple Israel’s high school students for decades.

Among his master classes was one on the short story, “A Piece of Advice” by Isaac Bashevis Singer. Here is a synopsis of Singer’s story:

A young man has a father-in-law who is self-aware that he is a bad-tempered man. He wants to deal with his anger, so the son-in-law takes him to see a rabbi. The rabbi tells him to praise and flatter everyone he meets, even scoundrels. This suggestion enrages the father-in-law because he hates flatterers.

Later at Sabbath services, the rabbi offers the following wisdom regarding what a Jew should do if he is not a pious man: “Let him play the pious man. The Almighty does not require good intentions. The deed is what counts. It is what you do that matters.” 

The father-in-law takes the rabbi’s words to heart and stops snapping at people. He still feels angry, but he speaks softly. Our narrator the son-in-law says, “One could feel that he did this only with great effort. That’s what made it noble.” 

In time, the father-in-law becomes less angry. The story concludes with the narrator remembering the rabbi once saying why “thou shalt not covet” is the last of the Ten Commandments, because the main thing is to change one’s actions, not one’s desires. 

“And so it is with all things,” the story concludes. “If you are not happy, act the happy person. Happiness will come later. So also with faith. If you are in despair, act as though you believed. Faith will come afterwards.”

The point is not to lie to ourselves or about how we feel, but rather to change what we do, what we say, even who we are when we fall away from the divine potential we recognize through the eyes of a child. Children remind us it is important not only to understand our world but to cherish it and, by extension, every life within it.

In teaching the story of the creation of Adam and Eve, Jewish tradition explains when a coin-maker stamps a number of coins from the same mold, they all resemble each other exactly. But when God stamped every human being in the mold of the first Adam and Eve, not a single one is identical to any other human being. Even identical twins are not indistinguishably identical. 

With 2025 underway, we would all do well to act more loving and lovable like the little children in our midst. They are Exhibit A for what it means to walk in God’s ways and to regain the sense of wonder, awe and hope too many have lost. 

Children are truly our greatest spiritual teachers.