Children
I’m thinking about it all the time: What do children need most? You see, old people are already accustomed to this kind of existence, this ‘being or not being,’ just hanging around existence. But when children are born, they mamash know, their soul tells them, “You are only born in this world mamash to be completely here.” And they are waiting for encouragement so much, they are waiting so much. Why do children need love so much when they are little? And they not only need someone to love them… they mamash need this michuyav hamitziut [real existing], they really need this kind of existence. They want to mamash know that they are mamash here. Therefore the Gemara says that the first thing you do when a little boy or a little girl learns to talk is that you teach them Torah. Because the moment they can talk, their tongue wants to exist, and the tongue exists when you say words of Torah. When a little boy can shukkle [shake] a lulov [the palm branch waived on Succoth], his hands want to exist, his hands want to shake the lulov. Because each time he is doing a mitzvah he is mamash existing. On a very simple level, imagine if I feel the same before I’m putting on tefillin and after I’m putting on tefillin, then it was a very lousy putting on tefillin. Because each time I put on tefillin something has to happen to me, suddenly I am ‘mamash here’. Mamash here. To feel it So therefore Rebbe Nachman says, this is a very, very high level. Although I’m sure all of us have tasted it for a second, because it’s impossible not to – maybe on Rosh HaShanah you felt it, maybe one time when you were dancing with the Torah on Simchas Torah and you felt it, or maybe one time when you stood by the Holy Wall you really knew, “I am really here, there really is one G-d.”
Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach
