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Bamidbar (Shabbat Sat. 19th May/5th Sivan) - Laibl's Weekly Parsha Video

572 views · Published 13 May 2018 · 1:47 · Indexed 28 October 2026

Channel: Spiritgrow · 2018 · Education

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Bamidbar (Shabbat Sat. 19th May/5th Sivan) 
Laibl's Weekly Parsha Video
When Does Education Begin? 

SUMMARY: Educationalists debate the merit of beginning formal education early in the child’s life or delaying such ‘pressure’ till a later stage. Our Parsha informs us that the Leviim began at 30 days of age! In truth education begins in the womb when the child is already distinguishing sounds, words, identities, and also mediating mother’s experiences, both positive an negative.  So in truth education beguns very early and we need to become educationalists from the child’s earliest years and even before birth.

Notes:
• When does education begin? The debate swirls around not pushing youngsters too hard, through to allowing the young sponges to absorb as much as possible from earliest age.
• In our Sedra, Bamidbar, the Levites begin their education from the age of 30 days. You wonder how can a thirty day old baby be able to learn anything whatsoever?  Yet we know full well that even prior to birth, the child-in-womb is absorbing information at an accelerated rate of knots, imbibing all the experiences of the mother and the mother’s environment.  We know the child-in-womb begins to recognize and distinguish different voices, sense stress and anxiety, even become horribly addicted via its mother’s substance- and alcohol-abuse, and much more. 
• In a sense, education begins from the moment of pregnancy.  The Mind/Body medicine model suggests that we affect our bodies down to the cellular levels with our thoughts and emotions – how much more so emerging life that is just being formed into human form.
• The Lubavitcher Rebbe pointed out that a mark made on a young sapling will become a large deformity as the tree grows. No less ‘the mark’ we leave on our youngsters. Education begins from the moment we choose to have a child. 
• Having a child is an awesome and tremendous responsibility.  Too many parents have a child for purely selfish reasons – a plaything, or keeping up with the Joneses, or escape from other responsibilities. Inevitably the child will rebel if these are the parental motivations. 
• Likewise, the child’s well being is disposed of unceremoniously in divorce proceedings when all too often the child becomes an object of ego-centred tug of war, or privy to the horrible and emotion-shattering words and behaviours that angry parents punish each other with – which can never be hidden from the child in the home.
• Education must be selfless, and education is most powerfully taught by example, by modeling, not by rules. And education starts early, whether we like it or not!

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