Explaining "The King in the Field" to Children

the month of elul is the last month of the jewish year and it's the month that we use for preparation going into the first month of the year which is tishrei a month full of high holy days and there's a a martial a parable from the altar the balatanya in his say fellow torah which helps us to understand what this month of ello is all about now it's a very well-known parable it's become very well known but uh it doesn't hurt to hear it again so for the sake of clarity i'll just repeat the basic metaphor uh as described in lakutera of uh of the altarebe the idea is like this introduces the fact that elo the month is the time of his galaxy which in simple terms if you could say it that way means that the whole month is a time when hashem's 13 attributes of mercy meaning hashem's openness to be compassionate and forgiving is in a more revealed state than the rest of the year in other words it's a whole month where the energy of that month is the energy of forgiveness and opportunity and openness and approachability and the altera asks a question if indeed this whole month has this very special energy well you would think based on everything i know about the way jewish time works when you have a special day where there's a special spiritual energy it's generally a shabbos-like day of rest what we call a yamthaf or a hag so if the whole month is a month where there's this special energy the whole month should be one big yamtif so the alt explains with a parable and he says like this actually that's the whole point the whole point is that elle isn't one big yomtif alol doesn't have even one yamtif and it has shabbos because shabbos is shabbos the seventh day that pattern is embedded in the fabric of of reality but there's no jumped if there are no days of cessation of our regular ordinary routine to the contrary owls a day when we're in the regular world and that's the whole point because and then he explains once upon a time there was a king and the king was heading to his palace and on the way to the palace he went through a field and when he was going through the field all the people who were out in the field were able to go and approach him he was very approachable at that time when he was heading through uh the field and once the king gets into the palace now to see the king you're going to need an appointment not everyone can get an appointment and it's very exclusive so this is the opportunity when the king is going through the field this is when you can uh seize the chance to go over to him and approach him and to go over to him in your field clothes just as you are come as you are okay and dalton explains that the field is hello elves this big field it's not a yamchav it's not a holy day let alone a high holy day it's just regular life and in the regular life that we're living we can have this incredible experience of approaching hashem and expressing our desire to be in a relationship with hashem and to have hashem reciprocate that with a smiling face now after that phase of being in the field the king does go into the palace which is tishrei the high holy days but the beauty of it is if you already approached the king when he was walking through the field now you're set you don't have to worry so much oh i can't get an appointment to see the king when he's sitting in his pent office suite in the corner office okay no problem i already approached it we already made a deal we already negotiated terms everything's fine so i don't even have to worry about the fact whether or not i can get into the palace i have everything set up i could i spoke to him out in the parking lot don't worry it's all good right i set it up all right fine so that is the uh that is the metaphor of the king in the field all right now the question is how do we teach this to children can we teach this to children and and the answer is uh yes of course of course and not only we can teach this to children we need to teach this to children how else should children prepare for the high holy days how else should children seize the opportunity of the month of elul if we don't teach them this parable of course we should teach it to them and and teach everything that it stands for and everything that it conveys albeit on a child's level so that's what i want to speak about uh right now is how to teach the king in the field parable to a child in a meaningful way now happens to be that i don't have to make this up sometimes we have to guess well how would you do it yeah sometimes you do have to figure out how am i going to teach this i mean we do this all the time by the way when we teach adults we do the same thing right you learn something and you want to give it over to a certain audience and you have to figure out how do i make it accessible how do i make it relevant and so for for a child all right so it's a little bit different process but it's basically the essentially the same idea of taking an idea and figuring out how to package it and communicate it so yes of course we could teach malik basalt that we could teach the king and the field parable to children and we have to teach it to children and and if we had to figure it out for ourselves we would figure it out for ourselves i'm telling you we're in luck because in this case we don't even have to figure it out for ourselves because the rabbit told us exactly how to do it so that's what i want to share with you today i have three series that i want to share with you the first one i think i'll go in chronological order is from shabbos parishes that means it was the shabbos when they read par the parsha uh it was the shabbos blessing the incoming new month of alo and the year was tough shalom and give it was 19 1973 the summer of 73. okay so in this circa at this fabric in this shabbos fabregan the rebe says the the famous marshall the famous parable from the altered from the cotera and then proceeds to explain that not only can we explain this to a child but in some ways a child can relate to this parable even better than an adult can relate to it even better than an adult so how so first of all i want to just preface by saying before the dub explains how to explain it uh the best says that i'm just looking here in the text that bavaria certainly this parable is relevant even to small children the rabbit doesn't just say children but to small children if provided be if we explain it to them as is necessary meaning you do the adequate amount of explanation and with highest highest is with excitement with passion in other words if you're passionate about it when you explain it to them it's much more likely that they're going to understand i was in 770 the other day and the came over to me and he said i'm starting a new schlutz in a particular town a certain type of a community he described to him the demographic of the people and what kinds of things they're into he says i want to start a new shirt i want to teach them what should i study with them and i said what should you study with them whatever you're excited about because at the end of the day people don't flock to a text or a subject matter they're drawn to a person to a relationship and when you are on fire when you're excited about something everyone else will be excited as well so i said teach whatever you're excited about i tell them don't worry about it it could be a perk tanya it could be safe for my mother it could be whatever you're excited about okay so that's that's the first thing we have to get excited we have to get excited about this idea and then we have to explain it to our children like it's something that's actually interesting to us okay now how do we explain to them what do we explain to them so here's two points this is from the secret of shabbos one thing that abba says when you explain to the child this metaphor you should have in mind that from a child's perspective there's a detail here that actually may be even more meaningful for a child than it is for an adult and that is that an adult he hears this metaphor okay the king's in the field now so this is my chance he'll get to the palace and i'll have to schedule an appointment and who knows if they'll even give me an appointment it's gonna be much more difficult to approach the king okay but here's the thing an adult at least is in the category of someone who may actually gain admittance to the palace a child children children are often excluded from entering certain places that are grown up places children know what it's like to be told you're a kid you can't come in here i was this morning i was having my coffee before i headed off to davenink and i asked uh i was talking to my wife about this sikha and uh one of our daughters was uh was in the kitchen there so i think she's uh eight years old and i said to her isn't that what life is like for a kid all the time you're always being told oh you can't come in here no kids allowed yeah that's always happening i said so think about this the king's about to go in the palace once the king's in the palace an adult it's hard for an adult to get in but maybe the adult could get in a kid a kid knows he can't get in there's no way they're not letting kids in right but the king's in the field ah now's my opportunity to get to the king so a child can relish that idea and savor that idea of the king is accessible now in the field i can get to him now a child can get that so much better than an adult because a child knows that idea of just not being able to gain entry to certain places it's interesting that ebb also mentions that the adult could even think to himself if i can't get in in any other way at least maybe i could apply to be one of the king's cabinet maybe it's it's not so likely but i could be uh one of the sorem i could be one of the uh the the uh the ministers in the the king's government and then i would work in the palace and i would have access to the king in the palace a kid has no such uh illusion that what he's done a kid a kid can't be hired to work to work in the palace it's never going to happen okay so that's one thing and when you're explaining it to your child you can really build that up because they know what it's like to not be able to gain entry somewhere and then to be able to approach the king before he gets to that place that's inaccessible it's just all the more exciting all right now here's another thing that says being caught in legal here's another difference between an adult and a child where the child actually again will appreciate the malach basade parable much more than an adult and that is and this just struck me i i hope this doesn't sound crass or cavalier to say this but it always astounds me when the rabbit describes and there's many places where the debbie describes the perspective of a child and you're talking about a sikh there's a tough gimmel so the the rabbit this time is is 70 years old i can't remember what i what i felt like as a child until i look at this and then that eva is 70 and describing what it felt like and how the world looked to us when we were children and then i'm like yeah that's right that's what it was like how is someone who's 70 years old and who didn't have his own biological children how is he able to relate so easily to what a child's perspective of life is like it always blows me away and then honestly my only answer to it is that it's the same way that ebb was able to relate to everybody to people from all walks of life scholars and laymen and leaders and entrepreneurs and and politicians and rabbis and men and women and young and old how did that ever relate to everyone it it it's it's a spiritual thing it's what we call the shama claus an aggregate soul that is connected to to all the other souls and i guess from that perspective relating to a child is is um from a rebbe's perspective is just uh another form of that type of unique empathy that an ashama claus is capable of of course that ebba can think about what life is like from the perspective of a child but it's just astounding when you read it because it's so much like how did that ever know did ever spend his whole day with children like he didn't have his own biological children like maybe he would tell me he he taught pre-1a and he was he was dealing with children all day long okay fine so maybe i would believe it but for somebody who's running a massive operation with all the organizational duties that ebba has dealing with adults who i guess sometimes act like children but then also the scholarship that ever steeped in all of these these lofty spiritual matters um preparing for the fabregans and editing uh the the the uh the texts the books and to be able to relate to how a child experiences life it's just to me it's astounding um so listen to what the rabbit says an adult may be in a situation such as described in the parable where the king is in the field and the and the adult has an opportunity to approach the king because the king is now accessible and yet the adult may not seize the opportunity because of self-consciousness says because the the person feels such reverence for the king he hesitates to approach the king a child however what that ever says first of all that ever says commissioner we see for ourselves it's empirically obvious anyone who's seen children although i wouldn't have thought it on my own but once that ever says it you're like yeah that's so true children don't refrain they don't hold back that when they see something or someone that they know is a big deal they don't go hide they run straight to that interesting engaging exciting thing so the parable of the king being accessible in the field is actually more something a child can relate to in a certain respect than an adult because a child could actually see himself in that field saying yeah there's the king i'm running straight to him and then the devil brings in a proof from torah from a madrish there's a medusa parikh aleph that describes the childhood of maisha bain or the infancy when maisha robena was a little child he was raised in pharaoh's palace we all know the famous story how basia the daughter of of pare rescued the baby maesha from from the basket floating on the nile and she brought him into the palace to raise him in the palace so there's a mattress that says this is a famous every little kid learns this in in kindergarten that maisha would sit on paris lap and he would grab his crown because misha already had regal aspirations he had that that royal uh personality from birth so he wanted to grab the crown he was constantly grabbing the crown now para felt threatened by this and he said why is this kid grabbing my crown is he is he a usurper he said he's a future uh uh rebel he's gonna overthrow the the monarchy so if you know padre had three advisors three famous advisors um bila marosha the wicked beelum the the sorcerer uh eof job the one who famously suffered he was tested by god and yesterday yesterday the future father-in-law of of maestrobeno and uh there are other madrashima about this tribunal of of advisers about how bilaam would vote for bad stuff against the jews and eof would would abstain he would be silent so midakin negan hashem was silent through his suffering yesterday was usually the good guy he would try to do something good for the jews and then i guess part of his reward was that he became a jew but uh it's interesting israel says to para no no no no he's not grabbing the crown because he's drawn to the symbol of monarchy it's not like he's trying to take power for himself it's because it's shiny he's just a baby he'll grab anything that's shiny you want to see put a glowing coal in front of him he'll grab that too but you want to know something my didn't grab the glowing call he was not interested in the glowing call he was interested in the crown he wanted he was grabbing the crown because it was because it was the crown he wanted the gun he didn't want the coal so what happened if he wouldn't have grabbed the coal then padre would have said to yesterday uh you see he didn't grab the coal he really is trying to steal my crown so the malach gabriel the archangel gabriel came and he pushed misha's hand to grab the coal and put it in his mouth and that's when he singed his lips and he became covered he became speech impaired from that time but at any rate this is the source that when a child sees something good he doesn't hide from it he he goes straight for it now i want to share with you a uh a story and it's just such a touching story and just a little vignette a little slice of life but uh this happened in uh i believe there was a mother and she went to 770 on shabbos to say good shabbos to the rabbit okay and she brought with her her four-year-old son now i think it's a public thing i think it was actually printed in a in a churra in a wedding souvenir which my friend uh david zaklikowski from acidic archives shared with me so i think it's okay to say who the four-year-old boy was he was a little menachem levy and when his mother said good shabbos to the rabbit i have to understand that all you have to do is watch videos of that ever coming out of 770 and you're going to see people gave that rabbit space that ever can walk into 770 was packed and the sea would part right everyone gave space because that there's that all there's that reference and also you should note like even when you see videos of dollars sydney they would they would stand in a very reverent way um and they would never shake that up his hand they wouldn't sometimes strangers people from other communities who had different customs and different ideas about azadek they would they would touch the rabbit shake that up his hand hosted would never i mean sometimes you you see that barely want to look into his eyes there's just there's this feeling of of reverence like you don't stare into the sun sort of thing and uh if you understand that cultural context then you'll understand the significance of this four-year-old laboratory boy walking straight up to the dev on chavez and he stuck out his hand and he shook that out of his hand and he said good shabbos rabbit good shabbos rabbit shook it up his hand okay after shabbos the mother was uh she was so embarrassed about her child's conduct she went to masquirus to the secretariat and she left a ladder there begging the dab before forgiveness and expressing her pain that was the word that she used that she was deeply pained by this breach of protocol this breach of etiquette breach of decorum how her son didn't know any better he didn't know and he went over and he shook it up his hand so there's a minor an answer that uh it's dated thomas yeah i said yeah that's right 1978. and where the woman where the mother wrote i was deeply pained about what my child did that ever wrote hare adaraba to the contrary quite to the contrary oh contraire gaetham this caused a lot of pleasure this caused me a lot of delight there's no way to quantify there's no way to estimate gaidel halavius vapchitos fatmimos vamithius shall yelled the great heartfelt quality of a of a child and the simplicity of a child and the the purity of a child and the in the truth of a child how many words in here is it amethyst you have four different uh qualities here it's impossible to describe adequately adequately a child's uh qualities in those areas the halawa ains ebig dalem and if only adults would have even a smidgen of that even a little bit of that trace of that if adults would have a little bit of that so uh that was the answer oh and then one other thing what the rebbe says uh in this response is [Music] especially that this happened remember i told you it happened on shabbos it was shabbos parshas pinchus shah shabbos parsha's pinkrest that year was the first year of the three weeks sometimes it's mata sometimes it's pinchus but whatever the first shabbos of the three weeks is there's a special half torah called well there's three half totals three weeks of hators the place the three um have torahs of tribulation of uh calamity so the first week which that week was the haftara that they read that week and parches pinchas is a is a a selection from yo from the prophet jeremiah where he speaks about hashem tells the prophet remind the jews uh speak to them about khasid the kindness of your youth speaking directly to the jewish people and second person uh also in the feminine because we're describing the jewish people in the feminine as a like a bride who followed her beloved out into the wilderness this is the the that it describes there the the posix says i remind you i hereby remind you how you followed after me in a wilderness and a land that had not been planted in other words the jewish people didn't tell hashem where are you taking us are there any restaurants there i mean it's an uncivilized place no when hashem took us out of mitzrayim when he took us out of egypt we just went with him we said wherever you're going we're going it doesn't matter where we're with you and that's called khasid is the kindness of your youth so the devil says in this answer to this mother you're apologizing to me that your little four-year-old wanted to come over and shake my hand it's beautiful it was such a sincere display and it's so appropriate to this shabbos of shabbos parches uh pinchas of the first week of the three weeks because we read in half torah that hashem told your me go remind the jews of khasid nurayek about the love that your youthfulness displayed that when you were childlike when you were innocent and childlike you showed such kindness such love for hashem so um that's another aspect of remember we're talking about malach basada that that's another aspect of malachi masada the king of the field that's even more applicable to children than adults because the child is actually the one who would go for it he sees the king i love the king i'm going to go talk to the king also interesting i should bring this out because it's easy to miss this it's just a line it's just a line here in this circle where the ebba says that the child of course would have to have had it explained to him previously about the preciousness of the king because on his own he might not understand that however if it were explained to him then automatically bedelic melo automatically the childlike reaction would be oh this is the great king they told me about go right to him so it's interesting first of all the opposite reactions of children and adults the adult is going to run from the great king they told them about the child's going to run to the great king they told them about but another point here is that in order for the child to have that reaction the adults would would have had to prepare the child so it's important if we want our child to feel like the malachi someone worth running to you have to tell your child about the malik and tell them how great the malach is but don't be afraid because kids are not like us if you're going to tell them how great the king is how awesome the king is you're thinking oh no maybe i'll tell how awesome the king is he'll run away from the king no no he's a kid tell him how awesome the king is he's going to run straight to him okay now i want to share with you another thing this i originally found in one of my favorite spot him it's called the reberetsu kinder and uh it's mostly siches to see hashem rallies that's mostly what it is it's that ebb is speaking to assemblies of children which is quite unique in the history of jewish leadership to have uh a leader of claudius addressing not just groups that include children but groups entirely made up of children and to have special addresses just for them just sichu's just for the children um so that's what derebiretzukinder it's that's yiddish for the rebbe speaks to children but it's they have it in in english they have it in hebrew they have it in french they have it in a lot of languages and i want to highly recommend it something that in our home uh we learn a lot with the kids so in kinder uh the section is hedish alol and it's on page 30. there's uh there's a section called alol men is we're coming back from summer camp which is the field and we're going into the city in other words reframing the whole field and city parable as the child returning from camp going back to school so this actually is composed of two different circles and you'd base a lot of members okay 1988 and 82. so i took a look at the original what they have in common um they're not sifus hashem but what they are is they're the camps on the final day and this was something that was was sort of a a tradition for many years that the last day of camp there were times when the camps would come to 770 to for a visit like in the middle of camp but uh this is specifically on the last day of camp so there was uh there was a tradition of on the last day of camp so the campers and the staff would come to 770 and the rabbit would speak to them sort of as a an official transition from now you're ending camp and you're going back home so that's what these two addresses are you'd have and and you'd base ello uh tough mem bass and uh i know at least in one of them it says clearly in the hanok in the transcript that it was parkesville gangnam parksville and campomona so there was a group of boys and also a group of girls not sure the other year was the same camps but at anyway it was the same idea that the children had just finished camp and they were privileged to hear directly and address to them from the rabbit so just again astounding how an adult is relating to the perspective of a child in such a such an empathic way the rabbit describes in these these circles here the whole melech basade it's incredible is really perfectly timed to describe what's going on in the rhythm of a child's life exactly at this point in the year because owl for an adult what's up you know people ask me sometimes questions like oh is your work day different in the summer than in the winter what i don't know i mean what am i a child i mean since i've been an adult summer winter does it doesn't matter what season it is it's a you work every day that's what it is um but children if you remember what childhood is like summer is a different pace summer is really different your life is totally different and if you go away to camp then literally you're picking up from one environment which is totally familiar you're at home go to school you go back home go to school and that's your routine and then you break that whole routine and you leave that and you go to this whole other environment called camp so that's a really big change if you're a child that's a summer is really different now the beauty of summer camp that ever spoke about this many many many many times is the immersive factor that when you're in camp you're surrounded by jewish things and so therefore it's very easy to get inspired and to take on good practices so the whole advantage of summer camp is it's really it's a time where it's relatively speaking easy to [Music] get enthused get get inspired and to start to do things on a higher level now what do you see you see that precisely the fact that summer camp is so conducive to inspiration uh that itself is often followed by a certain struggle or let down when the child comes back from camp think about how many children come back from camp and they're on fire hitas and say for mitzvahs and they're so excited and then how long does that last until like the first week of school second week of school and then the drudgery of regular day-to-day life sort of sets back in and then all that camp spirit is a thing of the past so that ebb is speaking to the children and saying look malach is your marshall you think think about this the alt that ever wrote this parable the king in the field to over 200 years ago to just to describe the kabbalistic concept of his galaxy to the the spiritual quality of roshan and yem kippur and now comes the seven generations later and says yes and yeah all of that's true and let me spell out on a on another level let's bring it even closer to uh relevancy and let's just explain it like this what's the what's the sod though what's the feld the field well literally quite literally camp camp is literally you're out in the field you're out in nature in the big wide open place especially if you're a kid from brooklyn you go go up to the to the country you're literally in the field okay so the saudi the field is camp and during camp it's so easy to get inspired because you're just immersed in this inspiring atmosphere and that's like the king being in the field it's so easy to approach the king accessible easy but what happens is the king goes to the palace oh now the king's in the palace uh now it's a little bit more difficult a lot more difficult how i'm going to access the king that's like school that's like the rest of the year now the king's in the palace it's like how do i get inspired during the regular year in camp it was easy to get inspired during the regular school year it's very hard to get inspired just like it's hard to go see the king once he's already in the palace so here's the beauty here's what the devil says the king is in the field on his way to the palace to prepare you for the king being in the palace that if you connect to the king properly when he's in the field and approachable this is gonna serve you well later on when he's in the palace and he's not approachable in other words if you get excited in camp when it's easy to get excited and then you hold on to that inspiration and understand that the whole point of the field experience the camp experience is to unpack it slowly over the rest of the school year so when you head into the the city the capital city which is like being in school or for us grown-ups as like the high holidays but for a kid it's the transition back to the school year you have this camp experience to carry you and to lift you and to unpack from when you are in the in the rest of the year when you've when you've left the excitement of camp so really amalgam in a really accessible way is like this [Laughter] [Music] what is the field camp what is the palace school so if you can get excited about hashem when you're in camp and have in mind that the whole purpose of that is to carry it with you when you're in school then you're going to have an easier time in the in the school year just like if you make sure to make your connection with the king when he's in the field this is gonna carry you when the king is in the palace i mean i don't even go to camp but that that that's a great marshal what is a muscle after all what's the whole point of a muscle a metaphor is to take a lofty concept and to make it accessible by bringing it down into the familiar so the al-taraba took the idea of yud gimmel mira his gallows and he turned that into a king in a field and the rabbit takes that another notch to uh to relevancy and says uh yeah it's it's it's camp the king is in camp but if you met the king when you're in camp then you're gonna be okay when the when you're in school okay so i hope that this inspires parents in the way that they will communicate to their children i hope also in addition to that or probably even as a prerequisite to that that this has inspired parents the way they speak to their own inner child the way you speak to the child that that each one of us still is and hashem's eyes bona matamla shimola kehm we're still his beautiful sweet lovable pure innocent children so if you can speak to your child your inner child about these beautiful ways of understanding the king in the field and this time of year this should give us that highest that i've been described that's necessary for conveying it well to your actual children and i want to wish everybody to have a really awesome of just excitement and and spiritual discovery and spiritual wonder and a feeling of being engaged in your relationship with hashem that's just so real that it becomes automatic almost to go straight into tishrei with all of the the adequate reverence that we need but it should just be like a natural extension of this sensitivity that we're we're able to easily access this month while the king is in the field okay so uh and especially if your kids are coming back from camp right now this is an important talk you know if you could bring them to 770 and the rabbit could welcome them back from camp and explain to them kids malaqua isn't just in the books it's your life camp was the field school is the palace get ready you left the field you're going into the palace so if we can't bring them to the deb in 770 to tell them that then they say mamash you have to be the deba's representative you have to tell your kid that that's what's happening right now and it's no coincidence everything is that this happens at this time of year it happens always right around now when uh ello is coming okay a sweet healthy happy new year for you and your kids