Assimilating Torah Truths
A French couple sat before me. The woman was overcome with tears and could not utter a single word. When she finally calmed down, she recounted the following:
Her only daughter had traveled to Israel to volunteer on a kibbutz for two weeks. There she became acquainted with an Arab. She wanted now to convert to Islam and marry him!
I shuddered at her tale. I asked, “How did your daughter get interested in the Moslem religion? It is certainly terrible that she wants to marry an Arab; it is understandable that he wooed her. But what possessed her to convert? You live in a Jewish environment; what is pulling her to exchange her Jewish faith with that of the gentiles?”
“It’s all my fault,” she confessed. “In our home, there is no sign of anything Jewish. We do not observe the Torah, Shabbat, nothing. Moreover, about three months ago, on a Friday night, there was a program on Islam broadcast on television. Our daughter, who was home at the time, watched with avid interest. The next day, she announced, ‘Mom, Islam is the true religion!’
“I was terribly shaken by her words. I began shouting at her, saying that she was spouting utter nonsense. How dare she say such awful things?! But she kept her ground. ‘Don’t yell at me,’ she said. ‘You never taught me a thing about Judaism. I am therefore ignorant of my religion. I have now become enlightened to the Moslem religion, and I am certain that this is the one for me.’” The woman ended her tale in a torrent of tears.
When the authority of Torah is not held in esteem from childhood, children will grow up wild, ready to accept authority from any religion which comes their way. They will have no connection with Judaism. But when parents instill love for Torah and mitzvot into their children from a young age, their children grow up as true believers and do not seek to graze in foreign fields.
