Reply To: Inappropriate "Jewish" Periodical

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#793193
oomis
Participant

For instance, in a recent interview, Mrs. Lichtenstein of Hamodia and Rebbetzin Esther Farbstein of EY, were asked the appropriate age to expose children to information about the holocaust. I believe they said around 6th, 7th or 8th grade. “

So perhaps they should also not learn Sefer Shmos (Paraoh tortured the Jews and threw babies into th Nile), or about Haman, or Shimshon Hagibor whose eyes were bored out, until they are much older, also.

Maybe little kids should NEVER be taught the medrash about Avraham Avinu and the furnace into which Nimrod threw him. Or that Yosef’s brothers threw him in a pit.

There are realities of life, and one of them is that people can be incredibly cruel and inhumane to each other. Children CANNOT and should not be shielded from these things, though they can be explaine ona level that they can comprehend without getting nightmares. My father O”H explained the Holocaust to a group of Kindergartners (my daughter’s class), in order to show them a klaf of Torah that he had rescued that had been desecrated by the Nazis Y”Sh. He started off by asking them if any of them knew the story of Paraoh in Mitzrayim. when all of them raised their hands, he went on to explain that when their Bubbies and Zaydies were young, there was another man who was like Paraoh and his name was Hitler. He did bad things to the Jews (and then my dad took out the klaf and showed them). And he said, “The bad people took our Holy Sefer Torah and they scribbled all over it! Is that the right thing to do to a Torash????” The kids were spellbound. And they didn’t get scared, they had questions for him, like did we take a gun and shoot the bad people or put them in jail, and they were relieved to hear that the bad people got their just desserts. Kids are more resilient than we think, and they cannot be kept in a vacuum, because that does not prepare them for the real world. JMO