כל המלמד את בן חבירו תורה כאילו יולדו

Reading Rabbi Prince's excellent summary of the laws of pizza, I noticed the anecdote about his son, and thought, "you're lucky, many kids would come home and say YOU'RE doing something wrong - Morah told me.  Kids are presented with two different religious authority figures on a daily basis - their parents and teachers.  When the two conflict, it gets complicated, and confusing for the student.  I noticed that there is an article about this in the new Hakirah journal, by noted psychologist Dr. Aharon Hersh Fried entitled The Respect We Owe Each Other—For the Sake of Our Children.  Unfortunately, they only make the first two pages of articles in the current volume available on line, and in this case, it is a reprint of a somewhat angry letter from a parent, but as someone who has been on both sides of the issue, I look forward to reading it soon.

Ideally, there should be a third significant religious influence on young Jews, the shul Rabbi, but I find that with some important exceptions, it is difficult to foster that relationship.  I have always made a consultation with their shul Rabbi a mandatory piece of my students' halacha project, and have been thanked by local Rabbanim who appreciate the opportunity to interact with their young members.  As I mentioned, I hope that we will soon use this blog as another way to try to give you a comfortable opportunity to talk about real, issues that you think about with the Rabbanim in your community.