It was one of those perfect Fridays. The house was clean, the Shabbos food was already cooked and warmed in the oven, the children freshly bathed or showered and dressed, and my husband left to shul early, leaving me to just finish getting myself ready and light the shabbos candles.
Then I come out of my room to the playroom.
Three ghosts greeted me. My children. Covered from head to toe in flour.
The playroom floor was covered in flour. Not the “I’m sorry but a little bit spilled, Mommy” kind of flour pile, but the “oops, but isn’t the playroom a great place to make a sandbox?” kind of flour dump.
As I processed this, I saw a child entering the scene with my sugar container, and he happily proceeded to pour it on top of the pile. I turned to the kitchen…and found cracked eggs on the counter and floor. The raw kind. And time stood still.

In this week’s Torah portion, the Jewish people are given the commandment to appoint a king. Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks ztz”l, points out that there is only one man in the Torah who is commanded to be humble: the king. “When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law . . . It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to fear the Lord his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees and not consider himself better than his fellow Israelites…”

Rabbi Sacks explains that what Moshe understood when tasking the Jewish people with this commandment to appoint a king, and the king’s responsibilities to stay true to the Torah, is that there are only two ways of creating order: either by power from the outside or self-restraint from within, and the Jewish nation was tasked with living by self-restraint based on knowledge of the Torah’s ways and intrinsic motivation and commitment to living by those ways. They themselves would appoint a king and the king himself would be bound by the A-mighty.

How can we create such knowledge and commitment? By teaching our children from a young age.
So I retreated to my room. I did not speak to my children, as I was certain self-restraint would not be reflected in my words just then. When I finally left my room, I was greeted by a scene that had progressed more than I could have imagined. My preschooler was pouring a cup of water onto the flour layered over the carpet.

Self restraint? How?

Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev once said: “Master of the universe, in Russia there is a Czar, an army and a police force, but still in Russian houses you can find contraband goods. The Jewish people have no Czar, no army and no police force, but try finding bread in a Jewish home on Pesach!”

We practice the ways of the Torah because it is life itself.

My children are too precious to break with words and if they are going to learn self-restraint in speech and action, it surely must start with me. I don’t think I was able to think this through logically yet, but I knew it was still not time for a productive conversation, so I put the two youngest into the stroller and left the house on a walk.
The conversation happened later, but I am grateful that I was able to remember that teaching my children self restraint (including in their complex relationship with flour, sugar, water and the like!) starts with me. I learned that when time stands still, that is my warning to stand still as well- and take a moment, or multiple, to be sure that I will react in the way the Torah teaches us. It is in these moments that our children may gain the greatest lessons our children will ever learn.

Wishing you a beautiful Shabbos!