Part of the responsibilities of being a good parent is educating your children.   Before they leave for school in the morning we make sure to give our children a few coins to put in the tzeddakah box (charity) and that they finished all of their breakfast (my wife’s biggest concern).  My wife and I make sure to sit with our children when they return at the end of the day and ask them how their day went, what they learned and how much they ate (again, wife’s biggest concern).

Every Friday the two older children return home from school with a special bag that contains a folder from their teachers.  The folder has a synopsis of what they learned during the week and even a questionnaire for them so we can reinforce the lessons from the past several days.  On Friday evenings, after shull, kiddush and motzeh, we make it a ritual to read each child’s folder, aloud, at the Shabbos table. Believe it or not, they actually argue over who gets to go first.  My wife and I pray every week we remember the rotation, as to avoid a mini war at the table.

This ritual not only allows us, as parents, to review the children’s lessons, but it also tells the children to pay a little closer attention in school.  Their parents will be quizzing them on Fridays and neither one of them wants to look unprepared.

These few extra steps show the children that we not only care, but we are also involved.  Don’t get me wrong, this is not an easy task for us.  Everything is written in Hebrew.  My wife and I are immigrants in a foreign land.  Our kids often correct our pronunciations and give a little chuckle while doing so, but it’s all in good fun.

When I see videos bouncing around social media showing Arab children being taught to hate, it sickens me.  They are being taught the exact opposite of what my children are learning not only in school and in our home, but from society as a whole.  How are Israelis expected to try and make peace with a group of people who, at a very young age, are being taught to hate, kill, injure or maim them?  While my children are off learning how to be good human beings and how to make this world a better place through acts of kindness and charity, our “peace partner’s” children are being taught to use knives and bombs and any other means possible to murder my children.

The only way for us to achieve peace, and I am borrowing a quote from the late Golda Meir, is “when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate ours.”