Last week, in Parashat Va'etchanan, we read the first paragraph of the Shema prayer. It provided us with the sequence: teach the children, then bind the tefillin. Children first. Tefillin second.
This week, in Eikev, we read the second paragraph of the Shema, and the order of responsibility flips. "You shall put these words of Mine upon your heart and upon your soul and bind them as a sign upon your hand... and you shall teach them to your children." Tefillin first. Children second.
Our great sages have long wrestled with this reversal. Some suggest it reflects a shift from the individual; from Moses speaking to each Israelite directly, to now speaking to the collective nation. Other scholars read it as movement from the ideal to the practical; from what should be, to what circumstance demands. Whatever the explanation, the commentators agree the order is not accidental. As the regular reader of this column knows, Torah does not repeat itself unintentionally, and it certainly doesn't reverse itself, without drawing our attention to an important lesson.
As a lifelong teacher, I interpret this reversal with a slight twist: last week's order teaches the instinct most of us already carry, that we put our children first. If a child is in danger, we step between them and the danger without a second thought. That instinct is holy, innate, and it is unquestionably correct.
But this week's order teaches something we resist: tefillin, bound to our own arm and our own head, are the symbol of our personal obligation to ourselves, our own learning, our own spiritual maintenance, our own wellbeing. And the Torah insists equally that there are necessary times for this to also come first, not because we matter more than our children, but because we cannot pass on what we do not first put on ourselves. Like the oxygen mask on the airplane, we are taught to secure our own before helping the child travelling beside us.
This is exactly the balance our Federation lives every day. Through our annual campaign, we put others first; the frail, the indigent, the isolated, here in Naples and across the Jewish world, because that instinct to protect the vulnerable is sacred and non-negotiable.
And at the very same time, we bind ourselves: we fund the JCRC, the Nina Iser Jewish Cultural Center, the FedStar, and the programs that carry our own community from childhood to adulthood; because a Jewish community that only gives outward, without securing its own safety, security, and longevity, will have nothing left to give the next generation. Because we are Stronger Together.
Shabbat Shalom.
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