Thread by @rabbisacks

Here is a thread from my Covenant & Conversation essay on #MatotMasei called "Priorities". You can read it in full here: bit.ly/335HhZJ and download the accompanying Family Edition here: bit.ly/2YE0X3o. #ShabbatShalom & #ChodeshTov

It is hard to think of any other religion or civilisation that has so predicated its very existence on putting children and their education first.

There have been affluent Jewish communities in the past that built magnificent synagogues – e.g. Alexandria in the 1st centuries of the Common Era. Yet because they did not put children first, they contributed little to the Jewish story. They flourished briefly, then disappeared.

Moses’ implied rebuke to the tribes of Reuben and Gad [over the dispute about which part of the land they will settle in] is not a minor historical detail but a fundamental statement of Jewish priorities. Property is secondary, children primary.

Civilisations that value the young stay young. Those that invest in the future have a future.

It is not what we own that gives us a share in eternity, but those to whom we give birth and the effort we make to ensure that they carry our faith and way of life into the next generation.