Shabbat Shalom From Rabbi Eitan
Weiner-Kaplow
Shabbat Vayetze
Torah - Genesis 28:10-32:3 / Haftarah -
Hosea 12:13-14:10
How do we deal with
dishonesty. What should we do when
someone has not told us the truth and behaved honestly? In this week’s Torah portion, Jacob is
deceived twice by his father in law, Lavan.
In Jacob’s earlier years, he might have acted with deceit in return. But this time, Jacob kept his temper and
expained things clearly and logically to Lavan.
He kept his dignity and acted fairly and responsibly.
As parents, relatives and
teachers, how do we respond when children stretch the truth? The children’s psychologist Haim Ginott shared
this teaching in his book Between Parent and Child.
“Our policy toward lying is clear:
On the one hand, we should not play District Attorney or ask for confessions or
make a federal case out of a tall story.
On the other hand, we should not hesitate to call a spade a spade. When we find that the child’s library book is
overdue, we should not ask, ‘Have you returned the book to the library? Are you
sure? How come it’s still on your desk?’
Instead, we state ‘I see your library book is overdue…’ In short, we do not provoke the child into
defensive lying nor do we intentionally set up opportunities for lying. When a child does lie, our reaction should be
not hysterical and moralistic but factual and realistic. We want our child to learn that there is no
need to lie to us.”
Shabbat Shalom.
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