The Piacesner Rebbe on learning like a child

Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, the Piacesner Rebbe, became a Hasidic rabbi before World War I. Described as “passionate about education, stressing positive methods that would create connection and joy,” he was imprisoned in the Warsaw ghetto and murdered in a work camp in 1943. His writings were saved by being buried in a milk canister in the ghetto. This comes from his book, A Student's Obligation (Chovot haTalmidim), part of a handbook he wrote for young boys who had not been raised learning Torah. What he says applies to learning and maturing in general.

Please remember, pious student, how many great and wonderful people are jealous of you. They yearn, saying, “Who will give me now [the vitality] of a youth and a young person, to devote and give the whole day to God.” How many of them yearn to be in a body and soul that longs for God, but their years are hard upon them.

Everything remains in your hands. Will you lose this precious gem, saying, “I will serve God when I am older; I will repair [my fallen qualities] when I am mature”?

The Mishnah says: “One who studies as a child, to what may he be compared? To ink written upon a fresh paper. One who studies in old age — to ink written upon a paper that has been erased.” [Avot 4:20] So it is in all matters: in straightforward study, in Hasidic [devotion], and in repairing the soul.

Many people know about worship and healing the soul, yearning and even forcing themselves to do it. Yet they waste their years in just compelling and pressuring themselves, and so forth.

Such is not the case with you, delightful children. If you begin in your childhood and work on this in your adolescence, then [holiness] will become your flesh and blood. Even if you fall, you will not slide backward. Even if you must sometimes cease [the work], you will not become mired in the swamp. . . .

Faithful student, guard your childhood and be zealous in your youth. How pleasant is childhood, and how sweet is youth blessed by God! It is like a river of honey, like the river that runs from Eden to the person across years as a thirst-quenching stream.

Even in old and hoary age, its vitality remains vigorous, its elixirs grow and flourish. The body grows old as its powers weaken, but the fire remains; [the body] is warmed by its heat and set aflame by its fire. What fool would lose this, what crazy person would defile and stop up the source of his life?

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