The Talmud (Niddah 30b) states that when a baby is in the womb, "he is taught the entire Torah. However, as soon as he enters the air of this world, an angel comes and strikes him on his mouth, causing him to forget the entire Torah."
They just don’t make things the way they used to in the good old days. And whatever happened to service, and, “the customer is always right.” Nowadays everything is disposable and if you ask a clerk for help they act as if they’re doing you a favor and wish you had left them alone. And how about kids today? When I was a kid my parents told me to do something I did it. Why don’t kids do what they’re told now?
You’ve probably heard people say those things, I know I have. Are these statements true? I guess they fall into the category of, “all generalizations are false, including this one.” Some products are more reliable than they used to be, and some seem to have obsolescence built in. Some store personnel are friendly and helpful and some are impatient and even curt. It’s only human to be inconsistent in how we perform and what we produce.
But angels aren’t human. Don’t they always perform precisely according to expectation and produce the desired result? Apparently not. The prayer u’nesaneh tokef tells us that even the angels tremble on the day of judgment. The commentators point out an explicit misstep on the part of the angels who were assigned to rescue Lot and destroy Sodom. They were punished for saying that they were going to destroy Sodom rather than explaining that they had been sent to notify Lot that G-d was about to destroy Sodom.
It would be fascinating and probably quite enlightening to study the entire concept of angels, what they are, how they function, how can they be less than infallible. Unfortunately, such excursus is beyond the scope of this article. Suffice it to say that there is one characteristic of angels I would urge parents to emulate with their children as often as possible. Angels don’t multitask.
I’m not sure if it is the same angel who is tasked with teaching Torah in the womb who causes the child to forget all of it when he emerges. The problem is, whichever angel is supposed to cause the child to forget all of the Torah doesn’t seem to be completing his assigned task. We know he hits every baby at birth; we each have a philtrum between our nose and our upper lip as a souvenir of the event. But I often get the following complaint from parents:
I told her what to do and she didn’t do it, so I told her she has to do as she’s told, and she still didn’t do it. Doesn’t she have to do what’s she’s told? How come when I was a kid I had to do what I was told; why doesn’t she?
I find the question puzzling. I think that by definition, the term have to means there is no alternative. And I think that’s really rare. When we say, “you have to stop at a red light,” we mean that the choice of stopping when the light is red is a safer choice and prevents possible unpleasant consequences, not that you have no choice but to stop at a red light. The Torah teaches us that we have b’chira chafshis, free will. If we weren’t capable of making poor choices there be no such thing as a good choice. If it were impossible to fail there would be no joy in success. Yet parents find it hard when their children sometimes fail. When disappointment becomes frustration, and concern turns into fear that this child will never turn out quite right, parents truly wish the child had to do what they know is best for him. So I reassure them that failure is an event, not a state of being, both for their child and for them. I remind them that our role as parents is to help children identify good choices and learn how to avoid making poor choices.
And I tell them that it looks like when the angel hits these babies so that they’ll forget all of the Torah they had learned he doesn’t hit them hard enough. They all still remember one Torah lesson: b’chira chafshis.
Complain to the angel.