וּכְלָלָא הוּא דְּכׇל מִצְוַת עֲשֵׂה שֶׁהַזְּמַן גְּרָמָא נָשִׁים פְּטוּרוֹת? הֲרֵי מַצָּה שִׂמְחָה וְהַקְהֵל, דְּמִצְוַת עֲשֵׂה שֶׁהַזְּמַן גְּרָמָא הוּא, וְנָשִׁים חַיָּיבוֹת.
Is it a general principle that women are exempt from all time-bound, positive commandments without exception? But there is the commandment to eat matza on Passover, the commandment of rejoicing on a Festival, and the commandment of assembly in the Temple courtyard once every seven years during the festival of Sukkot following the Sabbatical Year, all of which are time-bound, positive commandments, and nevertheless, women are obligated to perform them.
for Video Shiur click here to listen: Psychology of the DAF Eruvin 27
חגיגה ג, א
(דברים לא, יב) הקהל את העם האנשים והנשים והטף אם אנשים באים ללמוד נשים באות לשמוע טף למה באין כדי ליתן שכר למביאיהן אמר להם מרגלית טובה היתה בידכם ובקשתם לאבדה ממני
They said to him that Rabbi Elazar ben Azarya interpreted the following verse: “Assemble the people, the men and the women and the little ones” (Deuteronomy 31:12). This verse is puzzling: If men come to learn, and women, who might not understand, come at least to hear, why do the little ones come? They come in order for God to give a reward to those who bring them, i.e., God credits those who bring their children to the assembly. Rabbi Yehoshua said to them: This good pearl of wisdom was in your hands, and you tried to conceal it from me?
תוספות שם
כדי ליתן שכר למביאיהן. ועל זה סמכו להביא קטנים בבית הכנסת:
In order to give reward to those that bring them: And upon this, [people] have relied to bring small children to the synagogue.
There is an idea that your children can absorb the atmosphere without actually being yet of age for the mitzvah of chinuch. This requires a sense of the holy. Holiness is a human emotional and psychological experience that can be accessed at any age, even in infancy, just as one can access any emotion at any age. What is this sense of holy?
Rudolph Otto, in the Idea of the Holy (1928) described the complex feelings that accompany the idea of the divine as a "numinous consciousness," a non rational experience that is difficult to put into words. Numinous consciousness, he believed, contains a polarity of feelings. There is, on the one hand, a sense of fascination that attracts the individual to the sanctilled object and elicits feelings of love, adoration, and gratitude. On the other hand, there is a sense of overpoweringness and majesty that repels the individual from the object (mysterium tremendum) and elicits feelings of awe, fear, and humility in relation to what is seen as Wholly Other, something that lies beyond our ordinary comprehension. Perceptions of sacredness may also engender emotions of responsibility, duty, obligation, and protectiveness.
Teaching children a sense of holiness is vital for psychological well-being:
Empirical investigations provide some support for the idea that people preserve and protect aspects of life they view as connected to holy and having sacred qualities. ln a study of a representative sample of 97 married couples in the community, Mahoney et al. (1999) found that husbands and wives who sanctified their marriages appeared to be more protective of their relationships; in respects to conflict, they reported more collaborative problem solving, less verbal aggression toward each other, less marital conflict, and less stalemating. Swank, Mahoney, and Pargament (2000) examined the degree to which a community sample of parents sanctified the role of parenting. Higher levels of sanctification of parenting were tied to lower levels of verbal aggression to their children and reports of more consistent parenting behavior.
Source:
Sacred Matters: Sanctification as a Vital Topic for the Psychology of Religion Kenneth I. Pargament and Annette Mahoney, THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION, Copyright 2005, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc
for Video Shiur click here to listen: Psychology of the DAF Eruvin 27
Translations Courtesy of Sefaria
Photo Abba Mari Rav Chaim Feuerman, Ed.D. ZT"L Leiyluy Nishmaso