Each week, Jews across the world all read the same pâ•râsh•atꞋ Tor•âhꞋ. To determine which is the right pâ•râsh•atꞋ sha•vuꞋa for any given week (as well as each week's ËrꞋëv Sha•bâtꞋ candle-lighting time in your area), consult a local Judaic calendar, available (usually free) each mid-summer, from any Jewish bookstore, synagogue or funeral home).

From Within The Womb Until…

Even Before Birth, Parents' Voices Reassure – And Train A Bedtime Routine!

In 2015, researchers at Northwestern Univ. demonstrated that babies can learn abstract relations even before they learn language, before 1 year of age. From birth, many of the illustrations and suggested demonstrations included at the end of each story can make a lasting impression your child may recall and further clarify each subsequent year. As your child begins to learn language, stopping to discuss the meaning of words and phrases becomes even more essential than the story itself – a parenting and bonding moment. The story will be repeated again next year, with the increased understanding profiting from this year's discussion. Each year, discussing a key word, phrase or fascinating principle that the story has brought up presents an opportunity for parenting – and a priceless parent-child bonding moment that both you and your child may remember and share together for your entire lives.

Even from within the womb, before your baby understands language, your voices become recognizable and trusted. The sound of the parents' voices inculcates reassurance and security. There is no better way to calm and reassure a child for sleep than reading a bedtime story. And there is no more effective way to instill a bedtime routine than to train the routine from the start. Even before birth, reading these stories – aloud – at bedtime calms and reassures your baby within you while also familiarizing yourself with the content of the stories, the questions you'll want to raise in future years, think ahead about how you'll want to handle them and, especially as your child becomes ready, plan well ahead for some of the optional related and educational activities. Science-Friendly Tor•âhꞋ Bedtime Bible Stories is over-the-horizon, incomparably better in all of these areas.

Enabling Parents & Grandparents To Be The Best Teachers

Though many parents feel inadequate to teach their children, parents are unique in being the initial exemplars of their child's trust. But that trust can be shattered if a parent teaches the child something that the child later learns, in school or college, isn't true.

Regurgitating simplistic and often primitive interpretations — typically based on misleading, sectarian-driven, translations — blindly accepting claims that plainly defy the real, rational, world; "on faith," just because some simplistic and science-challenged "clergy says…," inevitably leads to such interpretations being incessantly contradicted by education, science and the real world. That means that if you fail to adopt an educated approach, as your child becomes educated, (s)he will inevitably learn that what you taught them, and they trusted you to be true, wasn't true. Shattered by the realization that they've been misled by the very ones they trusted the most, they feel betrayed – rejecting religion and further advice from their parents.

If you tell your children fables (ok, let's drop euphemisms: lies), you're planting a time bomb within them that will detonate into betrayal when they grow up and learn better. If you mix fables with religion, the youth will walk away from religion along with the fables. Science-Friendly Tor•âhꞋ Bedtime Bible Stories are diametrically different and totally unique: no fables, not even "traditional" religious fables! Science-Friendly Tor•âhꞋ Bedtime Bible Stories resets the interpretations of these ancient accounts with a clean whiteboard, a logical and scientific approach to understanding and interpreting each historical event.

By providing an understanding of the Bible that is repeatedly corroborated by logic, science and the real world — instead of incessantly contradicted by it — Science-Friendly Tor•âhꞋ Bedtime Bible Stories empowers you to "sharpen" your child's curiosity and interest in a real-world convergence of science, history, archeology, truth and the Creator-Singularity of the universe: ה' and His Tor•âhꞋ.

By sticking religiously (!) to the best science, history, archeology and truth, Science-Friendly Tor•âhꞋ Bedtime Bible Stories empowers you, the parent, to avoid the "betrayal trap" and strengthen, rather than shatter, your child's trust in you.

Never Assume Can't, Never Insist Can

Not even top scientists understand everything, so no child should suffer growing up feeling like a failure because he or she doesn't yet understand something. Setting the example of not pretending to know everything, and discussing that issue, is constructive and healthy; transforming a potential failure event, which could lead to despondency, into an interesting and motivating challenge.

A vital axiom of these stories is: never assume your child cannot understand some advanced element of a story, and never insist that your child must understand any particular part of a story. No one understands impossible fairy tales, yet that's never been a barrier. Imagination is no less able to fill temporary voids when learning reality. (It could be argued that imagination is biggest factor in scientific theories. They're called theories rather than facts for good reason.) And insistence on complete understanding would introduce unnecessary frustrations. There is no rush – more will be understood in next year's reading, making next year's reading exciting and new again.

As your child grows and learns, (s)he will process this kind of story with new and individual levels of knowledge and ability. This, by design, necessarily leaves part of the story not fully understood, to be fascinating and compelling again the following year, understood better the following year. Limited understanding is refined, and the subjects further learned, the next year. Allow your child to determine what (s)he can understand and what must be committed to imagination and future rethinking. With every passing year, your child builds an increasingly sophisticated constructive and valuable knowledge base, which serves to reveal more of the story, keeping your bedtime Bible story reading fascinating.

Fascinating Scientific Facts Your Child Will Remember

By design, these stories embed fascinating facts and topics that are fully intended to trigger question(s) from your child — your opportunity for a parent-child communication moment, not "bogging down" the bedtime story. Your child's question is never an interruption; it's the opportunity for you to parent that has been designed into Science-Friendly Tor•âhꞋ Bedtime Bible Stories. It's the goal, not an interruption or annoyance. If you get into a discussion and don't finish the story that evening but discuss a question that's important to your child, that's a raving success!!! You don't need to finish the story to make the evening a gratifying and memorable bedtime moment. Science-Friendly Tor•âhꞋ Bedtime Bible Stories will point your child toward an enduring, real-world understanding of the universe and its Singularity-Creator in a way nothing else can. Science-Friendly Tor•âhꞋ Bedtime Bible Stories will encourage them in that direction year after year as schools and education increasingly corroborate, instead of contradict, them; and each story remains interesting with more to learn next year.

For parents who want to take a more participatory approach, some stories will include, at the end, typical questions to be prepared to answer and even optional related activities before bedtime that will introduce, and better prepare your child to connect with the bedtime Bible story.

Cultivate Science-Oriented Imagination

One axiom of these stories is: Harry Potter, Spiderman and people turning into wolves or other monsters, being impossible, is far more difficult for a child to process than reality. It's all in how it's presented. The Discovery Channel, TV series like Through The Wormhole and the National Geographic Channel have proven that the real world can be fascinating and engaging for children.

Imagining how nuclear energy fuels a star cannot be more difficult for a child than trying to process how people can ride around a castle on magic broomsticks or turn into wolves. Escapism from difficulties dealing with reality are a matter of adult shortcomings, not children's limits. Encouraging escapism in children charts a self-destructive course. Your child has no fear of reality unless (s)he learns that fear from you or someone else. Children will process factual input they don't understand, whether it be science or history, in the same way they process an impossible fairy tale: at whatever point logical processing is exhausted and understanding exceeded, imagination fills in the blanks, developing theories to test later. Relative to reality rather than escapism, that's good. It's what scientists do, a skill set your child will find valuable and can keep and refine for life rather than discard as a fairy tale in high school or college.

Assimilation trends increasingly suggest that Science-Friendly Tor•âhꞋ Bedtime Bible Stories are increasingly essential, an earlier start far more vital than the far more expensive, too often ineffective, special religious schools later on! Every evening that you delay reading Science-Friendly Tor•âhꞋ Bedtime Bible Stories to your child is a day lost "sharpening" your child.

Bible Language – Instilling Tor•âhꞋ Inherency

Practicing Jewish families will find all of the language routine. For parents who didn't receive a Tor•âhꞋ upbringing, adapting to the language of Ta•na"khꞋ may be difficult for you; but to your toddler or child who is just learning language it's just more words — no different, and no more difficult than learning your (not yet their) native language. And for your children, Science-Friendly Tor•âhꞋ Bedtime Bible Stories enables you to give your children the most valuable – Tor•âhꞋ – education in their life, a head start that you never had: to grow up being familiar with the language of Tor•âhꞋ-practice and the Jewish community.

A very few basic words will introduce a transliteration (xlit) of the original Hebrew term found in Ta•na"khꞋ, along with a live-link (when on-line) to our glossary entry. These stories limit Hebrew to a very few of the most essential basic terms that will enable the family to converse comfortably with, and recognize, other authentic practicers of Tor•âhꞋ – practicing Jews as well as geir•imꞋ.

Whether English-speaking Jew or geir, Science-Friendly Tor•âhꞋ Bedtime Bible Stories is the ideal way to enable in your child, from the very start, an inherent, and authentic, relationship with the Creator-Singularity of the universe, ה', and His Tor•âhꞋ.

To : pâ•râsh•otꞋ Ta•na"khꞋ Stories

© 2015 by Paqid Yirmeyahu Ben-David
Google+ registered author & publisher