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I’m nearly done with Part 11 of my character study on David and soon we’ll be leaving David behind for one final, new study before we reach Simchat Torah, begin the Torah cycle over, and I start writing Torah Cycle lessons for my bar and bat mitzvah kids.

I never realized when I started that my character study of David would go 11 lessons. I also never thought I’d be just scratching the surface in those 11 lessons, and if I ever come back to the topic once I’m ordained (provided God wills that I become ordained), I could break David’s life down into even more lessons, taught in even greater detail.

So what’s next? I’m not sure yet, but I’m leaning toward a book study focusing on Ruth; after all this time on David, I think it’s time to do something for the young girls in this class. Always nice at that age to have something to focus on other than the latest acne outbreak.

Some kids turn out great. Some… well, eventually you hope they’ll catch up to their peer.

A couple weeks ago, we graduated a bar mitzvah kid who has done well; he’s a young 13, but his mind is bright and he’s been a careful study and grasped his lessons well. Yet there are others I’m far more concerned about.

A child is usually as his or her parents expect them to be. If they allow their children to drift into bad habits of prioritizing entertainment over education, rare is the child who will become a good student. If they allow their kids to do whatever their heart desires, rare is the child who will show respect for their elders and obey their authority figures.

The behavior of children reflects an aspect of a congregation to those who visit. If children are generally well-behaved, it is a blessing to the congregation. If they run wild, it creates a less favorable impression.

The trouble is that not all parents are uniform in their approach to parenting. Some are involved and caring and appropriately strict; others are self-involved and unconcerned and as stable as inflatable boats.

This is human nature, it’s true; never will there be any congregation for whom all kids and parents produce equally encouraging results with their children. But I do wish more parents would see the importance of bringing up their children well. Yes, it’s a tough job; but it’s actually part of our covenant with Adonai our God. Solid parenting ought to be taken more seriously.

One good thing I’ve been working hard on lately is attempting to get at least a month ahead on writing my bar/bat mitzvah lessons. There are no travel guides to success is this area, just a lot of study time, prayer time and writing time. Fortunately, I’m finally getting a handle on it, which is good.

It’s a bit of a challenge at the moment, because some of the lessons are on our literagy, while the rest of the lessons I’m writing are currently a multi-part character study on King David. We’re currently about to delve into David’s desire to build a cedar-wood house for Adonai, which God turns down and then makes a messianic promise to David to “make you a house” instead.

David’s life really is fascinating and I’m glad we have some open time to really help the kids explore it before Simchat Torah comes ’round and we have to focus on the Torah cycle. A little detour never hurt anyone.

As I said in my first up-front talk on Friday, one of the things that is a mystery to me is why so few people want to take part in children’s ministry, and why it’s so hard to find teachers when we have so many parents.

Sure, kids can be a bit intimidating as a group the first time you stand in front of them as their teacher, and they’ll never stop testing limits with you, but they’re pre-teens, for heaven’s sake. They tend to listen if they can tell you mean business.

While my wife and I don’t have kids of our own yet, because we’ve decided to wait a bit longer, we both care about bringing the kids in our kehilat up in the ways of the L-RD. That’s why I teach bar/bat mitzvah class and why she does praise and worship for the younger kids.

If we’re not parents and we see the need and fill it, how could a person who is a parent not want to be a part of their kids’ Shabbat School experience? Maybe they need a good liver cleanse?

If for no other reason, they should at least want to know what their kids are learning and make sure it’s consistent with the beliefs of their kehilat. Yet, as the old saying goes, what seems simple, isn’t.

It came with little warning, little preparation time, and a whole lot sooner than I’d planned; but last Friday, I finally had a chance to go up in front of the congregation and give a short talk. I wouldn’t quite call it a full-blown sermon; I was given 5-10 minutes and ending up running over 13 minutes, but I did reference over half a dozen Torah and Brit haDasha sources, so it felt a bit like a sermon. Or at least close enough for horse shoes and hand grenades. Take a listen and decide for yourself.

Anyway, the initiation was thrilling and fortunately everone was very supportive and offering positive feedback. I have a lot of seeking God left to do, but at least now I have some confidence about my ability to produce and deliver something approaching a sermon.

Sure, it’s not the kind of achievement that merits renting Vegas hotels for a getaway after, but it is a big milestone nevertheless.

What is the main difference between praying and seeking God? It’s certainly not as obvious as finding the ones who wear luxury watches. Those who say, “I prayed and God answered me,” usually have only sought the L-RD in prayer once, and relied on their first impression of his will; yet this is dangerous, for to truly hear the voice of God, we must be sure that we have set our own desires aside first.

What does the Bible tell us about seeking the L-RD earnestly? We know that it means praying more than once about something; it requires confirming his will and making sure it is He who has spoken, and not just our own fleshly desires. But are there benefits to going to all that extra work, even in moments when time seems in short supply? Certainly there is!

Isaiah 31:1 Woe to those going down to Egypt expecting help–relying on horses; trusting in chariots because they have many, and in the strength of their cavalrymen–but not looking to the Holy One of Isra’el, not consulting Adonai.

What a warning! David had many military assets to rely on in a battle against the P’lishtim, but David, like the prophet Isaiah, remembered the lesson of the Exodus from Egypt. In every way, Pharaoh’s army was better-equipped for battle than were the children of Israel, and yet God led the defenseless Israelites through the Red Sea on dry land, but the Egyptians, who did not honor the Holy One of Israel, he destroyed.

Praying earnestly and seeking the L-RD can also help you to understand some of the injustices of the world, or see events that you do not understand in a new way that leads to better understanding. As it is written:

Proverbs 28:5 Evil people don’t understand justice, but those who seek Adonai understand everything.

If you think seeking God earnestly in prayer is not critical, take his warning from the prophet Amos:

Amos 5:4 For here is what Adonai says to the house of Israel: “If you seek me you will survive;”

Indeed, if David had gone off into battle against the P’lishtim without first seeking the will of Adonai, or had he heeded his advisors and stayed in Y’hudah, out of a motivation of fear, than not only would the city of Ke’ilah and its inhabitants have perished, but who knows? Perhaps Adonai would have allowed David and his men to be overtaken by his enemies. Therefore, we must acknowledge that the truth of the Torah is that seeking the L-RD is more than just saying a quick prayer like we do at the beginning of class, nor is it optional. It is time-consuming and is it vital; tragedy can even befall us if we fail to seek Adonai, and even this brief passage from David’s life underlines the importance of this point.

There is a lot more to David’s life prior to taking the throne of Israel than most Christian churches teach their kids about. Usually they hear about David and Goliath; sometimes they may even hear about David and Bathsheba or about how his son Solomon was allowed to build the temple instead of David.

There’s a lot more to David’s life than is traditionally thought, however, and while serious Bible students know this, it’s a revelation to the average believer who only attends Christian church or Jewish/messianic shul services out of tradition rather than a passionate drive to know more about Adonai.

That’s the thing that’s rewarding about being in a teaching position with my messianic shul; I learn more than I ever have just studying for my own enrichment. It is a trip that requires no Rimowa luggage, per se, but it’s definitely a journey worth taking.

Every once in a while, I like to reward hard work, and in my bar/bat mitzvah class, that means taking a week off studies every few months, and allowing the kids to have some fun. It’s not anything that costs much or requires budgeting software, but it is a good investment.

As the kids get to know each other better as classmates through these times, they are more likely to work hard and study hard in the weeks where we are doing lessons. We’ve recently added a lot more variety to our curriculum, to challenge the kids and better-prepare them for their bar/bat mitzvah.

One thing we’ve done is to start to teach them the prayers and blessings that are part of the adult service. By learning these, they will be better prepared to take part in the service and understand why each element of the service is included.

Another new element is a more rigorous biblical Hebrew language program than they had received in younger grades; we are teaching them letters and vowel markings, and over the course of the year, would like to have them to a point where they can at least sound out Hebrew words on sight.

Of course, we’re still in the middle of a big character study on David as well, so they’re taking on a lot of material; believe me, these quarterly breaks are well-earned.

At 41, I sometimes wonder if I’m already having memory troubles. I mean, I know what time it is generally, even though I can’t read it to you off a Parmigiani watch; or I can make great connections of disperate facts fairly often still … but sometimes it takes a bit longer than I wish it did.

Take for example this past Shabbat. Someone asked me if I had mentioned their daughter, who’s not part of my class, in class. I said no because, well, why would I? I have my hands full with the kids in my class.

Well, I was told, some kids heard me say it. I was pretty sure I didn’t. And so the situation was a bit tense when my wife and I headed home.

A couple hours later is when the light bulb over my head turned on. Of course I hadn’t mentioned that person’s daughter in class; but I finally remembered that we had another girl in class who had the same name.

Turned out to be a misunderstanding of who I meant by the kids who heard it. If I’d been a bit quicker on the ball, I could have realized what was going on sooner and cleared the air right away.

I’m pretty sure I could have done that better 10 years ago.

The latest development in the bar and bat mitzvah class that I teach is I recently discovered that shul leadership wanted the kids to be learning some Hebrew, as well as some of the prayers and such that are part and parcel of our order of worship at Kehilat Sar Shalom.

There’s good reason for that; if bar and bat mitzvah class is about preparing preteens to join the adults in the church service, then they need both of those skills in order to be capable of doing so with any sort of understanding about what’s going on.

I inaugerated the order of service lessons last week by teaching them the Ets Chayim blessing, but since my own Hebrew is minimal at best, my co-teacher, Patrice, and I went to one of the members of our congregation who teaches beginning Hebrew and are soliciting her help in coming up with a curriculum.

Patrice has agreed to teach the Hebrew portion of class, which takes pressure off of me and will allow me to focus on the other aspects of the lessons. I will more than likely be learning my alef, bet and chayin right along with the students the first time through. (So far, I have only gotten through learning about half the alef-bet in the past before bogging down and getting lost.)

I expect better results this time, the kind that make a person feel a sense of accomplishment and not like they need to go through drug rehab. It should make for a good time for the kids.

Goliath does not appear from nowhere in the Torah account. While it is well-known that he is a Philistine, less well-known is his parentage.

Without the benefits of an ECA stack, Goliath grew to be nine feet nine inches tall, so his parents had to be giants as well, right? Not so.

According to Jewish tradition, Goliath (or Golyat, to use his genuine name in Hebrew), was one of the four sons of Orpah. Readers of the Book of Ruth will recognize Orpah as the daughter in law who did not stand in loyalty to Naomi after Naomi’s sons die, but returned to her own people, the Moabites.

According to the Babylonian Talmud, Sotah 42b, because Orpah parted from Naomi reluctantly and shed four tears, she was given four sons, all of them giants. This interpretation means that Orpah is oen and the same as Harafa.

All four of Orpah’s sons were giants, although the Talmudic literature makes it clear that Golyat was the tallest and strongest of them. At nine feet nine inches, one would hope so.

The Torah teaches that David’s Philistine opponent, Goliath, was a giant who measured nine feet nine inches tall. While on first blush that height may seem inachievable, it’s not as far-fetched as it might sound. Goliath was likely a victim of a pituitary gland disorder known as acromegaly.

Acromegaly, one of the leading causes of gigantism, causes to pituitary gland to continue secreting human growth hormone to the body long after it would cease production in most normal adults. It causes unusual height as well as other body distortions, most notably of facial features.

Three of the most well-known sufferers of acromegaly in modern times are Andre Roussimoff (Andre the Giant), who died at 47 due to the effects of the disease, as well as Dalip Singh Rana (The Great Khali) and Paul Wight (The Big Show). Respectively, Roussimoff was seven feet five inches at his tallest, before the disease began to break his body down, while Rana is currently seven feet three inches and Wight is seven feet tall.

Not all seven feet and over people are sufferers of acromegaly; there are other causes of gigantism. For example, Kevin Garnett of the Boston Celtics (seven feet one inch) is not known to have acromegaly. Houston Rockets center Yao Ming (seven feet six inches) is also not known to suffer from the disease.

However, the disease may be the cause for the extreme heights reached by Bao Xishun (seven feet, nine inches), Leonid Stadnyk (eight feet five inches) and Robert Wadlow (eight feet, eleven inches). Stadnyk is currently in failing health due to the disease, and Wadlow, who lived from 1918 - 1940, died at the age of 22 from the affliction. Both Xishun and Stadnyk are still alive.

People afflicted with acromegaly tend to die young. In the time of David and Goliath, there was no modern medicine, let alone Medical Alert bracelets, to help diagnose such conditions, nor were there today’s treatments that have proven to extend the lives of such folks.

While even Wadlow, at eight feet eleven inches, would have been about 10 inches shorter than Goliath, the existance of such people shows that the existance of Goliath himself is not so far-fetched as some Biblical minimalists would have you believe.