The Quiet Month of Heshvan

Dear children! The month of Tishrei, with its solemn days and the celebration of Sukkot, is already gone. Now the quiet month of Heshvan has arrived. You have certainly heard that the life of a person is compared to a tree. Let us be a tree, which brings forth beautiful sweet fruit. The month of Heshvan can help with that. How? Listen, I will tell you! Rosh Hashanah awakened us all to repent. And the same way that the roots are the foundations of a tree, repentance is the foundation of yiddishkeit. On Yom Kippur God forgives our sins. And our trunk becomes stronger in the face of the strong winds, so these winds cannot, God forbid, harm us.

Then the celebration of Sukkot comes, and Jewish children enjoy true happiness. The joy of the Torah, which we Jewish people began to read from the previous year, starting with Genesis, and which we finish on Simhat Torah, these things are the delicious fruit of the Jewish tree.

In the month of Heshvan we have to take care that these fruit should not be neglected.

Each of us has to take it upon herself to be a fully committed Jewish girl. We also have to make others good and pious, as God has told us to do. For that, the Bais Yaakov Journal can be very helpful, and for smaller children, our beloved, beautiful Kindergarten magazine. Both these magazines are your best friends, and you should make sure that every Jewish house has them.

I am asking you, then, dearest children, to use the month of Heshvan to circulate these magazines among everyone you know and gather subscriptions for them.

I think that you will be successful in this work, because whenever we take it upon ourselves to do something good, we have faith that God will help us.

My Purim Gift to You

The clock strikes midnight. The future teachers of Bais Yaakov are already asleep. It is very quiet. And I dream about you, my faraway children, spread out among all the Bais Yaakov schools in Poland.