This past holiday season, I took my young son to see the new animated film about King David. I did not find the movie particularly strong as a work of storytelling, especially for younger children. Its ambitions often outran its clarity. But whatever its flaws, the film did something unexpected and deeply meaningful: It gave my son a reason to start asking serious questions.
Not questions about animation or spectacle. Questions about God. About fear. About what it means to live well with others. About courage, responsibility and purpose.
Those questions didn’t arrive all at once. They surfaced gradually — at bedtime, over breakfast, on walks to school. Once they began, they kept coming. I found myself telling stories I hadn’t planned to tell, without notes or preparation, drawn instead from memory and tradition. Stories I hadn’t realized how much I wanted to pass on.
After that, he asked for more stories about kings. So I turned to Solomon, David’s son.
I began where the Bible does: with Solomon’s dream. God appears to him and says, “Ask what I shall give you.” Solomon does not ask for wealth, long life or victory over enemies. He asks instead for an understanding heart, the wisdom to discern between good and evil so that he can govern the people well (1 Kings 3). That choice matters. It frames wisdom not as cleverness or ambition, but as moral responsibility. Solomon understands that leadership is not about dominance or display, but judgment — the ability to see clearly and to choose what preserves life. but as moral responsibility. Solomon understands that leadership is not about dominance or display, but judgment — the ability to see clearly and to choose what preserves life. but judgment — the ability to see clearly and to choose what preserves life.
I then continued the story. I told my son about the two women and the baby — the famous judgment that reveals Solomon’s wisdom. Two mothers come before the king, each claiming the same child. Solomon proposes dividing the baby in two. The true mother immediately relinquishes her claim to save the child’s life. Solomon stops the judgment and returns the child to her.
My son didn’t yet know to ask for that story. I offered it to him. He listened closely. And only afterward did the questions begin.
That sequence matters. Children do not always know what they are looking for. Curiosity often follows transmission. Moral formation does not begin with interrogation but with invitation — with stories offered patiently, without spectacle, that give shape to instinct and language to intuition.
The biblical text underscores this point. After Solomon’s judgment, the people respond not with awe at power, but with reverence for wisdom: “They saw that the wisdom of God was in him, to do justice” (1 Kings 3:28). Wisdom here is not abstract. It is legible. It is humane. It is oriented toward life.
Jewish tradition has long understood this. Wisdom is not merely intelligence, but discernment — binah — the capacity to distinguish, to weigh and to judge rightly in the face of competing claims. In Pirkei Avot, the Ethics of the Fathers, we are taught: “Who is wise? One who learns from every person” (Pirkei Avot 4:1). Wisdom begins not with certainty, but with attentiveness and humility.
The rabbis also taught something even more basic: “The world stands on the breath of schoolchildren” (Talmud, Shabbat 119b). Moral inheritance, they understood, is not sustained by institutions alone, but by the quiet, daily work of teaching the young.
The Book of Proverbs, traditionally attributed to Solomon himself, makes the same claim in sharper terms. Wisdom is not an ornament for the elite; it is a discipline for daily life. It governs speech, tempers anger and restrains pride. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” Proverbs 9:10 tells us — not fear as terror, but reverence as orientation, the recognition that life is ordered and that our choices have consequences beyond ourselves.
These are not merely religious ideas. They are civic ones.
In a time when children encounter more information than any generation before them, but less moral guidance, the need for shared stories has become newly urgent. Children are surrounded by content but rarely invited into narratives that ask enduring questions about responsibility, courage and restraint. Too often, moral formation is outsourced to screens or flattened into slogans. Adults hesitate to speak with confidence about tradition, worried about imposing, moralizing or saying the wrong thing.
But formation does not happen accidentally. It happens through repetition, modeling and shared language. It happens when elders speak and children listen — and then ask.
The rabbis understood this deeply. At Passover, children are not told simply to listen; they are invited to ask. The Four Questions do not arise spontaneously; they are elicited by ritual, by story, by participation. Wonder follows structure. Inquiry follows inheritance.
I saw this firsthand with my son. Once he had heard Solomon’s story, he wanted more. More kings. More decisions. More questions about fear and courage. We talked about the biblical injunction “do not be afraid.” What does that mean today? Does it mean being loud or aggressive? Or does it mean telling the truth when it is costly, acting with restraint when spectacle is rewarded, taking responsibility when avoidance is easier?
We talked about manhood not as dominance, but as accountability. About leadership not as self-expression, but as service. About belief not as blind certainty, but as commitment shaped by humility.
I work in higher education. I spend my days with young adults who are thoughtful, earnest and often unmoored. Many are fluent in critique but unsure of purpose — confident in opinions, uncertain about obligations. They did not arrive there overnight. The absence of moral vocabulary and shared narrative begins much earlier.
That is why moments like this matter — moments when children are invited into serious conversation rather than distracted away from it, when ancient stories are not treated as museum pieces but as living sources of wisdom.
The film that sparked this was imperfect. But it opened a door. And once opened, tradition did what it has always done: it gave us language for fear and courage, failure and responsibility, judgment and mercy.
In a time when anxiety is often mistaken for sophistication and cynicism for realism, a child’s questions can be a quiet rebuke. They remind us that wisdom is something to be sought, not assumed; that moral clarity is learned, not downloaded; and that community is sustained when generations speak to one another about what matters most.
My son is under 10. I do not know where his beliefs will ultimately settle. But I know this: for a stretch of evenings, our home was filled with conversation about God, justice, humility and courage — not because I planned it, not because a curriculum required it, but because a story caught his attention and tradition carried the rest.
We should be doing more of this — in families, in congregations, in communities — not waiting for perfect tools or flawless art, but taking seriously the responsibility to transmit wisdom while curiosity is still alive.
That responsibility is not a burden. It is a gift.
And when we honor it, we give the next generation something far more enduring than answers. We give them a moral inheritance and the confidence to keep asking the right questions.