Parshas Va'eschanan: Drawing Pictures of Nature and Celestial Bodies

From the realms of activities that seem permitted but actually might get you stoned, Halachaboy presents the follow query: In this weeks Parsha the Torah commands "lest ye deal corruptly, and make you a graven image, even the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female. the likeness of any beast that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged fowl that flieth in the heaven, the likeness of any thing that creepeth on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water under the earth; and lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun and the moon and the stars, even all the host of heaven, thou be drawn away and worship them, and serve them, which the LORD thy God hath allotted unto all the peoples under the whole heaven" (Devarim 4:16-19). [ I apologize for the translation, its the only one I could find on the computer] And one perek later, in the Ten Commandments, "Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, even any manner of likeness, of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down unto them, nor serve them; for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God" (Devarim 5: 7-8) Now let me ask you all a question- every child colors pictures of beautiful sceneraries. The glowing sun, a sprouting tree, a glistening rainbow. And as parents we ooh and ahh and praise these beautiful works of art. However, doesn't the pasuk above clearly prohibit such activity. Would we ever praise our children for eating traif, so why do we praise our children for their works of art. Knowing you, you are probably saying that the Torah only prohibits works used for Avodah Zara, however read those Pasukim again. The torah says you can't make works of art and then adds a separate prohibition of worshipping them. Thus we can deduce that even without worshipping such works, the mere creation of a work of art that resembles anything on heaven and below is forbidden. In fact, the Shulchan Aruch writes that there is a prohibition against depicting images of Avodah Zarah (even if you aren't making them or using them for such). The prohibited images include the sun, the moon and the stars! Rav Moshe Feinstein was actually asked this question when someone asked him whether young children should draw pictures of the sun in school. He said that their representations of the sun would be permissible since they are not going to be accurate. He added, however, that as children mature and develop their artistic capabilities, there could be a real problem (and so, he queries, why even get them started?). To conclude. Let the children draw, just make sure the drawings don't amount to anything good! Mural of the story (get it??)- We think we know a lot of Torah and Halacha, but we haven't even scratched the surface. So keep on studying!