Opinion & Commentary:
Preserving the tapestry of Torah life
By Debbie Israel
July 4, 2008
Recently, someone I was talking with asked me if I were Jewish. I proudly said that, yes, I am Jewish and have been all my life.
I thought later on about what I would have told her if she had asked me what it means to be Jewish. So much of the time these days I feel as though people think Judaism means how long your skirt is or how black your hat is or how many inches of hair shows out of your sheitel or hat.
But that's really not what Judaism is all about.
Hashem created the world to be separate from God. Because the world is separate and different, God gave human beings free will. But God also needed to give people a guide.
That's where the Torah comes in. The Torah is basically a user's manual for the world written by the Creator.
The Torah basically tells us how to live a moral and ethical life. There are civil laws, laws that tell us how to deal with a world that doesn't always react in the way we expect it. There are also laws that involve ritual, but the ritual is for our benefit. For example, it's particularly clear in our 24/7 world that most people would work until they "dropped" without a mandatory day of rest. That's all that Shabbat is. It's a day set aside for us to recharge our batteries. But, because it's human nature to decide for ourselves what rest constitutes (as in "I love my work," or "this is how I relax"), God gave us rules for our day of rest.
And the moral, ethical, and civil laws are there not just because they are the right thing to do but also because what goes around comes around -- if you treat people with respect and kindness, they will generally treat you with respect and kindness.
Judaism is not a religion in the same way as the ancient idol worshipping cults were. We have survived around 2,000 years without animal sacrifices, and prayer is for our benefit -- not God's. Judaism is more like a way of life, a guide to the best possible life a person can have.
Because I'm a baseball fan, I came up with a baseball analogy for life. There is a rule in baseball that a player can only steal bases forward. Why is this rule on the books? Because once upon a time, there was a player who was in a close stolen-base race that he wanted to win. One day, he was on first base and there was a runner on third. So he stole second base. Then he went back to first by stealing first and then he stole second base again. This essentially gave him three stolen bases for only advancing one base. The baseball rule writers decided that this disrupted the flow of the game.
The rules of the game are there to add to everyone's enjoyment of the game. This is true about the Torah too (though God, being omniscient, was able to foresee every eventuality and include all this in the Torah). The Torah is there to enhance our enjoyment of life.
The problem is that over the centuries people have often been too caught up in the minutiae of the laws and the rituals. Some people have appointed themselves the Mitzvah Police and they pay much more attention to how others keep the Torah and not enough attention to treating people well. They seem to have forgotten that a lot of what people do or don't do from a perspective of Torah observance is either custom or open to interpretation. There are many variations of how to keep the Torah, but there are people in some segments of Jewish society who feel it is somehow their responsibility to check on the observance level of every other Jew they come into contact with. They have forgotten that there are 70 faces to the Torah (which basically means there are many different ways of interpreting the Torah) and they have also forgotten the adage in Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers): Who is respected? One who respects all of God's creations.
And they have also forgotten the blessing we got from Bilam, the prophet who set out to curse the Children of Israel. Bilam said "Ma Tovu Ohalekha Yaakov Mishkenotekha Yisrael" -- How good are your tents, Jacob, and your dwelling places,
In addition to respecting people, we also need to respect different ways to the Torah. We need to remember that as Jews moved away from Israel and the Mediterranean area, there were new challenges (for example, as Jews moved to colder climates, the romaine lettuce that was used for maror -- bitter herb -- at the Passover seder was no longer available in April, so the Jews in colder climates adopted the use of the horseradish root). But there have always been Jews whose families remained in
Jewish law is also flexible, allowing for different customs and interpretations depending on circumstances. For example, in our community in this time most families have separate sets of dishes and pots for Passover. But in times or in communities where the cost of another whole set of dairy, meat, and pareve (neutral) utensils was beyond the budget of the average family or most families lived in small homes where there was no place to keep extra utensils, most families kashered their regular utensils.
We need to maintain the colorful tapestry that is Torah observance. To force people to follow only one interpretation of the Torah is to lose the beauty of Jewish life. It would be like embroidering and entire tapestry with only white thread and only one stitch. It would also make Judaism as inflexible as a steel girder. And that is not in keeping with the spirit of God's Torah.
Debbie Israel is a graphic artist (see https://www.cafepress.com/compugraphd2 for some of her work) and tutor living in