We didn’t go to Temple last night. It seems that our days are so filled that we are too tired to begin Shabbat in that condition. It is much better to be alert and fresh and sit with our Temple family at Ruach and study the weekly portion and engage in the often humorous insertions and asides that the topics provoke. There is a lot in the Torah that provokes. Instead of studying, memorizing and assuming that what we read and discuss is the inerrant word of God, we enjoy the “pilpul” or picking apart the words and, in many instances, question the meanings and come away without a clear, single message that the history of our people and the words of the redactors of the Torah decided were important enough to canonize.
I planned for my second Bar Mitzvah to take place in a time that I thought my son and his family would be able to come to celebrate with me. He is having a difficult time thinking that far in advance (August 9, 2008). I chose the time because it is summer vacation and there are no planned Bar or Bat Mitzvahs to conflict with it. It also gives me a long time to plan the special effects I hope will be approved for this 83 year olds’ imagination as well as his skill in performing the traditional ritual.
But study today is in the Book of Genesis and there is a continuing interest in what women think of the position of wives and mothers as reported as the story of the descendants of Abraham continues. The text is meager but the midrashic commentary is voluminous. Today the presence of women in congregations has become so marked, the emphasis in reading into the text has switched from the patriarchs to the matriarchs. I think this is good.
“Family“is the integral text of how the Children of Abraham have distinguished themselves from the other peoples who lived and worked and reproduced in the Middle East about three thousand years ago. It is interesting to note that women veiled themselves in modesty but seemed to have trouble in conceiving sons who sparked one of the divisions among the people who became Israel and then separated into twelve tribes who occupied the Promised land
In studying the life of Mohammad in addition to the weekly portions of the Torah I see a marked difference in how the two religions developed. Jews value family values in a different way than those of their neighbors. Women have a greater voice and importance in the development of a way of life that has led to the linking of Torah to democracy than the Qu’ran which submits not only to Allah but to the authority of Muhammad. It is extremely interesting today in the 21st Century that these ancient words can make us think responsibly and apply to our times.