Continuing the Story
Rabbi Tom Samuels
Summer 2017
There is a beautiful story in the Torah. Moses returns to the Israelite encampment after forty days and nights atop Mount Sinai. In his arms are the two tablets of the Torah, the Divine Law, written by the “hand” of God. Enraged upon seeing his people worshipping the Golden Calf, Moses smashes the tablets. Then he goes back up the mountain for another forty days. This time he brings down with him new tablets, a new Law, written, at the request of God, by his own, human hand. Then something amazing happens: Moses places the old, smashed tablets alongside the intact ones, together, into the Holy Ark, the Mishkan.
Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin (1816-1893) taught that the reason God ordered Moshe to carve the second tablets was not because the Israelites were not worthy of a Divine act, but to teach that the ever-renewing power of Jewish Law, Halacha in Hebrew, is dependent on the active participation of human creativity. Two Torahs, the Divine and the human, working hand-in-hand, in a symbiotic, equal relationship.
That just as God created an imperfect world and we humans are Divinely tasked to perfect it, God also gave us Torah with missing pieces. And, Rabbi Berlin continued, God created within us the ability to interpret, to create new chapters of Torah. To continually adapt it to our times, to our current realities.
And this is how I, myself, feel about the Torah, about my Jewishness: that I am in the most intimate relationship with a tradition that is thousands of years old. That my fears and hopes, embraces and doubts, angers and joys, are all part of the mix of the conversation that spans the past 2,000 years.
Rabbi David Weiss Halivni, teaches and shares in one of his books. He's a Holocaust survivor and he was in one of the death camps and he was working and they came back for this day out laboring all day long, on the verge of death, and from exhaustion, and from hard labor, and from despair. And he saw this security guard who was eating a sandwich in a wrapper. And it was wrapped in this piece of paper, and he couldn't take his eyes off it, because he recognized that there were Hebrew letters written on the paper. So he and his bunkmates traded their food for the day in order to get this piece of paper. And they dried it out and it turned out to be a piece of Talmud. And they took this piece of Talmud and, Halivni describes, they would sit together every night when they come home from the field and read this piece of Talmud together.
And it saved their lives. Just looking at this text made them feel like human beings again and made them feel like they were part of a story that was thousands of years long and wouldn't die with them. It would continue, somehow, beyond them.
And so, as we dive into our Torahs, we know that they do not assume a single, immutable form. That there is a covenant between human beings and God to co-create this world, through the prism of our Torahs, together. We share a rich historic tradition of making the story our own. Conversations which are continually restated, newly expressed, across the span of generations. And, that ultimately, the Covenant didn’t end at Mt. Sinai.
Rabbi Tom Samuels
Summer 2017
There is a beautiful story in the Torah. Moses returns to the Israelite encampment after forty days and nights atop Mount Sinai. In his arms are the two tablets of the Torah, the Divine Law, written by the “hand” of God. Enraged upon seeing his people worshipping the Golden Calf, Moses smashes the tablets. Then he goes back up the mountain for another forty days. This time he brings down with him new tablets, a new Law, written, at the request of God, by his own, human hand. Then something amazing happens: Moses places the old, smashed tablets alongside the intact ones, together, into the Holy Ark, the Mishkan.
Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin (1816-1893) taught that the reason God ordered Moshe to carve the second tablets was not because the Israelites were not worthy of a Divine act, but to teach that the ever-renewing power of Jewish Law, Halacha in Hebrew, is dependent on the active participation of human creativity. Two Torahs, the Divine and the human, working hand-in-hand, in a symbiotic, equal relationship.
That just as God created an imperfect world and we humans are Divinely tasked to perfect it, God also gave us Torah with missing pieces. And, Rabbi Berlin continued, God created within us the ability to interpret, to create new chapters of Torah. To continually adapt it to our times, to our current realities.
And this is how I, myself, feel about the Torah, about my Jewishness: that I am in the most intimate relationship with a tradition that is thousands of years old. That my fears and hopes, embraces and doubts, angers and joys, are all part of the mix of the conversation that spans the past 2,000 years.
Rabbi David Weiss Halivni, teaches and shares in one of his books. He's a Holocaust survivor and he was in one of the death camps and he was working and they came back for this day out laboring all day long, on the verge of death, and from exhaustion, and from hard labor, and from despair. And he saw this security guard who was eating a sandwich in a wrapper. And it was wrapped in this piece of paper, and he couldn't take his eyes off it, because he recognized that there were Hebrew letters written on the paper. So he and his bunkmates traded their food for the day in order to get this piece of paper. And they dried it out and it turned out to be a piece of Talmud. And they took this piece of Talmud and, Halivni describes, they would sit together every night when they come home from the field and read this piece of Talmud together.
And it saved their lives. Just looking at this text made them feel like human beings again and made them feel like they were part of a story that was thousands of years long and wouldn't die with them. It would continue, somehow, beyond them.
And so, as we dive into our Torahs, we know that they do not assume a single, immutable form. That there is a covenant between human beings and God to co-create this world, through the prism of our Torahs, together. We share a rich historic tradition of making the story our own. Conversations which are continually restated, newly expressed, across the span of generations. And, that ultimately, the Covenant didn’t end at Mt. Sinai.