Weekly D'var Torah

This week’s Parsha is most famous for the list of 98 curses/consequences that will follow abandoning the Torah. 

It’s not pleasant reading.  War, famine, starvation, exile… and that’s just the beginning! 

I won’t detail the successive stages of this dreadful reading.  It’s too jarring and awful. The fact that it all happened just the way the Torah warns: we did abandon the Covenant and the history of Jewish suffering attests to the horrific consequences.

But what does it really mean to NOT abandon the Torah?  Yes, there are 613 Mitzvot/commandments in the Torah.  Are we required to do them all? 

Well, a slew of them depend on living in the Land of Israel- first fruits, tithes, leaving over the corners for the poor, the sabbatical year- so for those of us living in the Diaspora, fulfilling these Mitzvot is impossible.

And then a whole bunch more are connected with the Temple in Jerusalem - laws of offerings, purity, pilgrimage and Temple-centered celebration.  Considering that the Temple was destroyed by the Romans 1,954 years ago and has not yet been rebuilt, we can’t follow those Mitzvot either. 

In fact, no one can individually keep all the Mitzvot for the reasons above and for other reasons dependent on circumstance and the realities of today.

So is the list of curses an inevitability?  Are we being set up?

Of course not.  Our G-d is a loving G-d who seeks only our fulfillment and blessing.

So what does it mean to keep the Torah?   If it doesn’t mean to do all of the Mitzvot, what is left?

Here’s what our Parsha (portion) says:

(All of these curses will come upon you) since you didn’t serve G-d with joy and fullness of heart in abundance.  (Deuteronomy 28:7).

Serve G-d with joy.  Celebrate your heritage.  Embrace your identity and live it. 

There are so many ways to “do Jewish”.  Almost all of them involve family and community.  Almost all of them involve celebration.  Almost all of them involve an action, whether hanging a mezuzah or volunteering or giving Tzedaka.  All of them deepen Jewish identity.  And especially, all of them contain a social justice value improving the world even wrapping Tefillin and supercharging our souls to act with kindness and compassion, even lighting Shabbat candles and providing our family and friends with a few minutes of the blessing of a Shabbat table. 

So the Torah isn’t saying that we need to do all of the Mitzvot.  It’s not possible. 

What the Torah is saying is to do as many Mitzvot as we can even if it is  just one Mitzvah!  But do it joyfully and wholeheartedly.  

We parents know that it’s not what we do that has the biggest impact on our children. It’s how we do it. 

In my own experience, I’ve spoken with many people who were turned off to Judaism as children and teens.  Not because they didn’t go to shul or celebrate a Bar Mitzvah, but because of their own caregivers’ negativity, resentment or even anger.  “I had to suffer through Hebrew school, and now you’ll have to as well,” is something that I have actually heard with my own ears.  There are also appeals to guilt, or caregivers dropping their children off at synagogue and making a beeline for the door.  Maybe stop in for a quick coffee and bite and a little schmoozing?  Think of the impact it would have.

On the other hand, I’ve also seen children take away a tremendously positive message, children for whom their Jewish identity is a source of strength, pride, resilience and joy.   All because of a little joy a parent took in doing a Mitzvah.

I have to conclude with my own story.  My mother rebelled strongly against the strict orthodoxy of her immigrant father.  As soon as she left her parents’ home, she shed every shred of observance. 

When we kids came along, our observance of Judaism was pretty much limited to the few times we attend synagogue.   But there was one thing that my mother did, every Friday night.   She lit the candles. 

The look of peace and serenity in her face during those moments has never left me.  Because of that one Mitzvah, I was able to open my heart to this heritage.  It became important to me, a part of me.  I eventually spent a gap year in Israel and, well, we know the rest.

The point isn’t for all of us to become Rabbis.  But the point is to become joyfully Jewish.  Joyful through action, through family and community, through deepening our identity and Jewish literacy, through Tikkun Olam and through social justice values. 

We don’t read the list of curses to wallow in misery or bitter memory.  We read it to remind ourselves of what Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav, the most modern of the Hasidic masters, says is the most important Mitzvah of all:  The mitzvah of joy.

Shabbat Shalom- L’shana Tova!