Lesson From Our Children
by Rabbi David Baum, Congregation Shaarei Kodes
Parashat Ki Tetzei
Imagine if you saw this movie attraction:
The scene begins on a battle field, with a gory fight. The tiny army who wins is an invading army that has come home to reclaim their land overcoming all odds. The scene goes on to show this small and noble army destroying a town, killing every man, woman, and child they see. The next scene shows a court of three men with a crowd of angry townspeople. The defendant: a young boy and his parents and the prosecutors. The parents loudly proclaim, “This son of ours is disloyal and defiant; he does not heed us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.” The camera pans to the eyes of the people, their eyes filled with rage, and you see a young girl picks up a rock and throws it at this disobedient boy. Then her mother picks up a rock and does the same, and then a torrent of rocks hit this boy until he dies.
Let me ask you something: would you allow your children to see this movie? Surely, this would be a rated R film.
Last week, I experienced perhaps the greatest gift as a Rabbi. A congregant came up to me during Kiddish and asked me a question, “Rabbi Baum, I read the parashah and it said that the Jews had to kill every single person in the town. That isn’t really fair.” I receive many questions after my divrei torah, but rarely are they so poignent and challenging as this one question. I will be working closely with this congregant as he will be a bar mitzvah in just one year. Yes, this congregant is 12 years old.
I want to thank him for having the courage to ask a Rabbi such a difficult question that seemingly challenges our faith, and yet, Yossi Pessah did something that is not only acceptable, but praiseworthy. Yossi is carrying on a tradition given to us by our Rabbis, something that can be found as early as our Talmud: the concept of questioning our texts of terror.
I have been a life long student of Torah, but I feel I only truly embraced this when I studied texts that made me feel uncomfortable. When I spent my year at the Conservative Yeshiva, we studied a masechet of Talmud called Sanhedrin which dealt with the courts and various laws of our people. One of my most vivid memories of that year was studying the sugyot on the subject of the wayward and drunk son – the Ben Sorer U’Moreh.
I spoke about this case last year, but instead of making sense of it from a different perspective, I want you to stand in Yossi’s shoes and read the text for what it is.
Deuteronomy 21:18 – 21
“When a man has a son who is wayward and rebellious, who does not listen to the voice of his father and the voice of his mother, and they warn him, but he does not listen to them. His father and mother shall seize him and bring him to the elders of his town, to the gate of his place. Then they are to say to the elders of his town: ‘This son of ours is wayward and rebellious, he does not listen to our voice, he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ Then all the men of the town are to stone him, so that dies. So shall you burn out the evil from your midst, and all of Israel shall hear and be afraid.”
Ask yourselves: do you want your children reading this?
I want to tell you something that is going to see strange, but we are not Biblical Jews, rather, we are Rabbinic Jews. In other words, we are required to look through the lens of the Rabbis to truly understand the Five Books of Moses. Only when we read it through their eyes does it become Torah.
I learned this sugyah in the original Aramaic and Hebrew without a translation. For a beginner, this took me quite a while and the argument of the Talmud went on for several dappim. The Rabbis of the Talmud took each word of the short biblical accounting and examined it. For example, the Rabbis ask, when does this boy become guilty of being a drunkard and a glutton? The Mishnah, which was redacted in 200 CE, states that it has to be a specific kind of meat, the first tithe which was given to the Levite, and anyone else eating it was a great sin. The Gemara, Rabbis who lived later than the Mishnah (probably 400 – 800 CE), adds even more restrictions in regards to the type of wine the child drank. For pages, the Talmud adds even more restrictions. Each time a Rabbi brings up a point to restrict the law, another Rabbi comes to say that the seemingly impossible is possible. Finally, the sugyah ends with the following words:
(Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 71a)
בן סורר ומורה לא היה ולא עתיד להיות,,
“There never has been a ‘stubborn and rebellious son’ and never will be.”
When I read this, I was shocked. My chevrutah (learning partner) and I had spent a whole week breaking our teeth over these words, flipping through dictionaries, etc. Why did we do all this work when you could have just given this answer at the beginning? The text asks that very question, “Why then was this law written?” And the answer, ולמה נכתב - דרוש וקבל שכר “That you may study it and receive reward.”
To re-read this text of terror is not only allowed, but it is vital to the process of being a Jew. Real Jews question the tradition, like Yossi did when he asked me those questions.
Most of you may not know a Rabbi named Joel Roth. Rabbi Roth was the Rosh Yeshiva of the CY when I was a student. He would always leave his door open for his students, no matter who they were. I would often come into his office and ask him anything I wanted. We used to talk for hours and he always welcomed my questions. His last year at the yeshiva was my year and he went to JTS where he spent the majority of his career. It was not until my time in New York that I realized how lucky I was to be able to ask him questions. Rabbi Roth, I found out, is the foremost posek (decider of Jewish law) in the Conservative movement. He is who Rabbis call when they do not know an answer. Rabbi Roth wrote the tesuvah (responsa) allowing women to be ordained as Rabbis among many other tesuvoth that he wrote. He is a humble man, but I will tell you this: he is probably the greatest mind of our movement if not one of the greatest minds of the Jewish world, and I am proud to say that he is one of my Rabbaim.
I remember question and answer session where Rabbi Roth wasasked, why are you a Conservative Jew? He told the crowd that the answer is simple. Conservative Judaism, in his eyes, is the most authentic movement in Judaism because it continues the tradition of following the halachik process, the process of deciding Jewish law.
The Rabbis tackled the texts of terror that we find in our Torah with Rabbinic logic and deep study, and as Conservative Jews, we openly face important issues that need to be dealt with such as the women’s roles in Judaism, issues of conversion, homosexuality, worker’s rights, the role of non-Jews in Judaism, ethical kashrut, and so much more.
I believe that Conservative Judaism is vitally important for our Jewish future.
We do not make decisions lightly, but we study them for years. We tackle these issues through the process of Jewish law, which other movements either CANNOT or WILL NOT do.
Rabbi Roth is one of the main reasons that I am a Rabbi. He taught me that the true authenticity of Judaism is in the questions asked and studied.
The 5th chapter of Pirkei Avot ends with the following advice from two Jews Ben Bag Bag and Ben Hei Hei:
[יט] בן בג בג אומר הפוך בה והפוך בה דכולה בה ובה תחזי וסיב ובלה בה ומינה לא תזוע שאין לך מדה טובה הימנה:
- Ben Bag-Bag used to say of the Torah: Turn it and turn it again, for everything is in it. Look deeply into it; grow old and gray over it; do not stir from it, for you can have no better portion than it.
בן הא הא אומר לפום צערא אגרא:
Ben Hei Hei said: The reward you get is how much you put into it.
We say in the Shema that we should teach our children, but what the Shema doesn’t tell us is that our children have much to teach us.
Like a child, ask many questions and never be afraid, keep searching, challenging, and keep working.
Turn it and turn it again, for everything is in it. Look deeply into it; grow old and gray over it; do not stir from it, for you can have no better reward than Torah.
