Shabbat shalom!
Torah is an old religious text that is a long story full of lessons and teachings. It’s in a big scroll made of animal skin, and it’s read every week just like we did today. The Torah is split into weekly portions, and every year we restart it. There are five books of the Torah, and my Torah portion is in the book of Exodus, which is the second book. What we have read today takes place shortly after the Israelites escape Egypt.
In my Torah portion, the Israelites are somewhat mischievous. The main conflict of the portion is the Golden Calf. Some of you may have heard of that story before. First, God endows skills to certain people to create holy structures like the Tent of Meeting, and the Ark for the Covenant. God asks those skillful people to fulfill many things using sacred anointing oil, spices, and many other materials. They will anoint the Tent of Meeting, the Ark for the Covenant, Moses’s brother, Aaron, and Aaron’s sons to make them holy and sacred. Meanwhile, Moses is receiving the covenant from God up on Mount Sinai. The Israelites are in shambles, and they need a leader. Moses is gone and not there to lead them. Then Aaron, Moses’s brother, comes up with a plan. He asks the Israelites for all of their gold, earrings, and other jewelry made of gold, and makes a golden calf for the Israelites to worship. Some may say, like the commentator named Chizkuni, that it was just to stall until Moses came down, but the calf is made. God is upset and tells Moses to check on the Israelites because they are misbehaving. They are committing idolatry, which is the worship of idols in place of a God that can’t be represented physically. God is enraged and wants to kill all of the Israelites!!! However, Moses advises God not to kill the Israelites, as torah tells us:
וַיְחַל מֹשֶׁה, אֶת־פְּנֵי יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהָיו, וַיֹּאמֶר, לָמָה יְהֹוָה יֶחֱרֶה אַפְּךָ בְּעַמֶּךָ, אֲשֶׁר הוֹצֵאתָ מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם, בְּכֹחַ גָּדוֹל וּבְיָד חֲזָקָֽה׃
Which translates to: But Moses implored his God Adonai, saying, “Adonai, let not Your anger blaze forth against Your people, whom You delivered from the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand.” (Exodus 32:11)
But when Moses finally comes down and sees the calf, he is furious too - so mad that he shatters the commandments God has given him. Then he disintegrates the calf! He forces the people to drink a mixture of water and the disintegrated calf. This mixture is probably disgusting and maybe even killed some of the Israelites. Then Moses asks the people who is for God, and the Levis gather. The Levis are a tribe of worthy men. Moses then has the Levis kill 3,000 of the people who committed idolatry, including their siblings and family members, which is very harsh. Then Moses decides he wants God to forgive the rest of the people for making the golden calf. This is very hypocritical of Moses, who just came down from mount Sinai and killed 3,000 Israelites!!! Now he wants to forgive the people? The remaining Israelites are still guilty of committing idolatry despite their decision to go back to worshiping God. Moses ties his fate to the Israelites’ fate when he says, “Now, if You will forgive their sin [well and good]; but if not, erase me from the record which You have written!” (Exodus 32:32). In other words, Moses is saying that he and the Israelites go together. If God won’t have the Israelites, then God won’t have Moses either. God responds, “Go, lead the people!” and then God wants the Isrealites to take account for their sins. God then sent a plague. It’s not clear how many people died, and Torah doesn’t even clarify whether it is a deadly plague. It could have just been a stomach bug.
I think the punishments were unnecessarily cruel - like Moses telling people to kill their family members. It goes against the 10 commandments to worship idols, but the Israelites who worshiped the calf didn’t even have the 10 commandments yet. If you sin, and you are just killed - that seems extreme and not forgiving. Does harsh punishment really help someone learn a lesson? For the Israelites, the punishment of getting killed is not going to help them learn anything. Dead people can’t learn a lesson. It made me think about less lethal cases, such as hitting your child as a form of discipline. Some parents do this to have a child learn not to do something, but in reality, it just makes them scared of the punishment and sometimes the parent. God and Moses’ actions are a great example of unfairly punishing someone for their bad behavior without actually teaching them why the behavior was bad.
Maybe God and Moses could learn from my parents. My parents don’t spank or hit me and my brother when we have bad behavior. They talk to us and communicate why they want us to stop doing that thing. We learn why it's bad and the consequences that could occur. I think this is a good way to tell someone that what they are doing is bad and to get them to stop. It doesn’t have to be by yelling or violence.
Adding on to parenting, I’d like to relate it to other parts of the Torah. And ask the question “How does Torah affect parenting and how does it teach it?” One quote from the Torah in Deuteronomy 4:9, it says, “But take utmost care and watch yourselves very carefully, so that you do not forget the things that you saw with your own eyes and so that they do not fade from your mind as long as you live. And make them known to your children and to your children’s children.” This explains that it’s important to teach your children your experiences and stories. But how much do people actually rely on the Torah for important things like parenting? I answered that question by surveying a few of the parents here at HBT. The first question they answered was how much they used the Torah for parenting. They answered on a scale of 1-5, and most said 1, although some people said they learned some parenting Torah from Rabbi Barbara’s class called “Parenting through a Jewish Lens.” Then I asked what they thought about 3 quotes from the Torah. The first one is the one from Deuteronomy 4:9 that I just read. Most people thought this was great advice. The second one is from the V’ahavta, which we say after the Shema, and it’s from Deuteronomy 6:6-7: “Take these words which I command you this day upon your heart. Teach them faithfully to your children and speak of them in your home and on your way, when you lie down, and when you rise up.” For this one, people either liked it or thought it was okay. My mom told me that she took these words to heart in thinking about making mine and my brother’s Jewish education a priority. Now for the last one, this is pretty brutal. It is in Deuteronomy 21:18-21, and it says, “If a householder has a wayward and defiant son, who does not heed his father or mother and does not obey them even after they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his town at the public place of his community. They shall say to the elders of his town, ‘This son of ours is disloyal and defiant; he does not heed us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.’ Thereupon his town’s council shall stone him to death. Thus you will sweep out evil from your midst: all Israel will hear and be afraid.” Everyone obviously thought this was horrible advice. No one is going to take this parenting tip. Overall, these quotes are all great examples of the Torah giving parenting advice. Some of them are great advice while some are pretty awful.
Now I’m not a parent, but I don’t think parents are going to the Torah for their parenting tips. They’re probably going to pick a more recent book, maybe one from the 21st century. Maybe a book someone has recommended to them. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen my mom looking at posts from other moms on Facebook saying things about parenting. She’s also a psychologist, which means she knows and cares about how feelings affect kids - mine and Cole’s in particular. I think parents are making their own decisions on what they think is best, rather than following rules from Torah (or Facebook)!
The Torah isn’t perfect. Some things in it are good, and some aren’t. I think of the Torah as more of a story or stories that all have lessons and teachings, but it doesn’t mean that all of them need to be followed exactly. In my Torah portion, I wouldn’t advise anyone to follow the actions of God and Moses by punishing the people’s actions that harshly. A Reconstructionist saying is “The past has a vote, not a veto.” That applies to the Torah. We as Reconstructionists learn from it, think about it, study it, and question it. But Torah doesn’t tell us what to do - we control our own lives and decisions based on our experiences and learning from other places. Ultimately, the Torah can help us, but we decide if what we learn is right.
I’d first like to thank my parents for encouraging me through this process and helping me when I needed it. Also for being amazing parents throughout my whole life. I’d also like to thank my brother, Cole, for being there for me and always being a great big brother. I want to thank all of my friends and family and the HBT community for being here and helping me celebrate this moment. I also want to thank Rabbi Noyo for helping me write this speech and being a great Hebrew school teacher and Rabbi this year. I’d like to say thank you to Rabbi Barbara for being a spectacular Rabbi for most of my life and playing a huge role in my Jewish education. Finally, I want to thank Morah Missie for tutoring me to prepare for my Bar mitzvah and encouraging me to do the best I can.
Shabbat shalom!