The Torah In Haiku: Ki Teitzei
August 31, 2012 
2 Comments
So many mitzvot
How can we keep all of them?
We just have to try
This week’s parsha contains 72 of the Torah’s 613 commandments. We can’t possibly fulfill them all, can we? So we do the best we can.
Some of the commandments seem to be things we wouldn’t want to do – having the community stone a rebellious child to death (Deut 21:21) or having a man marry his brother’s widow (25:5). And what does the prohibition against cross dressing (22:5) mean at a time when it’s common for women to wear pants or men to have earrings?
I recently came across an essay that addresses this dilemma. It begins, “Torah does not change, but we do.” Click here to read the entire thing at the website of the journal Sh’ma.
The image accompanying this post is of Keith Haring’s 2008 installation The Ten Commandments at Deitch Studios in New York. Click here to view more images.
I like to go with the Columbus Platform on this one:
“Being products of historical processes, certain of [the Torah's] laws have lost their binding force with the passing of the conditions that called them forth. But as a depository of permanent spiritual ideals, the Torah remains the dynamic source of the life of Israel. Each age has the obligation to adapt the teachings of the Torah to its basic needs in consonance with the genius of Judaism.”
The simple-minded, legalistic goal of “fulfilling as many as we can” defeats much of the thrust of liberal Judaism, and will not help Judaism continue to be a force for the good in the world. I wish that every member of a Reform Temple were required to take the kinds of Biblical Studies courses that I have taken in College, so that they would have to reckon with the Texts as the human literature that they are. This does not in any way detract from their holiness or wisdom, and in fact gives the sensitive reader permission to have MORE reverence for them, because the unpleasant passages become more understandable and less infuriating in their historical context.
Jordan …
I did say “do the best we can” which is slightly different from “fulfilling as many as we can” but perhaps it was careless shorthand.
I think the Sh’ma essay better captures my view (similar to yours and the Columbus Platform’s) that each generation “does its best” to adapt the teachings to their needs. That is certainly liberal Judaism at its finest.
It was the ancient Rabbis’ genius in adapting to the needs of THEIR times that makes is possible for us to be Jews today.
You’ll be glad to know that in our congregation’s Shabbat morning Torah study we often look at the text as literature and try to determine the agenda, as it were, of those who might have written it. Were they trying to secure their role (or power)? Were they trying to comfort a people in exile? Were they trying to teach lessons through allegory? All difficult questions but worth exploring.
Good Shabbos.