The Charlotte Jewish News -May 2004 - Page 27
No Loopholes on Shavuot
3,316 Years of Jewish Law Honored
By Jane Ulman
ENCINO, CA (JTA) - “You
know. Rabbi Hal, there’s no con
tract that can’t be broken,” my son
Danny said to the teacher of his
sixth-grade Judaic studies class.
There are advantages to being
the son of a lawyer. Danny, 12,
knows the difference between
slander and libel. He knows, under
the California Civil Code, that gift
certificates, with few exceptions,
cannot expire. And he knows, as
he remarked to Rabbi Hal
Greenwald, that no contract is air
tight, including one stipulating
expectations for his class at
Abraham Joshua Heschel Day
School in Northridge, CA.
But as a Jew, Danny also under
stands, like the manufacturers of
Hebrew National hot dogs, that he
must “answer to a higher authori
ty.” And while he may contem
plate skipping an assignment or
chitchatting during class, he
understands, as Numbers 30:3
tells him, that he cannot weasel
out of his vows.
Of course, Danny had no
choice about signing the class
contract. He also had no choice
about agreeing to Numbers 30:3
and the Torah’s other laws. For
according to one interpretation,
God held Mount Sinai over the
heads of the Israelites, threatening
to drop the mountain on them if
they did not accept the Torah.
“You were there,” I tell Danny.
“I was?”
“We all were.” The rabbis tell
us that every Jew who would ever
be bom was present 3,316 years
ago, on the sixth day of the month
of Sivan, when God, amidst thun
der, lightning and the sound of the
shofar, gave Moses the Ten
Commandments as well as, many
believe, the entire written and oral
Torah.
This was an extraordinary and
revolutionary event, marking the
first time in history that a civiliza
tion was given a code of law that
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“Maybe those killings were
grandfathered in,” my husband,
Larry, suggests.
“Maybe God wants us to know
that people aren’t perfect,” says
Danny, who has indulged in his
share of fraternal fighting.
But laws aren’t perfect either.
The sixth commandment notwith
standing, many biblical laws, to
many who are not strict tradition
alists, appear unjust, unethical,
irrelevant or outdated.
Who would, for example,
“present a burnt offering of pleas
ing odor to the Lord: two bulls of
the herd, one ram, seven yearling
lambs” on Shavuot? (Numbers
28:27) Or “not suffer a witch to
live”? (Exodus 22:17) Or, my per
sonal favorite, believe that “he
who curses his father or mother
shall surely be put to death”?
(Exodus 21:17)
Then why do we have laws?
“So we don’t get killed,” says
Jeremy, 13.
“So we can break them,” says
Danny.
“Laws? Who wants laws?” asks
Gabe, 16, bewildered by the fact
that not everyone is an adolescent
anarchist.
We Jews certainly want laws.
For at the base of Mount Sinai,
without even asking God if we
could preview our legal and moral
future, we exclaimed, “We will do
and we will hear,” tantamount to
signing the contract without even
reading it.
We should have added, “But we
will continually analyze and
argue, down to whether we should
light the Chanukah candles from
right to left or left to right.”
And that’s why we have literal
ly thousands of volumes of Torah
interpretations and reinterpreta
tions, starting with the Oral Law,
which was compiled, by the fifth
century C.E., into the Talmud. We
also have supposedly definitive
codes of Jewish law, including
Maimonidcs’ Mishnah Torah and
{Continued on page 30)
included ethical obligations. No
longer could people rip off a limb
of a living animal. No longer
could farmers harvest every last
comer of their fields. No longer
could people stand idly by when a
human life was in danger.
Of course, people slip up.
Moses did, the minute he
descended from Mount Sinai and
spotted the golden calf. Enraged,
he threw down the Ten
Commandments and burned and
pulverized the idol, demanding,
“Whoever is for the Lord, come
here” (Exodus 32:26). He then
ordered the sons of Levi to “put
sword on thigh, go back and forth
from gate to gate throughout the
camp, and slay brother, neighbor
and kin” (Exodus 32:27). Three
thousand Israelites were killed
that day, in direct contradiction to
the sixth commandment, “You
shall not murder.”
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