On Friday, May 18, we honored the 19 graduates of Woodlands Community Temple. I shared the following drash:
Our Torah
portion this week, Bekhukhotai, tells us one thing pretty clearly: if you
follow all of God’s laws, things will go pretty well for you. In particularly, the physical land of Israel
will treat you well: it will rain, your crops will grow. Your enemies won’t bother you, you’ll live in
peace.
But the
reverse comes into play too. If you don’t follow the laws, if you break the
covenant, God will break it too. You’ll
be punished with some pretty nasty punishments: physical afflictions, starvation,
expulsion…but don’t worry, Torah assures, if you abide by God’s rules, you can
avoid all of this.
We wish it
could be that easy. The truth is that the world we’re sending you out into is
unfair. You’ll be rewarded for no good reason;
you’ll be punished for no good reason. Every time this happens, you’ll be
surprised by it.
We know that,
and our ancient ancestors knew that. Therefore, I don’t think the Torah is
advocating that you try to find a deeper meaning in this chaotic reality of our
world. Rather, I believe it is telling
us that our actions matter.
Your actions matter.
How you approach both the good and the bad in your life matters. And like
God, all we can hope is that we’ve given you guidelines and values by which you
can meet those unfair and fair challenges of the world.
That’s in the
written Torah; that is the Torah we’ve shared as a group over the years. That is what we gird you with as your step
out into the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment