WANDERING JEWS

Some denominations of Judaism believe the entire Torah (Genesis through Deuteronomy) was given to and written by Moses.  If this is true, Moses then would have known in advance that his people would rise up against him repeatedly, that he would not be granted access to the Promised Land and that he would die. Then he would write about his own death! 

Both Moses and God are repeatedly upset by the rebellion of the Israelites against them, making it seem unlikely to me that either would have foreknowledge.  (Moreover, if God had foreknowledge, how could we have free will and what would be the purpose of prayer, repentence, learning and striving to change?)

I wonder why the Torah ends before the Israelites arrive in the Promised Land. Doesn’t it seem as if the whole point of Exodus, the fulfillment of promises to Abraham, Jacob and Moses is the arrival?  When Rabbi Maurice mentioned this in a Torah class, he grinned, “But it made you buy the sequel, didn’t it?” (Meaning the Tanakh, which contains the rest of the Jewish Bible.)

Is perhaps the point of the story the struggle to stay pure amid tribulations and temptations?

If the Israelites had calmly reached the land of milk and honey before the Current Era, would there be any reason to record the Torah at all? Would there be a Jesus? Would Jews, Christians and Moslems all have separate holy books that claim ancestry of Abraham?

If the Torah had a happy ending, would we treat it like a novel, as a means of escape rather than as an inspiration and source of great learning? Would we Jews feel the need to study Torah over and over, bit by bit in Torah portions in our synagogues and homes?

Will we ever have another Moses? Will we ever really reach the land of milk and honey? The constant uncertainty of our daily living, fears of layoffs at work, of being hit on the way to the grocery store, of the frequent falls from the mountain of love, may lead people to take comfort in the struggles for goodness among even the most holy.  Knowing that even Moses struggled may inspire us to work great deeds.

In fact, Israel was a land of desert, swampland, food rationing, thirst and malaria until kibbutz workers in the 1900s drained the swamp, irrigated the desert, planted fruit trees and established apiaries and dairies. So now it is a land of milk and honey, although the problem of nearly constant war remains.

Perhaps the persistence of Torah lies in the fact that Jews wandered from the destruction of the First Temple to our own lifetimes. We may even be wandering still, since we are still reforming, reconstructing, working to make Jewish life, worship and ritual compelling to modern Jews.  The word Hebrew comes from the Egyptian Habiru, which means "stateless people."  The word diaspora is from the Greek diaspore, which means milkweed or butterfly plant.  Milkweed pods develop from flowers, open and seeds, borne on the wind in a tuft of down-featherlike fuzz travel very far from the mother plant.  One could, in fact, argue that wandering has saved Jews from extinction numerous times, because the Romans, the Crusaders, the Inquistitors, the Cossacks and Hitler's army all attempted complete genocide of the Jews in their midst. 

It is clear to me that although I am no longer wandering in and out of widely disparate religious institutions, I am still wandering. With my children grown and gone, I am devouring books on Judaism and my new career, I am single and considering dating again and I am also returning to college this fall. The wisdom and love in Talmudic teachings have helped me examine my own life. I now believe that even if my prayers of gratitude never reach God, they reach my own heart, and thus are worth saying.

I recently found a note I’d scribbled to myself in the midst of notes on Jewish history. “I want a scholar.” I closed my eyes and tried to remember what inspired that; I remember being moved by the humble wisdom of Rabbi Teluskin, a great modern scholar. For days afterwards I heard over and over again in my head the lilting voices of the daughters in Fiddler on the Roof: “For Papa, make him a scholar…”

During that same week, I also dreamed that I cut my waist length hair so I could wash the remaining hair in a metal bucket of creek water warmed by a campfire. I understood this as a message that my wandering may require personal change.

In synagogue Saturday, an elegant wisp of a girl shone at her bar mitzvah.  She sang hundreds of words in Hebrew before the entire congregation, with only a rare stumble and smile.  She carried the Torah scroll in the procession. She gave her teaching on the week's Torah portion.  I checked the expressions of the others attending.  There were many pleased smiles, but no one looked as surprised as I felt over the poise, intelligence, lovely voice and grace of this young girl.  This is not an unusual occurance, I thought.  Singing before us was justification for thousands of years of wandering, of Torah study, of keeping the Jewish faith and culture alive.