Begins May 11th at 7.40 and ends
May 12 at 8.40 pm
My weekly
classes at the JCC (Amsterdam and West 75) start up again on Monday 14th at 1.30 pm and
Wednesday mornings 10-11 am. They are both studies and discussion on Torah,
making sense and relevance of the text of the Bible. No background necessary.
Everyone welcome.
Every week
I write a blog on a religious, political or cultural topic. If you would like
to receive it please go to www.jeremyrosen.blogspot.com/ and register.
There is a very
sad episode at the end of this week’s Torah reading. It concerns the son of an
Israelite, Jewish woman and an Egyptian man. One theory is that he was an
Egyptian taskmaster who raped a Jewish woman. The other version is that it was
an example of how an enslaved woman can often try to marry or seduce her way
out of poverty and oppression. There were examples in the Second World War of
Jewish women living with Nazis in the hope of surviving or escaping.
Here in this
episode, only the mother’s name is mentioned: Shlomit Bat Divri. It literally
translates “Hello, the chatterbox.” In other words her own looseness and
overfamiliarity brought her fate upon herself. We are often the authors of our
own misfortune.
But what of her
son? He was now fatherless, brought up by a single mother who was not held in
high esteem. It is not surprising that he felt alienated. And although he was
Jewish through his mother, he had no tribe to belong to, because tribes were
decided paternally. We are naturally inclined to feel sorry for him. But on the
other hand he turned into an aggressive, rebel who attacked the fundamental
values of Israelite society by rejecting God.
The lesson is
that we may have excuses for why things are tough but the answer is not to
blame ones parents or fate or society. The answer is to get on with building
one’s own life. We can all find excuses but in the end it is up to us to make a
life regardless of what difficulties we face.
