Jewish History has given Bnai Yisrael (the Jewish People) our share of challenges to overcome. Even with that, Jewish wisdom is timeless and always has what to offer us in every iteration, generation, and stage of our lives. When we meet challenges though, we often adapt and invent new approaches to our inherited Jewish wisdom.
The Book of Nehemiah, Chapter 8, where we open our new unit is a crash moments, where everything changes. (For more about Jewish civilization and how we respond to a crash, see Rabbi Benay Lappe’s talk about this: http://www.svara.org/tedx/.) The first Temple in Israel is destroyed, most of Bnai Yisrael is sent off to Babylon, and only generations later a new benevolent king allows them to return to the Land of Israel to rebuild The Temple. But when they come back, life is not quite the same.
A scribe and temple priest named Ezra begins doing something RADICAL. He gathers men, women, children, and all who could understand in the public square to hear the Torah read aloud. When Bnai Yisrael worshipped in The Temple, they brought animals to the priests, and the priests did the actual service of connecting to God on behalf of the Jewish people. Now, under Ezra’s leadership, there is a new model in addition to that.
Torah is read in the public square in Hebrew (a language most people no longer speak) while a group of helpers called targumim relay a translation into the vernacular (Aramaic) for everyone listening to understand.
Echoes of Ezra’s values at Makom Community
At Makom Community, as we study these texts with you and your children in the coming weeks, you’ll continue to hear how dedicated we are to Jewish wisdom being accessible to all of our students and families. Ezra’s choice to symbolically read Torah in the public square where everyone could hear and participate and then create a structure for access and understanding in the targumim to make sure everyone from every background could understand really resonates with us. Whether it’s always including translation and transliteration in our materials at Family Shabbat Celebrations, writing blog posts so you can keep up with your child’s learning, or looking toward the future where we have increased opportunities for groups of parents to learn together, we know that you and your child(ren) all deserve access to Jewish wisdom. We see the value in supporting you as you welcome Jewish wisdom into your life and let it and the community that comes with it celebrate with you and support you.
A few things you might talk to your child(ren) about this week as we’re all jumping in to new material together:
- How did Ezra’s first public Torah reading remind people of the stories they had heard from receiving the Torah at Mt. Sinai?
- Why did it matter that Ezra created an experience that reminded people of Mt. Sinai?
- What was the value of reading Torah in public instead of in a place that might have seemed more special or holy?
- What values at Makom Community remind us of Ezra’s decision to read Torah in public?