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UJCL Parashah Commentaries
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MISHPATIM 5769 Shemot - Exodus 21:1-24:18 February 21, 2009 – 27 Shevat 5769 By Rabbi Pablo Berman,
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Tell Me a StorySurely you all know children’s rights, right? Very well, then let me teach you today some rights that every child has, and which we should fulfill.
Every child, regardless of race, language or creed, has the right to listen to the most beautiful stories of their people’s oral tradition, especially those that will stimulate their imagination and their critical capacity.
Every child is entitled to demand from his/her parents to tell a story, at any time, day or night.
Every child has the right to know who the authors of the most famous stories are. Adults have the obligation to put all kind of books, tales and stories within the reach of their children.
Children have the right to invent and tell their own stories, and to modify those already told, creating their own version.
Children have the right to choose new stories. Adults have the obligation to continuously feed them with new and imaginative stories, imagined by them or not, with or without kings, long or short. What is mandatory is that they be beautiful and interesting.
Children are always entitled to ask for another story, and to ask for the same story a million times.
Children, and we adults as well, are entitled to ask for another story, and to ask for the same story a million times.
And that is what we have been doing these last 3300 years: telling, year after year, the same story, the Torah, that Moses received at Mount Sinai. Those are the stories that we have listened to; the greatness and weaknesses of our patriarchs, their wise decisions and their mistakes, God’s miracles, the words of the Prophets, the stories of our people. Those are the stories we recounted yesterday and still recount today, for they constitute our tradition, our history as a People.
After receiving the Ten Commandments, Moses conveyed to the people a set of complex and disorganized laws explained to Moses by God, while he was at Mount Sinai. How to convey these to the people? How to convey these laws and way of life to hundreds of thousands of adults, so that they are accepted by all?
“And Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord, and all the ordinances…” Moses told the people what God had said; he recounted the words, and then he recounted the laws, the most difficult part. First he recounted God’s words. He gathered together the entire people, he made a large circle, I could even say that he built a great fire in their midst and, by the fireside, kindly and affectionately, the leader of the people began to tell his people what God had told him, as a story told by parents to their children.
Let us recall Silvia Schujer’s interesting comments: Each one of us is an unfinished individual that can only be completed by telling stories. Through stories told and stories untold. Because telling and hearing a story is a wish as ancient as humankind itself, a wish shared by all cultures and geographies. And this was probably due to the need to explain life, to pass on experiences. Or to preserve collective memory and, thus, register thought, or simply for the pleasure of inventing stories, creating realities that account for real or imagined events, or reporting about famous figures and faraway places. But always, a wish that speaks about relationships between people, or with supernatural powers. Those things we cannot fully understand about life and death. At the end of the day, a wish aimed to track, disturb, understand, rectify, the relationship each one of us has with ourselves and with the world.
“And Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord, and all the ordinances…” And listen to what the people then said: “and all the people answered with one voice, and said: ‘All the words which the Lord hath spoken will we do.’” Kol echad vayomru, with one voice the people answered Moses.
The people understood the story, understood God’s words, and said to Moses: all those things we will do. They just asked Moses (and this is just mere imaginings from the writer of these words), “Moses: tell us the story once more, we want to hear the story again. Please, Moses, one more time.” And so it was. We are still telling the story, again and again, a story that began many thousands of years ago and which we still recount from generation to generation.
Parents, grandparents, tell stories, sit your children and your children’s children in your lap, and let us continue telling stories. Just remember one thing: we must feed on imaginative, beautiful and interesting stories, and I’m absolutely certain that it is in our Torah, in the stories of our people, where we will be able to find the best source of inspiration.
Shabbat shalom uMeborach, Rabbi Pablo Berman |
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This Parashah commentary was done by the Union of Jewish Congregations of Latin America and the Caribbean, and may be reproduced quoting its source.
Forwarded by Rabbi Gustavo Kraselnik, from Kol Shearith Israel Congregation, Panama. |
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