blogs/rabbi-huberman

According to our tradition, two Torahs were given on Mount Sinai.

On that day, Moses held up two tablets—the Ten Commandments. The first five Commandments focused on the Israelites’ relationship with God. The second five governed how people should interact with each other.

The Ten Commandments are easy to locate. Walk into any synagogue, and you’ll see them displayed. But there is another Torah many Sages contend is even more important.

It is known as the “oral Torah,” passed from generation to generation, recorded in such volumes as the Talmud. It answers the question, “How do we put God’s words into action?”

Legal contracts, land ownership, holidays, how to heal the sick, how to hang a mezuzah, when does life begin and end, what role does God actually play in our daily lives?

Often, when I explain “oral Torah” to Hebrew school students I refer to a case which I once observed.

We all know it is forbidden to steal. It is the eighth Commandment and appears straightforward.

But what about this—a case I encountered in Canada in my younger years as a daily newspaper reporter?

In my morning review of the nightly “crime blotter,” I came across the case of a single mother, whose ex-husband had cut off support payments, and who was trying to feed her two hungry children.

She stepped out of her apartment at about 12:15 am, approached the dumpster behind a nearby 7/11 store, and pulled out two loaves of bread and a few yogurts, which—minutes earlier—she observed being discarded by the store manager because they were past their due dates.

Guilty or non-guilty?

When she appeared in court, the prosecutor noted that if everyone in need assembled near supermarket or convenience store trash bins just after midnight each day, riots would break out.

But the judge responded: “Even though this was private property, the manager had discarded these items upon the belief that he would never see them again.

“When it comes to matters of feeding starving children, provided no one is being harmed, there is latitude. The law must be reasonable in its application.”

The woman was released with a warning to consider other ways of feeding her children.

I’ve always remembered that story, and the judge’s message of compassion and latitude; it has helped guide me as a teacher, a father and a grandfather. There are laws on paper, but I believe God can truly be found in the ways that they are applied.

This week in synagogue, we will reread the Ten Commandments and probably the most famous and repeated line within all of Judaism.

Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad. Translated—"Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is One!"

For generations, children have been encouraged to recite these words before they lay down to sleep. Often when a family is about to bid farewell to a loved one, they ask what should they say just before or after they pass away.

The suggested answer is Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad.

But however powerful and history laden that sentence may be, it is the next sentence that especially inspires me.

The Torah continues: “Take to heart these instructions… Impress them upon your children. Recite them when you stay at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up.”

When I think of it, my parents never had to tell me not to steal or kill. But what they did teach me is how to be kind, respectful, caring and compassionate—both at home and in “the outside world.”

After World War II, my grandparents, Zaidie Nissan and Bubbie Sheva, joined several first-generation Russian immigrants and asked relief agencies to assemble photos of children that were least likely to be adopted—the oldest, the most traumatized, the most “unattractive.”

Those were the children they chose to foster.

These life examples run through my veins perhaps more profoundly than words on pages or on tablets. Regardless of how many times we, as children, attended formal religious services, this was the Judaism we were raised on.

Where did you learn your oral Torah? From parents, grandparents, a teacher, a rabbi, cantor or coach? Which lessons have shaped you, and what part have they played in how you have guided your children and grandchildren?

The oral Torah taught us to be kind, patient and charitable on the path to becoming a mensch. Indeed, I would say that being a mensch is Judaism’s 11^th Commandment—Judaism’s “North Star.”

It runs through our DNA, and it inspires us to feel compassion for the penniless mother, or the plight of a recent immigrant, whose story parallels that of our ancestors when they arrived in this country.

It jangles me when I often hear, “My parents were not really religious.” Knowingly or not, our parents and grandparents “religiously” followed the second paragraph of the Shema, which we read this week.

It also compels us today to model the 11^th Commandment—to “be a mensch”—to our children and grandchildren, who are too often swayed by entertainers, sports figures, Internet influencers and false prophets. 

I believe these are the instructions that God was directing toward us 3,337 years ago, as the Torah stated, “impress these words upon our children.”

As it was for our parents, so it is for us.

And in that way, the words repeated in this week’s Torah portion have always inspired the Jewish people consistently to “choose life.”

For as the Torah teaches us this week, "Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one!"

One God, who continues to inspire us with two Torahs:  One from heaven—and other transmitted from generation to generation, which has made each of us the person we are today.