Spirit and Story
Welcome to Spirit and Story, where you will find the latest thoughts and reflections by CLAL faculty and associates on the contours of our contemporary spiritual journeys. A new article will be posted here every other week.
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Little Plastic Torahs, Big Revelations
By Daniel S.
Brenner
There are
thousands of little plastic Torahs in closets, drawers, stuffed away in boxes, lying on
shelves in Jewish homes across North America. Covered
with gold foil, mass-produced in Taiwan, these miniature gifts were generally given to
children around Shavuot time to mark a graduation or confirmation.
As a graduate
of a Jewish day school, I was one of those children who received this gift, and I still
have my little Torah, now tucked away in a box that once contained checkbooks. The Torah itself is basically unreadable and it is
falling apart. But each year, around the time
of Shavuot, I think of that plastic Torah.
How do you
teach the Jewish people to love Torah? If
Moses gave little plastic Torahs to the escaped Hebrew slaves would they still have
rebelled against him? But seriously, the question I’m asking is this: Are words alone
sufficient, or do we, as a people, need objects for remembering?
Last year, as
part of a planning committee organizing a National Unity Shavuot pluralist text study
program, I sat with rabbis from all denominations in intense deliberations over what we
could study and accomplish together. As
rabbis, we all share a love of learning and a desire to challenge one another -- whether
it is over the meaning of a Midrash, or a fine point of biblical grammar.
After one such
meeting, a colleague and I discussed the group’s tendency to attempt “mental
gymnastics” every time we got together. “At
our public events, hundreds of people from across the denominations come to hear us. How do they make sense of our theoretical
battles? How could we convey that, despite
our ideological differences, we share a simple love of Torah?” I asked.
Jokingly, she
suggested that we give everyone a little plastic Torah.
While we never
gave out little Torahs (we ended up doing a contemporary dramatic re-telling of the story
of Ruth), it was indeed clear to everyone who participated last year that we share a love
of Torah. But the dialogue once again
provoked in me the tension between loving the words of the text, which we do on Shavuot,
and loving the Torah itself, which we do best on Simchat Torah. The Jewish people have a classic mind/body split. So what do we do to balance the two?
This year on
Shavuot, I suggest that people not only discuss the ideas contained in the Torah, but
discuss the experience of Torah itself: of seeing it, of holding it, of reading from it. This is an experience that cuts across ideological
boundaries, and has powerful implications.
Just
imagine for a moment the metaphors: We hold
the Torah like a baby, gently cuddling it to our breast.
We dress it carefully; we touch it lightly. We honor it like an elder, standing before
it, honoring its history. We treat it like a
jewel, hiding it away except for special occasions.
Those metaphors convey part of the experience of Torah, and also
remind us why gifts like little plastic Torahs can be more than tacky gift shop items. Toy versions of religious objects can teach
children that play and imagination are vital in any spiritual path. Even when they grow up and move beyond the
objects, the associations and fantasies still have power.
My own three
-year -old twins play with the popular blue “stuffed Torahs.” And at times, when they are not whopping each
other over the head with them, I see them using the objects as dance partners. They hum a chasidic-like
melody that often spins off into a Barney tune, or march the Torahs around the room in a
big circle.
Will these
stuffed Torahs end up in the closet, forgotten, just as my plastic Torah did? I’m sure they will. But then again, the first Torah text -- the broken
up tablets that God gave Moses -- were stored away in the Holy Ark.
