Читать книгу A Jewish Journey - Sheldon Cohen - Страница 11

He took his class outdoors this beautiful, sunny day. There were only a few clouds in a light blue sky. Today he would teach his boys Jewish mythology.

The rabbi was a short, muscular man whose hair was black with early signs of gray, his mustache was black and his long beard was at least one-half white. The contrasting shades made his dark-complected, oval face appear like an artist’s portrait. His eyes were hazel colored and his pupils stared at you with a force that demanded your complete attention. The rays of the sun and the shadow of the tree outlined his face and prominent nose and caused his long beard to take on a flickering luminescence that seemed to extend around his face. The students took this to be another one of the many signs attesting to the fact that the rabbi was indeed a favored one of God. “Before we talk about Jewish mythology I want to ask a question,” he said.

The students looked at him with anticipation.

As his hands and fingers danced in the air, he sang in a loud tenor voice, “Shema Yisraeil Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echod.” He paused, waiting for reaction from the students.

There was none.

“What did I say, boys?”

Several students answered together. “Hear, oh Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is One.”

He nodded his head and smiled one of his rare smiles, “Yes, you’ve all said this prayer before, and by now I hope that it is in your brain forever. Let’s continue with the rest of the Shema. And you shall love the Lord with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart; and you shall teach them to your children, and you shall talk of them when you walk by the way, and when you lie down and when you rise.” He paused and looked at the students, his hands and arms now stilled and brought down at his sides.

“When you lie down and when you rise? What does that mean? How do we follow this commandment?” he asked staring at each of his students in turn.

They did not respond, so he continued. “We recite the Shema in the evening when we lie down to sleep and in the morning when we get up. This means that we must always think of the Shema. Then it says, “You shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. How do we do that?”

The smallest one of the group, a bright-eyed youngster named Yaakov answered. “That’s the phylacteries with the prayers inside that we wrap around our arm and head to remind us to keep the laws.”

“Good, Yaakov.” He then continued with, “And you shall write them on the door posts of your house and on your gates. And what does that…?” A hand shot up before the word was out of the rabbi’s mouth. “The Mezuzah,” interrupted Ze’ev. “That’s what we touch when we go into the house.”

“That’s right, Ze’ev. You see how what we do is connected to these prayers?”

“Yes, rabbi,” said Ze’ev, smiling and nodding.

“And who owns your house?”

“My father,” said Ze’ev.

“What does the Mezuzah mean?”

Silence.

“The answer is that the Mezuzah reminds us that God owns our house. Then we will keep our house a holy place where everybody lives in peace with God and with nature and with each other. That’s why we touch the Mezuzah on the doorpost and kiss our fingers when we come and go. We do that to remember to live with His rules.”

The rabbi looked at his boys in turn. He stopped speaking for a moment of silence to bring them to attention if their thoughts had strayed. He found these pauses to be an effective method of returning the boys to the concentration that, at this age, they were prone to lose.

“Yes, now you’re getting the idea,” he said. “There’s always a reason for those rituals we take for granted. They remind us that we are but children of the One God, and we are the people who brought this truth to the world. If we follow the One God there’ll be hope for all. It’s a blessing to recite the Shema because it means that we accept God’s guidance. The Shema must be the last prayer we say before we die.”

The students nodded yes.

“You know that Moses received the Torah from Sinai.”

“Yes,” they all said as one.

“How many books are there in the Torah?”

“Five,” they said together.

“God gave Moses the Torah, right?”

The students looked at each other wondering why the rabbi asked such an obvious question. Then together they nodded their heads.

“Yes, you know the Torah is God’s laws given to Moses for the Jews.”

Facing one boy the rabbi approached him and said, “And tell me Laban, where did God get the Torah?”

“God wrote it?” answered Laban with more of a question then an answer.

“Ah, good, you remember your lessons. When did he write it, Saul?”

“He wrote it with Moses on the mountain,” answered Saul with confidence.

The rabbi turned to the entire group and asked, “Is Saul right?”

“Yes,” some answered in a quiet, tentative manner, knowing that when the rabbi asked a question in this way there was more to come.

“I want all of you to think for a minute. How do you build a house?”

“With wood and bricks and stones,” said Saul.

“That’s right, but is that what you do? First decide to build a house and then go in the forest and fetch wood and stones and just go ahead and build it?”

“Yes,” they said after a brief pause and unsure of the answer.

“Ah, the brilliance of my young students,” he said nodding his head and waving his short fingers in the air. “First you decide to build a house. Then you get wood, bricks, stones, and put it up. Aren’t you forgetting something?”

The students knew the answer was yes, but no one would volunteer an answer as they all looked at the rabbi.

“Where will you put the wood and bricks and stones? How will you know where they go? What rooms will you have in your house? How big will they be? How many rooms will you have? What about windows?” he said pointing and looking at each boy in turn.

“We can build it any way we want. It depends how we like it,” was the consensus answer.

“Will you take measurements and decide how the house should look and how many rooms there should be and what size to make them and what direction the windows will face in order to get the sun’s rays to help warm the house?” The rabbi paused to watch his students reflect. “Now that you’ve made these decisions, I hope that you’ll draw up a set of plans to tell you what to do.”

“Yes,” they answered, at last understanding the point the rabbi was trying to make. “We’ll first make a set of plans.”

“Ah, good,” he nodded, and in a rapid-fire staccato, he asked, “Tell me, Yanov. Who built the world we live in? Who created the oceans, the forests, and the mountains? Who put all kind of living things here? Who made us boss over all the creatures of the earth? Who made us able to think and understand that there is a tomorrow?”

“God did,” said Yanov.

“Do you believe, Yanov, that God would build a house or a world without plans?”

“Uh, no, rabbi.”

“Good, Yanov. Tell me, please, what were the plans that God used in order to build a world? What plans did he draw so that we’ll all be told how to live a good life of peace and love?”

“The Ten Commandments,” said Aryeh before Yanov could answer.

“The Torah—the five books of rules,” offered Abraham.

“You’re both right,” he said as his eyelids closed and his head tilted back and pointed toward heaven. After several moments of silence he continued. “The Torah was in heaven before God gave it to Moses, and the Torah was in heaven even before the world was created. Just like your home has to be built after you make the plans, so the world could only be built after the Torah, for the Torah is our plan for living on the earth that God made for us. God used the Torah to build the earth. He did not build the earth first and then develop a Torah. Do you understand?”

As if one they said, “Yes, rabbi.”

“Never forget that the world was created for the sake of the Torah. It is the Torah of the Most Holy. God gave it to Moses so that Israel will be a kingdom of priests and become a holy nation to set an example for the world. That’s what you must know. God created the Torah to reveal the world. Those who live by the Torah will be honored by the Almighty, blessed be He.”

“If the Torah was written before the earth was made, where was it kept?” asked Ze’ev.

The rabbi nodded his head and smiled. “That’s a good question, Ze’ev. I want you to always ask questions. How else do we learn but by study and asking questions? Would you be satisfied with an answer that says the Torah was kept in the mind of the Almighty?”

Ze’ev nodded his head yes. The other boys followed.

“So God was first and the Torah came next in God’s mind,” said Yanov.

“Yes, that’s a good way to think of it.”

“How long before God created the earth did he think of the Torah?” asked Saul.

“Have you learned some mathematics? Have you learned about infinity?” asked the rabbi.

They looked at each other and then offered, “A little.”

“God is infinite. God is here. God has always been. You can never reach the number infinity, but God has given us the Torah so we could reach Him even though He is infinite. We could never count to infinity, because even if we counted for an eternity there would always be the next number to reach. God knew this and created the Torah. If he didn’t, we wouldn’t be able to reach him just like we can’t reach infinity. In mathematics, the great mathematicians have figured out how to use infinity in many ways to solve problems and learn many principles. So it is with the Torah, which is what we use to approach the infinite mind of the Almighty, blessed be He. Tell me my brilliant students, does this answer the question?”

With their mouths open, the students looked at the rabbi and nodded their heads.

He continued. “The Torah is the source of goodness for the world. Hillel said that the whole Torah could be summed up in one sentence: ‘What is hateful to you do not to your fellow.’ Rabbi Akiva changed the words, and said, ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself.’ This last commandment is what the Torah is all about.”

“Not too many people live by the Torah, so God must be angry that the people He made in His image don’t pay attention to it,” said Ze’ev.

“God has placed us here in His image. Yes, that’s true. He has given us…” The rabbi stopped his answer in mid sentence as he noticed his boys change their gaze to behind him and to the right.

He turned and saw a man on horseback approaching them. He became apprehensive, for he knew this could mean trouble. They all remained silent as the man approached. When he came closer, the rabbi recognized him as a police official in the town named Evgeny Kolakoff.

Looking straight on, the top of the rider’s head was above the horse, for Kolakoff was a short man with a pointed nose giving one the impression that he was following an arrow point extending from his frowning face. A narrow brimmed hat covered his bald head. He wore the typical Russian police uniform with brown pants stuffed in knee length boots and a brown jacket with brass buttons extending to his neck.

When Kolakoff arrived, he looked down upon the rabbi and his students. Through tight lips and furrowed brow, he sneered, “Do you all know what time it is?”

“Yes, we were just getting ready to leave when we saw you coming,” said the rabbi.

“Well you better get moving. Curfew time is close. On the other hand if you want to stay, that’s your decision, but then I’ll have the pleasure of arresting all of you Jews. It wasn’t your intention to break the law, was it Rabbi Tepperovitch?”

“No, of course not. Curfew doesn’t start for fifteen minutes and it’ll take us ten minutes to get to our homes. Come, boys.”