I sometimes wonder how many, with a certain thirst in their hearts, encouraged by the soulful approach to the upcoming High Holydays that has developed in Judaism over the centuries, turn to the Torah during this Hebrew month of Elul, perhaps rediscovering the synagogue during this time of spiritual preparation, and find themselves repelled by the primitive laws of this season's readings in the book of Deuteronomy.
And if you think I have just blasphemed, or have done exactly the opposite of what a rabbi ought to do, by calling anything about our Torah 'primitive' - rather than, say, 'eternal' - consider with me the thirteenth through the nineteenth verses of the twenty-third chapter of Deuteronomy, from our reading this Sabbath:
"When a man marries a woman and has intercourse with her, and takes an aversion to her, and makes up charges against her and defames her, saying 'I married this woman, but when I came unto her I found her not a virgin' - then the girl's father and mother shall produce evidence of the girl's virginity before the elders of the town at the gate. And the girl's father shall say to the elders, 'I gave this man my daughter as wife, but he has taken an aversion to her, and has made up charges, saying, I did not find your daughter a virgin, yet here is the evidence of my daughter's virginity,' and they shall spread out the cloth before the elders of the town. Then the elders of that town shall take that man and flog him. And they shall fine him one hundred in silver, and give it to the girl's father, for the man has defamed a virgin in Israel. And the girl shall remain his wife forever, he shall not be permitted to divorce her all his days."
These scriptures may have made sense, and even have been considered compassionate, in their way, in a time when the hazard was that a despised and wrongly accused young wife could be rendered destitute, and her life in society effectively ended, if she were cast out of her husband's house. But today, the binding of a young woman forever to a man who would defame her publically, and the father being the recipient of the fine for his daughter's shaming, and the public show of the most private matters, the transactional objectification of the female subject in these laws, not to mention the death penalty prescribed in the subsequent verses should the charge of non-virginity prove true, all read as horrific.
Why on earth cherish a scroll with such laws in it? Why not just take whatever spiritual ennoblement has evolved in Jewish culture since such ancient days, discard the primitive parchment, and move on? Why do we force ourselves to read and re-read painful portions year by year, running the very real risk, again and again, that - out of affinity for the beautiful traditions that have grown up around the scroll - new generations of bright youngsters may convince themselves that they should yearn for the literal enforcement of every formula inside?
In short, why do we love the Torah?
Perhaps it is even more blaspheming to say in such a place as Harvard, but the real reasons, at root, are seldom intellectual. The actual basis is experiential. And maybe it is even more sacrilegious to observe, upon such a training-ground of cerebral maturity, but the experiences that conduce to love of Torah tend to have a lot to do with childhood, even for those who come to tradition much later in life.
Taking my own experience for example - and inviting you to do the same, to consider yours - I think of crisp autumn days in 1970s Toronto, of a small brick shul, built by immigrants, nestled between gingerbread Victorian houses amid flaming maples on a quiet street between the market and the university. And just as vividly as the sensation of brisk air filled with the scent of turning leaves returns, so does the redolence of well-worn prayer-shawls glowing in the incandescent light of electric candelabra, the jostle, mumble, creak, and sway, of thronging grownups on old floorboards, and the sense of myself, waist-high to them, straining to catch a glimpse of the action on the balustraded platform with its reading-table at the center of the sanctuary.
If I search back as far as I can think, that's where I find the Torah with which I fell in love.
What was in it? At that point, as a child, who knew? It's what was around it that mattered.
And now that I know what is in it - still, it is what's around it that matters, and that's where our community comes in.
This week, for example, hundreds of undergraduates will arrive at a huge tent just off Harvard Yard for an enormous communal Shabbat dinner. And if I think of the endearing and inimitable and very particular way in which only the college-aged can appear in Sabbath finery - however construed, and individually constructed - and if I think of the eagerness, and the apprehension, and expectancy, and the delight in one another that I know I will see, then what warms my heart is really not the thought that so many young people will be escaping liability to the biblically prescribed penalty of death by stoning for non-observance of the Sabbath.
What I love is that these students whom I care about so much will be forging an experience, creating a sense that may recur inside at the mention of Shabbat. It may not be everyone's favorite Sabbath dinner - some prefer the intimacy of a smaller space, or much less of a show, or more of a do-it-yourself ethos (and we do that, too) - but, inevitably, the image and the atmosphere of the big white tent filled with festive tables and full of so many contemporaries, becomes a signal recollection. Perhaps some guests more advanced in years, too, will find that something like a childhood memory - a touchstone, a formative sense of what can be - is somehow placed within themselves by the gathering.
Then comes the grappling, then we are likely to engage intellectually, to fathom, and to question, to tear apart and put back together a legacy in analytical and probing ways - then we have a reason in our hearts to do so.
"For the One who made you will espouse you, who is called 'The Eternal One of Legions.' The Holy One of Israel will redeem you, who is called 'The God of All the Earth' ... For the mountains may move and the hills be shaken, but My loyalty shall never move from you, nor My covenant of fellowship be shaken - says the Eternal One, who takes you back in love." (Isaiah 54:5,10)