Rabbi’s Corner

Rabbi Robert A. Davis

Our Torah, Our Baby

Moses received the Torah on Mount Sinai and handed it down to Joshua; Joshua to the Elders; the Elders to the Prophets; and the Prophets handed it down to the Men of the Great Assembly. Pirke Avot 1:1

Handing the Torah to the next generation is a sacred responsibility that we take very seriously.

Each year we take our Confirmation Class on a retreat weekend. Following a beautiful Shabbat service in the middle of the Bay, our Confirmands returned to our Sanctuary late Friday night. They sat in a circle under the Eternal Light in front of the open Ark, and they each took the Torah into their arms and shared their thoughts, feelings, and vision for the role of Torah and Judaism in their lives.

The curriculum of study for the Confirmation Class is Human Sexuality and the Jewish Tradition, or as the students like to call it, Sex with the Rabbi. The official title of the class reflects the content and the serious and professional way in which the class is taught and material is presented. The title given by the students is their way of saying that this is their teenage opportunity to explore, question, and understand the connection between their bodies, their minds, their hearts, and their tradition.

We believe that we have an obligation to teach our children to value the sanctity of their bodies and to recognize when that holiness is not being esteemed by themselves or others; and we teach them to seek loving, healthy, and respectful relationships and to recognize when their relationships are not reaching these high expectations.

Torah is not just a scroll that we hold. The stories in our sacred texts of love and friendship are great teachers, but so are the stories of difficulty and challenge. It is much more pleasant to express the former. The latter is more complex. On Saturday of the retreat, we brought our Confirmands to one of 12 houses owned by The Children’s Home Society. These four-bedroom houses in Southwest Kendall are each the temporary home of three teenage mothers and their babies.

We met with the Program Director; we listened to the therapists; we stared at the dirty walls and broken furniture; and most importantly, we imagined what it would be like if we, at the age of 14 or 15, had a child. This story is a long way from the homes of most of our teenagers.

The Torah must not only be held, it must also be lived. We asked the Confirmands to do both. We asked them to hold the Torah - hold it like a baby for the rest of the day and bring the Torah to life. They took turns carrying the Torah - making sure that someone was always with her, that she never fell, that she was safe and covered. It was not easy for them to come up with a system to Torah-sit. And when they were not holding the Torah, they were living the Torah. They picked up spackle and brushes and rollers and they repaired, rolled, and painted as they discovered hard work is not easy.

At the end of the paint-splattered day, I do not know if the walls looked any better - I am not much of a painter. But I can tell you that our world looked better. Our Confirmands expressed not only sympathy for these teenage mothers and their children, but also, more importantly, I saw beautiful expressions of empathy. Quietly, in often personal and private moments, I saw our teenagers grow. I saw them earnestly painting a more tangible affirmation of their commitment to hold their bodies, souls, and lives with the same dignity that one holds a Torah or a baby.