Parashat HaShavua - Shavuot
וַיְדַבֵּ֣ר אֱלֹהִ֔ים אֵ֛ת כּל־הַדְּבָרִ֥ים הָאֵ֖לֶּה לֵאמֹֽר (שמות כ:א)
God spoke all of these words (Exodus 20:1)
In preparation for Shavuot, our 4th graders have been studying the 10 commandments. First, they looked closely at the structure of the commandments. Which are positive mitzvot and which are negative? Which have a clear consequence for following them? (Fun fact — the only one that does is ‘honor your parents’ for which you are promised a long life in Israel). Which ones have an explanation, like “remember Shabbat, because God created the world in 6 days but rested on the 7th day” and which are apodictic, like “do not murder”?
After investigating the structural similarities and differences between the commandments, the students began to ask questions and propose theories about their meaning based on what they noticed. An interesting mahloket (principled disagreement) came up in one class. One student said, “the reason that the mitzvot bain adam lehavero, the ethical mitzvot, do not have reasons given is because it is obvious why you do them. You don’t need an explanation for why you shouldn’t murder or lie.” But then a second student differed. “What if the reason that these ethical mitzvot are obvious is that a long, long time ago, God gave the Torah and that is what helped us to learn right from wrong and so now some things seem obvious?”
Our 4th grade students got right to the heart of an essential idea in Jewish education. In Stages of Faith, Fowler describes the relationship between belief and faith. He argues that religious belief is “cumulative traditions” — the various expressions of the faith of people in the past. But faith, he proposes, is at “ at once deeper and more personal than religion, is the person’s or group’s way of responding to the transcendent value and power as perceived and grasped through the forms of the cumulative tradition.”
Beliefs and practices that are passed down from generation to generation are a critical part of Jewish education because they are the fertile ground in which students’ faith can grow. Through these forms, through the experience of prayer, of studying Torah – even of asking questions about the difference between different commandments in 4th grade – students’ own ethical compasses and their relationship to the transcendent will ultimately bloom and blossom, as beautifully as the flowers on the heads of our Pre-K students as they sang a traditional Israeli Shavuot song for our assembly today.
Rabbi Anne Ebersman
Director of Jewish Programming N-5 and Director of Hesed (Community Engagement) and Tzedek (Social Responsibility)