Anna here. Yes, I know, this blog is a week late. So, I’m slow. I’ll do what I can to catch up. Meanwhile, we finished and started the Torah at Shul. We opened it. We studied it. We danced with it. It was a Torah sort of party, and I really enjoyed it. I’ve always loved that word – Torah. I like the fact that its meaning is so very clear – and yet so very changeable. I’ve seen it mean just the 5 books of Moses, that scroll that we danced with. I’ve seen it mean the entire Tanach – the whole Jewish ‘bible’ so to speak. I’ve also seen it mean the Talmud (called the Oral Torah, after all!) and any commentaries on the above, and in fact any book of Jewish learning that happens to teach values, Jewish ways of acting, Jewish ritual – anything based or grounded in the Torah. I love all of these!
I look forward to dancing with the Torah, I enjoy reading and studying the Tanach, the Talmud and the Midrash as time allows (and even occasionally a bit of Zohar if I’m feeling brave), and I learn from the various Sefarim that are regarded as part of our heritage. However, I’ve been thinking about another use of the word that I heard lately – a personal Torah – the values that guide my life. Like other levels of ‘Torah’, this one is based in the scrolls – but it has certainly developed in its own way. So, since values are a big deal around here right now (ask me my opinion of the charter some day), I thought I’d review mine, and their development and how they changed over the years.
It may seem unnecessary for many – people have clear guidelines. There’s what society tells us. There’s what we grew up with. There’s the law. There’s all the good stuff that the various books of Torah give. Why did I need a personal Torah? Maybe the multiplicity of options is precisely why. It’s hard to know what one should do when there are multiple cultures, multiple rules, multiple truths that we grow up with and they don’t always match. Besides – I don’t always listen to others so much. Sometimes, I need to figure it out on my own. So, it was as a very little girl, newly having left one country and present in another temporarily that I realized the first statement in my personal Torah.
I was happy playing with the little girls who included me in their circle in Italy. To be happy – that was a value I could stand by – and after seeing the different less positive approach that some of the little girls in the school I went to greeted me with, I realized it was two-way. Even if I couldn’t be happy, I could give happiness. “Be happy and bring happiness to others.” This was and is part of my personal Torah. When I had a kid brother, I was frustrated with how little he could do. Even when he was happy, all he did was lie there! He needed to learn things – things I could teach. “Learn and teach” was added to my values list.
As a teenager, predictably, I fell in love. This, of course, was after I swore that the whole ‘in love’ thing wasn’t for me, I didn’t work that way and it would never happen. When I fell in love, it was such a revelation, that I added ‘Love and be loved’ to my list. The pattern was established – new relationships brought new ways of seeing God, new ways of making decisions, new ways of understanding Torah. Each time, I thought my values list was complete. Each time, I was, of course, completely wrong.
A partner in university changed my values list once again, when my integrity – not just honesty, but how true I was to myself – came up. If I just went around bringing love, joy and learning to people, what was my core? How was I most truly me? ‘Maintain integrity, for myself and communicating with others’ – that was another value to add to my list. That was a big one, and took me years to even approach integrating. The later I stumble on them, the longer my values seem to take to really sink in. Again, a new relationship led to the question of responsibility. ‘If I am only for me, who am I?’ says the sage, and so I realized I needed to think about the world outside of the people I knew. Using the simple rule of thumb that responsibility is the ability to respond, I started thinking what I needed to do about the world around me. Again, so hard to do! I thought responsibility wasn’t bidirectional either. A new relationship, one where my love wanted to know why I didn’t treat myself with the same care reminded me that it was. ‘Be responsible, for myself and for the world I live in’ was added then, consciously and openly.
I was an adult now with a family. Would the world change again? How could it? I thought my values list was done. The next change was subtle – I thought this was an indication. Smaller changes, commentaries on my personal Torah – that’s what was to come. I changed the order of my list, putting responsibility and integrity first, and then love and learning and finally happiness.
Then, my world changed again. Everything I thought I knew I had to relearn and I felt like a 3-year-old, learning to talk and exploring a new world for the first time. I once again found myself with new friends and with new relationships. For a long time I didn’t think this would have an effect on my values list – in fact, it felt like my values list had been flung out the window by the uncaring forces of the world and I didn’t know what to do to take the next step. It was then that a new value emerged. I needed faith. Sometimes, it’s faith without knowing, faith without understanding that God is – that love is – that is the value that I need most. So, I’m adding it – at the beginning of my list. ‘Believe – without knowledge, without certainty – in love; in the goodness of the universe; have faith.’
These are my values. They may not match the Torah that most people follow. They may not have their own provincial charter. They are mine, however, and the more I learn Torah, the more ways I find of living them, of understanding and expressing them. Is this my final list of values? Eh, I think I’m going to avoid saying that. I know God is listening and I’m not up to another upheaval right this minute! I’m happy to change if I need to. However, having a personal Torah is, for me, important. It lets me have my own lens to see the world and my actions through – one that focuses on Faith and Responsibility, Integrity and Love, Learning and Joy as the guideposts of my life. That’s a Torah worth dancing with for me.
The Wingnut Family 