As I entered my fourth decade, my identity was beginning to solidify. Pegi had returned to nursing, specializing in cardiovascular surgery, Abi was starting elementary school and I had a meaningful and promising career in life insurance. My relationships with parents and family had grown. Spiritually, my sense of Jewish identity was developing. I was sorting through my religious experiences of the previous two decades, discarding what didn’t work for me while intensifying focus on what seemed to be reliable. I dug more deeply into the valuable strains of my religious experience while acquiring new tools of spiritual inquiry.
My mom had died in August of 1991 just before I started graduate studies. My father died in August of 1992. My great Aunt Selma, the last of my closest family connections, died in August of 1993. I was beginning to hate August! However, I began to understand that their lives would be carried forward in mine. In the same way, Abi would carry Pegi’s and mine. (She would pass it on to Aiden—for whom I have been writing all of this.)
You would think that experiencing the loss of a parent would have a negative effect on personal identity. That is not what I experienced. I was no longer bound by the pressure of parental expectations. That wasn’t a rejection of their roles in my life. Instead, I became aware of a deepened and stronger personal identity because of them. They were not dead—they were very much alive in me. I was their continuation and would add my story to theirs. I wasn’t yet fully conscious of this yet, but this long story reached back many generations, not just as human story, but as a Jewish story.
After the 40 years of wandering in Sinai, the Jewish people were about to enter the Promised Land. In his last words דברים (Deuteronomy), Moses explains the story:
For you are a people consecrated to the ETERNAL your God: of all the peoples on earth, the ETERNAL your God chose you to be the treasured one.
It is not because you are the most numerous of peoples that GOD grew attached to you and chose you—indeed, you are the smallest of peoples; but it was because GOD favored you and kept the oath made to your fathers that GOD freed you with a mighty hand and rescued you from the house of bondage, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt.
Know, therefore, that only the ETERNAL your God is God, the steadfast God who keeps this covenant faithfully to the thousandth generation of those who show love and keep the commandments,
[Deuteronomy 7:6-9 Revised JPS, 2023]
I was beginning to see that the Jewish perception of God was based on our direct experience of God as a caring and loving Creator. His Torah (instruction, teaching, law) and the boundaries it defined were safeguards to allow us to live fully, happily and successfully. God “treasures” us—not because of our merits, but because of His character—His name/identity/character/essence. The motivation to keep His commandments is based on our response to His lovingkindness.
Roman Law versus Jewish Law (Torah):
The Roman perspective/idea of Law is rigid, rough and without nuance. This is because the “gods” who are its source are disconnected from human life and nature. It is full of hard edges because its gods are arbitrary, self-serving and disinterested (even malevolent) towards human beings. The Roman gods have no concern for people—they are are only concerned with pleasing themselves. For someone who grows up in the West (highly molded by Roman thinking), just the word, "Law" conjures up negative boundaries that are brutally enforced. The point is the boundary--restricting life--only allowing minimal liberties, but the greater purpose or "why" is to enforce and restrict—to minimize freedom to live for some semblance of order which pleases them.
The Torah concept of law is softer, more malleable when it comes to humans and even nature and therefore more powerful. Jewish thinking is relational--connected to a warm and loving Creator. Its boundaries protect liberties for purpose of fulfilled living. Shalom (peace/fulfillment/contentment) is God’s desire for us.
The systems (religions) that develop out of each are necessarily different:
- The Roman law distorts the “law of life” into restriction and death.
- Jewish law (Torah) leads to life in its fullness.
As my Jewish identity emerged, I began to grasp why Moses wrote:
You shall faithfully observe all the Instruction [Torah] that I enjoin upon you today, that you may thrive and increase and be able to possess the land that GOD promised on oath to your fathers.
[Deuteronomy 8:1 Revised JPS, 2023]
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