5777-2

wow. We relate to so much of Judaism is through song, especially collective song. At a synagogue, most kids know the prayers from singing them and half of them can barely read Hebrew yet. And at machaneh, we sing all the time (At least at Galil, but I’m pretty sure this is a HDNA/HDO wide thing). And it’s amazing to me how I will find someone else who is Jewish from halfway across the world and we still know the same tune! Or even when we don’t and we can both learn a new tune. Everyone is just so passionate about singing that so many people feel personally compelled to write their own tunes and four part harmonies and renditions of other people’s melodies and then teach them to people, so maybe God really did know what They were doing when They made a song for the Israelites. Who knows, maybe it will be a number one hit on bible radio.

God also makes sure that we all know how important it is that every single person is able to hear the Torah. I can just imagine god going and dragging some goat that wandered off and isn’t listening and God screams "L I S T E N !" But really what I think God is getting at here is that everyone should listen, know, and try to understand. Everyone is responsible for their own Judaism, which is cool right? Because then if everyone is responsible for their own Judaism, it can be what they make of it (which is honestly how it is now). But that doesn’t mean that people can’t fight over whose Judaism is better or more right, because that is, in a sense, a way of taking responsibility. If you want to be responsible over your own Judaism, you have to also feel a sense of responsibility over the whole Jewish community. God just wants us to be passionate people. God wants us to care and not be apathetic about our religion/culture/peoplehood/ethnoreligion. Honestly, I feel like God is literally telling me to argue about Judaism with people and get into a fist fight. Okay, maybe not quite that far, but still. We have so many important books and scholars in Judaism and all these books and scholars contain are

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arguments over so many different things. And we say "here is this awesome book (example: the talmud) and we are going to read it and learn from it and then respectfully yell at each other about an idea while waving the book around in our hand." God’s probably listening in somewhere, putting bets on who will have the better argument. The national Jewish past time.