Adina Roth – Head of Jewish Life

Pick up your towel
A true path to freedom

I will let you in on a little secret…since moving to Sydney I am not managing too well on the domestic front. It’s fair to say that in South Africa I did not develop my scrubbing, cleaning and laundry skills. I have made more than one phone call ‘back home’ to ask how to get a stain out of a shirt! Indeed, we are all finding it quite the adjustment to keep on top of the rolling domestic duties in our new home. What’s especially challenging is that our kids are not taking to the idea of chores (surprise, surprise). When we ask our kids to tidy their room or remind them to hang their towel up on the rack, we hear a grumble followed by, “I’m not your slave”. Another strong rebuttal has been, “Why should I do anything, it’s not MY home…it’s yours!”. Before you show any concern that we are imposing hard labour on our children, let me be clear that we are talking domestic duties 101 here. Bring your lunchbox to the kitchen, pop uniforms in the laundry basket and unpack the dishwasher. When my child says, “I am not your slave”, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. How do you explain the difference between indentured servility and ennobling service to a 10 year old!  

Next week we celebrate the holiday of Shavuot and remember the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. As we prepare to enjoy our cheesecake and cheese blintzes, we may also use the time to consider the deeper meaning of freedom. The Jewish people had just been liberated from Egyptian slavery and for three months they had been adjusting to life in the desert. However, God does not free the Israelites from the desert to lie around listlessly and eat manna all day (even if it did taste, as Rashi tells us, like fried dough drenched in honey.) Shavuot takes the freedom of Passover and infuses it with direction, intention and purpose, bound up in the receiving of the Ten Commandments and the Torah.

You might be wondering how I plan to connect wet towels on the bathroom floor to the Ten Commandments, but wait! When God approaches Moshe to offer the Israelites the Torah, God says a very poetic line to Moshe. God says, “Moshe you have seen how I carried you (the Jewish people) on eagles wings and have brought you to me”. God proceeds to offer a kind of marriage proposal to the Jewish people; if you accept the Torah then you will be a treasure for me. In these lines, God, like a hopeful bridegroom, says to Moshe, ask the people if they want me, and the Torah that comes with me. Some people have, perhaps sceptically, commented that as the Jewish people accept the Torah and all that comes with it, we effectively left the servitude of one Ruler and exchanged it for another. However 20^th century philosopher Martin Buber challenges this notion. He reflects on the image of the eagles’ wings and writes: The God eagle hovers over the people…spreads God’s wings and sets one of the young upon God’s pinion, carries it away and by throwing it into the air and catching it, teaches it to fly freely. Buber imagines the ‘God eagle’ not as carrying the young eaglets but as giving us independence and teaching us to fly. In other words, receiving the contract of the Torah was not about becoming obedient servants to a bossy master, but rather becoming deeply independent to carve our own destiny, to live a conscious life. The bad news is God didn’t intend freedom as a kind of sit around and binge watch Netflix all day! Even if Jewish Matchmaking is that good! The good news is that the Torah at its best is about living an empowered life, a life deeply connected to Jewish story, culture, wisdom, and ritual – where each of us learns to fly and can connect to the Divine (and we get cheesecake!).

The Torah is not about becoming a slave again and it is not about blind obedience! The Jewish journey is always in a dialectic between Pesach and Shavuot, between Freedom and Responsibility.