Adina Roth – Head of Jewish Life

The Torah of the Indigo Girls and Barbie

I’ve been in a Barbie state of mind. Don’t worry, there will be no spoilers in this D’var Torah!

However, my favourite scene in the movie is when Barbie is driving from Barbie land to the real world. It’s not because she is driving in her Barbie convertible! It’s because of the song that was playing on her radio.The song is by a band called the Indigo Girls called to Closer To Fine. Many of us (Emanuel parents) came of age listening to this song on some cassette tape. Closer to Fine is a very important song choice because, as Barbie travels from the land of fake to the land of reality, the song represents something of the inner journey she has to travel. Barbie’s inner journey is about figuring out that life is not simply about a pink house and a pink car and perfect stiletto shoes and a perfect size 6 bathing suit and a perfect looking, but pretty boring, Ken. Life is also about crying and ageing, about mortality and sore feet and dealing with tough things like racism and patriarchy. Life is the full package.

So as she travels from bubble gum Barbie land to the real world, we hear:

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains/I looked to the children, I drank from the fountains, there’s more than one answer to these questions pointing me in a crooked line
And the less I seek my source for some definitive/ The closer I am to fine.

This song hints to Barbie that the answers to life aren’t going to be straight and obvious. Life isn’t simple or easy. The answers lie in more of a crooked line. When we can truly embrace the uncertainties and imperfections, we move CLOSE To FINE. As we say in Hebrew, Kimat Beseder, almost OK.

In this weeks Parsha Eikev, we are reminded of one of our not so fine moments! We recall that Moses smashed the first set of Tablets in response to the Israelites’ worship of the Golden Calf and that God gave us a second chance by writing a second set. In the Talmud we read something startling.

As we travelled through the desert with our ancient ark, we did not just carry the shiny, freshly minted new Tablets, we also carried the broken pieces of the older tablets along with us, ‘shehaluchot ush’vurei luchot munachin be’aron, the tablets and the broken pieces were placed in the ark.’ Isn’t it true of life that we carry the broken along with the whole, the messy along with the neat, the curly along with the perfectly straight GHDd, the Birkenstocks along with the stilettos, the older along with the young, the chaos along with the calm!?

And the more we learn to do this, the closer we will become to fine (the Torah of the Indigo Girls), because the mix of these things is what makes our lives rich and what makes us deeper and more resilient people. That’s one of the messages of this week’s Parsha Eikev – I was so happy that it seemed to line up with the Torah I found in the Barbie movie!

Shabbat Shalom