Parenting issues
Matot/Masei

by Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman
an author and speaker on Jewish ritual, prayer, and spirituality, is a professor of liturgy at the Hebrew Union College in Manhattan.

Jews have commonly conceived of God as a “Father” — as in our High Holy Day prayer Avinu Malkeinu (Our Father, Our King). The prayer for the State of Israel, penned by the chief rabbinate itself, starts with “Avinu shebashamayim” (“Our father in heaven”). God is regularly pictured as a father (or mother) — that is, a parent.

Many people remember their parents as inept, indifferent, or even abusive, so I do not immediately recommend the image, but since it dominates our consciousness, we ought to clarify the kind of divine parent we are talking about.

This week’s sedra inaugurates Deuteronomy, the final book of Torah, in which, at first blush, God seems grotesquely frightening, especially in the last part (called “the curses”), which details premonitions of punishment for Israel’s inevitable sinfulness. It is as if our parental God is sending us off to college, knowing we will become party animals cavorting with evil. Worse still, this all-knowing parent-God is going to college with us, to monitor our behavior and invoke retribution.

But that is a simplistic interpretation. Medieval commentators admit the surface scariness of Deuteronomy’s curses but offer interpretations that transcend the childish image of a purely punishing parent.

Take Nahmanides, who begins his commentary this week by citing the rabbinic name for Deuteronomy, Mishneh Torah, meaning “a review of Torah” (mishneh implies “a second time over”). Following standard interpretation, he justifies the review on the grounds that ordinary Jews are prone to forget their God-given duty. That is why Deuteronomy’s review of Torah’s laws omits legislation that is binding only on priests. Priests can be trusted to remain faithful, whereas regular folk cannot. The tale of a people made up mostly of the weak-minded must be riddled with warnings.

But a closer reading of Nahmanides suggests that a deeper understanding had dawned on him. He offsets the curses by first driving home the message of God’s mercy, “how the Israelites rebelled in the wilderness and how God dealt with them compassionately, so as to impress upon them divine mercy.”

Seeing God as a stern adjudicator of parental justice is a childish image best associated with the era when humankind knew more sorrow than happiness and had no scientific way of explaining trauma as the human lot. In this view, God is indeed a menacing presence, afflicting us with deserved sorrow.

The second stage is to see that no matter what we do, God is really a merciful and loving parent. Understanding human imperfections but believing we can grow in moral capacity, God is hardly hell-bent on punishment; rather, to cite another High Holy Day prayer, God “reaches out a hand to sinners,” desiring their metaphorical welcome back into parental arms.

The third step in human consciousness divorces God not just from punishment but from reward as well. God is no parental leash reining in us poor humans (who are really just children, lacking self-control), but armed with doggy biscuits to reinforce our behavior when we act properly.

More likely, God created humans with the capacity to be Godlike ourselves. God sets us free to make our own decisions and bring about our own blessings or curses.

The Malbim goes further. Deuteronomy is not all review, it turns out: It has at least some new legislation. So he concludes that it was only these new laws that Moses got at Sinai. The reiterative threat of dire punishment did not come from God at all. It was Moses who added the curses — a function of his limited human vision, not of God’s vantage point from eternity. God, the truly ideal parent, saw only human goodness emerging as we human beings mature.

Think more closely about this new legislation that appears only in Deuteronomy. Why didn’t we get it back in Exodus or Leviticus, where most of Torah’s laws are found? The answer must be that revelation evolves with human destiny. If we circumscribe Sinai to just a single time and place, we limit God to being a parent who bequeaths a one-time will through Moses and abandons us ever after. Sinai is better understood as a feature of human evolution. We stand at Sinai whenever progressive stages of human growth allow us to comprehend God’s will in ways we could never have imagined earlier.

I am willing to concede that God is like a parent, but only the best we can imagine, the progenitor of mature adults who relish their role as part of the evolutionary trend toward Godliness. Neither punisher nor rewarder, God is the mysterious Presence that brought us into being, encourages us ever after to grow in responsibility, over eons of time speaks wisdom that we newly “get,” and applauds every step of human striving.