Today we had a
guest speaker come in and talk to us about Judaism. Judaism is a wide umbrella
of practice including groups such as Secular Jews, Traditional Jews, Orthodox Jews
and Ultra-Orthodox Jews, just to name a few. With such a wide range our speaker
knew she couldn’t present all the intricacies of Judaism to us in one short
day. She decided therefore to focus her talks on some of the commonalities
amongst most Jews. One of those topics was Midrash.
Midrash
is kind of like a collection of stories or sayings that have built up around
the Bible. They often attempt to clear up confusion or answer questions that
come up during the reading of the Bible. As examples we looked at three
Midrashim connected to the story of Cain and Abel. In Genesis it says that Cain
invited Abel out to the field. The Midrashim attempt to give possible
conversations that they might have had on their way to the field. The
conversations presented are attempts to explain why Cain killed Abel. Without
giving the entire stories I will summarize the three Midrashim to say that the
first said it was a conversation over money, the second over power, and the
third over sex. The Rabbis were basically saying that these are some of the
reasons that we as humans fight and kill each other. We fight over money (or
possessions), over power, and over sex. That held true then and it holds true
today.
The
Midrashim gave insight into human thought and human life. One of our classmates
compared this to our Catholic Lectio Divina. In Lectio we use our own
imagination to place ourselves into events and explore the setting, much like
the Midrash does. By doing so we can also come to know ourselves better and
come to a deeper appreciation of our human condition. The Midrashim and Lectio
Divina stand as examples for us as to how we can further engage the Bible
stories that we know so well in order have a second and deeper look. Sometimes
when we think we already know something we miss another lesson that is waiting
to be discovered.
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