That Bronfman Schizophrenia

I was sitting at home today, in between unpacking, taking a break from talking to you on facebook to have lunch with my eleven-year-old sister. It was a quiet lunch. I was missing you guys, and thinking that meals with you were never this boring, even if the pasta I'd made was considerably more edible than the mysterious red stuff from Goldstein.

We were making some kind of small talk, when something her reminded her of this question: "Avital, do you really believe in the Torah?"


Me: What about it?


Mimi: That all of it really happened. Like the Red Sea and everything.


Me: No, I don't think most of it really happened. I think people wrote Tanakh. 

Long pause. I realize I'd forgotten how to talk like a normal person, with social taboos and saying things carefully. Thanks, Bronfman. But then I realize that this is one of those opportunities to take everything I've learned from the summer and bring it back, to make sure it wasn't just a bubble of learning that didn't help anyone but us.

Me: But I do believe in God, and I don't really think it's a problem to believe in God but not that God wrote Tanakh. For me, God actually makes more sense if I don't think God wrote Tanakh, because I don't think God would say some of the things in Tanakh.

Mimi: Fine, so if God didn't write the Torah, what does God do?

Me: That one's harder. I don't have a perfect answer to that, but I'll tell you some thoughts.

I really don't have a good answer to that at all, but I did what I could. I recited as much of Mish's shiur about imagining God as I could remember; I quoted some of what Josh said about feeling the Infinite in nature and Sharon's description of feeling small next to the vastness of God; I told her what Maya said about the sentience of God, part of Alex's proof, and so many other things I learned from the faculty and fellows.

Mimi: I don't really think the Torah makes sense either, but then how do you know God even wants us to keep Shabbat?


And she's only eleven. After a long conversation that includes several runs to the living room to check things in the Tanakh, we agree to wash the dishes and pick this issue back up later. For me, this conversation was satisfying in a couple ways. First, it reminded me that "Bronfman conversations" are not actually limited to Bronfman, and I can keep having them with people at home. But more than that, it made me think of what Mish said about having the voices of your teachers in your head: I still don't know the answers to most of the big questions, but I will keep hearing your voices in my head, helping me think.