In the Talmud there is a discussion about what happens after we die. We go to Sheol – a Hebrew word deriving from the verb “to question” – and there we are interrogated. We will be asked four questions about the life we have lived. They are good questions and I want us to ask – and even to try to answer them for ourselves. They are questions that can stay with us as we prepare for the Yamim Noraim – and as we move into the coming years.
The first question is this
“Kav’ata Itim L’Torah? Did you set aside time for Torah?”
Did you set aside time for torah? Not, you’ll notice, ‘did you study Torah’. Nor ‘did you follow all the halachic requirements predicated on torah text?” But did you set aside time for Torah – the question isn’t academic.
Torah you see isn’t simply a book, it isn’t a text that we can learn or a narrative we teach our children. Torah has many more dimensions than that. It is a process, it is a history, it is the ongoing dialogue across generations between Jews and Jews, and Jews and God. So when we get ourselves involved in Torah, when we join the conversation and add the experiences and reflections of our lives to the living narrative of Torah, that is when we fit ourselves into our people and truly enter the Covenant. To set aside time for Torah is to be willing to identify in, to be prepared to challenge our ancestral understanding of God, to be ready to encounter God in modernity with open heart. To set aside time for Torah is to say “I will engage with life as a Jew – and in doing so I hope to enrich Judaism and deepen life. And I will add my link to the chain of tradition that remembers the past, supports the present and reaches out to a future I will not know”.

The next question will be posted tomorrow