By Mary-Justine Lanyon
At the Mountain Jewish Community’s annual bagel brunch – held at the lakeside home of Marsha and Andy Lewis – members and guests heard from Mitch Paradise, an independent scholar of Jewish teaching.
Paradise had the guests read three passages from Genesis and then pointed out the two things that are happening in these stories: loving kindness and judgment.
The Torah, Paradise said, can be looked at as a blueprint of how people can live as a community. There are rules; if God feels you have not obeyed those rules, harsh judgment can be exercised on you.
“We all need to know how to be generous and kind,” Paradise said, “how to take in a stranger, how to give when you don’t have much. Our tents have to be open in all four directions.
“You never know when an opportunity will present itself – you have to be ready. And if you don’t know what to do, hope that someone in your midst will,” Paradise said.
He quoted David Frum, who had been a speechwriter for President George W. Bush and is now a senior editor at The Atlantic: “Conflict is a reality of human existence. We don’t seem to be able to get rid of it. It is a terrible reality. We have to be prepared to meet it when it happens.
“No one wants to see conflict, to see human suffering but it doesn’t go away because we don’t want it or choose not to believe in it.”
You have to be ready to respond, Paradise said, but you also have to be ready to know when to say enough is enough.
He added that we often find ourselves having to deal with both sides of God – loving kindness and judgment – at the same time.
“Hospitality should be at the forefront of your thinking about how to deal with other people,” Paradise said.
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