Last week the members of my little Hebrew Conclave asked me to get a copy of the 613 Mitzvot for them. (I think that they thought I was just making the whole thing up, really. But, whatever.) So, this week I found a fairly readable list and formatted it carefully and printed it out for them.

Then I started thinking about how this would be perceived by the ten year olds who are the real focus of the class, not their parents who were the ones who really wanted the list. The children seem to be content just to love God and learn about God. Their parents need the rules. Whatever helps is good though, so I got the Mitzvot.

Now, about the Mitzvot, having relations with one’s ox is not something I am eager to delve into with anyone. Talking to ten year olds about it makes me want to run far away. Far. Plus, there are a lot of words that the children won’t know. It will be a good teaching opportunity for their parents. IF -- and it is not at all certain -- the parents know. But, by Wednesday I realized that there was something much deeper bothering me about placing these 613 commandments in the hands of my innocent and vulnerable ten year old friends. They will, after all, deal with incest, bestiality, and big words soon enough anyway.

What really troubled me was the whole rule thing. And this is more than just a projection of my own anti-authoritarianism in which I feel totally justified anyway. What I want is for them to see that the Mitzvot are not just a list of rules but an invitation, an holy opportunity, to divinize the mundane. Yet, when I see them all lined out there on the page, it does look like a list of rules. Just been thinking about that. Wanting the children to be liberated by the law, not oppressed by it. They are only ten. I imagine they will do better with it than I have.