The Torah column is supported by a generous donation from Eve Gordon-Ramek in memory of Kenneth Gordon.
Shemini
Leviticus 9:1-11:47
There is a story I remember from childhood. It is not dramatic or filled with peril, but it is etched into my memory for what it taught me.
I was at Camp Gan Israel one summer, and we were on a two-day, 35-mile canoeing trip. I found myself paddling with a friend down a fast-moving river, its waters glinting in the sun, its current swift and unrelenting.
At one point we noticed a small island. It was green, serene, inviting. We debated whether to stop. One of us thought it would be a perfect place to rest and enjoy the view. The other wasn’t sure. Back and forth we went, arguing the pros and cons, weighing the time, the distance, the value of the pause.
But rivers do not wait for human debates. They are not concerned with our internal hesitations. While we argued, the current carried us onward. By the time we agreed we should stop, the island was behind us, vanishing from sight.
That is how many decisions in life unfold.
We imagine we can deliberate forever, as though time itself would stand still while we make up our minds. But life is more like that river — constantly flowing, indifferent to our indecision.
Whether it’s the question of how to spend an evening or how to spend a life, delay itself becomes a choice. And often, by the time we realize that, we have already passed the moment that mattered.
This is nowhere more true than in the realm of faith.
People sometimes say: “I’m not sure what I believe about God. I’m agnostic. I’m still working it out.” That answer may feel honest, even noble. But time does not pause for existential uncertainty. While we are still deciding what we believe, we are already deciding how to live.
You may not know whether the universe has a purpose. But you must still choose whether to live with purpose.
You may be unsure whether life is guided by a Divine hand, but each day, you will live either as though it is or as though it is not.
There is no neutral ground.
To live as though the universe is silent and indifferent is itself a leap of faith — a faith in randomness, in chaos, in a world governed by chance.
To live as though human dignity is self-invented rather than Divinely bestowed is to gamble on an idea that has little historical precedent and even less philosophical grounding.
And to live without reverence — without a sense of awe, or a moral structure rooted in something higher than the self — is to risk living a life diminished in its depth, its meaning and its joy.
The Torah itself acknowledges this in a subtle but powerful way.
We’ve just come through the holiday of Passover, which celebrates the Exodus and the splitting of the sea. At the sea, the people walk through. Their enemies do not. And in that moment, the text says, “The people believed in God.”
What happens next is unexpected: They sing.
This is the first recorded song in the Torah. It is spontaneous, unstructured, raw and magnificent.
Why now? Why not when they were freed? Why not when they left Egypt?
Because it is belief that turns life into song.
Before, they were surviving. Now, they are singing. Before, they were uncertain. Now, they believe. They had seen something undeniable: a reality beyond nature, a truth beyond power.
And in that moment, belief was not an abstract creed. It was a lived experience.
They saw that history has a direction. That human beings matter. That there is a God who intervenes, who redeems.
This week’s Torah portion declares it plainly: “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt.” And what follows is just as vital: “Therefore, be holy.” (Leviticus 11:45)
The experience of redemption is not merely a memory. It is a call to holiness.
From that, a new kind of life begins — one shaped not by fate but by faith.
They understood that they were not accidents of evolution or the byproducts of blind forces. They were beings created in the image of God, charged with a mission, living within a story that had meaning because it had an Author.
Faith, in Judaism, is not the absence of doubt. It is the presence of commitment.
It is the decision to live in covenant with something beyond the self. And that decision cannot be postponed indefinitely, because life does not wait.
We do not get to live twice.
There is no instant replay, no rewind button for the days we spent drifting.
The question is not “Do you believe in God?” as a speculative inquiry.
The question is “Are you living as though life has meaning? Are you walking through your days with reverence and responsibility, with purpose and hope?”
You cannot be neutral about God, not because God insists but because life does.
It is the current that carries us.
And in the end, it is belief that allows us to sing.