Sadie Perlin
This week’s Torah portion is Vayetze: Genesis 28:10 – 32:3
This week’s Torah portion is Vayetze. In Vayetze, Jacob leaves his family, marries two sisters, Rachel and Leah, and then returns with his new family to Israel. This week’s Haftarah is from the book Hosea. In the Haftarah, Hosea is a prophet who is told to go and deliver bad news to the people. He shares that God is very disappointed with the misdeeds of the Israelites.
In reading both my Torah and Haftarah portions, I identified that they share the common theme of loyalty. In Vayetze, Jacob must stay loyal to God. He wants to stay loyal because he still wants God to trust him and continue Abraham’s covenant through him. In turn, God stays loyal to Jacob when God makes Jacob the promise of land and descendants. In the Haftarah, God promises to stay loyal to the Israelite people even though they are not always faithful to Him.
Being loyal is related to being faithful. The biblical Hebrew word for faithfulness, loyalty and reliability is emunah. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the former chief rabbi of the United Kingdom, said that the word emunah means not giving up when something does not go your way.
Emunah means believing in someone or something, even when it is hard or you disagree. Loyalty is important because it helps people know you are trustworthy and that you care about others around you, even if they make different choices than you. Loyalty can build relationships with family and friends.
According to Rabbi Sacks, loyalty is one of the most important parts of leadership. Leaders can be brave and confident, but those traits are not substitutes for loyalty, which is what makes people want to follow their leader. If you are not loyal to people, you quickly lose their trust, which is one of the most difficult qualities to earn back.
I think that it is also important to be loyal to your religion. Being loyal shows that you care, that your faith is important and that you respect God and your community. In Judaism, we show loyalty to our religion by celebrating holidays, such as through the Passover seder, the Yom Kippur fast and observing Shabbat. When we have our Passover seder, we recline and think about our ancestors thousands of years ago who worked and sacrificed so their children could live freely and be proud of their Judaism. During Yom Kippur, which is one of the holiest days on the Jewish calendar, fasting shows loyalty to the people you may have wronged over the last year. This is not easy, but as Rabbi Sacks said, it is most important to show emunah, or loyalty, when you disagree with someone or when it is hard to do so.
In Judaism, we show loyalty to our ancestors, but also to the descendants that will come after us. As I become a bat mitzvah, I am sharing my commitment to be loyal to my religion, my family and my Jewish community.
Sadie Perlin is a seventh-grade student at Krieger Schechter Day School.
