fbpx
[additional-authors]
October 21, 2013

When I was younger,  I anticipated the taking out of the Torah.  I enjoyed the prayers but the Torah signaled my time to play.  It was break time.  I could not connect to a book whose stories were unbelievable, whose characters were incredulous, filled with disappointments and misconduct, brothers who killed each other, and families who tricked one another.  And every Yom Kippur I read what kind of sex I should avoid, while being told not to think of sex.  Can you walk across a football field without thinking of a pink elephant?

I met the same challenges in medical school.  Hours of didactics, boring texts, medications whose names put learning German to shame. We memorized equations and formulae which I yet have to use after some twenty years of practice. 

It wasn’t until I stepped onto the wards, those alcohol ridden hospital corners where bargaining and despair mix, and held the hand of my very first patient dying of AIDS that suddenly like fireworks, my synapses started shooting, the physiology course, the dissection of the cadaver, all jumped into light against a dark sky, liberated, presenting themselves to me for the first time.

I wish someone had told me the secret when I was younger.  Get over it.  The Torah was not entirely written by God, the characters not actual, the timelines off. 

Did you enjoy this article?
You'll love our roundtable.

Editor's Picks

Latest Articles

Print Issue: Got College? | Mar 29, 2024

With the alarming rise in antisemitism across many college campuses, choosing where to apply has become more complicated for Jewish high school seniors. Some are even looking at Israel.

More news and opinions than at a
Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.

More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.

More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.