Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Parshah- Judah and Tamar

Last night I read my son the story of Judah and Tamar. We are a little behind in our reading and I thought I would skip this one due to its "graphic" content. I decided not to because Judah and specifically Tamar are mentioned in the New Testament and are Jesus' ancestors. Again there is more sex and death and my son by now is immune. (I survived explaining Hagar, and all of Jacob's 4 wives and children, I can handle Tamar). I obviously skipped some very graphic parts and mentioned Onan's mishaps as just "he didn't obey God". But the wonderful part of last nights parshah was that my son couldn't believe that Judah and Tamar were Jesus' ancestors. He couldn't believe that another sneaky person was related to Jesus. It's been a blessing reading to him these other stories that are not so popular. But this again points out that we can have some really messed up relatives, but still have a chance to not be such screwups.