Discerning the value of traditional teachings that are not part of scripture is not an easy task. As I write my 47 lessons of Torah, it would be easy to get lost in the traditional teachings of the Sages. However, only a small fraction of what is written has direct relevance to our purpose as a messianic congregation; even that aside, only a small fraction has relevance to issues that would shed light on these Torah lessons for my bar and bat mitzvah kids.
Of course, if anyone thinks it’s easy to teach 10-13-year-olds, I have some North Carolina land for sale. While I greatly enjoy it, it is a challenge to get kids at that age to pay attention enough to learn something, though it can be done.
Relevancy is the trick. So many lessons talk about adult concerns in their examples, rather than kids’ concerns. An illustration of how a certain passage of scripture relates to marriage or paying off a mortgage, for example, isn’t as relevant has an illustration that compares a certain passage to dealing with bullying or peer pressure, or making a choice between Bible study time and videogame time.
Yet even kid-appeal doesn’t guarantee relevancy. In writing my lesson on Genesis, I came across a writing of the sages that expands on the day of creation when all underwater life was brought forth by the words of Adonai our G-d. The passage was filled with stories of G-d creating monsters that could destroy the earth if he’d made more than one of them. Such a story from the sages would have held great youth appeal.
But the truth is, it’s complete legend, never mentioned directly in the passage we were studying and, therefore, problematic at best, if not downright confusing the mythology of Torah from the historical Torah passage itself. Better to leave such a story aside for an older, more discerning age. That was my feeling, anyway.