My partner complains that I turn everything into a joke, that I don't know when to be serious. I see my sense of humor as a gift, but he seems to view it as an affliction. And sometimes it is. Though we tend to think of the Torah as a record of holiness and righteousness, a quick glance at any page reveals another story. Well, not any page.
Some pages are mostly sacrificial procedures or tabernacle construction specs.
But any narrative page tells a tale of human frailty, human inadequacy, human mistakes. Quite a lot, as it turns out. The themes and struggles of our traditional history are not so different from the challenges we face today. The Torah is full of domineering parents, disruptive children, stern judges and moralists, arrogant chiefs and conquerors, fallible rulers and subjects. Mistakes are the one thing they all have in common.