See what I am giving you today: blessing and curse: blessing if you obey the commandments that I am giving you today, and curse if you do not obey and turn away. (Deut 11:26-27)

Parshat Re’eh begins with a command – RE’EH – SEE! The opening command echoes that Jewish clarion call: SH’MA (LISTEN UP)! In other words – pay attention, people!

In Re’eh, the divine tells the Israelite people, in no uncertain terms, that they need to follow all the laws outlined in the parsha, which include detailed rules forbidding idol worship, the consumption of meat, tithing, and pilgrimage festivals. If they do so, then they will receive the blessings of the covenantal relationship and will settle in the Promised Land. And if they choose not to follow the rules [i.e., literally – if you turn away from the path, if you follow other gods whom you have not experienced- whom you do not know (Deut 11:29)], they will be cursed. In chapter 12: 8-9, the Torah reads: “you won’t act at all as we now do here today (implying, the way the Israelites act in the desert, prior to the arrival in the Promised Land), each person according to how they please, because you haven’t yet come to the restful haven that the divine is giving you.”

This week’s parsha is all about the divine telling the Israelites to look, listen, make the choice to either follow the rules or not, and live with the consequences of those individual and collective choices. Indeed, it would not be a stretch to say that parshat Re’eh is one long admonition to adhere to ritual, communal, and behavioral boundaries, limits, and rules. Power is exercised directly and authoritatively – God demands, essentially, “Do what I say (even if it involves destroying other people and their stuff) because I say so, and you’ll reap the rewards. Don’t do what I say and you’ll pay the price.”

Previous Torah Queery commentators have seized upon the bludgeon-like nature of all this rule-making to critique Re’eh through a queer lens. For example, Rabbi Seth Goren objects to the labeling of certain animals and ritual practices as abominations, linking such rules to the question of how communities chill the freedom of expression and of speech. Taking a different tack, Rabbi Jacob Staub sees in Re’eh a painful reminder of how calcified norms and rules often exclude others, particularly queer people. I can see why Re’eh might cause some bristling. All those edicts run counter to the anarchic, anti-authoritarian, and freedom-loving tendencies that have historically marked queer culture and queer expression. Seen through such a libertarian prism, rules and limits act as straitjacket on our unruly desire to be freely queer.

My own struggle to make sense of Re’eh reminds me of an oft-repeated family joke. My cantankerous maternal grandmother (who is definitely libertarian, but not queer) has always chafed against the rules and intensely dislikes any request to change her behavior. When someone makes a reasonable request she doesn’t like, she often stubbornly retorts “No one’s going to tell ME what to do!” In re-reading Re’eh, I hear my prickly grandmother’s voice throughout the text as the resistant counterpoint to all the admonitions, directives, and threats to behave a certain way.

However, as a queer, co-parenting mom of a three year old, Re’eh forced me to think about the important functions of boundaries and limits, and the (gentle, loving) exercise of power. What might be some unanticipated queer blessings of creating and ‘following the rules? ’ How might our own rules, as members of queer communities and as queer parents, create ‘safe containers’ that offer blessings and the security of belonging for our kids, ourselves, and members of our larger tribes? I want to share with you a story about how I learned to answer these questions the hard way.

A year ago, my co-parenting dads and I went to visit our Jewish promised land, New York City, with Sasha, our then two-and-a-half-year-old daughter. It was a very difficult trip for me on many levels. I was at my wit’s end in parenting, and the situation was taking a serious toll on my family relationships. Up until that point, I had tried to embrace a style of parenting that borrowed a bit from the philosophy of non-violent communication, which emphasizes asking questions to elicit feelings, lots of negotiating, and making requests so that everyone can get their needs met. At the time, and possibly in reaction to my grandmother’s messages, I unconsciously believed that establishing rules, boundaries, and limits was rigid and authoritarian. I wanted to be the gentle, nurturing parent, and was more comfortable with offering a range of choices than telling my daughter ‘what to do.’

Suffice it to say, my non – Re’eh way of parenting wasn’t working. Two-and-a-half-year-olds are notorious for acting out of a towering and untamed will, not reason. I was not setting clear boundaries and limits about what was allowed and what was unacceptable. My very perceptive daughter acted disrespectfully, and often ignored my constant stream of negotiating questions and confusing choices. Some of the consequences I experienced that weekend were tantrums, recalcitrance, two-year-old style civil disobedience, and a lot of emotional chaos. The Divine and Moshe would have seriously disapproved.

And what were the fruits of my well-intentioned – but utterly unsuccessful – approach? I felt beyond exhausted, frustrated, irritable, and was constantly ‘giving in’ to avoid a massive hissy fit (sorry to all those folks trapped on the Q train at Canal Street!). And then resentment would seethe within me. It wasn’t pretty.

At one point, my girlfriend asked, with loving and stunning clarity: “Caryn, who’s driving this bus? You or Sasha?” I knew the truth but didn’t want to answer. She was right. Ima (mom – i.e., me) was not driving the bus. I was giving away all my power and authority, and that was precisely the problem. Rules or no rules? Boundaries and limits or lack of structure? Blessing or curse?

I instantly recognized in that moment that I was unwittingly passing down the inherited family mantra (“No one’s going to tell ME what to do!”) that created many painful struggles in my family about lines of authority, respect, and rules. I imagined a future in which my unruly daughter morphed into a petulant thirteen-year-old who flouted the rules, disregarded structures designed to protect her, and ignored basic requests to cooperate. Oy.

What I learned from that difficult weekend was that, like in Parashat Re’eh, sometimes boundaries and limits are good, and there are important reasons for establishing rules, and maybe there’s a reason my girlfriend works in law enforcement. When I looked deeper, I realized that it’s possible to exercise power lovingly and not be a tyrant. For the Israelites, the rules outlined in Re’eh (among many other parshiot) served to create a cohesive community, “designed to regulate activity in the Promised Land and to bind Israel to its God.” The rules of Re’eh distinguished the Israelites from other communities (a perennial obsession of the Jews) and offered ways to create meaning, connection, responsibility to one another, and holiness in their everyday lives. The rules allowed them to do so by outlining how and who they should worship, how and what they should eat, and how they should treat others in the community.

For better or for worse (blessing or curse?), I changed my parenting style pretty quickly. No longer did I ask lots of questions and provide lots of choices with an uptick in my voice. Simple, short, gentle declarative sentences became routine (think “It’s time to put away our toys and get going to school,” rather than “Would you like to put your toys away now?). My daughter and I even came up with a funny gesture and slogan to symbolize the new “norm.” Now, when I ask Sasha to do something and she plaintively asks “Why Ima?” I offer a quick explanation. Then I start to make a square in the air with my fingers. Sasha breaks out into a smile to play along with the game, and says “Because boundaries and limits are good!” Then I ask, “Who’s driving this bus?” Sasha laughs as we both say “IMA’S DRIVING THE BUS!” Then she giggles and cooperatively completes whatever task I’ve asked her to do.

Whereas the divine in Re’eh has no problem issuing directives, I still remain deeply uncomfortable with giving commandments in an authoritarian manner without explanation. I suspect that my discomfort with exercising raw power has more to do with gender and feminist politics than with being queer. Establishing the social order with the carrot and stick of blessings and curses just isn’t my style, and using threats or curses seems, well, ugly and sort of anti-feminist.

But becoming a queer parent has taught me a valuable lesson that I didn’t necessarily learn from my family or the queer community. Sometimes boundaries and limits, rules and regulations are good – for kids and for the Israelites- because they create a sense of safety, order, and predictability in what can otherwise seem like a chaotic universe. Even the queerest of queer subcultures and communities develop their own norms, structures, and limits over time. Rules and boundaries are what render a group cohesive, intelligible and functional – whether it’s a bunch of queer Radical Fairies on a rural farm or a ritual committee in an LGBT synagogue. Not all rules are just, and in the Torah, some rules seem inexplicably confusing and downright bizarre. Sometimes unjust rules require resistance, rather than obedience, and resistance to injustice is something that we queers and Jews are good at. It’s why we’ve had successful LGBT civil rights movements these past forty years, and why so many Jews historically have been overrepresented in social justice struggles over the past two centuries.

What I learned to love that weekend in New York was the idea that rules and limits serve a similar function to what Parashat Re’eh is trying to outline. Letting us know who we are, where we belong, and how we can do things that will help us to feel safe seems like a blessing if there ever was one in these uncertain times. At the end of the day, everyone – kids, queers, anyone who wants to live with others – needs some form of structure, some identifiable rules that govern our behavior, that guide us towards acting with compassion and loving kindness. Boundaries and limits are the tools that help us create the blessing of belonging to community. As a parent, I learned the hard way that my kid, like the Israelites, needed some limits to make sense of the world and to thrive. And now, most of the time, Sasha understands why the rules are what they are, and follows them, quite happily and cooperatively.

Dr. Caryn Aviv, Jewish Mosaic’s research director, is a Marsico lecturer in the School of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at the University of Denver, and academic director of the Certificate Program in Jewish Communal Service in the university’s Graduate School of Social Work. Aviv, along with David Shneer, is the author of New Jews: The End of the Jewish Diaspora, published in October 2005 by New York University Press. Aviv and Shneer have also co-authored American Queer, Now and Then (Paradigm Publishers, 2006), and co-edited the anthology Queer Jews (Routledge 2002).