Belief and the traditional sephardi

  

An acquaintance of mine, a traditional Sephardi whom we will call Orna, is having some difficulties at home. Her two young adult son's have gone "chozer b'tshuva, "  Breslev. The younger one in particular seems to have engaged in particularly outrageous behavior; destroying some of his parent's property that didn't meet his religious standards; which to me indicates prior issues in this family.

So one day Orna asked me, what is the "correct" belief: Is the entire Torah from God at Mount Sinai or only the ten commandments? And she told me not to beat around the bush or give her any gobbledygook about there being multiple opinions. Smart woman.

I hemmed and hawed and had to inform her that the traditional acceptable belief is that the entire Torah was given from God to Moses at Sinai.

"Aha!" she said. "so my son was right!" It seems that the son had accused his parents of not being good Jews; based on their belief in the Torah being "parshanut"; interpretation, of the Ten commandments given at the revelation at Sinai. The son had said something like "Mom, Dad, I can't believe that a Jew would say such a thing."

I tried to stick up for Orna and her husband and their religious rights. I started to say something about the son having to behave respectfully toward his parents no matter their belief. "Yes, but if you and his dad believe otherwise...."

She cut me off. "No, it's not that we believed otherwise! We just didn't know."

We just didn't know.

So is that what being a traditional Sephardi is about? about ignorance? or at least about feigning thereof?