If you ever missed a day at school, you may have asked a friend for some notes. Reading through the notes can be helpful in trying to catch up the lesson. However, the notes can never replicate what happened in the classroom. Together with those notes, the best way for you to understand the lesson is if your friend takes the time to explain what the teacher said.
The Written Torah (Five Books of Moses) is like the shorthand notes given over from Moshe from Mount Sinai. Reading the text literally and without context can leave one confused and uncomfortable. Does Hashem really want me to take out someone else's eye if they hurt mine?
In this week's parashah, we read many laws about how people should treat each other and others’ property. And as a punishment for bodily injury, the verse says that one should award "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”.

Our rabbis explain that these words mean that one should pay damages equivalent to the worth of that particular part of the body.
Our Torah consists of those "shorthand notes”— the Written Torah, combined with the Oral Law, which was passed down from generation to generation, until the third century CE when Rabbi Yehuda Hanasi redacted the Mishnah.

Ever since, our rabbis have learnt those texts and explained to us how to keep the laws in our day and age. Without those explanations, the Torah cannot be understood properly and is open to misinterpretation.
When one walks into shul and picks up a Chumash, one may feel upset if they read a piece of text that seems incomprehensible. However, knowing that these words are shorthand, and that there is more to these words than meets the eye, can help us appreciate the beauty of the gift that Hashem gave us so many years ago. Especially if we use one of the many commentaries to help us along that journey.
Asking questions is encouraged in Judaism, and finding answers helps us learn and grow. So, if you come across an idea that is hard to understand or words that bother you, please feel free to ask, engage and discuss.

We will all learn more when we look beneath the surface and discuss ideas freely.