From a young age I was a seeker. I sought out wise elders, was on a subconscious search for meaning and loved learning about the world. I grew up in an American Orthodox home and always went to Jewish schools, but textual learning outside the formal classroom was not a mainstay of my life or a significant part of my family's lifestyle. I was exposed to inspired Jewish living in wonderful summer camp settings, but I went unchallenged by the learning opportunities available to me. It was only when I was introduced to chevrutah study, through a learning gap year program in Israel and then continued to hone the skills to keep learning independently that I began to feel that the depths of Judaism was within reach. It was the long awaited secret sauce I had been seeking and which ended up forming the foundation, not only of a personal passion, but of my professional life.
Judaism is a text-based religion and it was so long before literacy was societally common. The mitzvah of Hakhel (Deut. 31:10-14) instructs us to read portions of Deuteronomy every seven years by the Temple site: “Gather the people—men, women, children, and the strangers in your communities—that they may hear and so learn to revere your God and to observe faithfully every word of this Teaching.”This is just one example of the way the Jewish people were supposed to interact with text, even when printed texts were almost inaccessible. The Torah underscores the need for the Torah tradition to develop and pass on to future generations, not only through its observance, but in the magical interaction between the text and those who learn and cherish it. This interaction is what imbues text with vitality and what ensures that it continues interacting with current generations. It is our national sourdough starter, constantly adding flour and water to an original kernel, keeps us simultaneously connected to tradition and adding new layers to it.
While Jewish learning can be accomplished through so many different forms of text study, in light of the Simchat Torah Challenge’s focus on the five books of chumash, I wanted to take a moment and zoom out on the broader biblical collection (Tanakh) of which chumash forms the first section. There are two central principles that uphold the kind of Tanakh learning I engage with. The first is the understanding that Tanakh is a multi-vocal work composed over hundreds of years, spanning the creation of the world and all the way into the early Second Temple period. Often biblical texts are studied in isolation but that kind of narrow study leads students to erroneous conclusions, or at least conclusions based on partial data. Let’s look at an example from the early Second Temple period, later books in the biblical cannon.
Isaiah 40-66, which forms the second main section of Isaiah, must be learned alongside the prophets Hagai and Zecharya, who prophecy to a common generation. What are the differences between their messages? What can we learn about the challenges of that generation based on their prophetic messaging? It turns out that the people had a hard time viewing the Persian King Cyrus, who in 539 BCE after conquering the Levant from the Babylonians, allowed all minorities to return to their national homelands and rebuild their religious temples. The prophet Isaiah calls him as a servant of God, a theological frame that the people had a hard time accepting. Could this be the redemption the earlier prophets had spoken of? The book of Ezra opens with a similar statement, “ In the first year of King Cyrus of Persia, when the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah was fulfilled, the Lord roused the spirit of King Cyrus of Persia to issue a proclamation throughout his realm by word of mouth and in writing.” Cyrus’ role in history, according to this, is indeed to fulfill the earlier prophecies of Jeremiah. Haggai speaks to the people, some of whom have returned to Jerusalem but have tarried in constructing the Temple. The difficulty of viewing secular leaders as part of a divine plan is a challenge that returned to the theological chalkboard of the Jewish people at the turn of the 20th century. This is just one of so many parallels between this biblical time period and our modern lives.
The second principle is a devotion to Peshat study, often poorly translated as the ‘plain sense of the verse.’ Peshat study connotes a method which utilizes the text to explain itself. An unclear word can be better understood when probing its use in other places in Tanakh or in parallel Semitic languages. Peshat study tries to understand the text on its own terms, before jumping to narrative expansions to fill in gaps. Sometimes it uses literary tools like characterization, allusion, alliteration, and structural study to analyze texts. These are not academic questions but ones which seek to understand the messaging of the biblical text.
Knowing where a narrative begins and ends has a deep impact on the point it's trying to make. For example, does the flood story begin in Genesis 6:1 with the enigmatic coupling between the 'sons of God' and the 'daughters of man' which seems to illustrate the moral depravity of the generation? Or perhaps in 6:9 which describes Noah’s family tree and is chosen as the opening verse of the Noah Torah portion? How do these two different starting points impact the way the flood narrative is understood? Is Noach the focus or the generation? A peshat approach is far from 'simple,' because the ideas and theological messages of the Bible are not simple and neither is its text. This approach demands the reader to pay close attention to the words of the text and contend with them on their own terms before having them interact with our own value systems. Many times the Sages and centuries of rabbinic commentaries from the Middle Ages utilize these same tools, somewhat before they had official names and long before systematization was culturally popular.
Alongside a Torah teaching career, I have had the honor of hosting the weekly Matan Parsha Podcast since March 2021. The project began at the height of the Corona pandemic, what turned out to be the ironic perfect storm to midwife into the world a channel of Torah that could be accessible during any lockdown or unforeseeable future reality. Matan is a women’s Torah learning institution in Israel that encourages independent thought, inquiry and discovery which was established in 1988 by Rabbanit Malke Bina. The Matan podcast is listened to and geared toward a wide-ranging audience with varied Torah backgrounds. We have high school students listening weekly on their runs, grandparents listening together on their drive to watch grandchildren, and teachers of Torah who find the format and content illuminating for them as well.
Each week on the podcast I learn the parsha with a different guest. Some of them are Matan trained scholars alongside figures from around the globe making their mark on the Torah world: Dr. Yael Ziegler, Dr. Tanya White, Rabbanit Nechama Goldman Barash, Rabbanit Shani Taragin, Dr. Elana Stein Hain, R. Dr. Joshua Berman,Dr. Erica Brown, Dr. Mijal Bitton and so many other phenomenal Torah teachers and scholars. After four cycles, we have explored the weekly parsha through diverse angles and themes, such as: family dynamics in the book of Bereishit, leading lives of holiness through the book of Vayikra, learning through the lens of 19th century commentators, following the rocky road of Israel’s maturation in the book of Bamidbar, and so many other themes that have served as an anchor for our study throughout the years.
The beauty of Parsha study is that it moves and develops with us. We are not the same person from year to year. New ideas and challenges appear in our lives and hearts and this impacts the way we learn the same Torah text. The podcast aims to understand the text as it is presented, not to undermine it or use it as a mere jumping point for a sideways discussion. We are also seeking meaning and guidance and are not afraid to be uncomfortable or challenged by what we learn. The Torah is our eternal guidebook and that means that we have a duty to mine it for its messages and understand how it can authentically guide our modern lives.
This year we are turning our attention to the weekly prophetic portions (haftorah) which were chosen centuries ago as complementary readings to the weekly parsha. This slight shift will provide us with an opportunity to explore new biblical books and different themes prominent in the prophetic texts, while simultaneously broadening the web of connections and learning we have done for the last four years. We will explore the connections with the parsha as well as study the prophets on their own terms. The prophetic readings often pass up by, because they are hard texts that many Jews have little interface with. This year we want to bring them closer to our reach and our hearts. We are living in both challenging and phenomenal times and these texts have guidance to offer us, about the interaction between divine plans and human efforts, about the varied faces of redemption, and what a relationship with God looks like under ever-changing circumstances.
Join us this year--in your car, on your run, or while folding laundry. It would be an honor to be your study partner.
