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Submitting a thesis for Bible study

שו”תCategory: generalSubmitting a thesis for Bible study
asked 2 years ago

Hello Rabbi Michi,
You’re probably tired of addressing the above-mentioned field, but nevertheless, following reading columns 134-135, where you raised challenging and thought-provoking questions about Bible study, I thought I’d raise a thesis and ask your opinion on it:
 
Regarding Torah study, since Torah is God’s will, meaning His demands of us, there is no doubt that this is the most important and essential part of Torah study.
There is no dispute about God’s will for us to be moral. The division is what morality is (and the expansion of the question of whether morality is learned from the commandments or is it separate from the commandments, etc.).
My question: Is it also God’s will that we have a certain national identity? You raised the issue of national ethos in column 134 as some kind of anecdote, but you claimed that it is not necessarily important.
And if it is important to God? Maybe studying the Bible is what shapes our Jewish identity? The Bible tells us our story from its beginning to a certain period.
A period that our ancestors shared together, before the Babylonian exile and a little after it (and yes, I left out all the tribes of Israel because unfortunately they disappeared, and perhaps their remains are found, but that is not certain). A period in which God was present at the level of speech/prophecy, it was felt that He existed and intervened in the world and was not hidden.
Can’t we conclude from this some specific will of God that our national ethos be ingrained in us and that it is precisely the history written in the Bible, in this textual form, that will influence us on our national level?
Now, if it is important, how will it be expressed? As you said: values, can be learned from another place, maybe even better. Same with psychology and same with history.
But the combination of everything as a founding ethos, while dealing with the details, perhaps this builds some kind of spiritual-metaphysical level in the nation (I used the word “level” here, maybe someone will find another word) that God is interested in? That every individual in the nation will be obligated to deal with this and that this thing will be internalized within him?
Because, as you said, the text itself is sacred here, and therefore including and developing literary text analysis skills is the tool to reach the desired ethos?
This is, of course, a theory that is based on the assumption that if this text is indeed holy, and God wanted this text to reach us, then there is something God did with this text.
And since you ruled out everything else with good arguments, I stuck with this idea.
 
I didn’t see if they addressed this in the comments in columns 134-135, there were many comments.
 
Thank you and sorry if I’ve already dug into this topic too much.
 


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מיכי Staff answered 2 years ago
My answer in my translation: Building an ethos is not learning. It is like working on the virtues. It may be important, but it is not learning. Furthermore, the ethos does not require details. It exists in all of us, and there is no need to delve into details and reconcile contradictions between verses and invent interpretations that teach us nothing.

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מוישה אופניק replied 2 years ago

Thanks for the answer.

I agree that it is not like studying Torah, since studying Torah requires entering into matters that are all obvious to us and as we enter we can reach some certain truth, compared to the Bible where you can argue as much as you want, you can't necessarily reach the truth.
But regarding the simplicity of the text, you can agree on something like 70% (just throwing it out of the way, of course) and the rest is vacillation that we won't necessarily get anywhere with.

It's not that we have to be knowledgeable in the details as much as
the dealing with the text itself in order to instill the text in us at some elite level.

Perhaps by everyone studying the sacred text, this is what creates the national identity for all of us.

Since there is no mitzvah here of studying Torah as a matter of course, we were not required to do so, but since the text is sacred, it is possible to understand that G‑d does want us to do something with this text. And the easiest thing to do with a text is to read it.

As for interpreting the text, by contrast, it is somewhat reminiscent of the interpretations of judges regarding a law enacted by parliament.
You can separate conservatively according to the rules of text analysis (literary?) versus more progressive interpretations that rely on external things of this and that.
From the diversity that there is no obligation to understand one way or the other, there is the matter of dealing for its own sake, and unlike ”great hunting that leads to action”, here the reading is great (let's say). Period. Without taking anything beyond the mere association with the text as something we all do.

I read what I wrote and it certainly seems like nonsense, but the fact that there is a sacred text makes us reflect on its meaning for us.

In any case, thanks for the answer

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