Reflections on Studying Tanakh – Summary and Clarifications (Column 135)

With God's help

In the previous column I dealt with the study of Tanakh, and what I wrote stirred polemics and lively debate. There are several things that became clear to me anew through the discussion, and I am very glad of that, and there are quite a few things that gave me the feeling that I was not understood. So here I will summarize my updated position (including clarifications and lessons from the discussion that followed the previous column). Please read carefully, because in the comments to the previous column the same misunderstandings of my claims kept recurring, including regarding matters that were clarified in the post itself.

The point of departure and the main thrust of my claims

Let me begin by saying that my intention was not to prove to everyone that I am right, but genuinely and sincerely to try to examine the thesis I raised. People accused me of being closed-minded, a heretic, or someone who does not believe in the sanctity of Tanakh, but it seems to me that none of this is true. Personally, I am very inclined toward the view that there ought to be value in studying Tanakh, and that there must be a way to make this study meaningful. After all, this is God's word that was given to us, and therefore a priori it is clear to me that it is very important that studying it have significance.

The picture I described presented a difficulty, not a positive claim, and the difficulty is mainly practical rather than theoretical. The difficulty is that despite my expectations, and despite my theological and faith-based point of departure, on the practical level I am unable to find relevant meaning in this study. In my experience, Tanakh classes and its study are devoid of meaning and do not produce significant and new insights. These are the facts as I know and experience them. Therefore I asked that examples be brought that would help me clarify the matter and challenge the practical conclusion to which I had arrived. I asked you to show me that I am wrong, that is, that studying Tanakh really is meaningful. I would be very happy to discover that, because it would only confirm what I would have expected.

It follows that all the claims of the following sort do not help me: How can Tanakh be meaningless, after all it is God's word? Can a believing person think that Tanakh teaches us nothing? Surely you agree that it is holy, no?! Some even raised logical arguments: if there is God, and if Tanakh is the medium through which we are supposed to learn God's will, then it necessarily contains important messages and its study is meaningful. But all these claims are based on a misunderstanding of my words. My response is that they are all right. Indeed, this is very difficult and unexpected, and that is precisely why I raised the problem here. That is also why I asked for examples and not for a priori arguments proving that there must be significance. That really does not help me. I too thought that there had to be meaning in studying Tanakh, except that, to my sorrow and poverty, I do not find it.

What I find in Tanakh study is either little homiletic flourishes (but those exist in Talmudic analysis as well), or serious and committed study that yields trivial and agreed-upon ethical insights, or alternatively factual-historical insights that may perhaps serve as a basis for a national ethos, but to my mind that is not a good reason to study it, at least so long as I have not finished the study of Jewish law and the Talmud. Beyond that, Tanakh study is rather lacking in depth. The study does not require real intellectual effort (unlike Talmudic analysis, which, for all the criticisms one may have of it, is certainly far more complex and difficult than Tanakh study), and therefore even on the plane of academic challenge I do not find a real challenge there. In many cases it is psychologizing or existentialism (on the cheap?), which I will probably address in the next column. One can find among certain Tanakh students brilliant moves, ones that reveal to us a connection between passages or the significance of some word or other, but the brilliance is almost always in the move and the links, not in the conclusions. The conclusions (the non-factual ones) are always expected and simple, and therefore do not teach us anything new. And if they are not like that, then in most cases we will not accept the move in the first place. And as stated, regarding factual conclusions, it is hard for me to see this as very meaningful study, as will become clearer below.

Moreover, contrary to what some commenters wrote, I did not claim, and do not claim, that studying Tanakh is not Torah study. I do not deny that this is what we have received, and that it is also the reasonable way to understand things. I agree that one should recite the blessing over Torah study when engaging in Tanakh, if only because of its intrinsic value (it is engagement with God's word). It is a holy text, but its holiness seems to be primarily in its wording and less in its content (as opposed to the Oral Torah, whose holiness, I explained, lies in its content and not in its wording). What I am claiming is that I do not find in Tanakh much meaning beyond the intrinsic value and the engagement with rather ordinary content. Therefore, if I am supposed to choose what to occupy myself with: to burrow into a holy text that does not tell me much beyond some holy chronicles, or to engage with God's will (=Jewish law and its meaning), it seems to me entirely preferable, reasonable, and more meaningful to engage with the Oral Torah and Jewish law rather than with Scripture. These are the core of my claims; now I will elaborate further.

Two components in Tanakh: facts and values

In the previous post I already mentioned that Tanakh consists of a normative part containing moral and religious commands, and a factual-historical part. Therefore, when we study it, we can expect insights of all these kinds. In the first post I divided the discussion between facts and values, but in the comments this became sharper, so I will spell it out here again.

Learning historical facts from Tanakh

Regarding historical insights, my claim was that although such insights can certainly be derived from Tanakh, I find it hard to see factual-historical knowledge as something holy. Historical knowledge, whether what is found in Tanakh or other historical knowledge, can also be produced from other sources, and I find it hard to accept that the study of ancient history is Torah or God's word—that is, that there are what I called in the discussion in the comments "sacred facts." Especially since some of the historical information in Tanakh is not necessarily precise. Sometimes these are parables meant to convey messages, or an adaptation of historical events (as we sometimes explain), and therefore other sources may be better and more efficient sources for one who is interested in facts. All this leads me to think it unlikely that this is Tanakh's purpose, and it is not clear to me why this should give such great value to its study.

One can of course argue that there is a scriptural decree that studying the historical facts that appear in Tanakh counts as Torah, as Yishai repeatedly argues. But this again is not a relevant claim, since I too agree that studying Tanakh is Torah study with some intrinsic value. I agree that one recites the blessing over Torah study on it, and I am perhaps even willing to agree that studying the sacred facts is what yields that intrinsic value. In any case, I do not deny that studying Tanakh is Torah study. What I am claiming is that although it is indeed Torah study (for some reason that is not clear to me), it nevertheless seems to me less meaningful and less interesting study. And since the study of Jewish law and Talmudic analysis (that is, deepening in the halakhic parts of Tanakh, or the Torah, with the help of the Oral Torah) is also Torah—I prefer to engage in those. It is, to my mind, more interesting, deeper, and more instructive than engagement with ancient history.

Viewing Tanakh as a source whose significance is mainly historical actually assumes that the collection of chronicles—who ruled after whom, who fought with whom, who murdered whom, who begot whom, and who married and/or had sexual relations with whom—has the status of Torah and sanctity. That seems to me very puzzling, and even somewhat Leibowitzian (see below). You know what? It does not even seem to me all that important who served God and who did not, and what God did to him. Those people died quite a long time ago, so these too are facts that do not strike me as especially important or interesting. I find it hard to accept the assumption that there are "holy chronicles," and even if they are holy in some sense, why should I deal with them in particular, at least so long as I have not finished everything else.

If we nevertheless reach the conclusion that chronicles and sacred facts are not really convincing (and as noted, even if they are, my claims still stand), there is another alternative way to explain the significance of engagement with Tanakh: the engagement with the text itself is what is sacred, and that is the value of Torah study. The fact that the content of the text consists of facts, sacred or not, does not really matter. I spoke about this in the previous post, where I explained that the sanctity of Tanakh is the sanctity of the wording and the text, unlike the Oral Torah, whose sanctity is the sanctity of the content. This proposal says that engagement with a sacred text has value, regardless of the insights I derive from it. But here too we are still dealing with the intrinsic value of the study, not with the production of substantive insights. Therefore my claim is that even if this is true, it is still preferable to study something that also teaches me something. For example, rote repetition of Mishnah also has the value of Torah study (as is well known, in the book Maggid Meisharim the Maggid instructs Rabbi Yosef Karo to engage in this), and yet it is commonly accepted that, qualitatively speaking, this is an inferior use of one's Torah-study time. It is better to study other things that have greater value. Here too everyone can ask: from where do I infer that Talmudic analysis has greater value? My answer is that this is a matter of reason and does not require a source. The same applies in our case.

There is, of course, another interpretive alternative for understanding the significance of the non-halakhic component in Tanakh, namely that the historical-factual component in Tanakh is also intended to teach some ethical-spiritual lesson. Presumably the events convey to us ethical messages or non-historical facts (metaphysical or otherwise), and those are the purpose of the study. Perhaps that is why Tanakh also chooses only some parts of history and does not convey all of it to us in full. It presumably chooses only those parts that convey relevant messages. This, at least in principle, I can understand; but regarding this I argued (see also below) that practical problems arise in deriving values or ethical lessons from Tanakh.

Learning other facts from Tanakh

Suggestions were also made to derive psychological facts from Tanakh (such as Shatzal's suggestion to learn how to cope with trauma from the Exodus from Egypt and the splitting of the sea). But as I answered him there, in my opinion that is not really a lesson that I learn from Tanakh. If I agree with the psychological claim, then I will adopt it—but not because it is written in Tanakh, but because it seems correct to me. And if I think it is not correct, I can offer the verses in question a great many other explanations/interpretations.

Beyond that, psychological facts are best learned from life experience and from psychological (empirical?) research. If I want to know something about psychology, it is best to turn to those who work in that field and inquire with them. Exactly as I argued regarding historical facts, here too there are factual sources that are better, more efficient, and more reliable than interpretation of verses. I would not want anyone to treat me or my children with tools he derived from biblical interpretation, and I assume that even Shatzal would not entrust the treatment of those dear to him to such hands. Absolutely not recommended. Therefore psychological facts too do not seem to me to be "sacred," and it is implausible to see the study of them as Torah study. Therefore learning psychology from scientific literature or from other teachers (Gentiles, heaven forfend) seems to me far more reliable and effective for that purpose (though I have more than once expressed my skepticism regarding those fields), and yet it is quite clear to me that none of this will be considered Torah study.

Learning metaphysical facts from Tanakh

Before we turn to examine the matter of values, what remains for us within the factual realm is metaphysical facts. In the comments a few examples came up, and I must say that almost all of them were rather weak. Some were examples that all of us already know, and therefore they do not provide a basis for explaining why it is important for me today to study Tanakh. I know that there is God, and I also know that God created the world and revealed Himself at Sinai to give us the Torah. I know that He was in contact with the world and that there were prophets who brought His word. All of these are important and relevant pieces of information, but they are already known to all of us. Therefore they do not contribute to our discussion, because they cannot explain the importance of Tanakh study for a person living among us today, and that, and only that, is the subject of our discussion.

But in this area one good example was in fact brought. Yehoshua HaTekoa'i, with the help of A.H., brought the verses from the beginning of parashat Va'era that teach us about God's names. We learn from there that God has several names that He uses in different circumstances and contexts. They noted that systematic study of Scripture can even teach us the concrete meaning of those names (according to the contexts in which each of them is used). This is indeed a factual lesson (not historical but metaphysical-spiritual) that can be learned from Tanakh, and apparently not from other sources (that is, not from non-Torah sources. I am not entering now into Kabbalah or the Oral Torah, because they too are part of Torah). But even regarding these lessons, as I wrote to them, this is something rather general. More detailed information will probably not be unambiguous, and there it will already be difficult to extract clear information from Tanakh.

At this point it seems that the metaphysical-factual yield is very general and rather sparse, and therefore my interim conclusion is that even if there are some non-trivial metaphysical-spiritual dimensions that can be learned from Tanakh, there are few of them and the chance of encountering them is slight. So again, my conclusion for now is that from this standpoint too it is more reasonable and sensible to focus on studying Ketzot (that is, Talmudic and halakhic analysis).

There is of course an option to interpret Tanakh on the kabbalistic plane, in which case the whole of Tanakh is nothing but a collection of metaphysical facts and occurrences. Those who follow allegorical interpretation move in a similar direction, as I mentioned in the previous post. But that is not what I am dealing with here; I am dealing with the study of Tanakh in the accepted sense in our circles. I am asking whether there is value in it, not in other types of Tanakh study (just as I answered regarding the suggestion that Tanakh be studied in order to expound it through the thirteen hermeneutical principles).

Learning values from Tanakh

Now we come to values. The values that can be learned from Tanakh may be divided into moral values and religious values (Jewish law). Let me preface and clarify that in my view Tanakh is a source of authority on the principled plane because its source is divine (whether directly or through the prophets). Therefore, if I find that Tanakh instructs one to do X, my conclusion will be that X is the right course, whether this is a moral value or a religious one.

Some (Yishai) understood my words to mean that I was claiming a principled inability to learn values from any text whatsoever, especially from a text that describes facts (the is-ought question). But as I explained, that is a mistake. Since I see Tanakh as a source of authority, then if I find in it an instruction, directly or by implication, that X is a proper value, then for me X is a proper value—both a halakhic value and a moral one. Of course, if there is a direct instruction, then there is no room here at all to speak of the naturalistic fallacy. Just as the halakhic instructions in Tanakh obligate me, so too do its moral and evaluative instructions. But even without that, from my perspective, if I learn some value from Tanakh, it will obligate me.

On this plane, I did not claim and did not mean to claim anything substantive. My main claim was practical. Even if in principle one can learn values from some text, and even though from my perspective, if Tanakh really did teach me something I would be bound by it, in practice it is hard to see how I actually learn values from Tanakh.

Learning values from Tanakh: Jewish law

The Torah introduces religious values, such as Sabbath observance, eating kosher, and so on, and moral values (the prohibition of murder, theft, honoring parents, and more). Religious values are not embedded within us, and therefore Tanakh's basic and obvious purpose is to teach us what God expects of us on this plane, that is, to serve as the basis for Jewish law (which of course is also shaped through the Oral Torah). Therefore here it seems self-evident to me that there is value in the study of Tanakh through the mediation of the Oral Torah, of course. Without that we could not clarify God's will for us, and what is fitting and unfitting from a religious standpoint.

It is important to understand—and again, against the misunderstandings that arose in the comments—that I do not mean only practical laws. For me, the study of the passage of the stubborn and rebellious son, which never was and never will be, or the study of the laws of sacrifices that are not relevant in our day (and are doubtful to become relevant even in the future, in Rav Kook's opinion), is the study of God's will. Even if I do not understand why the law is like this and not otherwise—and perhaps precisely because I do not understand it—it is important to learn it from the Torah. There is no other way to learn it. Not from history books or psychology or any other source. That is what the command and the biblical text are for. Therefore it is clear to me that there can be "holy norms" and that it is important to study them, unlike "holy facts." When one studies God's will (=Jewish law), this is the way to serve Him and cleave to Him, for He and His will are one, and in this way I come to know the One who spoke and the world came into being. But historical facts, even if they are a tool for knowing Him, can be approached better through history books and archaeological and historical research.

Learning values from Tanakh: morality

With regard to universal values this is more difficult, though it is still important for me to clarify that it is not impossible. Universal values are usually embedded within us, and therefore it is unlikely that we will find innovations in this area in the Torah or elsewhere in Tanakh. Moreover, even if we do find innovations, we will usually interpret the verses in a way that fits our moral intuitions. This too is what we have received from the Talmud: it is better to strain the language than to strain reason. This of course does not happen to that extent in the area of Jewish law, for there we do not have prior intuitions about how one ought to redeem a firstborn donkey; at most we have reasonings that accompany the interpretation and probably arise from the learning itself and not only from us and our values.

However, in the comments it became clearer that in principle it is possible to learn moral values from Tanakh as well, in one of two situations:

• If I were to understand from the Torah in an unambiguous way that, in the Bible's view, life has no value or that one may commit suicide, I would learn from this a universal value, even though it contradicts my own views. Here the problem is mainly practical, since I will usually interpret the verses in a way that fits my views, and therefore it is hard to extract an innovation from the Torah because the gates of interpretation have not been locked. Just look: there are almost no such cases. This is not just me, but all of us. I know of no case in which someone derived from the Torah a genuinely new moral value—against what he had thought beforehand—in an unambiguous way and changed his position. And even if there is such a case (I believe Aharon brought one such example) — it is almost never found and that is not enough to justify focusing on Tanakh study.
• Even if the evaluative message that emerges from Tanakh does not emerge from the text unambiguously but only plausibly, it can still have significance in issues where I do not have a clear position of my own and I am uncertain. In such cases, it is enough for me to find that the plausible interpretation in the Torah is X for me to adopt it. There I would not try to interpret it otherwise.

Still, even here one should note that if I am uncertain, I very much doubt that I would decide in light of an interpretation in Tanakh if it is not sufficiently unambiguous. But such cases, even if they exist, are rare, and again they do not justify focusing on a kind of study most of which lacks substantive meaning.

Why is it different in the study of Jewish law?

Yishai kept arguing that all my claims are relevant also with respect to the study of the halakhic part of Tanakh and the Oral Torah. Talmudic and halakhic analysis also depends on the learner's interpretation, and there too the learner imposes his understandings on the text, and there too we are dealing with study that has no value in and of itself (especially according to my view that Jewish law is foreign to morality, is not based on it, and does not come to teach moral values). There too the laws are scriptural decrees, and if the laws too are only scriptural decrees, he argued, then how is that different from "holy facts"? Why can there not be a scriptural decree to study some sacred facts, while the value in studying the redemption of the firstborn donkey or waving the lulav does seem acceptable to me?

My answer to these claims operates on several planes. First, God's will has self-evident value. Even if the will as such is not clear to me, and I do not know what it achieves, it is entirely clear that when one studies His will, one understands something about Him and about the proper way to conduct oneself in the world and about our conception of the world. When I learn that one must redeem a firstborn donkey or stone a rebellious son, I have learned a piece of God's will. This is self-evident to me, and therefore I have no problem at all with this study. Of course, I would be very glad also to understand what good it does, but that does not interfere with the meaningfulness of the study. Incidentally, in the course of study, various understandings and intuitions develop that find meaning in those laws (and the interpretive reasonings that appear among learners even in formal halakhic contexts testify to this). Second, it is a fact that when I interpret the topic of redeeming a firstborn donkey, I do not insert my values and bend the Torah to my a priori intuitions. Without the Torah I would not redeem a firstborn donkey, and I would also not refrain from eating pork or blood—unlike murder, theft, and universal values generally. So study in Jewish law certainly does teach me something new (again, irrespective of whether the topic is practically relevant or not). This is not like study that teaches me some chronicle or factual tract of some kind. There I am not learning God's will, but at most learning historical facts (and perhaps thereby fulfilling His will). That is a very significant difference. And third, I wrote to Yishai that even if facts can be holy and there is Torah value in studying them—that is, even if there really is a scriptural decree that nevertheless gives this value—it still seems logical to me to study that only after I finish the halakhic and analytic study, which is more meaningful to me.

A bird's-eye comparison

I will summarize here, from a bird's-eye view, the differences that I see between the study of Jewish law and Talmudic analysis and the study of Tanakh in its common sense. Each aspect on its own may perhaps be debatable, but the sum of them all, in my estimation, does indeed lead to the conclusion I presented.

A considerable portion of Tanakh's chapters deal simply with history. No wonder they are studied in the same way and with the same enthusiasm in secular groups and secular study halls. People study history and their national ethos, and in that sense I cannot see this as Torah or sanctity. You are doing what every Gentile does, and in exactly the same way. Yes, yes, I know there is a scriptural decree that nevertheless gives this some value, but still, think about what substantive significance one can find in it. This stands in contrast to halakhic study, with which Gentiles and secular people are almost not involved. That is a Jewish and Torah world that does not concern them.

Halakhic study also requires external tools (logic, mathematics, and even history and ancient realia, psychology, and more), but in the halakhic context all these are only instruments. This is the clarification of the factual infrastructure to which the norms being studied apply. By contrast, in the study of the non-halakhic parts of Tanakh, the study of the external disciplines is the very substance of the matter. Historical clarification of a biblical topic is supposed to be conducted also on a purely academic-historical plane. There it is not a tool, not an instrument in the service of a commandment, but the body of the study itself. I find it hard to accept that a course in a history or archaeology department, and study of completely external sources, is Torah study. And even if it is, it still seems to me reasonable that this is less meaningful than the study of Jewish law, as above.

Beyond that, I have already written several times in the past that in the halakhic tradition a discipline has crystallized. Despite all the differences among the study halls and the different learners, there is a discourse and there is a distinctive mode of thought, and therefore you can feel that in Talmudic analysis you are acquiring something new. You are joining a unique discipline, and that is something Jewish that can count as Torah. By contrast, in Tanakh study, the religious Jewish learner studies in exactly the same way as the Gentile or the secular Jew, and there is nothing specifically Jewish here. There is no mode of thought and relation that has crystallized over the years. We all read it like any other text, with no difference whatsoever. The various commentators each goes one way or another, but there is no real discussion among them. This is not a discipline but, if anything, a collection of such things, and in fact, in my estimation, even each study hall on its own is not fully a discipline. What follows from this is that the study of the Talmud and analysis of it also enables connection to the ethos and the Jewish mode of thought of previous generations far more—and certainly no less—than Tanakh study, which was presented here as having national value and as connecting us to the collective. The study of Jewish law will do that better as well.

Incidentally, if one wants to connect to the generations on the personal plane—that is, to learn facts and chronicles about personalities and events from the past—then for me it is far more interesting to read about the history of Rabbi Akiva Eiger, Maimonides, and Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman and their halakhic thought, than to know who ruled before and after Ahaz, and whether he did good or evil in the eyes of God. Why should the history of the post-biblical periods be placed at a disadvantage? Is every study of history Torah? Why is connection to the nation of the biblical period Torah, while studying the history of our great sages and ancestors is not considered "the substance of Torah," in the standard yeshiva ethos (with which I do not agree)?

The mosaic created by the study of Jewish law in all its branches is far more meaningful than a chaining together of the collection of Tanakh's historical facts. In my humble opinion, there is no comparison between the two kinds of study in terms of sophistication and depth, breadth of scope, complexity, and the quantity of insights relevant to faith and life. The Talmud is truly a masterpiece in my view, one that succeeds in presenting a complex picture of the world rich in branches, shades, and layers, in documenting give-and-take and intergenerational discourse on varied and diverse topics that are both applicable to our lives and enriching of them, and in incorporating many aspects and synthesizing them into a discipline and uniquely Jewish modes of thought.

By contrast, those who defend the meaningfulness of Tanakh study explain to me that I am supposed to study chronicles such as "He brought his offering: one silver bowl weighing one hundred and thirty shekels…" that repeats itself twelve times, or long lists of generations and names from different periods ("So-and-so begot so-and-so, begot sons and daughters, and died…"). Again, this is probably Torah, but I do not see why it would not be preferable to study a different Torah, far more meaningful, which is also Torah. For some reason I have become accustomed to being accused of Leibowitzianism—that is, of dealing with matters that are unintelligible simply because there is a scriptural decree to deal with them—whereas in fact Tanakh students are the ones who deal in chronicles and "sacred facts" and mutter technical verses with grocery-list inventories, only because there is a scriptural decree telling us that there is some intrinsic value in this. That is already too Leibowitzian even for me. Leibowitz said that as far as he was concerned, prayer could just as well be the recitation of the telephone book five times a day, since the content of prayer has no significance. That is actually exactly the picture created by conventional Tanakh study. They recite telephone books because of the intrinsic value involved. I refuse to see this as Torah—or alternatively, even if it is Torah, there is Torah of higher quality whose study takes precedence over it. By contrast, the student of Jewish law is engaged in uniquely Jewish things, in God's will as reflected in the Torah and in the rich discipline that developed from it (and only from it), and precisely that is presented as pointless and technical engagement. Amazing!

So why was Tanakh given?

People kept asking me, again and again, why Tanakh was given. If chronicles and facts are not holy, why were those parts written into Tanakh?

First, let me say that this is a good question, but it does not help me solve the practical problem. I cannot manage to find meaning. So even if it is clear that I am wrong because, on my approach, there is no explanation for why Tanakh was given, that does not help me on the practical plane—and that, for me, is the heart of the discussion (see the beginning of the post).

Second, it is entirely possible that Tanakh was given in order to constitute a national ethos, and perhaps there is even religious value in that (a scriptural decree). But why should that be my fault? In my eyes it is boring and not especially useful, and therefore it is no wonder that I prefer to engage with the more interesting and challenging parts of Torah. If others want to give themselves over to those tedious matters—good for them.

And third, I explained that in the past Tanakh probably really was necessary. The values current in our culture today (not only in Judaism, of course) have taken root in it in part thanks to Tanakh. Some perhaps by mistake (such as male homosexual intercourse, which in my view is not a moral abomination but a religious one, and these matters have already been discussed on the site), and some not (such as murder, theft, adultery, and so forth). There were cultures in which those values were not accepted, such as Sodom, the generation of the Flood, or Amalek. And probably our own forefathers too had room for improvement. Therefore I can certainly understand why the non-halakhic parts of the Torah were given in their time. They were given both to teach the values and to help internalize them. But still, as far as I am concerned, at least in our present condition, I do not see much value in this. I have better ways to internalize values, beyond the fact that, as I wrote, internalizing something already known is not learning—or at least not learning in its pure sense (which is the production of new insights)—and besides, I really do already know all this.

To conclude, let me once again mention here Rabbi Yitzhak's explanation in Rashi's very first comment on the Torah, which in effect states my point briefly: his very question assumes that there is no value in the narrative parts of the Torah, only in Jewish law. That is why he asks why the Torah does not begin with This month shall be for you. From here it is clear that in his opinion the main body of Torah is Jewish law. True, he answers and explains why everything else too was given (he is dealing with the first book and a quarter), but note that according to his view this was given only for technical reasons. For example, the book of Genesis was given in order to teach us our right to the land and to silence those who challenge it. Fine—I already know that, and I do not challenge our right to the land. So what does all this say to me today? Not much. It seems to me no accident that Rashi chose to open his commentary on the Torah with this remark, for it addresses a difficulty that ought to trouble every learner: what is the value of the non-halakhic parts of the Torah? And this is written by the greatest of the commentators on Scripture and the Talmud, at the beginning of his commentary on the Torah. This is what every student of Tanakh encounters at the outset of his path. So for little me, all that remains is to join in and hold on to the hem of his cloak.