Q&A: Proposing a Thesis for Studying the Hebrew Bible
Proposing a Thesis for Studying the Hebrew Bible
Question
Hello Rabbi Michi,
I’m sure you’re already tired of dealing with this topic, but still, following my reading of columns 134–135, where you raised unsettling and thought-provoking questions about studying the Hebrew Bible, I wanted to suggest a thesis and ask your opinion about it:
When it comes to Torah study, where Torah is God’s will, meaning His demands of us, nobody disputes that this is the important and central part of Torah study.
As for God’s will that we be moral, that too is undisputed; the division is over what morality is (and you elaborated on the question of whether morality is learned from the commandments or is independent of them, etc.).
My question is: is it also God’s will that we have a certain national identity? You brought up the issue of national ethos in column 134 almost as an anecdote, but argued that it is not necessarily important.
But what if it is important to God? Maybe studying the Hebrew Bible is what shapes our Jewish identity? The Hebrew Bible tells us our story from its beginning until 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 here because unfortunately they disappeared, and maybe people find remnants of them, but that is not certain). A period in which God was present at the level of speech/prophecy, when it was felt that He existed and intervened in the world and was not hidden.
Can one not infer from this some particular divine will that our national ethos be ingrained in us, and that specifically the history written in the Hebrew Bible, in this textual form, is what should influence us on the national level?
Now, if that is indeed important, how would it be expressed? As you said: values can be learned elsewhere, maybe even better. Same for psychology, and same for history.
But the combination of everything as a founding ethos, together with engaging in the details, perhaps builds some spiritual-metaphysical layer in the nation (I used the word “layer” here; maybe someone else would find another word) that God does want? That every individual in the nation should be committed to engaging with this, and that it should be internalized within him?
Since, as you said, it is the text itself that is sacred here, perhaps refining and developing the ability to analyze literary text is the tool for reaching the desired ethos?
This is of course just a theory based on the assumption that if this text is indeed sacred, and God wanted this text to reach us, then God has some interest in our doing something with this text.
And since you ruled out everything else with good arguments, I was left with this idea.
If this was addressed in the comments on columns 134–135, I didn’t see it; there were a lot of comments.
Thank you, and sorry if people have already worn you out on this topic.
Answer
My answer is twofold: building an ethos is not study. It is like working on character traits. That may be important, but it is not study. And moreover, ethos does not require details. It exists in all of us already, and there is no need to dig into details, resolve contradictions between verses, and invent interpretations that teach us nothing.
Thank you for the answer.
I agree that this is not like Torah study, because Torah study requires entering into matters that are all available to us, and the more deeply we go in, the more we can reach some kind of truth, whereas with the Hebrew Bible you can split hairs as much as you want, but you cannot necessarily arrive at the truth.
But regarding the plain meaning of the text, you can agree on something like 70% (I’m just throwing out a number, of course), and the rest is hair-splitting that won’t necessarily get us anywhere.
It’s not that we have to be expert in the details, but rather that
the engagement with the text itself is meant to root what is written in us at some higher level.
Maybe by everyone studying the sacred text, that is what creates our national identity in all of us.
Since there is no commandment here of Torah study in the simple sense, we were not commanded in it, but from the very fact that the text is sacred, one can understand that God does want us to do something with this text. And the most straightforward thing to do with a text is to read it.
And as for interpreting the text, by way of analogy, it reminds me a bit of judges’ interpretations of a law enacted in parliament.
It can be interpreted conservatively according to the rules of textual analysis (literary?), as opposed to more progressive interpretations that rely on various external things.
Since there is no obligation here to understand it one way or the other, there is the matter of engaging in it for its own sake, and unlike “great is study, for it leads to action,” here reading itself is great (let’s say). Period. Without taking anything further from it, other than connecting to the text as something we all do.
I’m reading what I wrote, and it definitely looks like finger-in-the-air nonsense, but the very existence of a sacred text prompts reflection about what it means for us.
In any case, thank you for the answer