To Hear and to Hold
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might never have fallen in love with Torah
if I hadn’t been the very youngest in my
family. In a constellation of elderly grandparents, starting-to-gray parents, and two
teenage brothers, I was always the baby, surrounded by elders with much to share. My
grandfather, an orphan, stressed self-sufficiency; he even taught me how to change the
oil in his old Volkswagen Beetle. My father
taught me the subtle rhythm of kneading bread
when we made seeded rye. My mother quietly
taught us to treat everyone with kindness and
compassion, and my brothers offered advice
on matters educational (algebra is important)
and cultural (listen to Joni Mitchell rather than
the BeeGees). Most compelling, though, were
my family’s stories of our history: All that I
know about my great-great grandparents came
from my grandmother, who learned the importance of remembering from caring for her
father as he struggled with dementia.
It was too much to absorb when I was
young, and years later, I wasn’t interested; I
wanted to craft my life on my terms, not everyone else’s. At some point, though, I learned to
hear — really hear. Not because I had to listen,
but because my family’s words represented their
sorrows and joys, their hard-won understanding
of their place in the world, and their distant
I
April Peters, who grew up in
Iowa and resided in Rhode
Island for many years, currently
lives and studies in New York.
She is a second-year
rabbinical student at the
Hebrew Union College–Jewish
Institute of Religion.
memories filtered through more immediate experiences. I would have been a fool not to listen.
Their voices inform me still, though some
of them are now silent. As a rabbinical student
in New York (something my family would
never have imagined), I hear the voices calling
to me from the Torah every day — relatives
from my larger family helping me understand
where we have been, how we act, what we
hope for, and why we mourn. The Torah’s
words rest in my heart, encircle my arm, dangle before my eyes, barely within sight. Torah
shapes and challenges me, as real and immediate as the stories I heard at my grandmother’s knee.
My duty is to hear words of Torah and teach
them, to hold them inside myself and bring
them forth, not as an ancient epic but as the
story of our family, our people. I seek the wisdom of Torah, but I also wonder how much its
stories can inform my life in this different time.
I want to follow its traditions in the same way
I wanted to please my grandmother or make
my parents proud. But it’s not always possible
to live their story and, if I had, I would not be
studying Torah now. My obligation is to hear
Torah and to hold it; to wrestle with it and to
pass on that struggle. In that way, I am faithful
to the Torah’s past and to its future.
Torah: An Unfolding Story
NICK RENNER
n considering the role that sacred texts and
Torah play in my life, I’m reminded of a conversation I had with a colleague about violent passages found in the book of Judges.
Biblical but not Torah, the book of Judges includes some of the more insidious elements in
our canonical writings. My colleague asked
something to this effect: “How can we really relate to all this bloodshed as a virtuous, godly
thing?” Pondering the question, I realized that
I don’t see our Jewish canonical scriptures as
monolithic and authoritative tomes, transgressing many contemporary values while demanding absolute fealty. To me, the power of Torah
lies in the way in which its drama is recounted
through a range of texts and interpretations that
map our narrative and tell our story.
I
Nick Renner is a fourth-year
rabbinical student at the
Reconstructionist Rabbinical
College in Wyncote, Pa.
Originally from Chapel Hill,
N.C., Renner is looking forward
to his second year as the
rabbinic intern at the University
of Delaware Hillel.
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Many Jews debate whether or not the
Torah is divinely revealed, or whether it is a
work of human authorship. This question
doesn’t help me get at the meaning of Torah in
my own life. Regardless of who wrote our
scripture and under what circumstances, I understand Torah as the story of my people’s relationship with God. Reading the Torah as a
living document, with evolving impact and
meaning for subsequent generations, has
helped me to maintain the centrality of text in
my own understanding of religious life, and
also helped me to feel a sense of connection
and rootedness with Jewish tradition. In contrast to what some might say, I don’t see contemporary progressive Jewish movements as a
deviation from normative Judaism; I see them
as part of an unfolding story.
Mishnah, Gemara, legal scholars, and mystics all serve to refract our holy writings and
provide us with a framework for being Jews.
And just as we use the Torah and the full range
of subsequent works to understand our people’s story, so, too, can we come to understand
something about ourselves. Today, not only can
we look at halakhic answers, but we can see
many of the historical, social, cultural, and theological processes that lead us to contemporary,
innovative solutions. Today, we can examine
our own Judaism and how it came to be, with
respect to these processes, and we can see how
we fit into the broader Jewish story.
While I live my life by Jewish precepts and
instruction, I find my relationship with sacred
texts to be complicated. While I sometimes
look to various sacred texts to enrich my understanding of a practice or to find a concrete
answer to a halakhic question, far more often
I go to a text with the aim of taking part in a
broad discourse that spans across generations,
centuries, and continents. Jewish explication
— arguing and wrestling with one another as
well as with scholars, thinkers, and philosophers of earlier generations — has existed for
centuries. Jews have always had a plurality of
opinions and ideas, and that’s why the Talmud
is one of the longest written works in the ancient world; it preserved many dissenting ideas
and arguments.
This model of wrestling, arguing, and grappling with sacred texts most accurately captures
my relationship with them. It isn’t a matter of
simply deferring to authority. Rather, it is deeply
engaging with Torah through arguing and questioning that marks the relationship. The
Reconstructionist Rabbinical College’s civilization-based approach to learning about Judaism
has helped me to form a relationship with
Judaism that is contextualized; I’ve come to see
different Jewish eras and innovations as a function not only of the received tradition, but also
of their respective times and places. This approach suggests ways in which contemporary
practices are both reflective of the world around
us and deeply rooted in Jewish tradition.
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Humility, Freedom, and Transcendence:
An Exchange of Letters
Dear Ari,
n October of 2011, in occupied Zuccotti Park,
I noticed two seemingly unrelated occurrences. The first was a young Haredi man living with the anarchists; the second was a group
of Modern Orthodox graduate students setting
up an Occupy Sukkot space in the park. These
sightings raised an important set of questions for
me: Is there a role for the Torah, as Judaism’s
founding text, in contributing to the literature
that shapes left-wing ideologies? Does my own
Jewish day school education inform my progressive political convictions?
While many important liberal values can be
found in Jewish teachings, progressivism — the
belief that ongoing sociopolitical reform improves our society — requires a certain degree
of flexibility in order to continually adapt to
changing socioeconomic conditions. The Torah
would have to be treated as a living text.
Otherwise, it risks becoming irrelevant to contemporary progressive Jews. I apply the same
progressive reasoning to my understanding of
the U.S. Constitution. Progressivism seems to
require that our societies be based on documents that can adapt, and while the meanings
I
of edicts and passages are still debated, the
Torah as a text has been arguably fixed for
thousands of years.
While Judaism is an important part of my
personal identity, progressive politics defines
my daily life. I understand the Torah as critical
to the Jewish ethnohistorical identity, but it
doesn’t retain, for me, its sacrosanct status. To
treat the Torah as one political document
among many is to deny its very essence —
namely, that it is the will of God and thus a
unique text. Once devoid of that holiness, the
Torah becomes a cultural symbol, perhaps critical to our self-perception, but unreliable for answers to the critical economic and political
questions of our time.
Like other contemporary Jews, the Haredi
man in Zuccotti Park seems to have found ways
to reconcile his interpretation of Judaism with
his apparent political ideology. Ultimately, we
all participate in our respective national projects by appealing to well-known contemporary
texts. My father jokes that my Orthodox education successfully instilled in me the belief that
the word of God, the Torah, is the supreme text.
Thus, with my rejection of Torah’s divinity, I
Chisda Magid, born in
Jerusalem, grew up outside
of Boston, Mass. He was an
intern at J Street in
Washington, D.C., and he will
begin a doctoral program in
political science at Indiana
University Bloomington in
the fall. He currently lives
in New York.
Rabbi Ari Weiss is executive
director of Uri L’Tzedek, an
Orthodox social justice
organization. In April 2010, he
became a fellow of the Joshua
Venture Group, which identifies
emerging Jewish leaders and
champions their visions for
social change.
M AY 2 0 1 2 | I YA R 5 7 7 2
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