Essential Torah by George Robinson

Author:George Robinson [ROBINSON, GEORGE]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-48437-6
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2006-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

HOW I STUDY TORAH

Your questions are deceptively simple, and I am not sure what to do with them. I am afraid that any answer I would compose would be equally deceptively simple. I know of no single one-line answer.

I guess my overall advice on studying is how I learned to study:

Don’t be put off by people who know more than you do. Do what you can do. Finding meaning in Torah is a blend of you and Torah. I call it “Where life meets text.” If you are not already an expert in text, you are in life.

Be serious. Do not settle for the recipes for study that others tell you to follow. Never say anything you do not believe. But how do you know what you believe until you say it, and what language do you use to practice the saying? You need a balance here. Use metaphor liberally, realizing that so-called religious language may mean nothing literally, but may be the only way to get at the deep issues you are after. And yet, never forget that the same language can hide ignorance by pretending to say something but really saying nothing. Other people with nothing to say will nod approval, making you think you are profound, not empty. So check to see that ordinary people nod with satisfaction. They are better judges of what you say than the experts. You need to test what you say against life; ordinary people worry about life, “experts” may forget life for text. If you cannot address life from text, you are just addressing text from text and are becoming tex-tually solipsistic.

Life and text are deep, so ordinary language will not suffice. Specialized language, however, may occlude. So avoid simplistic spiritual fluffiness that just clouds reality, but be willing to push a metaphor to arrive at insights that scientific prose will never capture. The test is whether you really and truly believe what you say; I mean belief here in a deep literary sense. Text is literature. Literature should address life in metaphoric ways that science does not.

3. Do not feel you have to know everything to say something. But do not think you can say just anything if you really know nothing.

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