Judaisms Ten Best Ideas : A Brief Guide for Seekers (9781580238069) by Green Arthur

Author:Green, Arthur
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Judaism; Introduction to Judaism; Guide to Judaism; The basics of Judaism; Basic Jewish beliefs; Basic Jewish ideas; Being Jewish; Jewish religion; Jewish faith; Jewish thought; Jewish teachings; Arthur Green; Understanding Judaism; Modern Judaism; Contemporary Judaism; Jewish theology; Hasidic spirituality
Publisher: Jewish Lights Pub
Published: 2014-07-24T00:00:00+00:00

Judaism is a civilization built around a text. That text is called the Torah, or the “Teaching,” and consists of the five books of Moses, the first section of the Hebrew Bible. Although historians believe the Torah text as we have it was canonized by Ezra and his followers around the fifth century Before the Common Era, the Jewish imagination sees it all as having happened at Mount Sinai, that mysterious encounter in the wilderness where Israel collectively said “Yes!” to each of God’s commandments even before it was given and God handed us the Torah as a token of our covenant and love.

Whenever the final text came into being, the process of interpretation was already going on before that. If you hold strictly to the Sinai view, you may find yourself saying that Moses in his old age, when he was making those great speeches before his death that constitute the book of Deuteronomy, was already revising through commentary some things he had said, or even heard from God, earlier in his life. If you follow the historians, it is clear that the Torah text stands in dialogue with prophetic and other writings of ancient Israel and that these often comment on and respond to one another.

But the process of commentary really gets going later in the Second Temple period (beginning around 150 BCE), when new revelations were no longer accepted. (Yes, that’s the right word. There were still people who thought they heard God speaking, but the community stopped listening.) As the Romans ruled Judea, each group among the Judean populace thought they had a proper understanding of God’s word: the priests, the Pharisees, the extreme pietists who retreated to the Dead Sea, and the small nascent Christian community. The rabbis, heirs to the Pharisees, saw Torah study and the process of commentary as the highest ideals of Jewish life. Once the Temple was destroyed in 70 CE, the life of Torah became the new sacred center around which all of Judaism revolved.

The most famous story of that early era tells of a dispute between Rabbi Eliezer and the sages, on a fine point of emerging Jewish practice revolving around the ritual purity of a certain type of oven. All the rational arguments possible were exhausted, but the two sides could not agree. Then heaven seemed to intervene on the side of Rabbi Eliezer: a tree leaned sideways, a brook flowed backward. Finally a heavenly voice came forth and took his side. The majority view was that of Rabbi Joshua, who, quoting the Torah itself, proclaimed, “It is not in heaven” (Deut. 30:12). The Torah has already been given; its interpretation is in human hands, not God’s. A talmudic postscript to the story adds: “What was God doing at that moment? Smiling and saying: ‘My children have defeated Me! My children have defeated Me!’”1

Freedom of interpretation became the lifeblood of Jewish creativity. Sometimes it was very daring, uprooting clear commandments of the Torah that seemed heartless to a later, more compassionate age.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.