The Holy Books of Judaism:  The Torah
Sermon, June 3, 2005
Rabbi Bruce Kadden

This year our congregational theme has been Talmud Torah K’neged Kulam – the study of Torah equals all of the other mitzvot.  Now in this phrase, the word Torah refers not just to the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, but to the entire scope of Jewish learning and teaching.  The rabbis taught that to study these teachings was of utmost importance because such study leads to the observance of the mitzvot; a life of study leads to a life of practice.

The primary source of our study should be the great texts that we Jews have produced over the centuries, beginning, of course, with the Torah, but extending to the Talmud, midrash, commentaries, codes, and responsa literature.  By studying these important works, we can come to better understand their importance to the development of Judaism and the role that they play in Jewish life.

Beginning this evening, and extending throughout the summer, I will examine what I call “The Holy Books of Judaism,” examining their content, development and importance to Judaism and Jewish practice.

Any discussion of Jewish literature, indeed of Judaism itself, must begin with the Torah, for it is the heart and soul of Judaism.  All Jewish laws and teachings must have their origins in the Torah.  Ben Bag Bag taught:  “Turn it and turn it for all is in it, and look in it and grow gray and old in it, and do not turn away from it, for there is no better measure for you than it.” (Pirkei Avot 5:25)

The central role that the Torah plays in Judaism is demonstrated by the importance of the sefer Torah, the Torah scroll.  That we continue to read from the Torah scroll and not a printed book and that our Torah scrolls are meticulously handwritten on parchment when a virtual replica could be reproduced indicate the importance of this sacred work.  Placing these scrolls in the aron hakodesh, the holy ark, further demonstrates their sacredness.

We treat the Torah like royalty, dressing it in the finest garments, reminiscent of the garments of the Kohen Hagadol, the high priest; rising whenever the ark is open or the Torah is being held, not turning our back on it as it is paraded through the congregation, and reaching to touch it with our tzitzit or siddur and then kissing these items to demonstrate our love of Torah. 

It is, of course, not the physical scroll that we adore; the Torah is no idol.  Rather, we show our love for its teachings and traditions which guide us as we live our lives and –as we affirm in the blessing after reading from the Torah—are the key to eternal life.

The Torah is the source for the 613 mitzvot of Judaism.  But the Torah is much more than a law code.  In fact, the rabbis point out that if the Torah were only a code of law, it could have started with Exodus 12, the first passage containing many mitzvot.  Instead, it begins with the story of creation and then continues with the story of the origins and development of the Jewish people because these stories are just as important a part of who we are and just as important for knowing what we should do as the laws that come later.

The primary scriptural reading each Shabbat is from the Torah.  The rabbis divided the Torah into 54 portions, assigning one to each Shabbat, beginning with the first Shabbat after Simchat Torah.  In the course of the year, therefore, we cover the entire Torah.  We also read special sections on each of our holidays.  And, because the rabbis did not want even a few days to pass without reading Torah, they instituted readings during Monday and Thursday morning worship services.

The rabbis also spent a significant amount of time studying Torah.  Every verse, every word, even every letter had something to teach.  And the rabbis were by no means fundamentalists; they insisted that a text could yield a multitude of teachings, a variety of interpretations.  And that is why it is so important that we continue to study Torah, that we come back to the same texts year after year, because there are always new insights to be discovered, new meanings to be uncovered.

These rabbis, of course, believed that the Torah was of Divine origin:  that God dictated the Torah –precisely as we have it today—to Moses on Mount Sinai.  Not one letter has been altered since that time.  Indeed, in places where the text seemed to be inaccurate, the rabbis changed the way the text was read in order for it to make sense, but not how it was written.

Now if the Torah is of absolute Divine origin, then it must be historically accurate and morally unimpeachable.  The rabbis would spend hours debating its meaning, but they would never admit that it could be mistaken. 

Many Jews today do not accept that the Torah is entirely of Divine origin.  Instead, in the words of Rabbi Gunther Plaut “the Torah is a book which had its origin in the hearts and minds of the Jewish people.”  According to this view, the Torah developed over many centuries as the record of the interaction between God and the Jewish people.  Its stories and traditions were first passed on orally for many generations before they were written down and eventually shaped into the text that we have today.

This understanding raises the question of the relationship of God to the Torah.  Rabbi Plaut suggests that “The Torah is ancient Israel’s distinctive record if its search for God.  It attempts to record the meeting of the human and the Divine…. Therefore, the text is often touched by the ineffable Presence…. God is not the author of the text, the people are; but God’s voice may be heard through theirs if we listen with open minds.”

For liberal Jews who accept this interpretation, the Torah remains the central teaching of our tradition precisely because it reflects the interaction between our ancestors and our God.  But the fact that human beings played such a significant role in its development means that it may contain misunderstandings and errors in places where our ancestors failed to grasp the true meaning of the Divine.  They were, after all, only human. 

Nevertheless, we study, debate, and wrestle with Torah in order to better understand our ancestors and how our ancestors viewed God.  Throughout our history the Torah has meant not what it might seem to mean, but what the rabbis and those who studied it said that it meant.  If we, too, seriously struggle with it, then we have a voice in articulating what it means.

When we return our Torah scroll to the ark, we proclaim, in the words of Proverbs, that our Torah is a tree of life.  Like the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden, the Torah contains the secret to eternal life.  We study Torah not because we hope that one day we will suddenly discover this secret, but because through the process of such study we will come to learn how to live our life as God wants us to live.

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