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| THE CHRONICLE
I
f not now, at some later point, I invite you
to pick up this book, to lift
The Torah: A
Women’s Commentary
.
You will notice that this
Torah
is downright heavy. Indeed, this hefty
volume will take up its share of space on your
bookshelf. As you “turn it and turn it again,” as
Rabbi Ben Bag Bag admonishes us in Pirke
Avot (2:25), notice its gold, embossed lettering
on the front and binding; take pleasure in its smooth, eco-friendly
green texture; admire, as my 9-year old daughter does, its delicate,
border illustration of vines and pomegranates.
For centuries, traditional texts of Jewish culture – what are com-
monly known as
seforim
–
have appeared in a particular guise.
Consider copies of the Bible, the
Mishnah,
the
Talmud, Shulkhan
Arukh, Zohar
and more recently J.D. Hertz’s
The Pentateuch and
Haftorahs
published by Soncino Press originally in 1936, Gunther
The idea of a multi-vocal
Torah
commentary is both definitively
Jewish and definitively feminist. The design of the
Women’s Commen-
tary
was inspired by
Miqraot G’dolot
,
the standard form of Jewish Bible
commentary since the sixteenth century.
Miqraot G’dolot
contains the
Hebrew text and an Aramaic translation, along with commentaries by
a range of different scholars, all of whom interpret the text for their
own generation. So, too, our
Commentary
contains the
Torah
text, a
translation (in our case, what is called a “gender accurate” English
translation), and various commentaries reflecting the interests and
concerns of our own day and age. A key difference, however, is that in
Miqraot G’dolot
all the sages are Jewish men; in our Commentary, all
the sages are Jewish women. Thus, drawing upon a classical Jewish
model of biblical exegesis, we have created a
Torah
commentary for
the 21
st
century – a commentary for both women and men alike.
Another example of the multi-vocal nature of the
Commentary
is
the diversity of our contributors. The
Commentary
was published by
the URJ Press, which is part of the Union for Reform Judaism; and it
was developed and funded entirely by the Women of Reform Judaism,
the remarkable organization that raised the $1.5 million needed to pro-
duce this project. Nonetheless, this is a commentary by and for
klal
Yisrael
,
the entire Jewish community. Our contributors hail from
across the globe – from North and South America, Israel, and Europe
–
and they represent the full Jewish spectrum: Reform, Reconstruc-
tionist, Conservative, Orthodox, and secular Jews.
Likewise, in the few months since its publication, the
Commen-
tary
has been embraced by a diverse audience. Celebrations of the
Commentary
have been held or are being planned at the seminaries of
the Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist movements; and just
yesterday, we had an event at General Theological Seminary, which is
part of the Episcopal Church. A recent article in the
Christian Science
Monitor
quoted Orthodox Rabbi Bradley Hirschfield, who called the
Women’s Commentary
a “magnificent work” and stated: “I’d love to see
more Orthodox people say, ‘No, we don’t share their theology, but
boy, they’ve helped us to appreciate the text we both love better.”
Since Tamara Eskenazi unfortunately could not be with us this
evening, she asked me to share with you some of her reflections on
the
Commentary
:
“
In the
Torah,
the call from and to the deep, the reaching for
water and sustenance, is a call to holiness, which is why the book of
Leviticus, which we begin reading next week, is so central – physically
and spiritually. The call to holiness is not only about orienting us com-
fortably in the world, but it also entails examining our most public
and most private actions in light of the high ethical standard that the
Torah
spells out: how and what we eat, how we treat each other and
the stranger, how we treat the poor, how we approach God.”
As is evident when studying the
Torah
in general and the book of
Leviticus in particular, the call to holiness is also unquestionably a call
to justice. In the 21st century this call to justice takes on an added
weight; and those of us who write commentaries are keenly aware of
the need to heed the call. In transmitting a tradition through a com-
mentary, one inevitably highlights certain elements. After all, it simply
is not possible to comment on everything in the text, especially in a
single volume commentary; so one must be selective. Yet, one also
needs to know when to challenge the received tradition. The
Torah
it-
self is a collection that exemplifies both gestures. It is tradition, draw-
ing upon the wisdom of generations past and present in order to guide
a people. But it is also a counter-tradition, standing against some cur-
rent ideas and practices in the biblical world.
Every commentator in every generation is obligated to replicate
these two activities: affirmation and critique. Commentators who
exposit the text must also be ready to expose – not only the text, but
our own cultural blind spots. We live at a time when sacred texts are
used as weapons against innocent people. Thus, as commentators, we
cannot forget the actual context into which our comments enter. In
writing the Commentary, our task has been to write about the
Torah,
but with an eye to how our readers are going to use these teachings.”
An illustration of this pattern of embracing but challenging the tradi-
tion can be found in Tamara Eskenazi’s “Another View” essay in
parashat K’doshim
.
Based on her reading of the
parasha
,
she expresses
a new notion of holiness when she asserts:
“
Parashat K’doshim
articulates more comprehensively than any other
portion of the
Torah
what it means for persons and community to be
holy. Dictionary definitions of the Bible’s concept of holiness empha-
size the notion of separation. In
parashat K’doshim
,
however, holiness
comes from cultivating relationships. Connections – not only separa-
tions – define the holy community: the connection to parents whom
one must honor, to the poor and the disadvantaged whom one must
protect, to the neighbor and stranger whom one must love, and of
course to God.”
The Torah: A Women’s Commentary
is such an important addition to
our collective Jewish library, an exciting new resource to help us read
and wrestle with
Torah
.
This, after all, is what Jews have been doing for
thousands of years – and now we have many new voices to add to that
conversation.
THE NEWEST L INK IN
THE CHA IN OF B I BL ICAL
INTERPRETAT ION
Dr. Carole B. Balin,
Professor of Jewish History, HUC-JIR/NY
