Two weeks ago the Israeli Ministry of Education launched Project 929. Directed by Rabbi Benny Lau and a woman named Gal Gabai, and with the blessings of the President of the State of Israel, Project 929 is a curriculum to study one chapter of Tanakh, one chapter of the Hebrew Bible, each day, five days each week, leaving Friday and Saturday for review. All 929 chapters of Tanakh will, in this way, be studied in time for the 70th anniversary of the establishment of Israel. There is a fancy Project 929 website where one can find short videos, graphic art, and short commentaries on each of the chapters. The organizers of the project are hoping that Israeli Jews, of all religious backgrounds and world-views will study Tanakh together and in synchrony. The commentary and resources on the Project 929 website reflect a wide spectrum of Israeli religious life.
The current chapter, is Genesis Chapter 11. The website features short discussions of the Tower of Babel by leading Israeli politicians. Can you imagine a website where Barack Obama, Mitch McConnel, and Nancy Pelosi shared their reactions to a biblical story, or any piece of literature? It’s not too late to join the project – you should all know the first ten chapters of Genesis fairly well!
Like any ambitious project, there has been controversy. Rav Aviner, an extremely influential rabbi within the so-called Hardal, or Zionist Haredi, trend in Israeli Religious Zionism objected vociferously to the initiative and it isn’t hard to see why a religious conservative would be troubled by the project. Can there be a partnership in understanding a sacred book between believers and skeptics? Is a religious Jew reading a book that is the product of prophecy even reading the same book as a secular Jew who is reading a product of the Ancient Near East. The commentaries on the website, Rav Aviner claims, have dragged the sacred words of Tanakh into the sewer.
Who’s right?
Depends on the goals of the project. If the goal is greater understanding Tanakh and Torah-study, then everyone deserves a seat at the table, but there might be room to insist on a certain framework of respect.
If the goal is unifying Israel around a common conversation around a central book, then there can be very few limits. There are all kinds of Jews and all kinds of attitudes towards Tanakh and if the study is supposed to be unifying, then we have to accept the other for who he or she is and invite them to the table as they are.
Rav Beny Lau, responded to the criticism late last week and said,
אני חש שזהו היעוד שלנו ליצור שיח סביב המקורות שלנו, שיח שלא היה קורה לולי הפרויקט. ושוב, אם
.”זה חטאי אני מוכן לשאת בעונש
“I believe that it is our destiny to create a conversation surround our sources, a conversation that would not be possible without this project. Again, if this is my sin, then I am ready to accept the punishment.”
But, I wonder, whether the entire project, conceived as a way to strengthen Jewish identity is misguided. What does Tanakh tell us about Jewish identity?
Sure, Jews are the “people of the book” but that book isn’t Tanakh. If there is one book which encapsulates how Jews see the world – it isn’t Tanakh. If there is one book that describes our way of life and explains our mitzvot, it isn’t Tanakh. If there’s one book, whose study has been at the center of Jewish intellectual and spiritual life for centuries – it isn’t Tanakh. We are the people of the Talmud.
This coming February, our daily learning following weekday Shacharit will begin to study Daf-Yomi, the organized and coordinated study of one Talmudic double-sided page each day. This cycle, begun in the early 20th century to promote Jewish unity and to encourage the study of relatively obscure portions of the Talmud works its way through the entire Talmud every seven and a half years. I would like to name our Daf Yomi group at ASBI in memory of Dr. Jack Goldman, who was a solitary daf-yomi learner. The first Tractate that we will study together will be Massechet Ketuvot which is sometimes called “HaShas HaKatan” the mini-Talmud because so many different topics are covered in the tractate. It’s a mini overview of the Oral Torah. I am very excited to study Massechet Ketuvot, at the same time as tens of thousands of Jews all over the world will be studying it, and I’m excited to study it with members of our shul community. If things go well, then seven and a half years from now, some of us will have a major accomplishment to celebrate.
But what about Tanakh? What is the purpose of the Written Torah alone? We can’t learn how to act from the written Torah alone. Hazal, the rabbis, determined the legal meaning of Biblical verses. We can’t acquire a comprehensive picture of Jewish history from Tanakh. Tanakh is not a complete or comprehensive record of all that happened in Jewish history. Each book in Tanakh has a set of prophetic messages to impart and historical details that are not germane to those prophetic messages are not included. Even prophecy itself is not an automatic criterion for inclusion in Tanakh. The Talmud tells that only those prophetic messages with some enduring relevance were included in Tanakh but additional prophecies that were only relevant for their time were omitted entirely.
Is Tanakh a source for Jewish philosophy? On more than one occasion, I’ve heard Rav Yoel Bin Nun, one of the greatest living Tanakh educators, say that “Mahshevet Yisrael – Jewish Thought – did not begin with Rav Saadya Gaon and Maimonides – it began with Tanakh.”
And yet, Tanakh is a poor textbook for Jewish philosophy. In the words of David Schatz1 , a professor of Philosophy at Yeshiva University, “Most of what the Bible has to say about subjects of manifest philosophical importance seems primitive to later philosophical sensibilities. For example, the biblical God ostensibly has human form and human emotions; he regrets his actions and changes his mind. Miracles are commonplace, and natural events such as earthquakes and winds, are often identified as direct divine acts.”
Dr. Schatz continues, “an acute awareness of the gap between the centrality of biblical teaching in Jewish thought and its apparent philosophical deficiency precipitated much of the subsequent history of Jewish philosophy.”
And so a great deal of the literary output of figures like Saadia Gaon and Maimonides was Biblical interpretation – offering a reading of Tanakh that was consistent with a philosophical worldview. Nonetheless, Dr. Schatz ultimately suggests, that “although the Bible serves first and foremost as a record of primary religious experience, study of the Bible,…evokes fruitful lines…that repay philosophical attention even today.”
One such theme, that courses through the Torah’s account of Yosef is the relationship between Divine knowledge and human agency. This is a familiar question of religious philosophy: If God knows the future, how can human beings retain the moral freedom to make choices? If the future is known to God and is unfolding according to God’s plan, what culpability to human agents have for their actions? They are only carrying out God’s plan!
This perspective is explicitly adopted by Yoseph when he absolves his brothers of responsibility for selling him into slavery.
וְאַתֶ֕ם חֲשַבְתֶ֥ם עָלַ֖י רעָ֑ה א-ֱלהִים֙ חֲשָבָ֣ה לְטֹבָ֔ה לְמַ֗עַן עֲשֹ֛ה כַי֥ום הַזֶ֖ה לְהַחֲיֹ֥ת עַם־רֽב׃
“And as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save many people alive.”
According to Yosef, even though the brothers had a malicious motivation, since their sale of Yosef was part of God’s plan to provide food for multitudes during the years of famine, they are forgiven and bear no guilt.
But the Torah is not a book of pure philosophy, presenting philosophical conclusions by means of logical argumentation. The Torah presents a perspective, that of Yosef, and leaves us to evaluate the cogency of his claim. Are the brothers blameless because it was all orchestrated by God for a good purpose?
Here it seems that Yoseph is wrong. Yes, he was sold into slavery as part of a Divine plan. But that Divine plan does not reach its culmination in Yosef ’s ability to save his family from famine. The Divine plan continues to unfold. The outcome of Yosef ’s sale to Egypt is the enslavement of the entire Jewish people. What a bitter irony! Yosef is quick to forgive his brothers because he sees how their actions were necessary for a Divine plan to unfold. God’s foreknowledge, to Yosef, does absolve individual agents from moral responsibility for their actions. But Yosef ’s own knowledge was sorely lacking. He had a limited perspective on the outcome of his brother’s crime. In just another generation, his children, and the children of all of his brothers would be enslaved.
This is how the Torah provides philosophical insight. The Torah is not a work of analytic philosophy, nor a didactic code of ethical norms. It is a Divine gift that requires our study and interpretation to reveal its wisdom.
- David Schatz: “The Bible as a Source for Philosophical Reflection” in Jewish Thought in Dialogue. The philosophical analysis of Yosef and his brothers is from the same article which was written together with Rabbi Shalom Carmy. ↩︎
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 