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By Rabbi Carl M. Perkins

“Writing Ourselves into the Book of Life”
Yom Kippur 2007
September 22, 2007

The rabbi explained to him that when the Torah is read in shul, we call up one person, but that person actually isn’t trained to read the Torah, so we generally have someone else there alongside him who actually does the reading. “Sooo, that makes two,” said the builder, “and it seems to me we have room for that …”

But then the rabbi interrupted, “Well, I’m not done. There’s a person standing over there, too.” “What’s he standing there for?” asked the builder. “Well, this person here, who is reading, might make a mistake, so we need someone to follow the reading and correct him if he makes a mistake.”

“I see,” said the builder, “You call someone up, but he can't read. So you get an expert but he isn't that good either, so you have another person there to double check the expert.”

“Right,” the rabbi said.

“Well, I think there’s enough room for that the way I’ve designed it; I don’t see the problem.”

“That’s because,” the rabbi said, “I’m not done. There’s another person over here [i.e., on the other side of the podium].”

“Wait a second, rabbi, tell me, what does he do?” asked the builder.

“Well,” the Rabbi answered, “this person over here may not catch all the mistakes made by the Torah reader, so we need another person up here.”

“Great!” says the builder. “You call someone to the Torah—he can't read—so you bring another person—an expert, you said—but he is going to make mistakes, so you put a guard there”—“That's right!”, the rabbi said—“but the guard isn't really good enough so you put another guard on the other side,”—“That's right,” said the Rabbi—“and that guard will fall off the bima the way it’s designed, so we need to make it bigger,” said the rabbi.

“I will do that,” said the builder, “but there is one thing I certainly did do right.”

“What's that?” asked the Rabbi.

“I designed six classrooms for you, and God knows: the way you people read, you sure need those classrooms!”

* * * * * * * * * * *

In most religious traditions, it isn’t the practice to read every word of a sacred text, publicly, over a period of time, like a year or three years, with such care and devotion and reverence as we do.

How did it come to be this way? When various legal issues came before Moses as he was leading the Jewish People through the wilderness, he doesn’t look up the answer in any Torah. Instead, he turns to God, and God tells him what to do. When King David steps over the line, it is a prophet who tells him that he’s done wrong, not the text of a sacred book. The reason is that, historically speaking, the Torah didn’t exist yet. Yes, there were poems and ballads and epics and collections of legal material, but there was no sacred scripture. It wasn’t until the Jews were exiled from the Land of Israel in 586 BCE and ended up in Babylonia—long after the period of the judges, the kings and the prophets—that the idea of gathering our sacred writings, editing them, and establishing them as the foundational document or constitution of the Jewish people arose.

When the Jews returned from their exile to the Land of Israel, a leader named Ezra shared with his fellow exiles a book he called the Torah of God, or the Torah of Moses. Now, the word “torah” means “instruction” and this book was obviously intended to be instructional. We don’t know exactly when or where or how the Torah came into being. But we do know exactly when, where and how the first public reading> of the Torah took place. The ceremony is described in great detail in the Bible, in the Book of Nehemiah:

On the first day of the seventh month [that is, on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, and scholars believe it was in or around the year 444 BCE], Ezra the priest brought the Torah before the congregation, men and women and all who could listen with understanding. He read from it … from the first light until midday, to the men and the women and those who could understand; the ears of all the people were given to the scroll of the Torah. (Nehemiah 8:2-3)

Ezra stood on a raised platform, with people to the left and to the right of him—just like we do here in our shul, just like they do in that shul in Miami, just like they do in every other shul. The reading began with a blessing and a response from the people—similar to the way an aliyah begins today.

Now, the text says that “all who could listen with understanding” were present. That might give us the impression that the only people who showed up were those who knew Hebrew—the language in which the Torah is written. But that’s not so. The Bible tells us that the Torah was read in Hebrew but that it was also explained and presented in translation to the people:

Ezra opened the scroll in the sight of all the people ….and the Levites explained the Torah to the people>, while the people stood in their places. They read from the scroll of the Torah of God, translating it and giving the sense> [i.e., explaining it], so that they [in other words, the people] understood the reading.” (vv.5-8) (emphasis added)

What does this mean? It means that from the very start, the Torah needed to be translated and explained in order to be understood. And it also means that from the very start, translations and explanations were provided. In fact, the scene I’ve just described became the norm throughout the Talmudic period: In synagogues all across the ancient world, standing alongside the reader of the Torah would be a person called a m’turgeman, a trained translator, who would translate the Torah, as it was being read, into the vernacular (which, at the time, was Aramaic). We no longer have a m’turgeman. (Our bimas would have to be even larger.) Nowadays, we have books that contain the translation and explanations of the Torah reading in the spoken language of the community, so that everyone can follow as the reader is reading, but the principle is the same. This is not just the ritualized, liturgical reading of an ancient text. It is the sharing of a sacred scripture which we must understand> if we are to make sense of it and embrace it.

We Jews have kept up this practice of reading the Torah. We continue to do what Ezra did way back then.

Why is that? What was Ezra’s> point? And why do we> follow in his footsteps? Why do we turn to the Torah? Why do we read it reverentially when we gather for public worship, every holiday, every Shabbat, in fact, every three days?

One answer is that the mitzvot can be derived from passages in the Torah. At that first Torah reading ceremony we just read about, when Ezra read the Torah to the people, the people learned that they were supposed to dwell in sukkot, in booths, during the festival of Sukkot (cf. Nehemiah 8:14) and so they went out and brought back limbs and branches and made sukkot for themselves and dwelt in them, which they hadn’t done for many, many years. In fact, all> Jewish rituals can, in one way or the other, be traced back to the Torah. Do you remember that scene in Fiddler on the Roof, in which Tevye holds up his tzitzit and says, “If you ask me, ‘How did this tradition get started?’ I will tell you, ‘I don’t know’”? Well, if Tevya had only looked it up in the Torah, he would have found it. In the book of Numbers, in the paragraph that we read twice a day as the third paragraph of the Sh’ma, we’re told about when, how and why Jews are to wear tzitzit. If you want to know the basis> of contemporary Jewish practice, all you need to do is to look it up and see what the Torah has to say.

We turn to the Torah for the basis of Judaism’s ethical obligations. Principles like keeping honest weights and measures, refraining from placing a stumbling block before the blind, refraining from gossip—they too can also all be traced back to the Torah.

We also turn to the Torah because the story of our people, though it may not be strictly historical, is recounted there. Much of the Torah is narrative. It begins with the creation of the world and continues all the way until the people of Israel are about to enter the Land of Canaan, 40 years after leaving Egypt. This is our> story; if we want to know who we are and where we came from, this is where we turn.

But there’s more to Torah than either law or narrative. In fact, any> answer to this question would be incomplete. As Ben Bag Bag, a Talmudic sage, said about the Torah, “Turn it and turn it again, for everything> is in it.”

What did he mean by that? He meant that the Torah is not merely a book, not merely a collection of laws or stories with a bit of poetry thrown in. It’s not merely a work talking about the past. The> Torah is the quintessence of the Jewish religious imagination. The Torah is the lens through which Jews have always looked at the world and will continue to look at the world>.

Once Ezra read the Torah to those people gathered in Jerusalem in the fifth century before the common era, and they accepted it as the constitution of the Jewish people, Judaism was never the same. Never again would we consult an oracle or a soothsayer or even a prophet; never again would we listen to heavenly voices to determine how to behave. From that point on, Judaism became a way of life centered around a book and its ever-expanding body of explanations and interpretations.

Arnold Eisen, the newly inaugurated chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, wrote a book a number of years ago, called, Taking Hold of Torah: Jewish Commitment and Community in America. That book has five chapters. Guess what he entitles them?! Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. Arnold Eisen draws on the five books of the Torah as a frame to share his reflections on American Judaism. In his introduction to that work, he explains why:

[W]e must [he writes,] (as Genesis insists) come to terms with the fact of biography …. We must ([and this is] a lesson of Exodus) come to terms with history …. We do not live alone, but rather (as Leviticus makes clear) require community and employ ritual in order to build community. … [Moreover, b]ecause we are commanded to change the world, we must engage in politics (the foremost theme [according to Eisen]… of the Book of Numbers). Finally, we must do all this not only for ourselves, but … for future generations. We have no choice as adults but to concern ourselves (as Deuteronomy does) with raising students, teaching children, passing on what we have received.

Dr. Eisen’s use of the Torah as a frame for his book is not just a clever gimmick. It’s not artificial; it’s authentic. Arnold Eisen uses the Torah as a frame because he understands that the Torah is not about things that happened long ago and someplace else to somebody else. The Torah is about us. Whenever I teach the Torah to kids I tell them that: the Torah is not a newspaper which, once you get the information it contains, you throw away. The Torah is meant to be read again and again and again. For it is not about other people; it’s about us. As the Zohar puts it, “Yisrael v’oraitah: chad hu.” “The Jewish People and the Torah: They’re really one and the same.” You can’t have one without the other. As we seek to understand the Torah, the Torah shapes our lives, and assuming we continue to, in the words of Arnold Eisen, have a “live, engaged relation with Torah,” it will shape our future as well.

How do we do that?

This year at Temple Aliyah, as I hope we all know by now, we will, for the first time, be writing a Torah scroll. We’ve engaged a scribe—whom we will all get the chance to meet at the end of next month—to write the sefer torah as our agent.

A few weeks ago, Rabbi Berkman was explaining this project to the kids in our religious school, and one of them asked him a question. “What’s it going to say?” he asked. “What’s it going to say in the new Torah?”

What a wonderful question! Rabbi Berkman explained that it’s going to say what every other Torah says, because the text of every Torah scroll is identical to that of every other one.

Of course, he’s right. And of course, the text of the Torah being written for us will be identical to those of every other Torah. After all, the scribe’s obligation is to make sure that the text is accurate. Otherwise, a sefer torah is pasul—unfit to be read publicly.

But at the same time, there’s a wonderful midrash which says that when God gave the Torah to the Jewish people, God’s “voice went forth to each and every one in keeping with his particular capacity: to the elderly, to the young, to the little ones, etc. Just like the manna, which came down from heaven varying in taste, in keeping with each person’s particular need, so too, God’s voice, God’s message, varied according to the capacity of each individual.” (Legends of the Jews, 80:40; Exodus Rabbah 5:9) We are taught elsewhere that trying to comprehend the word of God is similar to what happens when someone strikes an anvil and causes sparks to fly off in all directions. (Ibid., p. 81:43)

The Torah is both one thing and many things. That’s why it is an obligation to explore it ourselves, to try to understand what it says to us, what message it has in store for us.

There are many, many ways to pursue Torah study. For some, it will include taking an adult ed course, or enrolling in Meah. For others, it will involve reading books or going to lectures.

But I would like to suggest one simple step to take to begin to explore the Torah. I believe that this step is accessible to all of us, and it can prove highly rewarding.

Let’s dedicate ourselves this year, this year in which we’ll be writing our own sefer torah, to a simple goal: to read the Torah, either in its original Hebrew or in translation, from beginning to end. That’s it. It’s that simple.

You know, many of us belong to a book group. The Torah can be our congregational book group book this year.

On or around next Simchat Torah, we will celebrate the completion of our new sefer torah. Wouldn’t it be amazing, if, as we are celebrating, each of us had actually read it during this year? We have a year. An entire year to read five Biblical books which, in translation, come to just under 400 pages. That’s not too challenging, is it?

Actually, it is challenging, because the Torah, as Ezra knew, is not an easy work to understand. So you may want to read it with a commentary. I can suggest a half-dozen translations and three or four good editions of the Torah with commentary, such as the Etz Hayyim Humash, which we use here at Temple Aliyah.

Now, as many book groups have to resolve, how do we organize our reading? There is an approach that might be helpful in addressing this particular challenge. As many of us know, the Torah is conveniently divided into 54 portions, called parashiyot. If we read about one of those each week it should take us about a year to finish. It would be nice if there were a calendar that associated with each week a separate portion of the Torah. Sure enough, there is such a calendar. It’s called the Jewish calendar. If we align ourselves with that calendar, we should be able to make steady progress toward our goal.

One way to keep on schedule is to be in an environment where the Torah is discussed regularly, once a week. One obvious place is right here in synagogue on Shabbat mornings. In addition, beginning in October, I’ll be teaching a class on Tuesday nights in which we’ll be studying the weekly portion from the Torah. But whether one does this in shul, or at home, on Shabbat or on weekdays, it should be possible to stay on course and to read the entire Torah in one year, parashah by parashah.

Now, why am I speaking about this on this day, of all days? Well, according to our tradition, when the Torah was first offered to our people, they rejected it. Remember: they stayed up all night partying and worshipping the golden calf. Only after they repented and told Moses that this time they were really going to study and fulfill it, did he go back up the mountain and then, after forty days, return. That day, that 40th day on which he is said to have descended with the second set of tablets, is, according to our tradition, today: Yom Kippur. What better day for us to commit ourselves to reading the Torah?

* * * * * * * * * * *

Whenever we march around the room with the Torahs, it’s customary to reach out, touch the Torah with our tzitzit or, if we’re not wearing a tallit, with our siddur, and then to kiss the tzitzit or siddur. Why do we do this? We do it because it is symbolic of our collective love and devotion to the Torah. But, as we know, true love is grounded in knowledge. We can’t really love fully unless we know the object of our devotion. If we devote ourselves this year to learning what’s in the Torah, we should be able to love it, with full intentionality, next year.

In the beginning of 5769, that is, in the fall of 2008, when we will start reading from our new sefer torah, as it is carried around the room and we reach out to kiss it, I hope that our gesture will be more than symbolic. I hope it will truly express a love of Torah acquired through knowledge.

Let me close by reminding us of that plaintive phrase that we have already sung many times during this high holiday season and will sing several more times today: “zochreinu l’chayyim, melekh hafetz b’chayyim, v’chotveinu b’sefer ha’chayyim, . . .” Remember us to Life, O King Who delights in life, and write us in the Book of Life>!

What is the Book of Life in which we wish to be written? Of course, it is the book of those who will be privileged to live another year. But it is also something else. According to the great Hasidic master, the Sefat Emet, the sefer ha-chayyim in which we’d like to be written is the Torah itself. The Torah, which is also called torat hayyim, the Torah of Life, is the true Book of Life. In this prayer, we are asking God to give us the privilege of living out a life informed, enriched and inspired by Torah. We want that Book to live in us and we want to live in that Book>.

A few minutes ago, as we returned the Torah scrolls to the ark, we sang that well-known passage from the Book of Proverbs: etz hayyim hi lamachazikim ba: the Torah is a tree of life for those who take hold of it.

The title of that book by Arnold Eisen from which I quoted a few minutes ago, Taking Hold of Torah, is, of course, a deliberate paraphrase of that passage. As he argues in that book, it is holding onto Torah that truly gives us life as people and as a community.

I look forward to celebrating with you next year as we write a new Torah in our shul—and in our hearts.

Shanah Tovah.