Reading Jew-ish-ly: A Book Launch

We move around our world as readers. Readers of people, of texts, of situations. Being Jewish is to be part of the people of the book. As Amos Oz and Fania Oz-Salzberger write, in their book, Jews and Words, 'ours is a textline'. We are a people of words and stories. To be Jewish is to fully inhabit being a reader. But what does it mean to read Jewishly? To answer this question, like a good rabbi, I am going to ask more questions! And I do this in honour of the book launch of 'Abuse in World Religion: Articulating the Problem', edited by Professor Johanna Stiebert with a chapter on Judaism by myself and the wonderful Yehudis Fletcher. You can read our chapter, and the entire book, here.

1. What are reading Jewishly?

   
   

   I'm going to focus on the Tanach (Torah, Neviim (prophets) and Ketuvim (writings)). Even using these labels situates our reading. Not the Hebrew Bible, not the Old Testament, but the Tanach. We turn, perhaps, to the Jewish Publication Society Tanach a translation cognisant of our stories and sensibilities. We know the Bible is organisied differently for different traditions. We read our books in the order we have received them. We may take our time with dictionaries, dancing our way through the webs of meanings and layers of connected words and the literary craft of the ancient language of Biblical Hebrew.

   
   

   Connected to the question of what we are reading is whether we read through a historical-source criticism lens. Do we mine the text to find the seams where older stories have been woven together with later ones? Most likely, a Jewish approach, would receive the text as it is, as one unity, understanding that 'there is no end or not beginning' (Sifre Bemidbar 64). Time is not linear, the contradictions within the text have deeper meanings, it is not an archaeological artefact but a living document - we seek to live within the text rather than outside it.

   
   

   Perhaps, most importantly, if we are reading Jewishly we would understand, in someway, the text we are reading to be holy. In Hebrew the word holy is kadosh, which has a sense of separation within in. We might understand that the Tanach is other, separate, elevated in some way from other literature. We might understand it as the word of G!d or divinely inspired by G?d and written down by people. Either way it's seen and treated as a sacred and important text that binds Jewish people together.

   
   

2. How we read Jewishly?

   
   

   Maybe we read Jewishly by attending synagogue and incrementally, over the year, week by week, study and hear the parashiot. We may muse upon the connected Haftarah portion (from Neviim) as a type of commentary on the parashah.

   
   

   Perhaps we encounter the Tanach solely through the commentary of Jewish commentators like Rashi, Ibn Ezra or the rabbis of the Mishnah and Talmud. We listen to their interpretations and approach the text through their eyes - adding their interpretations and musings - onto the text. The text, then, expands over many years.

   
   

   For a reading to be Jewish, perhaps, you would read the text in dialogue with others and not alone. Chevruta O Mituta - 'chevruta/friendship or death' (b.Taanit 23a), as we say. We are studying the text with and through others always.

   
   

   We may utilise certain Jewish exegetical methods like PaRDeS where we recognise that a reading has layers: Peshat (a literal meaning), Remez (hints contained in the text), D'rash (a homiletical lens), Sod (mystical, hidden meanings).

   
   

   We may read rabbinically - understanding that there is nothing irrelevant or without meaning in the Tanach. Knowing that our job is to: 'Turn it over, and [again] turn it over, for all is therein. And look into it; And become gray and old therein; And do not move away from it, for you have no better portion than it.' Pirke Avot 5:22.

   
   

   If we are reading Jewishly we might also read with the intention that there are 70 ways (at least!) of expounding the Torah (Bemidbar Rabbah 13:16). Keep turning the Torah and you will find new meanings, insights and possible interpretations.

   
   

3. Yet, I am most interested, not in what I am reading or how I am reading but what am I reading for?

   
   

   Rabbi Rami Shapiro writes: 'my grandparents kept kosher because God demanded it. My parents kept kosher because Judaism demanded it. I keep kosher because life depends upon it.'

   
   

   Are we reading as if our life depended on it? Are we reading with the understanding that the biblical word is powerful enough to muster armies (Carleen Mandolfo)? If our job is to engage with and make Torah relevant today, then are we asking ourselves, what are we reading for? For to read Jewishly, I am arguing, is to recognise that the world is violent as much as the biblical world is violent. In the chapter we wrote we do not shy away from the rotten, dark corners of the biblical text but we confront them, and we do so situated in our world today.

   
   

   To read Jewishly is to read responsibly, creatively, critically and to understand that reading can be the practice of freedom (Pablo Friere, bell hooks). Biblical stories have shaped and continue to shape, for better and for worse, our sanctuaries, communities and the world. To read Jewishly is to not read selectively - to pick out those texts which suit our worldview.

   To read Jewishly is to read honestly - to recognise who we are as individuals and how that influences how we see the text and what we might miss.

   
   

   To read Jewishly is to know that Jews, and the biblical text itself, have always been influenced by the 'outside' world. We read as insider-outsiders. We take from the text what we need and bring to the text what it may need. To read Jew-ish-ly is to experiment with contemporary approaches to bible study from a range of places, to utilise different hermeneutical lens, to discomfort, awaken and sharpen our critical thinking. To read Jew-ish-ly is not to only stay with the rabbinic commentators and their agendas but to enter into dialogue with them and ask as many questions of their hermeneutical lenses as we do of our own.

   
   

   And, perhaps most importantly, we read with (physically and symbolically) all those who have been marginalised by the text (Renita Weems). To read Jewishly is to read with, not about. For the text to be holy, our reading must be holy. For our reading to be holy it must be honest. For our reading to be holy it must be political. For our reading to be holy it must be cognisant of the power the text holds and how it has been weaponised. For our reading to be holy we read as activists, reading across boundaries, and with others, not only in closed yeshivot.

   
   

   As Yehudis and I write:

We seek to demonstrate that power and liberation emerge when women come together, across and through differences, addressing the dark corners and rotten structures of our sacred texts and textual traditions upon which our institutions stand. A missing edge of our religious spaces is thus born and reclaimed – one of wild, fierce sisterhood. We write, together, for ourselves, for Batsheva, Rizpah, and Dinah (our “revolt-ing” women whose stories we will explore), and for all those seeking comfort and justice after abuse and those who need to be discomforted in order to “let justice well up like water, righteousness like an unfailing stream” (Amos 5:24).

Ashworth-Steen and Fletcher, 2025, 'Our Revolt-ing Women: Bringing Women Together to Highlight Abuse in Jewish Communities Today'