HOW I READ SACRED TEXTS METHODOLOGICAL NOTES

I want to share a few words about how I read sacred texts. Those who have read with me can share that my readings are different in kind than the usual way of reading our sacred texts. Let me highlight a few different facets of how I read.

One prime feature of how I read is that I don’t believe that there are perfect characters who can do no wrong. Way too often, our commentators start with the idea that our heroes can do no wrong. This places them in the position where they have to justify behavior that they should instead condemn. Jacob steals the birthright from Esau and our sages turn themselves into pretzels to justify his behavior and condemn Esau who is a much more gracious and generous person than his brother. YHVH too often gives into his rage and slaughters people, and our sages justify his behavior. I believe strongly that we should assess the different characters in our sacred texts in their fulness, rather than starting from the assumption that our heroes can do no wrong.

Another feature of how I read is that I look at the story or the character as a whole. Jewish tradition specializes in taking phrases fully out of context in order to buttress points a given sage wants to make. There’s a technical term for this “proof texts.” Much of midrash is an expression of Jewish imagination that takes off from phrases or verses and wanders far afield. This is a really interesting way to read text, but it isn’t how I do it. I believe strongly in being loyal to the integrity and details of a text. Let me offer two examples.

Genesis 43:26 says “and they killed Hamor and his son Shechem by the sword and took Dinah from Shechem’s house and went out.” What was Dinah doing inside of Shechem’s house? You either have to conclude that she was being kept a prisoner and argue for that interpretation, or argue that she was there willingly. And if she is there willingly, then she most likely wasn’t raped and that the horrible killings by the sons of Jacob were a kind of murder, not some holy act of revenge for a wronged kinswoman. Needless to say, this reading is not the usual one.

Here’s another example. We’ve all learned that we eat matzah on Passover because we didn’t have enough time to let the dough rise. We are even told that in this parasha (Exodus 12:34,39). But this simply makes no sense in the context of the story. First, the Israelites are given time to shake down their neighbors. You are about to flee your house because a wildfire is coming. What’s more important, making bread ready for your journey or knocking on your neighbor’s door and asking to borrow their silver and gold? (11:2-3). Further, our ancestors were given four days notice of the ritual. 12:3 has the Israelites choosing a lamb or a goat without blemish for the sacrifice on the 10th of the month and then keeping watch over it until the 14th of the month when the sacrifice was slaughtered. Time enough to make bread. Then Chapter 12 verses 8 and 9 tell us about how we can eat the meat and goes out of the way to say that it can only be roasted, not cooked with water, and consumed that very night. I thus read the eating of matzah as not about the haste of leaving Egypt, but rather about sympathetic magic of praying for no rain so the grain could dry out. Again, this isn’t the usual reading of the story.

A related feature of my approach to interpretation is that I believe that the interpretation should be consistent with the plain sense of the text. Rachel stole the teraphim from Laban because they were important to her. Why? The text doesn’t tell us, but any interpretation should account for the fact that the teraphim were regarded as having sacred power and were highly regarded. Then if the teraphim had sacred power, what does that say about Rachel’s beliefs about the divine? I am frustrated by the kind of interpretation that focuses on justifying her actions based on Laban’s bad actions of tricking Jacob. Sure Laban is a bad actor, but please account for the sacrality of the teraphim.

A fourth way I read text is that I don’t assume things happened in a factual way. I don’t think the earth was created in six days, and I don’t try to twist myself up with talk of the days being millions of years long. Instead I read the text as a myth, with the belief, to quote Mircea Eliade, that myth is truer than history because myth speaks to deeper concerns that mere facts can often reach. The vast bulk of the Hebrew people, for instance, were never in Egypt, though I will grant Richard Friedman’s compelling argument that Moses and the Levites were. But the exodus is such a compelling myth of liberation that we continue to keep it alive every year—so let’s read it as myth, rather than create convoluted explanations for how a sea could part, or the first born of only the Egyptians could die, or how there could be frogs everywhere etc. It isn’t that I ignore history. I’m interested, for instance, in how our ancestors actually worshipped and think we should learn things from, for instance, the water drawing ritual practiced during Sukkot or the ecology of the four species that comprise the lulav and the etrog. But I believe strongly in reading mythical material as mythical and letting it speak to me as myth.

Another characteristic of my interpretive approach is that I often read actions by non human actors literally rather than metaphorically. For instance, both Leviticus and Deuteronomy talk about the land vomiting out its inhabitants if the Israelites misbehave. Every other interpreter I know reads this metaphorically, but I believe that the land is capable of acting on its own behalf and causing damage to those harming her. That’s part of how I understand the extreme weather that is characteristic of climate change. Abuse various ecosystems through the burning of excess fossil fuels and watch them fight back. Another example is the claim in Leviticus that both houses and clothes can have tzara’at, scale disease, often mistranslated as leprosy. How can a house have a disease? So this claim is routinely ignored. But I take it seriously and literally.

Now I am an Animist, meaning that I believe in the aliveness of all beings including rocks, rivers, birds, trees, the microflora in the earth etc. Further, I disbelieve in the idea that humans are superior to these different beings; we are different, but no better or worse, have no more or less rights to live our lives and deaths according to the design of our own beings. Jewish Animists, of course, aren’t exactly common, just as believing that houses can have scale disease and land can vomit out its inhabitants isn’t exactly common.

Another characteristic of my interpretations is that I am highly sympathetic to pre YHVH indigenous Hebrew practices. Let me give you two examples. El Shaddai is routinely interpreted as just another name for the divine. But I argue that it is a different God because I believe that our ancestors lived in a world with many Gods. And why not a many breasted androgenous fertility God? A second example is the routine condemnations of Asherah that populate Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. I read these as proof that our ancestors actually worshipped the Goddess in the manifestation of Asherah and thus that worship of the Goddess is an authentically Hebrew religious practice. At least this is a little bit more broadly accepted, but it certainly isn’t the traditional reading.

All these aspects of my approach lead to what I believe are at a minimum unusual interpretations of text. I believe strongly that that they should be viewed as authentically Jewish interpretations arising from a deep encounter with the text, even if they are outside of the Rabbinic mainstream.