5782 Introduction to Reading the Parsha
Commentaries on the parsha of the week is one of the most common forms of Jewish sacred literature. Untold teachers have developed and expressed their views on a myriad of issues through reading this text. There’s just nothing more Jewish to do for facilitating earth based Jewish adults.
This text and the Hebrew Bible as a whole are the oldest layer of our heritage and preserve more of our indigenous and pre-monotheist orientation than anything else. These stories are tales of our relationship with the more than human world. So if we want to reclaim our indigenous roots in service of becoming earth based Jewish adults, here is a place to start.
I read the parsha, the portion of the week, asking myself always how I can use these stories to deepen my grounding in the soil that nurtured our ancestors. What can I explore, what can I learn, what can I teach, that will feed my roots so I can make it through winter and come back when the soil begins to warm and the days grow longer in the spring?
We live in a time of profound alienation. From our bodies, from our land, from our community, from ourselves, from the divine. If you don’t believe that, stop reading. I have nothing to offer you.
I read these texts and ask myself “As a person who seeks to be deeply connected to my ancestral Hebrew roots and to the more than human world, deeply connected to the earth which is the basis of everything, what kinds of things do I take seriously in the writings that I am reading?” Idiosyncratically, I am far more interested in myth and ritual to go both deep inside myself and to be aligned with the divine through being grounded in creation where the sacred is manifest. I am far less interested in theology, law, priestly exactness and social justice, the last three of which are major themes in many of the parshiot (plural of parsha)
Our Hebrew ancestors lived a life close to the earth. They did it because they had to; if they didn’t raise crops, gather food or hunt meat they starved. If they didn’t build shelter from the surrounding world they would have been hot in the summer and cold in the winter. They depended, as it says in the part of Deuteronomy that follows the Sh’ma, on rain in season. They believed that bounty was bestowed or withheld based on their behavior.
We are farther from this world than we realize or can know. There are great blessings in not being so dependent; a drought is an inconvenience, not a death sentence for our children and our parents, infections can be treated with antibiotics, we do not live in fear of mountain lions or neighboring tribes coming to kill us. But we are lost spiritually. And at least some of us are lost because our connection to the very earth beneath our feet is too tenuous.
I believe that what I have to offer is different than much of what exists out there in terms of commentary on the parsha. What makes it different?
I am focused on different aspects of the text, driven both by my project of facilitating earth based Jewish adults and by my deep connection to the elements that are characteristic of indigenous cultures but that we moderns think we have outgrown. So I am going to spend a lot of time on things like place names, visions, pillars, magic, hero’s journeys and initiations.
I am not an apologist for the tradition. Raise your hand if you have ever heard or read anything defending Esau? Valorizing Esau? This apologist orientation also led to a hundred ingenious ways to explain away apparent contradictions or tensions. But I believe in the messiness of the text as a source of great richness. and rather than try to smooth all of the messiness out, I want to explore it without the fundamental assumption that the editors of the text we have are always right.
My discussion of El Shaddai, for instance, in Va’eira looks behind the attempt at seamlessness that the text always presents, and the tradition used to defend so tightly. I argue that contrary to the editors, El Shaddai and YHVH were two different divine beings. I’m obviously not the only one who can discuss the ambiguities of who El Shaddai was/is, but I am at most one of a handful of people who are prepared to argue that worshipping El Shaddai as the many breasted God is an authentic Jewish position. I discuss the background to this argument more in the introduction to the project as a whole.
I recently had the great pleasure of reading David Abram’s The Spell of the Sensuous. Abram is Jewish, but there is no indication that he is writing as a committed Jew. He has a great deal of interest in the implications of writing versus oral traditions. Our text originated as a smorgasboard of oral stories. The editors worked to integrate these stories in the context of their own political-religious agenda of promoting first worship of YHVH only (monolatry) and eventually of monotheism, YHVH as the only true divine being or God.
Abram argues that unlike texts written with Greek or Roman alphabet, Hebrew texts had to have the reader’s breath added to them because they are written without vowels and vowels are sounds made with the breath. Thus the text is never complete in itself, but requires the reader’s active participation to add the vowels. (p.245)
The demand for participation in interpreting the text is completely consonant with Jewish tradition. We believe in and are committed to the interpretation of the text. We even treat interpretation as on the same religious level as the written text, calling one “written law” and calling the other “oral law.” So, I would argue, what I am doing in inviting the reader’s active participation is what we have always done. My approach coincides with Abram’s insight “Ancient Hebrew religiosity was for more corporeal and far more responsive to the sensuous earth than we commonly assume. (p.242)
So I want to invite you to join on the journey with me. To that end, I offer questions and possible practices to consider arising from each parsha. We all have different toolboxes of practices that take us deeper. Use the forms that work for you. I encourage you to work with these questions and share your process with a hevruta, a partner in study/practice. You can join our class here:
The weekly rhythm is hugely important. This is not a rhythm of the more than human world, but rather a human invention. And yet it is a rhythm that can make sure that we slow down, take a step back from our preoccupations in our everyday world and remind ourselves of our deepest connections. My experience has also been that it is incredibly easy to get stuck in our psychospiritual development—or at least it has been for me. I believe that engaging with the material I am providing will give you a weekly chance to reconnect.
The structure of each commentary will be:
Plot Summary—what happens
What grabs my attention as someone interested in deep connection with my ancestors and the more than human world.
Possible questions/practices to consider
Class structure will include Hevruta and Hevruta report back. Join the free class here so you can have a study buddy and share yourself.
I urge you to engage with this commentary by first, reading the parsha as well—don’t just take my word for it. The Parshiot don’t actually take that long to read—probably less than hour an hour. Second, engage with one of the questions I ask, or one that jumps out at you from your reading of the parsha or my commentary. How can you engage with the questions? The ways are infinite, but here are some possible ways.
Journal on the questions offered or your own. I do a timed writing practice of 10 minutes on one question a week.
Hitbodedut, out loud praying in the more than human world about something that captured your interest.
Movement or some other expressive art reflecting on the questions offered.
Read/Write poems
Write a midrash about something that intrigues you from the parsha.
Anything else you want to do.
Some housekeeping notes. I use YHVH as a proper name of the divine when it is used in the Hebrew text as Yod, Hey, Vav, Hey. This is usually translated as “Lord” in English texts. I use God for Elohim, which is also standard in the translations. My Hebrew transliteration is terrible and inconsistent. This isn’t an academic book, so I don’t feel any need to get it right, but would of course be greatly appreciative for someone who had the patience to do it correctly. I italicize Hebrew words, to indicate that they are in Hebrew. I don’t explore midrashim, the stories that we have made up to address problems in the text, but stick to a close reading of the text, as I’ve discussed in the introduction. There’s nothing wrong at all about using midrashim; that’s just a different project.
The text itself is highly patriarchal, and the women’s voices are too muted. Midrash is a great answer for that and I’m all in favor of midrashim that explore, for instance, Sarah’s response to Abraham’s taking of Isaac to be sacrificed. But again, that’s not this project. I have gone out of my way to highlight the women in the story as they appear (or at least I like to think I have) and I surely wish I had a less patriarchal text.
It is my fervent wish that you find this commentary to make a profound difference in your spiritual journey. Let’s begin.
Parsha Commentary Writings:
