40 | OCTOBER 24 • 2019
Spirit
torah portion
L
et’
s start at the very
beginning, which is a
very good place to start.
This Shabbat, we start read-
ing the Torah again, having
completed the last portion as
part of the Simchat Torah hol-
iday. Around the world,
Jews will roll their
Torah scrolls back to
the beginning in order
to start re-reading the
Five Books of Moses.
I’
ve always been
intrigued by this prac-
tice. For thousands of
years, since instituted by
the prophet Ezra, we’
ve
been publicly reading
the same text aloud,
year after year, multiple
times each week.
While the Torah is
filled with incredible narra-
tives that certainly maintain
intrigue, I can’
t help but won-
der how our ancestors, over
time, didn’
t opt to sub-out
Torah readings for some other
textual selections from our
traditional canon. Granted,
the reality that many of them
(and still many folks today)
believed that the Torah was/
is God’
s own words and they
were commanded to read/
study them with regularity
likely played a part. Yet, I still
find it surprising this custom
of publicly reading the Torah
has lasted as long as it has.
When was the last time
you heard someone read
from the Torah (or read from
the Torah yourself)? What
was that experience like?
Did it touch you in some
way? Traditionally, we read
from the Torah on Mondays,
Thursdays, Saturdays and hol-
idays. Our tradition likens the
Torah to water, and the ancient
rabbis taught that just as the
human body needs water
to be nourished; so, too, the
Torah nourishes us as Jews,
and we should never go three
days without it. (Babylonian
Talmud, Bava Kama 82a).
Many contemporary Jews, if
they attend prayer services at
all, gravitate to Friday nights,
when the Torah traditionally is
not read.
Given that reality,
should we continue with
the traditional public
reading of the Torah?
Should it be read on
Mondays, Thursdays,
Saturdays and holidays
exclusively, or is it time
for a new schedule?
As we begin this
new cycle of reading a
designated section of
the Torah each week,
if you don’
t regularly
attend services, consider
reading along on your own; or
even better, find a study-bud-
dy to read/study along with.
The Five Books of Moses —
the Torah — is the core part of
our heritage and narrative, has
had outsized impact on the
world and remains relevant
today in ways large and small.
Every person in our commu-
nity having familiarity with
our traditional text should be
a goal.
Some of the stories in the
Torah make sense. Some are
erotic. Some are just down-
right unfathomable given our
contemporary views of right
and wrong. But it’
s ours, and
we read it from beginning to
end and back to the begin-
ning, year after year.
As first century C.E. teacher
Ben Bag Bag taught his stu-
dents: “Turn the Torah, and
turn it again, for everything
you want to know is found
within it.
” (Avot 5:25)
Let’
s make it ours again.
Rabbi Dan Horwitz is the founding
director of The Well. For more infor-
mation, visit meetyouatthewell.org.
Parshat
Bereshit:
Genesis
1:1-6:8;
Isaiah
42:5-43:10.
Rabbi
Dan Horwitz
Begin Again For
The First Time
For more information regarding
our trip to Detroit please contact
646.592.4440 yuadmit@yu.edu
Are you a
high school student
or the parent of one?
YESHIVA
UNIVERSITY
WILL BE IN
DETROIT
October 28-29, 2019