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