Wrestling With Torah

I have been wrestling with Torah as far back as I can remember. I've always wrestled with that ancient text shrouded in obscure mystery. Perhaps I can share some of my struggles with you.  My concerns are chiefly with the narrative, the story line, the aggadah. There is something inexplicable and otherworldly about Torah text, particularly in the Book of Genesis; the continuity between the stories seems fragmented and lead to no specific conclusions. Although the same confusion lasts all the way through to Deuteronomy. It's almost like someone in therapy telling a story one-week and jumping in with another entirely different one the following week.

At first, I, like everyone else, began my excursion into Torah with what we might call the intellectual approach: attempting to analyze and make sense from that which cannot be rationally probed.  The intellectual approach attempts to extract lessons from the narrative as if Torah were a simple guide to etiquette or ethical living. Such mentality is built upon a blind, naive faith, something that has always made me uncomfortable. It also dismisses our personal responsibility to discover truth for ourselves.

Ultimately I found the intellectual direction hollow and barren so I started to explore the possibility that in the mystical, poetic dimension, more insight might evolve. I needed to find more meaning for myself.  I needed to excavate my own depths to unearth the possibility that within the spiritual, the hidden domain lies the real meanings of Torah. I found that story itself, no matter whose stories, yours, the Torah’s or mine, to contain the deep, mysterious entryways into spirituality. Perhaps these quotes will help unlock the riddle. Elie Wiesel once said, "G-d created man because he loves stories". The following quote is from a book by Rachel Naomi Remen. "Everybody is a story. Hidden in all stories is the One story. The more we listen the clearer that story becomes. Our true identity—who we are, why we are here, what sustains us—is within the story. Stories, therefore, are much more than just an account of what happened; stories are the stuff we're made of."  I tell my story, we all tell ours, and from this emerges one story, the common story. It's about family, struggles and courage; the same thinking applies to Torah-the sacrifice of Isaac, the reunion of Jacob and Esau, the reuniting of Joseph and his brothers; all very touching plots.

The Torah is unlike any other book; it is quite different than Shakespeare or Aristotle. It presents us with a power that could only come from another dimension.  Listen to these words from the Zohar, the prominent text of Jewish mysticism. "Rabbi Shim'on said, 'Woe to the human being who says that Torah presents mere stories and ordinary words! If so we could compose a Torah right now with ordinary words...Ah, but all the words of Torah holds supernal truths and sublime secrets!"

Torah stories not only describe the historical account of our journey towards the Land of Canaan, but they are symbolic themes that reach deep into the landscape of our minds. Something happens each time we read and study the details of anyone of those stories; some shift in awareness occurs. We emerge somewhat different, a little more exalted, a little more refined and that's because the imagery of each account represents patterns of healing energy that are absorbed at every layer of consciousness.  It would be foolhardy to that Torah could be confined to intellectual analysis.

More recently, archaeologists have shed new light on what may be thought of as sacred literature. They have studied tribal societies both ancient and contemporary to find that literature, in the form of stories and myths, existed in the cultures of every society they encountered. Often these stories were stored as oral tradition because so many tribal societies didn't have a written language, but whether these stories were oral or written they all functioned as teaching stories.  I believe that Torah also began as oral tradition, which ultimately became preserved on parchment scrolls once writing was invented. Stories serve as teachers; they reach deep inside the human soul and teach by striking certain chords that awaken a person's sense of who he is. It has been taught that Torah is our life; shouldn't we, therefore, take it a little more seriously? On Shabbat we listen to the weekly portion read aloud. Shouldn’t we listen more carefully, realizing that those words contain the healing energy of the Source of all Being.