Jews for Exegesis

into the orchard

This is Life as a Sacred Text, an expansive, loving, everybody-celebrating, nobody-diminished, justice-centered voyage into one of the world’s most ancient and holy books. We’re generally working our way through Leviticus these days. More about the project here, and to subscribe, go here.

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I have been meaning to do a post on How Jews Read Text since I started this project back a year and a half or so ago, but wanted first to get going, and I guess never got back to it. And then a totally reasonable question in the comments last week reminded me that it still could be of interest.

So this post is about some of the cool things Jews have, and have had, going on in their methodological toolbox. (Some of you know this stuff. Maybe even some of y’all might pick up something new or useful?)

I want to start by talking about the title of this post.

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Exegesis is, strictly speaking—so the dictionary tells me—”critical explanation or interpretation of a text, especially of scripture.” And yet! When I hit Google Images on the term, I find all sorts of gifs telling me that it’s “digging into the text in order to find its real meaning” (As opposed to eisegesis, “an interpretation that reflects the interpreters own ideas and bias rather than the real meaning of the text.”) Or even that exegesis is when the interpreter, rather than making scripture say “what he wants it to say,” makes it say “what God wants it to say.” Phew.

The real meaning of the text. What God wants it to say. Because of course, a person can interpret text in a way that does not reflect their own bias, perception, understanding of the world?!? No matter how careful we are, how thoughtful we are, we’re always going to be looking from our experiences, identities, our place in history, in society, our particular interests. The more we’re honest about that, the less sloppy our exegesis will be.

The text will really start opening up when we start to acknowledge that our biases and perceptions will always impact our readings in more ways than we think they do.

A different way to think about it might be from Rabbi Edmond Weiss, who defines this all a little differently—yeah, OK, a little more Jewishly.

“Exegesis is the process of extracting understanding from a difficult or obscure text. Eisegesis is the process of finding what you need in the text — whether it’s there or not.”

No illusions of objectivity, of finding the single, immutable meaning in the text (ha!), let alone being able to access the Divine Mind from all the way down here. And also, like, letting it be OK if you find some stuff in the text that’s useful to you. Eisegesis doesn’t have to be a bad thing! Anyway.

Let’s start by looking at how Jews study Torah on the page.

I’m not talking about how we read it from the Sefer Torah/Torah Scroll liturgically, wherein the whole text is written by a scribe, with particular rules, on animal parchment, without vowels. That’s this—that’s what we read from in services, in the context of prayer and ritual.

Rather, I’m talking about how we study text. Here’s a Mikraot Gedolot. (“Expanded Scripture,” maybe. But “Big Read” is a way more fun translation imho).

Over there, on the right, the big font? That’s the one verse. Leviticus 18:22, as it happens (since I photographed this when some dude on the internet was of course insisting that there was only one way to read it <insert sound of uproarious laughter here>).

And here it is, below, crudely marked up with the names of the guys whose commentaries appear on the page. I know that you all know that there are a lot of commentaries already—we work with them a lot in this newsletter, for example—but for those of you who haven’t seen, we literally lay out our books as an ongoing conversation across the centuries—they offer different perspectives, influenced by their propensity for midrash or grammar, Kabbalah or Aristotle, by their historical and geographic location, and their individual insights. (Their—oh, golly, dare I say it—biases?!?) And sometimes one voice will directly refute a claim made elsewhere on the page, written several centuries earlier. "So and so says X, but he's wrong because Y." (Always “he.” Sigh.)

There are other voices in the Mikraot Gedolot, who just happen not to be on this page. Orech HaChayim, the Tur, Kli Yakar, etc etc. (Needless to say, the question of “who decides whose voice is worthy of inclusion” is a whole other topic of conversation.)

And as long as we’re doing a little bit of “how we read,” this would be a good time to show off the classic “page of Talmud” intellectual matryoshka doll thing we do.

So, like: The first page of Talmud (yep, that’s Tractate Brachot 2a right there, yes we start on page 2 (because even before you’ve sat down to learn, you’ve already started learning—and also because, like, the front page is page 1.) And below it is an explainer, of sorts, of most of what’s on the page. (Will note that this now-iconic layout didn't appear until the Talmud was first printed, in 1484).

Many props and gratitudes to Desirée/Devorah for pulling together this great teaching tool to elucidate the page so quickly and easily. (Others exist, I just think this one is particularly effective.)

Again, you see that multivocality—the initial mishnah, the gemara’s attempt to clarify, understand, fill in the blanks. Rashi’s clarifications, explications. The Tosafists begin to get meta—looking at the conversations between tractates, trying to resolve larger-scope (and sometimes conceptual) problems. And onward and outward as Jewish law (halakha) began to sprout.

Again, a conversation across the ages.

I don’t tend to go heavy into the back and forth of sugyot/talmudic conversations here, maybe we’ll wind up there at some point, but I’d feel remiss if I didn’t at least mention Rabbi Yishmael’s 13 principles for deriving Jewish law from the Torah. (They, themselves, were an expansion of Hillel’s 7 principles—so we know this tradition dates back at least to ca ~ 0 CE or thereabouts. Rabbi Yishmael was born in 90CE.) One quick example would be: if you have a rule that applies in one lenient case, it’ll definitely apply in a more stringent similar case (eg If you can’t pick apples on a holy day—when it’s OK to do certain things that are forbidden on Shabbat—then you definitely can’t pick an apple on Shabbat.)

Here’s a good translation/explanation of them; and it happens, Rabbi Dr. Ben-Zion Bokser’s (the translator’s) note at the beginning really fits with this conversation (and gives me a new metaphor that I adore, adore, adore. 🌱)

The Torah was conceived not as a static body of rules, whose careful observance was all that a person required to meet God’s will. Its teachings were rather looked upon as the living seeds, capable of sprouting into new principles and new regulations, in accordance with the changing requirements of life.

Hevruta

I can’t not talk about hevruta. I just can’t. I’m sorry.

Hevruta, from the Aramaic word for 'friend' or 'companion' is a traditional rabbinic approach to Jewish text study where two people analyze a text together, looking at it deeply, then challenging and refining each others questions and insights. Hevruta learning is a three-way conversation between the two learners and the text. In this way, ancient texts are given voice and relevance from generation to generation.

The three core pairs of hevruta skills are:

• listening and articulating;

• wondering and focusing;

• supporting and challenging

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Never since Rabbi Yochenan and Reish Lakish has there been such a pair

A STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE TO HEVRUTA LEARNING

1. Read the text to your hevruta out loud.

2. Ask a question. What do you notice about the text that invites exploration?

3. Gently push your hevruta to refine their idea (with each person having opportunities to answer and push).

4. Leave your life in, not out, of the hevruta learning.

Get help, but don't let difficulties keep you from moving forward.

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Rabbi Ḥama, son of Rabbi Ḥanina, said: Why is it written: “Iron sharpens iron” (Proverbs 27:17)? To tell you that just as iron implements sharpens each other, so too, Torah scholars sharpen one another in halakha. Rabba bar bar Ḥana said: Why are matters of Torah compared to fire, as it is stated: “Is not My word like fire, says the Lord” (Jeremiah 23:29)? To tell you: Just as fire does not ignite alone, so too, matters of Torah are not retained alone. (Talmud Taanit 7a)

One of my favorite contemporary texts about hevruta is in a brilliant short piece by Kendra Watkins, which includes:

We learn from each other, witness each other’s brilliance, hold each other accountable, and offer each other a soft place to land when the text (and the world it represents) hurts. Together we can reach backwards into our tradition to find tools and strategies, and practice the love and care it takes to move us towards a world liberated from anti-Blackness and transphobia. We know that when we bring ourselves to meet each other and the rabbis in any given text, we aren’t passively receiving a set of laws; far from it. We receive the offerings of our ancestors and offer parts of ourselves in turn, and we are both changed because of it.

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Now, let’s talk about levels.

That is to say, let’s talk about PaRDeS.

“Pardes,” in Hebrew, means “orchard,” and it’s used as a reference to an ultimate state of connection with the divine, based on a famous story of four Tannaim/Mishna-era sages.

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(Yep, sure seems like the word “paradise” derives from it.)

In the world of Torah interpretation, it’s shorthand for Pshat, Remez, Drash, and Sod, developed by the Spanish Kabbalist Moses de León (c. 1240 – 1305), who first publicized (and, uh, probably wrote) the Zohar.

• Pshat— the plain meaning of the text, aka what’s going on here, the basics — that doesn’t mean it’s simplistic—it’s a careful reading based on text and context.

• Remez—”hint”—the allegorical or symbolic meaning of the text—looks at spiritual meaning, often connects to the Hebrew using acronyms, gematria (uh, Hebrew numerology,) etc.

• Drash—the midrashic aspect— is about seeking meaning, can be a very expansive, additive reading, concerned with religious or moral takeaways, sometimes relevant applications.

• Sod—”secret”- the mystical or esoteric meaning, what this verse tells us about the nature of God, perhaps eternal spiritual truths.

We say that there are 70 faces to Torah; the assumption is not only that every verse will exist simultaneously on all four of these planes, but that there may well be more than one meaning of each of these. (Well, maybe not of the pshat—what happened in the story may be pretty straightforward.) But that one verse could have several drash meanings? Absolutely.

There is no, “what is the one meaning of this text,” to Jews.

The easiest way to show you what PaRDeS looks like is to turn to Rebbeinu Bachya (Bahya ben Asher ibn Halawa, 1255–1340 from Zaragoza in what’s now Aragon, Spain) who gave us so much in terms of a clear articulation of what these levels look like in practice.

I decided to open to Leviticus 10, the story of Nadav and Avihu, since there’s a lot going on there and we were there recently.

“they put fire in them (the censers) and placed incense in them.” According to the plain meaning/pshat of the text Nadav and Avihu’s sin consisted in that they introduced strange, i.e. man-made, fire into the sacred precincts. The regulations pertaining to the incense offering required that the fire be taken from the Altar and that the incense be burned up by that fire. The Torah had spelled this out in Leviticus 16,12: ”he shall take a shovelful of fiery coals from atop the Altar that is before God.” Nadav and Avihu thought that the actual fire from the Altar was required to totally consume the animal sacrifices. This was a sin as they demonstrated a lack of faith, not trusting God to make heavenly fire descend on the sacrifices and able to consume the sacrifices; this is why they brought additional fire to consume the incense.

OK, plain meaning. What’s the sin? That’s the sin. Here’s the verse to back it up. Clear on the story? Cool.

(You’ll note that they died in ch. 10, and the prooftext is from ch. 16.—wouldn’t they already be dead then, you might ask? Well, “there is no chronological order in Torah” is another one of those interpretive rules that shows up later—anything can be read as having happened before or after the other. Of course Abraham the patriarch kept kosher even though the laws of kashrut weren’t to be given until many generations after his time? Pfft. NO EARLY OR LATE IN TORAH.)

A remez approach often goes hard on numerology or letters—this symbolizes that, teaches out that, kinda thing. Here, he looks at the verse following— “And fire came forth from God and consumed them; thus they died before God”—and the use of a vav (ו), the sixth letter in the alphabet, in a word that I suppose could have been spelled without it (since a vowel could do the job of the vav, but that would risk it being confused with another word; ANYWAY.) The point here is to see what he’s doing here:

The word אותם at the end of our verse which is spelled with the letter ו in this instance, is an allusion to the “sixth fire of the Shechinah.” We are told in Talmud Yoma 21 that there are a total of six different categories of heavenly fire

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…..Fire which consumes fire is the fire of the Shechinah. …The letter ו in the word אותם, may also allude to the six sins which our sages claim that Nadav and Avihu were guilty of and which combined to cause their deaths.

So the presence of this possibly superfluous sixth letter is there to tell us either that the fire that consumed Nadav and Avihu was the fire of the Immanent Divine, or to allude to the sins for which they were guilty. We could spend hours discussing this one (BRING IT IN THE COMMENTS!) but we press on —

into drash:

A Midrashic approach (Tanchuma Acharey Mot 6). They entered the Sanctuary while in a state of intoxication. This accounts for the fact that the Torah spells out the prohibition of priests entering the Sanctuary while drunk immediately after having reported this incident (compare 10,8-11). The Sifra Shemini Miluim 22-23 writes as follows: “God said to them: ‘I have honored you more than you honored Me. You introduced impure fire into My holy Place, whereas I will burn you with pure, heavenly fire.’” How exactly did they die? Two threads of fire came out of the Holy of Holies and entered their nostrils becoming divided into four “threads.” Two entered the nostrils of Nadav and the other two entered the nostrils of Avihu.’”

OK, so we’ve got that drash I mentioned a few weeks ago, about them being drunk—and then adds on some more midrash with a rather gnarly take about their method of death. The readings here are more playful, more like jazz than concerned with a straightforward, “what happened, exactly?” understanding. And you can see a larger moral interest with regards to drunkenness while attending to sacred matters, for example. Note the language: “A” midrashic approach, not “THE” midrashic approach, because, duh.

As for something a little Sod-ier, we could look at this, which presumes that there are various attributes (sefirot) of the divine, and that Nadav and Avihu’s sin related to how they tried to connect to the divine in their offering—that is to say, to which attribute they offered their incense. (Don’t worry if it doesn’t make a lot of sense. You have to spend a minute in Kabbalah for this to track, fully.)

A kabbalistic approach: We can gain a clearer picture of the sin of these sons of Aaron when noting that the Torah wrote: they placed on it” instead of: “they placed on them.” [There had been two censers, each brother having entered with his own censer.] …The word “on it” as distinct from “on them” is an allusion to the attribute of Justice. [EG it would read “each took his fire pan, put fire in it, and laid incense on Justice”] The Torah is trying to give us an insight into the thinking of Nadav and Avihu at that time. They knew that incense was intended to counter, to stop the attribute of Justice in its tracks, as we know from Moses in Deuteronomy 33:10: “they place incense to placate Your anger.”

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..The spiritual affinity established by means of the incense is meant to draw down an abundance of heavenly blessings by means of the attribute of Justice, which in turn will confer these blessings on the person burning up the incense. The sin of the person offering incense with such considerations consists in the fact that it is not permissible to direct one’s offering to any other attribute of God than the Tetragrammaton. Seeing that Nadav and Avihu erred in the address to which the offered their incense…the very attribute of Justice to whom they addressed their offering smote them.

How you connect to the divine matters. What you’re trying to do when you connect with the divine matters. Everything else is commentary.

The Or HaChaim— Chaim ben Moshe ibn Attar (Morocco, 1696-1743) wrote the following on Genesis 1:25:

You should know that we have permission to explain the implication of the verses after careful study – even though our conclusions differ from the explanation of our Sages. That is because there are 70 faces to the Torah. There is no prohibition against differing from the words of our Sages except if it changes the halakha/Jewish law. Similarly, we find that even though the Amoraim/Rabbis of later Talmudic eara, [200-500 CE] did not have the right to disagree with the Tannaim/Rabbis of earlier Talmudic era [10-220 CE] in halakhic matters – but we find that they offered alternative explanations to verses.

As Ben Bag Bag is quoted as saying of the Torah in Pirke Avot (5:23), “Turn it, and turn it, for everything is in it.”

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Sending a big pile of blessings and goodness your way.

1. Credit goes to Rabbi Gordon Tucker for this phrase! It dates back to the early 1980s, when NYC orgs and corporations could participate in a series of races in Central Park; he organized a team from the Jewish Theological Seminary, and of course they needed a name—and Jews for Exegesis it was. (Thanks to Alex Friedman for setting me on the right investigative path!).

2. Adapted from Dr. Orit Kent "A Theory of Havruta Learning", thanks to Karla Worrell for this.

3. Adapted from MakomDC, Adas Israel Congregation, thanks to Karla Worrell for this.

4. Four entered the Pardes: Ben Azzai, Ben Zoma, Aher, and Rabbi Akiva. One gazed and died. One gazed and was afflicted. One gazed and cut down the saplings. [that is, apostatized] One went up in peace and went down in peace. Ben Azzai gazed and died. … Ben Zoma gazed and was afflicted. …Elisha gazed and cut down the saplings…Rabbi Akiva went up in peace and went down in peace. Scripture says about him: "Draw me after you, let us run! The king has brought me to his chambers (Song of Songs 1:4)." (Tosefta Chagigah 2:2)

5. Abridged for space but I know a lot of you were also going to want this information, so here’s what I cut: They are: “a fire which eats” but does not “drink;’ fire which “drinks” but does not “eat;” fire which both “eats and drinks;” fire which consumes both dry and wet material; fire which supplants another category of fire; fire which consumes another category of fire. The fire which “eats but does not drink,” is the fire of which the Torah says that it descended on the altar and consumed the meat of the offerings. Fire which “drinks” but does not eat is fever, which dries out a person at the same time killing his appetite. Fire which eats and drinks was the fire that consumed both Elijah’s sacrifice and the water in the moat he had made around it. The fire which consumed both wet and dry matters was that on the woodpile of the altar which was not extinguished by rain. Fire which supplanted competing fire is the fire of the angel Gavriel which descended into the kiln where Chananyah, Mishael, and Azaryah had been thrown by Nebuchadnezzar.

6. Here’s what I cut for space and esoterica: “The word “incense” קטורת itself means “establishing a spiritual affinity.” התקשרות רוח במדות [“establishing” here is connected to “tying”] The Aramaic translation of the word (Genesis 38,25) ותקשור “she tied” is וקטרת [related to the letters used for the word incense—some of this won’t make sense if you don’t know Hebrew]. “