CURLING UP WITH THE WORD OF GOD
My bat mitzvah took place aboard a boat floating through the turgid waters of the Gulf Of Mexico. Like most Jewish kids, I read my haftorah (the weekly Torah portion) in Hebrew, a language I learned to memorise rather than understand. And so it was that I entered womanhood: speaking phonetic gobbledegook aboard a rocking boat filled with family and friends, as well as a blind man rumoured to be a wizard. Also there was Brad Holland, who would later kiss me as the moon dipped low over the bow.
I had not picked up the Torah since. That is, until now: I am sitting with the very copy I used when I was 12, signed over to me in 1985 by Rabbi Klayman. I have resolved to read the thing cover to cover, and to take notes on my selective and highly interpretative sense of God’s words. (Or is that the words of Moses interpreting the words of God? Or the words of God as translated by a number of guys trying to recall what some guy told him that some guy told him that someone said God said the other day over by the Burning Bush?) The Bible may very well be the original game of telephone, or Chinese whispers, that childhood metaphor for the unreliability of communication and the faultiness of memory.
Whether the Torah is the word of God as written by Moses or a meditation on the proper ways to live, as translated by an untold number of scholars culling stories and information from suspect hearsay, I’m excited to find out what the fuss is all about. Watch this space.
~ DEBORAH STOLL
Picture credit: hyperscholar (via Flickr)
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Comments
The Torah
April 3, 2009 - 15:11 — Paul K (not verified)If you really study the text and read up on the history of its compilation, you will not find that it is a collection of random hearsay. Thousands of scholars over thousands of years have reached a different opinion.
:)
April 12, 2009 - 04:19 — Alisa (not verified)I'm excited to read about your findings!
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