It always breaks my heart to see how simplemindedly the Hebrew Bible is discussed in the media. David Plotz, editor of Slate, has a new book out about the experience of trying to read the Bible straight through — apparently with no serious Jewish commentary, an impossibility for adults, I would think. Without the oral tradition that explains the Torah and the rest of the Bible, how could anyone take that stuff seriously?
The result sound predictably juvenile and depressing, a la A.J. Jacobs’s The Year of Living Biblically. He has an interview in The New Yorker. Excerpt:
My favorite bits of the Bible tend to be those that show human beings behaving in our flawed, weak ways: Jonah whining about God’s mercy to Ninevites; David sexually misbehaving and expecting God’s forgiveness; Elijah playing the dozens with King Ahab; Moses whacking the rock in frustration.
Sigh. No wonder you have atheists like Sam Harris (who is Jewish too, by birth) rejecting Biblical religion — talking snakes in the Garden of Eden and all that — not realizing that the Bible he finds worthy only of contempt I would also find contemptible if it were the authentic Jewish understanding of Scripture.
Do you really think that the Bible as it stands, without explanation, is worthy of adult consideration? Seriously?
posted April 27, 2009 at 12:03 pm
First of all, it’s rich that David Klinghoffer feels entitled to judge my book based on a five-minute interview from the New Yorker, rather than from oh, I don’t know, reading the book itself, or at least the blog on which the book is based.
But set that aside: It’s certainly true that I didn’t read the Hebrew Bible in the way that many Jews traditionally study Hebrew Bible. But you know what? I’m not an observant Jew! The idea that you can’t hope to get anything out of reading the book on your own is exactly the kind of mandarin snobbery that made me want to write GOOD BOOK in the first place. It’s fine for Klinghoffer to say that he has had a wonderful, rich experience reading Torah and Talmud with his rabbis and teachers. Bully for him. It’s bizarre for him to universalize his experience, and assume that no one can possibly get anything out of the book without a rabbi reading over his shoulder. Is it any wonder that so many people–so many Jews–are alienated from their Bible, when there are people like Klinghoffer telling them that they shouldn’t dare pick it up and read it on their own?
posted April 27, 2009 at 12:31 pm
I think, to clarify (?), Mr. Klinghoffer means that without the accompanying traditional commentary the BIble can’t be taken seriously as a *divinely given* text–which, if you allow that it might be such, would naturally mean that you can’t pick or choose which parts are valuable. It could still, of course, be taken seriously as a great and interesting work of literature, but, again, only some of it, and a reader’s naturally dividing it for himself–into important, interesting parts, and weird outdated parts–would take away any possibility of being religiously compelled by it. Not that I’m very knowledgeable about it, but what the Jewish oral tradition claims to do is make sense of the whole entire thing without shying away from the crazy outdated-sounding stuff–it’s all integral to the whole.