The title of Rabbi Caryn Broitman’s “The Torah Is an Open Book: Radical Readings for the Seeker and the Skeptic” signals its thought-provoking nature. Stimulating us to think is, in fact, aligned with her strong message about the participatory nature of the Torah; the word comes from the Hebrew root meaning “teaching” or “instruction.” Broitman writes, “In Torah, meaning is not there to read. It is rather created, and therefore revealed by a process of serious searching, engaging, and interpreting.” At its essence, engaging with the Torah, and the Hebrew Bible as a whole, is an active, inquiring conversation.
She explains, “The word Torah has a very broad meaning. It includes not only the words on the page, the written scripture, but also the interpretations both written and spoken over millennia … The word Torah can be broader still, used to refer to contemporary interpretations voiced by any of us who engage in a meaningful and heartfelt way in discussions or learning.”
Broitman encourages us to read the Torah within the context of the challenging times we live in. “As I began to write the book, the horrific attack of Oct. 7 unfolded, followed by a war of destruction on Gaza that continues to this day, almost three years later … I think we have to see ourselves in the text during the times we most need it, and I think today is such a time. For myself, I have felt comforted by reading Lamentations and Psalms, and hearing the cries of other times and places in the midst of historical cruelty, knowing we are not alone. Where do we turn for a vision that keeps us together when our world is falling apart? For me, in the midst of these tumultuous years, it has been the Torah and other books of the [Hebrew] Bible that have spoken to me as if they were written for these moments.” She continues, “Yet, still, looking to the Bible for a coherent message and a vision can be complicated. The Bible is indeed a collection of voices over centuries, with interpretations and commentaries written over millennia. Within the Bible, we can find some verses that express love, and others that express the desire for revenge.”
Broitman has noticed, however, that some people cannot find themselves in the text, so they either reject it or feel rejected by it. “The last thing I want to do … is to be an apologist for these very real challenges of the ancient biblical text. I do, however, want to bring home that the Bible’s power as revelation, as a sacred text, lies less in its literal and unchanging truth on the page than in the multiple voices within the Bible itself, addressing the deepest questions we as humans can address.” Broitman invites us to join in the interpretation: “Challenging the text is part of keeping it alive … The text is holy not because it tells you what to think and what to believe … [but] because it asks you to put yourself in it, and confront those difficult questions.”
Rabbi Broitman’s chapter titles pique our interest, compelling us to see how she will tackle them. Among others, we find “But Is It True? Surviving the Belly of the Whale and Reading for Meaning”; “But I Don’t Believe That: Reading the Bible with Authenticity and Integrity when You Don’t Believe in the ‘God in the Sky’”; “Sodom and Gomorrah Has Nothing to Do With Sex: Liberating the Bible from Right-Wing Culture Warriors”; and “What’s Mine Is Mine? Not in the Bible! The Religious and Progressive Values of Biblical Economics.” Each one is a deep, multifaceted dive into the topic.
Speaking about how she came up with them, Broitman says, “Some of these questions are ones I’ve been asked as a rabbi and challenged to think about. For instance, I’ve often received the question ‘Is it true?’ But something can be ‘true’ in a deeper sense without it being historical or literal.” She addresses the issue of treating parts of the Bible as history. “They aren’t,” Broitman says. “Rather than a literal reading, if you take the Torah as addressing questions about what it means to be a human being, and think of the God depicted in the Bible not as a frozen idea but as a literary character whose depiction evokes those questions, the text evokes a lifetime of thought and conversation about what God’s presence is and can be in our lives.”
“The Torah has a comprehensive view of what it means to be a holy society within which everything is connected to each other, and everything is connected to God. In that sense, the Torah is neither ‘progressive’ nor ‘conservative.’ It is, however, radical in its vision, and in its implied critique of our own society, and may well be a meeting ground that inspires dialogue and change.”
Broitman skillfully draws us into “The Torah” through her learned scholarship, laced with a passion for the Bible’s intricacies, a sharing of her personal journey, and quotes from a wide range of individuals, including William James, Bernie Sanders, Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, and Homer.
In her final chapter, Rabbi Broitman writes that the question isn’t what the vision of the Hebrew Bible is, “but rather ‘How does the Bible expand our vision? How does the Bible help us to transcend the limits of our human vision, so we can give birth, together with others, to a deeper and more expansive one? The question is a central part of an understanding of vision, because the Bible is more than a book that we read. It is a book we experience.”
Broitman notes, “We are living in such a fragmented time. The opportunity to read together and discuss a literature of meaning which has spoken to us through the generations can be healing. Our shared reading and openness are what make it a sacred text. It also makes our time together reading it sacred. When we listen to and learn from each other, even or especially with our disagreements, the text can bring us together and bring out the best in us.”
Rabbi Broitman will be appearing on August 7 at Edgartown Books. “The Torah Is an Open Book: Radical Readings for the Seeker and the Skeptic,” by Caryn Broitman, is available at Edgartown Books and Bunch of Grapes.
