Stringing the Pearls: How to Read the Weekly Torah Portion

2. Premodern Ahistorical Approaches

81 2. Premodern Ahistorical Approaches Midrash When people quote the Rabbis with the words “the Midrash says . . . ,” chances are they are referring to midrash as a collection of interpretations of the Torah that circulated orally in the Rabbinic period (from as early perhaps as 200 B.C.E. to as late as 800 C.E.) and were later collected and written down; they are not themselves engaging in such midrashic interpretation. In the context of this discussion midrash is an activity, not a body of material. Midrash as I discuss it here is an interpretive process, a way of reading the Humash that goes back to Rabbinic times. The Rabbis read the Torah text very, very closely. In doing so they left a legacy that is significant in telling us not only what the text means but how it means it. Rabbinic midrash is a rich repository of techniques to extract meaning from the words of the Humash. These techniques still stand us in good stead today and, in fact, they anticipate insights into how literary texts produce meaning that modern understandings of language and systems of signification have discovered. When the Rabbis read the Torah they had one objective: to know what the text meant. After all, to them the words were—and remain —unequivocally God’s words, and every single one of them carries within it a content or a meaning that has to be extracted. It is interesting that the Rabbinic word for “word” is teivah, which is the same term Genesis uses for the ark that bore Noah and his passengers. We may say that in the Rabbinic mind, just as Noah’s 82 SOME MAJOR APPROACHES TO READING A PARASHAH ark carried cargo that embodied the living material out of which God would rebuild His world and on which He pinned His hopes, so, too, do the living words of the Torah hold freight that is critical to the ultimate success of the creation. In extracting content from the Torah’s words, that is, in doing midrash, the Rabbis follow a double agenda. When their objective is to determine what the text meant with regard to how the commandments (mitzvot) are to be performed, they are engaged in midrash halakhah. This requires certain specific interpretive methods appropriate to determining legal norms and Jewish practice. When their objective is to explore what the text means in nonlegal terms, that is, when its implications are not binding and do not concern observance or any performative act, they are engaged in midrash aggadah. This involves using interpretive techniques sometimes similar to those of halakhic midrash, sometimes not. Whereas halakhic midrash is almost scientific in the rigor with which it parses a given verse or word to extract its meaning, in aggadic midrash the Rabbinic imagination is unfettered and often treats the text loosely and playfully so as to make it yield its insight . That is the kind of midrashic reading that I shall be talking about here. It is the one most relevant for parashah readers. In this discussion I call it simply “midrash.” Midrashic reading works in a variety of ways. Many of them focus on the intricacies of the Hebrew text and involve wordplay with it or on it that is often extremely clever. Puns are a favorite tactic. What I did above with the Hebrew word for “word” gives you an idea of what this involves. Such wordplay will not advance our purposes here unless one is grounded in Hebrew. So I will focus on those midrashic methods that can help shape our reading of a parashah even in translation. Gaps in the Text Biblical narrative is laconic. It minces words. J and E will tell you what individual characters do; they will rarely tell you what they are thinking about what they are doing or how they feel about it. A good case in point is the Akedah story in Genesis, chapter 22. Abraham is told to take his son Isaac and offer him up as a sacrifice . We are given no inkling of what Abraham said at hearing 83 PREMODERN AHISTORICAL APPROACHES God’s command or how he felt about it. He is silent here as he is not when God earlier told him that God had marked out the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah for destruction (Gen. 18:18–33). Then Abraham challenged God; here he does not. So...