Stringing the Pearls: How to Read the Weekly Torah Portion (review)

“Bible reading is like Sudoku or chess: there are strategies for beginners, intermediates, and advanced players” (p. 106). James Diamond has written a valuable “how to” book for both newcomers and experienced readers of the Bible, in which he deftly lays out a range of strategies for reading the text. In lively, conversational prose, the author covers some familiar terrain of literary theory, questions of biblical authorship, and the range of critical and interpretive tools that are available to readers. He does not offer this scholarship as an intellectual exercise, however, but in the service of something both practical and spiritual: enhancing our personal interaction with Torah from week to week. Diamond conceives his primary audience, though certainly not his sole one, as:

Synagogue-goers who want to sit in synagogue during the Torah reading, not in boredom or in a less wakeful state of consciousness, but as involved listeners in what for 15 centuries has become the centerpiece of the Shabbat morning service: the millennial reenactment of the Sinai experience through the public reading of the Torah scroll

(page xv).

For a work of scholarship, and it is that, Stringing the Pearls is a refreshingly personal book. Diamond’s not infrequent use of the first person made me feel that I was sitting in a seminar room, or perhaps over a cup of coffee, with a master teacher, not shy to share his own perspective as he encouraged me to explore my own. Diamond wants to empower the reader to find individual meaning in the text of Torah, reminding us that “without the reader there would be no reading. The author has done his thing; the text exists; it is the reader who, in opening the book, closes the interpretive circuit and turns on the interplay between the three parties” (p. 37).

He doesn’t let us forget, however, that when reading a canonical text, there is yet another party involved: “There is always some reading community, its values and assumptions, that is the silent fourth player in the three-way encounter between author, text, and reader” (p. 39).

Thus, though what the reader sees and hears is pivotal, we need all the help we can get. Making personal meaning of Torah may be in our power, but it demands serious work. Toward that end, Diamond provides an excellent overview of available resources, from translations and commentaries to web resources, and experienced advice on how to best use them. More importantly, Diamond points toward the following talmudic dictum of Rabbi Ami as a template for our own personal regimen of Torah study:

One should always complete one’s [private] reading of the weekly Torah portion . . . twice in Hebrew and once in Aramaic [lit. targum] by the time that it is read publicly by the congregation in the synagogue . . .

(BT B’rakhot 8a)

Adapting Rabbi Ami to our own circumstances, Diamond encourages a four-step process of studying the weekly parashah: a first reading on our own, without commentary, during which we consider the literary genres that we encounter and the greater context in which the parashah is set; a second reading, perhaps with a study partner, during which we sharpen the questions and themes that interest us; a third reading with commentaries; and a climactic fourth reading, which is the communal experience of reading and hearing the text on Shabbat morning.

In good “how to” manual style, Diamond takes us through five sample parashot, one from each of the Torah’s five books, laying out the specific questions that might arise, during a first and second reading. Note the specific advice that Diamond offers regarding the context for our home study:

Early in the week block out some dedicated parashah time, as you might for a yoga or a meditation session. Find a comfortable and quiet place where there are no distractions or interruptions (telephone, pager, e-mail). Arrange for child care if possible

(p. 115).

For ultimately, the message of...