Dear Friends,     

For our studies this Shabbat, I would like to respond to a few questions I have received in response to my presentation of archetypal approaches to Torah study.

For the morning study, I will talk about two core and related terms that are featured in Jewish spirituality and social ethics - "exile" and "redemption". As one reads through the books of Samuel and the first part of Kings, one can see that Egypt is a formative but distant memory. As the prophetic period really opens with the destruction of the Northern Kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE, one gets the sense that exile can occur even when we live in our homeland. We are not exiled in a foreign land, but we find ourselves in exile from our values, from the history that we had predicted for ourselves.

With the advent of Kabbalah, these two terms take on a critical importance. In order to understand Jewish spirituality, one must understand these terms.

Every parsha (and every text) presents a variety of approaches for interpretation. Some passages seem to call out for specific answers. For example, when the text says, "God hardened Pharaoh's heart", does that text not demand a theological critique of God taking away a person's free will? Does not such a verse cause us to distance ourselves from the text?

For our Torah study time, I want to show a few different types of interpretation and comment on which interpretive posture I prefer. We can discover what the proper questions to ask are - questions that produce insight, not distance. Essentially, I want to teach about the art of questioning - what kind of knowledge are we seeking? What kinds of questions lead to what kind of knowledge?

Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Mordecai Finley