When Rabbi Ismar Schorsch retired in 2006 as chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, he left a body of writing on weekly Torah portions that could have filled a book.
It didn’t take long to do so.
Published last year by Aviv Press, “Canon Without Closure” is an erudite yet accessible collection of essays. The book’s title reflects the awe Schorsch has for the 2,500-year dialogue on the Torah: A finite number of verses have generated infinite commentary; God’s divine words in the Torah are “susceptible to unending interpretation.”
There are generally two types of Torah commentary. One elaborates on the Hebrew and/or English text verse-by-verse, such as the Women of Reform Judaism’s “The Torah: A Women’s Commentary.”
The other contains essays on each parshah, or Torah portion, inspired by biblical text, but not a line-by-line response to it. A good example is Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson’s “The Bedside Torah.”
“Canon Without Closure” falls into the second category. Besides biblical text and the Midrash, Schorsch employs the Mishnah, the Talmud and the Zohar to frame his thoughts. A typical essay will start with a vignette from Schorsch’s life, or from a contemporary or historical event. Regardless, he always finds a concrete way to introduce the point of the essay, bringing Torah commentary to the lay level.
Schorsch is not writing for other biblical scholars — he’s writing for the rest of us.
For example, he opens his essay on the parshah Lech Lecha by describing his parents’ emotions as they left Germany for the United States in 1938: They felt as if they were being exiled. Much of the Torah, Schorsch explains, consists of stories about exile: Adam and Eve being expelled from Eden; Noah restarting his life after the flood; and, in this Torah portion, Abraham leaving home at age 75.
Schorsch points out that exile is a recurring theme in Jewish history, such as the expulsion from Spain and other European countries in the Middle Ages, and from Arab nations after Israel’s War of Independence in 1948. Over time, he writes, Jews have shown that “exile is a harsh test of virtue and character.”
It’s a well-woven essay that doubles as midrash and memoir (Lech Lecha was his bar mitzvah portion).
Although Schorsch attempts to write for the general reader, he occasionally falls back on unnecessarily pretentious turns-of-phrase. In discussing what led to specific laws in the parshah Behar-Bechukhotai, he writes, “The Torah forges a religion designed to get us through the chaos of an engulfing wilderness with a ramified system of legal prescriptions whose inspiration is rooted in the revelation at Mount Sinai. A faith-based community is the matrix of individual survival in a hostile environment.”
Chew on that for a while.
However, Schorsch balances this verbosity with a skilled command of English. In explaining inconsistencies on how Jews experience God, he writes, “The Bible is not a book but a library. It abounds with a spectrum of complementary, contrasting, and conflicting views … The editors did not put a premium on consistency and uniformity, but rather on assembling clashing voices driven by a hunger for the holy. A tolerance for diverse opinion and practice is imbedded in the foundation text of Judaism and in the vast exegetical literature that it inspired.”
This is more easily digestible.
Schorsch’s love of sacred texts shows in “Canon Without Closure.” He cherishes his father’s books, among the few possessions brought to the United States when he left after Kristallnacht in November 1938. Those books “anchored his psyche” during his transition from German to American. Schorsch never lets readers forget that Judaism is a religion based on a unique and devoted attachment to the written text.
It takes awhile to plow through this hefty volume; you might need a dictionary and Jewish Bible nearby. You may even need to read sentences more than once. However, once finished, you’ll be richer intellectually.
“Canon Without Closure” by Rabbi Ismar Schorsch (480 pages, Aviv Press, $34.95)