Gateways to Torah

Joining the Ancient Conversation on the Weekly Portion

Rabbi Russell Resnik

• Publisher: Messianic Jewish Communications
• Year: 2000
• ISBN:
  9781936716135
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

A commentary on each of the weekly portions read in traditional synagogues, a practice seen in the New Testament.

Contents

Introduction

B’resheet/Genesis

Blessing and Boundary: B’resheet

God of Two Names: Noach

Tent and Altar: Lekh L’kha

Arguing With God: Vayera

Burial and Betrothal: Hayyei–Sarah

Jacob and Esau: Tol’dot

Two Stones for Jacob: Vayetze

The Man of Peniel: Vayishlach

The Chosen Son: Vayeshev

The Teller of Dreams: Mikketz

The Brothers Restored: Vayigash

Until Shiloh Comes: Vayechi

Sh’mot/Exodus

Moshe and the Serpent: Sh’mot

God Makes Himself Known: Va’era

Redemption of the First Born: Bo

He Has Become My Salvation: B’Shallach

Lessons of the Desert: Yitro

Don’t Follow the Crowd: Mishpatim

Noble Servitude: T’rumah

The Garments of Priesthood: Tetzaveh

Can a Man See God: Ki Tissa

Creation Restored: Vayak’hel

The Cloud of Glory: P’kudei

Vayikra/Leviticus

The Call Across the Divide: Vayikra

The Law of Continuity: Tzav

Strange Fire: Sh’mini

Cleansing the Leper: Tazria

The Sickness of Slander: M’tzora

Garments of Glory: Acharei Mot

Honor Your Elders: K’doshim

Sanctification of the Name: Emor

The Great Shofar: B’har

The Reward of Obedience: B’chukkotai

B’midbar/Numbers

Order in the Wilderness: B’midbar

God Our Keeper: Naso

Torah and Spirit: B’ha’alotkha

A Different Spirit: Shlach l’kha

A Rebel and His Sons: Korach

The Serpent in the Wilderness: Hukkat

Balaam the Soothsayer: Balak

A Righteous Zealot: Pinchas

The Bond of Community: Mattot

Guard Your Inheritance: Masa’ei

D’varim/Deuteronomy

Time to Move On: D’varim

The Glories of Exile: Va’etchanan

Circumcision of the Heart: Ekev

A Word Ancient and New: Re’eh

Righteousness, Righteousness You Shall Pursue: Shof’tim

Right Worship, Right Works: Ki Tetze

Remember Your Roots: Ki Tavo

Beyond Repentance: Nitzavim

The Fear That Frees Us: Vayelekh

The Rock That Follows Us: Ha’azinu

Simchat Torah: V’zot HaBrachah

Notes

Bibliography

Introduction

Ben Bag Bag used to say, “Turn it, and turn it, for everything is in it. Reflect on it and grow old and gray with it. Don’t turn from it, for nothing is better than it.”

Pirke Avot 5.22¹

Torah—the five books of Moses—has been a unifying force in Jewish life since the earliest days. Today virtually every synagogue in the world reads the same portion of the Torah each week, completing the cycle of readings every year. Each weekly Torah portion, called a parasha in Hebrew, has been the subject of commentary and discussion since before the days of Yeshua the Messiah, and continues to be today. This book is one student’s contribution to the ancient discussion.

Study of the weekly parasha creates a sense of common interest with other readers, and with the Jewish community around the world and throughout the ages. In this form of study, the parasha becomes the topic of conversation. The study is more interested in considering possibilities, exploring tough questions, and discovering novel interpretations, than in reaching binding conclusions. It finds the text of Scripture to be multi-faceted, infinitely rich, and endlessly engaging. A recent book on Jewish spiritual guidance puts it this way:

As we study sacred text—the touchstone of Jewish spirituality—we become conscious of every dimension of what is written; we also become insightfully aware of its silence. The rabbis understood this phenomenon. They drew meaning out of every aspect of the text. We should do the same.²

The authors encourage us to engage in the ancient conversation with and about Scripture that has been the pursuit of Jewish thinkers over the ages.

Let us consider an example of this conversation from the Midrash. Midrash is an entire genre of rabbinic literature that explores the meaning and implications of the text of the Hebrew Scriptures. The earliest Midrash (on Genesis) dates from the classical Amoraic period of 400–600 CE, but is based on older oral material.³ Midrash Rabbah is the collection of such commentaries based on the five books of Moses and the five scrolls—Esther, Ruth, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, and Lamentations—that reached final form during the medieval period, but also reflects much older tradition.

Midrash comprises both halacha, or legal argument and rulings, and haggada, stories, homilies, and illustrations that expand the biblical text. Haggadic Midrash especially is characterized by its imaginative and creative treatment of the text. As Rabbi H. Freed-man notes in his introduction to Midrash Rabbah, it

. . . continued to express the ideas, aspirations, hopes, fears, and collective thoughts of the people of Israel in successive generations. Many of the thoughts in the Haggadic Midrash were due to poetic inspiration, and these were often ahead of their times. In this sense they were prophetic, and in respect of function they continued the prophetic tradition, though formally and chronologically they were the direct descendants of the Scriptures, children of their verses, souls of their soul.⁴

Midrash Rabbah on Numbers 7:19 considers the offering of “one silver bowl of seventy shekels” presented by the tribe of Issachar. This bowl, it says, represents the Torah, because Issachar was considered the tribe of great Torah scholars. Furthermore, the Midrash claims, Torah is like wine and it is customary to drink wine in a bowl, like the silver bowl of the offering. But why is the bowl seventy shekels in weight? “As the numerical value of yayin (wine) is seventy, so there are seventy modes of expounding the Torah.”⁵

The point of this rather imaginative (even by Midrashic standards) interpretation is that Torah has multiple meanings and applications. As Ben Bag Bag says in the reference from Pirke Avot above, “Everything is in it.” Moreover, it is to the Torah’s glory that it has such a wealth of meanings. Seventy is a number of completion and perfection, ten times seven. It intimates that every verse of Torah is filled with meaning. The best Jewish minds throughout the ages will spend their best energies exploring its meaning and never come to the end of it. Further, says the Midrash, seventy is equivalent to yayin, wine, according to the Hebrew numbering system. Torah yields sweet and even intoxicating meanings as we drink of it deeply.

Thus Rashi, the great medieval Torah commentator,⁶ savors the views of his predecessors, explains them, and expands upon them. He often seems just as interested in keeping the conversation going as in uncovering the one true meaning of the passage under consideration. Rashi is considered the definitive commentator. His approach to Scripture defines the Jewish outlook and methodology to this day, and it often reads like a friendly conversation.

In the same way, Ramban, another great medieval commentator,⁷ comments on the opening words of the book of Leviticus or Vayikra. Vayikra begins with an unusual verbal construction, literally, “And he called to Moses, and the Lord spoke to him from the tent of meeting.” Ramban explains that the Lord had to call to Moses because Moses would otherwise not be able to enter the tent of meeting, according to Exodus 40:35.⁸ He then goes on to give a different, earlier opinion concerning the use of the word “call” in this verse.

“All communications [that came to Moses], whether they are introduced by the word dabeir (speak), or by emor (say), or tzav (command), were preceded by a call,” that is to say, G-d said to him, ‘Moses, Moses’ and he answered, ‘Here am I.’ This was a way of expressing affection and encouragement to Moses.⁹

Finally, Ramban adds a third interpretation. According to the “way of the Truth,” his code phrase for kabbala (Jewish mysticism), the verse under consideration is like Exodus 24:1—“Now He said to Moses, ‘Come up to the LORD, you and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, and worship from afar’ (NKJV).” In this reading, says Ramban, the call summons Moses into the presence of Mattatron, the Angel of the Lord, but not “right up to the Proper Divine Name, for man shall not see Me, and live.”¹⁰ The call in Leviticus reiterates this call in Exodus.

Thus, Ramban gives three different interpretations of Leviticus 1:1, and makes no effort to compare their merits or to decide between them. Rather he engages us in a conversation that spans a millennium and the entire breadth of the Mediterranean world.

This approach to study stresses the process rather than the event, reflecting the way people actually tend to make decisions today. We are faced with so many choices and possibilities that we shy away from any option that demands a hard and immediate decision. In recent years, telemarketers have learned to be non-confrontational. When a prospect declines their offer, they no longer push the issue, as in the old foot-in-the-door methodology. Instead, phone solicitors accept your refusal and leave you with their 800 number just in case you have questions later. They want their call to be part of a process instead of a definitive event.

Of course, the story of Messiah is an event that ultimately demands a response. Those who believe in the authority of the sacred text and its ability to convey God’s truth to every generation may balk at some of the more imaginative interpretations. I am not, of course, advocating such a treatment of Scripture as normative in all cases. But I am advocating it as a means of entering into an ancient Jewish conversation, a conversation about the things that matter most, and potentially about the Messiah.

The conversational approach is not foreign to Scripture itself. Hebraic rather than Western, it does not seek to define one precise and correct interpretation of the text, but to mine the text for its interpretive riches. This distinction does not mean that anything goes interpretively, but it does allow the possibility of multiple meanings, a possibility that Scripture seems to endorse. Thus, for example, Scripture often conveys truth through story, which is inherently more flexible and multi-faceted than straight propositional presentation. Further, Scripture itself seems more comfortable with ambiguity than many of its modern interpreters. It is beyond the scope of this introduction to go into a detailed study, but I will suggest three examples from Yeshua’s teachings.

•	Yeshua portrays John the Baptist as Elijah to come, as promised in Malachi 3:23–24 (4:5–6, NKJV):
	Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet Before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. And he will turn The hearts of the fathers to the children, And the hearts of the children to their fathers, Lest I come and strike the earth with a curse.

Yeshua intimates that this prophecy will have multiple fulfillment when he says. “And if you are willing to receive it, he is Elijah who is to come” (Matthew 11:14, emphasis mine). He demonstrates that this is the sense of his statement in Mark 9:11–13:

And they asked Him, saying, “Why do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?” Then He answered and told them, “Indeed, Elijah is coming first and restores all things. And how is it written concerning the Son of Man, that He must suffer many things and be treated with contempt? But I say to you that Elijah has also come, and they did to him whatever they wished, as it is written of him.” (NKJV)

•	In the Olivet discourse, Yeshua mentions the “’abomination of desolation’ spoken of by Daniel the prophet” (Matt. 24:15, NKJV). Yeshua undoubtedly was aware of the fulfillment of this prophecy in the days of Antiochus, when the Seleucids defiled the Temple. Yet, here he seems to apply it both to the first century Roman destruction and to a final catastrophe at the end of the age. It is one original prophecy spoken by Daniel, but it has multiple meanings in its outworking through history.
•	When Yeshua disputes with the Sadducees concerning the resurrection, he says, “But concerning the dead, that they rise, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the burning bush passage, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living. You are therefore greatly mistaken” (Mark 12:26–27, NKJV). This is an imaginative use of Scripture that discovers new and unexpected meaning in a familiar passage, without depriving it of its more obvious meaning, much as does the Midrash.
	Significantly, Mark records that “one of the scribes,” an expert in the Jewish conversation concerning Torah, overheard Yeshua and “saw that he had answered them well” (12:28). Yeshua’s hermeneutic approach would have gotten him drummed out of many modern seminaries, but it was highly credible in the eyes of his Jewish contemporary. It may be an approach that would further Jewish appreciation of the Scriptures today.

My method in these studies is not systematic. I do not seek to cover the entire content of each parasha.¹¹ Instead, I comment intensively on a key verse or passage and its message for today. I draw heavily upon the New Covenant Scriptures as the inspired development of the Torah, but I do not seek to use the Torah as an apologetic for the New Covenant or faith in...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Back Cover
• Copyright
• Dedication page
• Contents