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after each public Torah reading (Prov. 3:18). The relationship between Torah and her interpreters—one that develops over the course of a lifetime, as well as across the centuries—is hardly a one-way affair. I said at the outset, trying to understand our relationship to the evolving truth of the natural/divine order: “We discover, it reveals; it reveals, we discover.” The same is true in our evergrowing relationship with Torah. The text is not a passive object upon which we work the cold magic of interpretation, bringing forth meanings that are nothing but our own conjure. We fully believe in the mutuality of this relationship. To “take hold of” Torah, le-hahaziq bah, is to hold “her” strongly, but also to gain strength from her. She, Torah, divine wisdom — described by the Zohar as a beautiful maiden hidden away in a palace63 — reveals her face (indeed, her many faces) only to the one who loves her. We do not impose interpretation upon the text; we seduce the text to reveal her endless meanings to us.

The text is a living presence in our midst, a Tree of Life. Learning and interpretation are assertions of our own vitality, our attachment to that ever-renewing font of life. As we do with “God,” so we do with Torah. Our religious need causes us to personify “her,” to see her as one with whom we enter into intimate relationship, one to whom we give our love in gratitude for the endless love we have been given. How could she not be “person” to us? If God is Father in much of Jewish imagery, Torah is both Mother and Bride. She charms us with the beauty of her subtle language and endless meanings; we respond to her charms and seek always to unlock her secrets. “Open to me, my sister, my love, my dear and perfect one, for my head is filled with dew, my locks glisten with the night” (Song of Songs 5:2). Interpretation and teaching of Torah assure that both the giving and receiving of Torah go on through the night.

Returning to the Torah of a single word, the Talmud notes that anokhi (consonantally A-N-K-Y), the “I am” of the first commandment, can be read as an acronym for the Aramaic Ana Nafshai Katvit Yahavit, “I Myself wrote it and gave it.”64 Later interpreters read the phrase differently: “I wrote and gave Myself.”65 What God gives in Torah is nothing other than God's own Self, but now in verbal form, so that we mortals may “read” God in the garb of language. This is what all sacred teaching needs to be: the divine presence parleyed into words. Since we accept that language is a human institution, we are the ones who can and must effect that transformation. The Hasidic author understands this well when he reads Deuteronomy 26:17, et ha-shem he'emarta, as “You have brought God into speech.” But he is also wise enough to understand that when we engage in this work of articulating divinity, we mere humans are also transformed and uplifted, so much so that we humans become the voice—indeed, the only verbal voice — of God in the world. The verse goes on to say (26:18): ve-ha-shem he'emirekha — “God [or the silent divine presence within you] has caused you to speak, has transformed you into language.” Make us Your Word, Lord, and speak us in truth.

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ISRAEL: BEING HUMAN, BEING JEWISH

Response

“Where are you?” We are being called. The voice calls out to us from every corner of the natural world. Mi-kenaf ha-arets zemirot sham'anu, as Scripture says (Is. 24:16). “We hear singing from the corners of the earth.”1 But that same voice calls out to us from within the Torah, text and tradition also serving as mikra'ey kodesh, “holy callers,” calling us to a life of holiness, dedicated awareness of the One that stands behind the multiplicity of our lives.

The voice calls out to every person, but we hear it uniquely as Jews, a people from the start constituted as a religious community that seeks to live in response to God's voice. How will we respond to the call? The challenge is addressed to every generation, but to ours in some unique and dramatic ways, given the high-risk times in which we live.

To begin to respond,