Shabbat Shalom from Rabbi Eitan Weiner-Kaplow
Shabbat Devarim
Shabbat Chazon – Preceding Tisha B’Av
Torah: Deuteronomy 1:1 - 3:22 / Haftarah: Isaiah 1:1 - 1:27
“Who Wrote the Torah?”
Dear Friends,
Who wrote the Torah? For most of Jewish history, there was only one teaching. It was Moses who wrote the Five Books. As we begin the reading of Deuteronomy, the last of the Torah books, we see that the text does not say that Moses wrote these books. Rather, we are told that “these are the words that Moses spoke to Israel.” Furthermore, the last paragraphs of Deuteronomy are about the death of Moses and events that happened afterwards. How could Moses possibly have written that?
Modern scholarship suggests that the five books were probably edited and redacted during the Babylonian Exile, when the Jewish community of Jerusalem was transported to what is modern-day Iraq (586 BCE). There they reconstructed their Jewish identity and customs through the creation of holy texts and prayer books. Genesis, Exodus, and Numbers are narrative in nature and most likely composed of very old stories. Leviticus is a carefully structured manual of priestly obligations and responsibilities. Deuteronomy, probably the latest of the books, contains a series of Moses’ speeches that indicate the centrality of the Jerusalem Temple.
Does this analysis make the Torah less holy. On the contrary, if we can see the humanity in the authorship of these texts, then we can better relate to our ancestors. Through these texts we see how, like us, they were searching to understand God’s presence in their lives. Like us, they were striving to create a just and compassionate world.
Zay a mentsch – be a good person.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Eitan Weiner-Kaplow
