Welcome to Judaism Demystified, a podcast for the perplexed.
We are joined by JJ Kimchi. JJ is a PhD candidate at Harvard
University, where he specializes in the intersection between
European and Jewish intellectual history.
During the post Enlightenment period, JJ received his
undergraduate education at Chilean college Jerusalem, where
he double majored in Western philosophy and Jewish thought.
Prior to that, he studied at Ishivatar Etcion and completed
his military service in the 101st division of the ID FS
Paratroopers Brigade. JJ has taught courses on Jewish
thought in a wide array of institutions, including at
Harvard, Brandeis and MIT. His works have been published
across a wide array of scholarly and academic platforms.
He has ghost written two books on Jewish ideas and his first
academic book is due to be published in 2024.
JJ is also the host of Torah and Motion's podcast of Jewish
Ideas. Without further ADO, JJ Kinfi.
Thank you for joining the Judaism Demystified podcast.
It's great to have you back. JJ Kimchi Akham.
JJ Kimchi. At this point you might have,
you might have to move in with us because you know we're doing
this. It's great.
Really. We're getting great feedback
from your podcast and we're very excited for this one.
In particular, we're going to be discussing the Goose Tanakh
method. So we want to discuss what
particular method are we talking about.
If you could provide us with a background of who uses this,
where it stems from, and how widespread it is.
OK, firstly, can I say once again, it's great to be here.
I'm a big fan of yours. I love what you guys do.
I listen to your other stuff and I'm always happy to be back.
And yes, you're right, this is now a third time and people
might be, might, might begin to suspect something.
So but I hope, I hope this is not our last time and there's
many, many interesting things to discuss tonight.
So let's jump into it. Before we get into discussing
what I'm going to discuss a couple of quick caveats just for
the audience and and for everyone to know the first thing
is that what we're going to be speaking about.
I can't claim to be really an expert in it in the sense that
I'm a consumer of the sorts of writings that get put under the
Guptanac Method banner. I I've been reading it for many
years and I speak to people about it, et cetera.
But it's not really an area of my research as it were and
really the area of nobody's particular research.
I mean there's I, I don't know of anyone who's done very
serious academic work in this and therefore this is everything
I I will be saying is the words of an enthusiastic amateur
rather than someone who's been you know sitting in the
libraries and and swatting up on all this.
This is the first thing. The second thing of course is
that we're going to be talking about a a school of scholarship,
right. And the problem always we're
talking about a school of scholarship, no matter what it
is, is that you have to generalize if you're going to
say anything coherent. But of course you will always
find scholars in the school who sort of buck the trend and who
don't fit particularly into the boxes in which you're
generalizing. And therefore, so I wanted to
say this mirage that the the things and the generalization
that I'm about to make might not encompass every single member of
the Gushnach method. And there's an open question as
to whether this particular method is in fact a global
method or whether there are important differences between
the Israel and the American branch.
I don't think so, but others do and therefore, you know, so
let's get into it. But.
You attended the the Israel. Branch.
Correct. Say again?
You attended the Israel. Branch.
Yeah, so, So I guess my own background is that yes, I spent
two years in the Gush itself. I also lived in the yeshiva and
yeshiva tharatiyan known as the Gush for for the year and a half
in which I served in in Sahel. And therefore, you know, I I
have a lot of, obviously, you know, many roots there and still
keep up with their literature and still keep up with the
people there. And so therefore, you know those
are my basic qualifications to speak on the matter.
But of course many others have the same qualifications as me.
So, you know, I can't, I can't claim any superiority on that.
So yeah, so this is a method of studying and writing about and
reading Tanakh that is known colloquially as the gush Tanakh
method because it's associated with the gush yeshiva, Yeshiva
Harrison in Alan. She was a very large religious
Zionist at Hesde Yeshiva. It's also associated with the
college that's in the yeshiva. This was the lower levels of the
Shiva. There's a colleague, Mclet
Herzog or Herzog College and many of the teachers who teach
in should Harrison also teach there?
And that's also a world centre of this particular method in on
the American scene there are this is generally known as the
literary theological method and this is, this is just something
that is generally spoken about. But within something that I've
observed in the last 10 or 15 years that I've I've been around
to observe is its spread and its ubiquity within the Modern
Orthodox, religious Zionist world, right.
That really in the last couple of decades you've had the the
tremendous success of this way of of rings, the Tanakan,
obviously part of it is the fact that places like Gush and
Yeshiva University where there are some, you know, some
important members, some important figures within this,
within this school they have produced many teachers.
Many of these teachers teach in seminaries, they teach in
yeshiva, they teach in in high schools.
They teach everywhere that they are, you know become pulpit
rabbis. They write on popular websites
on the VBM or Allitera other such other such websites and
therefore this has spread. Another very big agent of the
spread of this method is Korean mugged publishing.
Right. They publish a lot of books.
I've just you know a couple. So for example holding up to the
camera here the book is slightly blurred but this is Yadel
Ziegler's book on route actually very good book from alienations
and monarchy. Again these sort of these white
books on of Korean and they were producing one each part of it's
enough so. So within Israel I mean I'm just
going to throw out some names because it's very possible some
of the audience would have come across them.
In Israel we're talking about people like Ravyakov Maidan, one
of the Russia Shiva of the Ghosh, Raviol Binnun Rav Amnon
Bazak, who wrote this excellent book called Adhayam Hazare,
which I thought was very good, even if I, you know, don't.
Nominal. Yes, I have that.
I have the translated translated.
Version Yes, it's an important book to read and also to take
issue with to some degree, but we'll put that to one side for
the moment. And also other names.
For example, Yonatan Grossman, Dr. Yoni Grossman, Maryland and
Yal Ziegler, who I just mentioned here.
She's. Broken on Samit.
Exactly. More in the English speaking
world, you have people like Menachem Libtag who also teaches
very widely. In the United States, you have,
you know, Sharon Kami from Outreach University or Haim
Angel or you had to hear David Foreman of Alabita the other
week who uses sort of a version of this method.
And these, all these scholars constitute to a broad degree
this this school which which will be called which generally
locally known as the Gushtenach method.
Although of course some of those who some of the people who use
it don't, don't belong to the gush.
And one of the most important people, actually underratedly,
who did use this method a lot was Lenny Rabbi Jonathan Sacks.
And of course his stuff, his conversation, even though
includes, you know some of his own expertise and his background
philosophy. But that was, that was something
at the very heart of his exegetical process.
And because, you know, 10s of thousands have read his books
and read his covenant conversation, so you know, he
was also a very important voice in all this.
You asked me a little bit about the historical background to
this and well, I've been giving this some thought and it seems
to me that there are three important processes, historical
processes, which are worth noting and must be understood in
order to to sort of contextualize the Gustanach
method before we actually get to the characteristics of the
method itself, which I want to outline a bit more in depth
later on. So the historical backdrop and
there are three of them. The first one is to my mind the
the return to Tanakh commentary and Toro commentary in the 19th
century. OK, let me explain a little bit
what I mean. If you look at the history of
Toro commentary, so it has Toro commentary as we know it,
meaning line by line analysis and and and mini essays or or or
or little comments sort of on the biblical text.
So I had basically a beginning date which was Sadia gone who
was the 1st to write in many of the different genres that we
were familiar with today as he wrote his tafsir, his
translation and his and his commentary.
And then you have the development of different
schools, the development of the French school with Rashi and
Rashbaum and Bahar and developments of various various
luminaries in Spain, the Rambandi, even Ezra etcetera.
And then you have and you have sort of a high point in the
medieval period which roughly comes to an end in the in the
early 1500s, roughly in the 1500s where you have a Barber.
Now let's say the last very major example, the last of
canonical example of this. And you also have others such as
Ovadios for now. And a little bit later on you
have also the clay a car right and these the from lunches and
you have these figures. But then in the about the 1500s
after the Eurospara, then after about an, you know, the rise of
of of Kabbalah and side etcetera, you basically have an
end to this, to this process, an end to the production of
commentaries which we would consider canonical, which we
would consider, you know, major central commentaries at the
heart of the of the Jewish Canon.
And we have a few 100 years of very little writing in this
regard. Actually it takes a break more
or less through the through the 1600s to the 1700s and through
until the mid 1800s, where suddenly from 1840s onwards you
have an explosion of really novel and really exciting and
you're powerful and impactful Parsha, Not right.
So you have Shadal with Hamish Dadell and you have Rashim
Shrofal Hirsch and you have Talit Sri Harsh Berlin, the
native, and you have the Malbim and you have the Katavaha
Kabbalah and later on you have Hoffmann in in Berlin and
basically have a series of really important Parsha Nim
writing once again on the tour. In other words, that that in the
mid 19th century, due to a variety of factors, due to
partly the Enlightenment, partly to the spread of Jewish texts
generally in the in Europe, due partly to the attack on the
Tanakh by biblical critics, due partly to the secularization,
the growing importer and the secularization of Jews in Europe
in general. And you suddenly had a series of
very again very important, very impressive, very multi talented
rabbinic figures, Eliabana Mosaic, another one who are
writing, who not only writing important works on Judaism but
using commentary on the Tanakh as a medium through which to
provide a a Jewish worldview. Right, Because that's really
what characterized medieval Parashanov.
Neil Parashanov, you read, you know, not all of them, of
course, but if you read the great ones from Ban Ibn Ezra,
Ababanel, these commentary stand as statements of Jewish
philosophy, statements of what Judaism is like.
You can get a whole course on Jewish belief and Jewish
practice and Jewish everything by reading these great
Prashanthi. Whereas and again, sort of took
a break. And from the 1840s, eighteen 50s
onwards, you suddenly had this explosion.
Again, there's this return to to commentary on the Tanakh, and
specifically commentary on the Torah as a method through which
to explore and discuss and and and state Jewish ideas writ
large. OK.
And this is something very important, you know, perhaps one
day, that's one day I'll actually devote a book to this
phenomenon. It's actually a very important
phenomenon that sort of gone under, you know, underratedly,
underratedly important and has gone somewhat unnoticed
certainly within the academic world and should be sort of
focused upon more a part of the modernization of Judaism and
certainly rabbinic culture was this return due to commentary
itself. That's sort of that's the first
point, the first historical process that I wanted.
And of course this continues a little bit into the 20th
century. And your figures like as I said,
obviously Hoffman, Chief Rabbi Hertz with the Hertz, Gromach,
et cetera, et cetera. And this sort of continues,
continues, and then and eventually ends up where we are.
This is the first one. The second historical element
is, is the centrality of Tanakh learning in the Zionist world
and specifically the religious Zionist world.
Right. So in fact within the early
Zionists and there was a bit of a disagreement among the early
major Zionists thinkers as to whether the Tanakh specifically
should be at the center of their, you know, should be
something that the the the new Jew.
So the whether the new Jew ought to be reading the Tanakh not to
be paying attention into it, not to, you know, include it, have
it on their bookshelf and study it and and basically you have to
dwell in different schools of thought.
So for example had Haram as Ashad Sieginsberg and his pupil
Khan Naham Bialik. They were among those who loved
the Tanakh, who wrote about the Tanakh who wrote poetry.
You know, interweaving the Tanakh and really felt the
Tanakh to be should be the basis of Hebraic thought and culture
going forward. And Gershomme Charlam and
others. Whereas you have on the other
side but the chef skin and others who basically said no,
no, we want to get rid of all that.
We want to push that, put that all away.
But again, within the Zionist movement you still had many like
Ben Guri who really, really loved it.
However, the religious Zionist movement as such really got
going only after in 1967, four 67 was very, very small.
You showed America Sarab and a little bit surrounding it but
actually it was only after the six day one, only after the
conquest of Udan Shamran and your Shalim et cetera.
Where suddenly had this explosion of this new this new
section of the population, new type of Judah.
The new sector called Religious Zionism in its own schools and
its own Yeshiva and its own seminaries own Curricula and and
Tanakh learning over those decades.
Or let's say 70s, eighties, 90s became at the center of the
Religious Zionist movement. First because distinguished them
from the Haredi counterparts. Obviously the Haredi well-being
much more interested in rabbinics and and in Talmud and
its commentaries but also because the Tanakh is the
religious but also the cultural and linguistic and historical
artifact at the center of the religious Zionist world view.
Right. So you're you're walking through
Udan Shamran and you know you're you want to be part of the land
and develop the land and and what is what is the book that
you whip out. You obviously whip out the
Tanakh and you say here is the battle of David Tamela, 14 and
here is where you know, Shmoel did this and this, you know.
And you, you connect yourself to the history of the land through
the reading through the study of the Tanakh.
And that became central for the, for the educational.
It's a curriculum, educational ideology of the religious
Zionist movement. And again it was a return to
Tanakh. And return to not not just
Tanakh through, you know, not necessarily through its
commentaries, but just the very words and the very, you know,
the basic data, the basic, the names and the places and the
people. That was what grounded those who
were resettling the lands of Israel to the land itself was
part of the Tanakh that assumed of central imports.
That's point #2. A third historical sort of
context, which I think extremely important, is a development
within academic biblical studies as such, because for many
decades from the mid 19th century onwards, or even really
from the early 19th century, from the 19th century onwards,
much of academic biblical studies, especially in the
Germanic lands, was focused mainly on source criticism.
What I mean, what I mean about that is you take the Bible, you
take it to the home as a whole, and you try and break it down
and see, you know, which which sources are in which text.
You know, take the first few chapters of operations of
Genesis, Okay, what is AJ text, What is an E text?
What is AP text? You know, what are the
ideologies, different ideologies of JE and P?
Where were they situated historically?
You know, in in in which era were they written, in which
circumstances? How do they relate to each
other, Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera?
Like a more sophisticated DH? Say again?
Documentary hypothesis. But you know, you know, correct,
correct. So if you had the documentary
that that was exactly documentary hypothesis what I'm
talking about, let me is actually one of of several
hypothesis that abounded. Then you also had the the
supplementary hypothesis and the the fragmentary hypothesis.
But basically, yes. So source criticism in.
In other words, finding slicing down the to, not slicing down
the to write into different. Sources.
How are the four supposed authors interwoven with, you
know, their different? Correct.
Yeah.
How how the different source and
of course you know we know four but actually you know P is
made-up of of their various different sources and and
etcetera etcetera. You know many others positive,
many others. We know the four source because
that's the picture from Julian Velhausen that sort of conquered
the world. But.
But there were many arguments on this.
However, in round about the 1970s, nineteen 80s, they became
they became a shift within a small part of the biblical of
the world of biblical studies. Basically said as follows.
Let's leave aside the source questions for a moment because
that's actually very technical and quite boring often.
Right. And let's look at the Tanakh.
Let's look at the books of Tanakh as as we have them, as
finished artifacts, OK. As pieces of literature that we
have sitting in front of us. And what can we say about them?
Right. And and basically applying the
tools of literary analysis, literary criticism to the text
that we have in front of us without worrying too much.
You know, was this half of the chapter written by this one?
This half of the chapter written by that one?
Forget it. Just the book.
As is the book of Genesis, as is the book, you know, How does the
book of Genesis seek to to tell its stories?
What, what methods does it use? You know, what kinds of themes
are there? What kind of, you know, how are
parallels used and and and leading words.
And you know, and and structure of stories and vocabulary and
all the things that go into analyzing, let's say a text from
Plato or Shakespeare or Dostoevsky, whatever it is.
Treating it as a real text, it's.
Treating it as a text, fragmentary, correct.
Treating it as a phantext. Now of course, this is, this is
decidedly more friendly to the to, to to the religious world,
right, Because many in the religious world could say, ah,
you know, we also believe it's a finished text and and you know,
trying to find, let's say, you know, interesting literary
structures and brace it. Well, you know that that's
actually not a million miles away from what some of the
classic Parashani were doing. And that's something that we can
get involved in as well. So.
So is this turn in in academic Google studies.
And I have another book here. The problem is I'm blurred.
So I'm sort of trying to show you this here.
I don't know. You can see it called the lit
the literary what else that was. It called back.
Back, yeah. Yeah, no, it's not going to his
background. Oh, it's Delivery Guide to the
Bible. The Literary Guide to the Bible,
edited by Robert Alton Frank Commode.
It was written in the 80s or something, and it's a whole
series of essays now, exactly on this point.
It's a series of essays from different authors on on every
book of the Bible, again from a literary perspective.
But the literary perspective can yield great sort of great
treasures of of insight, right? Especially to some of the more
literarily rich books of the Tanakh, let's say the book of
Ruth or the book of Samuel or the book of Job.
I mean these are, these are very finely woven and brilliant works
of literature in addition to being a holy scripture,
etcetera, whatever they can be. One of the main leaders of this
was was Robert Alter and I've had him on my podcast, the
podcast The Jewish Ideas and a very interesting man.
He's still sharp as anything at the age of 88 and and really one
of the great biblical translators of our age.
But what's fascinating is if you read his, he, you know,
translated the entire Tanak with the commentary, The altar
Bible's a phenomenal achievement.
But if you read that Tanakh, so on the one hand it is based on
source criticism and he'll mention it occasionally.
But actually the vast portion of it is noting again the literary
qualities and and and techniques and and structures and and
everything used within within these books.
And actually because of that, he will invoke things like
Midrashim, he'll invoke Ibn Ezra, he loves Ibn Ezra and
occasionally invoke Russia because these people were also
noticing this sort of thing. So.
So in the biblical the world, the world of biblical studies,
there was a turn on the part of some figures towards this this
literary way of of reading the Tanakh.
OK, so those are basically the three as far as I can tell, to
understand the gush method properly.
I would say to to note that within the 19th century there
was a return in general to commentary and study of Tanakh
as the basis for making great statements and you know, drawing
a philosophy of Judaism as such And also the centrality of the
Tanakh in the religious Zionist world and and you know, the
return to it at the centre of the curriculum.
And thirdly, the development in Bible studies among academics
that opened a door. I wouldn't say that this is
mainstream academic biblical studies.
And you know, a lot of people, a lot of biblical scholars
nowadays consider this kind of, you know, just froth on the
waves of of real biblical biblical studies.
However, that definitely opened the door for a more religious
way of viewing the text. All right, so let's talk about
the Gooch method itself. Right.
OK. So I have outlined 3 broad
characteristics, I believe of the gush method.
It's funny because I seem to be working in threes.
I don't always do that but you know, it's it's a nice number.
We'll we'll go with that three board characteristics if anyone
wants. I actually wrote an essay about
this about seven or eight years ago, which I published in a
festive that was dedicated to my father and his retirement from
the rabbinant. But maybe on the podcast I can
put a link to it to a PDF or something.
Anyone wants to read it where I outline what I'm saying a bit
more. Having said that, it was written
about seven or eight years ago and my opinions have changed a
little bit, but you know. That's what we have.
OK, so main characteristics. The characteristic #1 that I
think is most salient within many of the writings, again
generally, generally of this good school is the is the
primacy of pshat okay the primacy of the plain text
reading of of the miracle text and really the.
So firstly, the effort to find out what the pshat is, what
Makaga like what actually happened, what is you know what
is the what information is there to try and understand it and
also to have a direct encounter with the text.
In other words the method of a a Gushanach teacher is to first
and foremost read thoroughly the the biblical passage that you're
trying to read the the book or the chat or whatever it is.
Read it properly, thoroughly notice it, all of it before you
touch a single Purush, right before you touch a single
Midrash. Now, of course this is very much
contrary, let's say, to the more classic Harry D way of doing
things that that's practiced even till today, which is that
you, you learn homage with one finger in rushing.
Right or or one finger on on the note the article note to the
bottom. Why Because it's unthinkable to
to read a bunch of sukim without it's you know without the
Targum. Whichever Targum you use you
know without time you right. Whereas the with Nerna read the
book of Root as is just the book surface level and and on that
surface level make sense of it. What is it trying to tell you?
And because again this is Sean Carmi called this method the the
literary theological method. This is the point.
It's literary and it's theological in the sense that we
we are we are trying to to find out what's going on but but we
believe that what is written in the shut is is the foundational
message of the book And therefore to find out what is
the message that God or the prophet or whatever it was
wanted us to know you have to find out what that book is
actually saying, right. It is an essential religious
thing. It's not just a literary thing,
not just, oh, I want to understand, but no, actually the
main message is contained in what the book actually says or
the book actually says, requires an understanding of the chat.
Now, now, part of the gush method is to to keep to a
certain degree this, this, this endeavour on the Tanakhi level.
What I mean by that is, is a phrase that's often invoked by
many who use this, which is a Tanakhma Faresha Tatma, right?
The Bible. It explains itself and what that
means is. And again, this is hardly new.
It's used by Similar ideas are used by Hazam, by the
commentaries, which is that sukim in other places of the
Tanakh can shed a great deal of light on, you know, let's say
textual quandary that you have at the moment or or something
like that, right? So basically your classic gush
teacher will read the read the passage or read the book, try
and understand it as best as possible just from reading that,
but also bring in other sukim, other methods and other ideas
from the Tanakh itself from the biblical books, because that is
seen as as the first port of call in order to try and
understand something. Right now, let's be very clear.
They aren't against the use of the use of piroshim.
But that use comes after you've read it, thought about it,
discussed it, asked questions, tried to answer it, and then
let's see. Yeah.
Supplement. Exactly.
Let's see what the rumban says about this and let's see what
you know. See if any interesting Midrashim
that that that sort of open our eyes.
And the truth is that if you approach that method and then
read them with Hashim, so you often discover them of Hashim
that that that you've anticipated them, that you've
they. Asked the Famous famously.
Get on with the Story of Avraham and and the Fire Furnace, the
Midrash, which we talked about previously on the podcast.
There's an intertextual link. He.
Draws the intellectual links everywhere.
Let me give you a good example, which I quite like.
So for example with Mordechai and Esther, right?
So Esther, they have this whole back and forth in whichever
chapter, Chapter 4 or whatever it was of the Magilla of you
know, you know you have to go to the king and plead on behalf of
your people. And as I said, no and then
etcetera. You know salvation will come to
the Jews from another place but you and your your father's house
will be annihilated. Your father's house will will
you know will not live to tell the tale and and you know so so
this has been it's been pointed out again by tears that I had So
for instance reading this in the context of the battle between
Shaul and Agag right show the first king of Israel and Agag
that Amalekite and basically seen the Mordechai and Esther
story as a second chance of the House of Shaul because Mordechai
who's who's as his uncle is shown as he's described as as
Ben Kish Ishimini right from the same tribe.
He's also Ben Kish he's on the line of Shaul and they're having
a sort of a second chance to be able to destroy Amalek in the
form of Haman. Right.
And see. And then you.
Exactly. And then you understand you and
your father's house be destroyed.
Meaning if you don't take this chance, then the House of Shah
will have absolutely failed in his mission.
And. And basically, there's no way
back for it, right. And again, this is sort of an
intertextual link, but it sheds tremendous light on sort of a
broader psychological political drama that's going on between
the protagonist in the book of Esther.
So yes, that is that's sort of characteristic #1 is a focus on
shat and a use of of the Tanakh itself.
Other places in the Tanakh in order to shed light on the shat
before going to any refresh him before going to to any madrasim
which which are generally brought in as a court of sort of
a post hoc to the analysis that you've already done.
OK, that is point #1. The 2nd characteristic is very
important. Is has been expressed by by one
of the main teachers of Moshe Lichtenstein as Torat Adam, OK,
the Torah of man. In fact, he he expressed it as
such in this book here called Hisihati I.
Love that book? It's an important book.
This is, this is the major book of essays by central figures
within the Gushtonach world. So somewhat self reflecting on
that methodology etcetera, etcetera.
By the way, it includes sections from a speech given by of Aaron
Ecklestein at Stern College in 1962 already saying that we
should encourage the use of of of literary criticism in our
study of the Tanakh right. So this.
So in a way he actually anticipates and predates alter
and others who who only you know came into this in the 70s and
80s and this is a very very early instantiation.
Anyway, that's sort of a piece of trivia as neither here nor
there just thought your audience might enjoy that.
But Ravoj Nekancine draws attention to the fact that that
Torah Adam, what I mean by that is that human concerns and human
questions and stories about human beings are at the very
centre of the of the story, right.
This is the major, this is one of the major concerns of the
Tanakh. So, you know the Tanakh gives us
stories after stories about love and hatred about parents and
children, about birth and death, about, you know, loyalty versus
treachery, about, you know the development of various Midot and
you know and and cycles of Chuva numbers.
It's a it's a very intensely human drama and as such it
should it should be studied as such and and again the literary
theological method. If you presume that this is the
case, that means that one of the main messages of the text is to
be found in the shot, but also to be found in the deeply human
stories that exist within the Tanakh, right?
So if you study the, the stories of Yosef and his brothers, for
instance, or of Yakov or of of David Hamela, a lot of these are
are not necessarily great religious stories as such.
You know, they go places and they fight people and they have
conversation. There are many stories, but
within those stories are embedded very deep and important
religious messages. These are the messages that
Tanakh wants us as Jews to have, right.
And again, it's almost an astonishing discovery.
In other words, trying to really understand the the root of the
fight between Joseph and his brothers or of, I don't know,
pick any other characters in Tanakh, you know or the fight
between Benjamin, the Civil War between Benjamin and and the
rest of the end of Shaft team. So but that is that human drama
is at the very center of the Tanakh and therefore the center
of the message that Tanakh are trying to get home to us and
therefore we must study it and try to understand it.
And to be honest, there's a little bit of of that in the
first from bun of the Torah, right.
Because famously, Rashi, the first Rashi on Torah, asks the
question, you know, a possibly slightly tongue and cheek
question, which is why the Torah didn't begin with the first
mitzvah in you know, the first mitzvah given to the Benet
Israel. So why doesn't the Torah begin
in in the middle of chapter whatever.
It's 12/13 of Exodus right? Why doesn't it do that And and
Ramban counters on Rashi immediately says what do you
mean miss out the whole of of the book of Genesis.
You know, with all the stories and all the lessons and all the
Marseille vote and all, you know, all the dramas that
they're in. These are crucial elements of
what the Tanakh is. They're crucial elements of the
message of the Tanakh wants to give over to its adherents.
Right. And that's a central part also
of the English method of paying attention to the human drama.
And one again I'll get a brief example of this again from the
book of Romosa Lettenstein on Moses.
He wrote a book about Moses first in Hebrew then it
translates to English envoy of God envoy of his people.
I think the subtitle is. And basically he portrays the
the, the story of Moshe Arbeno, you know, so he's born in Egypt,
grows up in Egypt. When he's in Egypt, you know, he
finds an Egyptian beating a Jew and he, he kills the Egyptian
and then runs away to the desert.
The bash of Moshe. He gives his whole, I think,
very brilliant disposition on on Moses as basically having given
up on on mankind giving up on human society.
You know, he sees that there's no justice in human society that
he, he stops the Egyptian beating the Jew.
And then therefore he and because of that he's haunted
basically for his life as he says.
You know I've I've had it up to here with with with human
society. I'm going to the desert.
I'm going to meditate. I'm going to have this kind of
intimate awesome connection with God by myself without the dross
of human society around to get in the way of me.
Anyone else. I'm I'm going to become you know
a a sort of a guru meditating on top of a mountain basically the
whole point of the revelation of the of the burning Bush is to
tell them no you have to go back.
Actually the, the, the the salvation is not to be found in
the desert, is to be found among the people and deliberate the
people and give, you know commandments to the people and
and that's the whole. And again, I'm obviously not
doing justice within the 60 seconds I described it.
But I thought it was quite a brilliant way again of reading
the character of Moshe, of understanding his own inner
crisis when being expelled from Egypt, his his rationale for
going to the desert and the rationale for calling him back
and basically saying no, actually Moshe, you've misread
the situation and what God wants isn't gurus meditations of the
mountainside, rather it's people who actually who lead the masses
and and and lead them to a better place.
So that's another example, again to Rata Adam, the human story,
human concerns, human lessons, and stories about human beings
being at the very center of of the Gushtonach method.
And and I think that's important because part of the tendency, I
think, especially in Ishibot, is that we sort of give the
characters in Tanakh almost we we kind of dehumanize them in a
way, if you know what I mean, There's a dehumanization a
little bit. And so we kind of like we're
there's a certain vantage point of like, you know, Moshe can do
no wrong. Therefore you're already taking
a sort of biased angle and not really, not really allowing the
text to kind of develop his story.
You know what I mean? It's almost like you kind of
have to, you know, make up you're white.
Washing you're. White Washington and and these
things are coming from good intention.
But it's you're missing so much that way. 100% and and this goes
back to a debate that that was really raged more more or less a
couple decades ago in Israel surrounding the phrasal concept
of Tanakh Gova E naim. Right.
Learning Tanakh at what they call at eye level and basically
treating the major protagonist of the Tanakh, as you say much
more as human beings than as you know some sort of angels or some
sort of you know a different breed who can do no wrong.
But but that's very important and really the the funnily
enough, the Gush Tanakh method, because it's focused on human
beings, is much more willing to to act to to, let's say.
Knowledge. Part of the tradition, yet to be
part of the tradition that acknowledges folks because of
course there are some. For example, Rumban has no
problem stating that the avatar did you know sins here or this
you know he's sometimes critical of them.
Others as well. And then see others as well who
who have, who do do this from time to time and again done
respectfully and done, you know with the awareness they are
supposed to be religious heroes and role models etcetera,
etcetera. Having said that, it's again
much more, much more sensitive to the possibility and the
people were dealing with the human beings.
But it's specifically the human trajectories.
For example, the the process of Chuva, of Yahuda and Reuven and
others in the story of Genesis. Like that's part of their
greatness. That's part of the religious
message that that is at the center of those stories.
That's characteristic #2, characteristic #3.
And this one has also been the subject of many, many, a lot of
discussion. Also, a lot of criticism is the
methodology and what I call methodological omnivorousness,
meaning the tendency to basically make use of any and
every method of analysis that you can Right so many, many sort
of protagonists of teachers of the Gustanak method will use,
you know, history, philology, archaeology, linguistics, you
know, whatever you like, all the possible different methods that
are used to to study the text and study the historical
appearance and you try and make sense of it.
These appear if you look at the footnotes of many of these many
of the texts, you know they'll refer to this academic study or
this thing in the Israel Museum or or this part of the geography
and topography of the Land of Israel And this theory about the
you know, the the place names etcetera, etcetera.
And especially, and this is something I've noted before,
especially tools of literary criticism.
In other words tools of of looking at a text and noting OK,
what are the the parallels the classic structures the, the, the
main words that accompany each story was called the light vote
in in German. You know ambiguities,
repetitions, all the various things that a story does in
order to capture the attention of the reader.
They will say, ah, this exists in the Tanakh.
But again, the literary theological method, it exists in
the Tanakh in order to capture to the reader's attention for
what end? To the end of, you know,
understanding the message, the religious message in the text.
And therefore that's supposed to, you know, speak to to, to
the adherent that they do today, right?
It's not just understanding it for the sake of understanding.
It's understanding it for the sake of getting some sort of
religious message or inspiration or or instruction, you know,
thousands of years later. You.
Want to come in on this? Forgot what I was going to say.
Go on. I was, I was going to mention.
I was going to mention the fact that you know, people who are,
let's say, adherence of the biblical source criticism method
will view that as kind of cherry picking because.
You're jumping the gun. We're going to get.
I want to. So we'll get to the critiques
because the critiques of the gush method are very important
part of understanding the gush method itself.
And and one thing I will say about the the teachers of the of
the of this school and 100% of their credit is that they're
very aware of these criticisms and they speak about them, they
write about them and they acknowledge them and they try
and struggle with them. Because the truth is that
there's no method of teaching and learning to knock which is
which is flawless which is without its its downsides,
without its difficulties And we're going to get to the
advantages and disadvantages in one moment.
I just want to lay out the characteristics and then jump in
because all all three characteristics that I mentioned
now are open to quite serious and scathing critique which I
want to outline when the time comes.
Before you, I remember what I wanted to say before you get to
the to the critiques. This method with all the
literary constructs and you know, the chiasms and keywords
and all that to say differently, this would be a very
sophisticated understanding of Debra Torbil Shamane Adam.
Yes. That I mean essentially the
would mean that God, that Hashem, made the Torah in a way
where it can be looked at from a critical vantage point in order
to unearth its its messages. 100% Let me give you actually a
little example which doesn't come from the Grishinak method,
but it's such it is a brilliant essay.
Everyone should read it, which is an essay written by a
professor of literary criticism called shortly after the Second
World War called Eric Orbach, right?
So it's a famous, famous essay and it's called Odysseus Scar.
OK, Odysseus Scar. And basically it is a it is a
brief comparison of the literary methods used by by by Homer, by
the great Greek playwright Homer in his, in his work on DC and
his epic poem The Other Odysseus.
I learned it in Hebrew. That's the problem in Shalim
college. I actually can't remember what
it's called in English. Odysseus and Odysseus and and
the Book of Christians and the. What do you say?
The. Odyssey.
The Odyssey. That's the one.
Odyssey. Odysseus is the person.
OK, fine. The problem is I did my
undergrad in Hebrew and so a lot of, a lot of the stuff cycles
around my head in Hebrew. Yes, so.
So this is a brilliant essay and he points out the following
which which which I thought was very thought provoking, which is
that so he talks about an episode in the book of of the
Odyssey in which so so Odysseus returns to his mansion after his
Kingdom after many decades. I'm wondering didn't recognize
him, etcetera, etcetera. And basically he's he's treated
as a guest and then another nurse basically bathes him and
notices a big scar on his leg and thereby identifies him
because only Odysseus had that scar And and Homer goes into a
digression of hundreds of lines describing the hunt in which
Odysseus got that scar right. And and basically shows how
Homer uses every description he never said just says Odysseus he
you know the fleet footed you know strong bodes brave or this
is and who describes everything goes into every protagonist's
emotional state and state of mind and basically uses enormous
amounts of description describe actually very simple you know on
a hunter with a boar and basically how he got the scar.
Whereas in contrast of this too, the story of Akila Jitskak,
right in Genesis 22, because that story is such a powerful
and poignant story and is told with such unbelievable economy
of phrase and economy of expression, right, the whole
story. You firstly, you never have any
insight whatsoever into the minds of of the protagonist
involved. You don't know what Avram was
thinking. You don't know what Yitzhak was
thinking. You don't know the rationale
behind why God told him to do what he did and and you know you
just have very almost almost laughably shop sukim where says
you know Yitzhak turns to the fact that everyone says you know
where's the where's the where's the lamb oh God will show us the
lamb you know where's the knife is the knife like you have very
brief short absukim and and basically the Urbak's point was
these are two very different ways of telling a story because
the Homeric way of telling the story leaves no room for the for
the for the reader for the interpreter.
Right. It tells you everything you
could possibly know. You can't know any more than
what's told you because it filled the detail.
Whereas the Akina Gitzhak story is so lacking.
Detail is so open to interpretation.
Is so sort of invites the reader in, in order so that the reader
can participate and sort of put themselves in the shoes of the
characters of the story and try and imagine, you know, what was
Adam thinking? Was he start thinking, you know,
was Adam happy to do this or or devastated, you know, what was
going on here? You know, was he trying to delay
or he trying to do it quickly? So there are.
In the world of writing, it's called show versus tell.
Yes, yes, in, in many ways, yeah, it's.
Really it's it's really showing us.
It's not getting into the detail.
And and of course that, you know, so.
So Arbach's interests were purely literary.
In other words, just showing, OK, two different very ancient
authors from 3000 years ago who are trying to tell us different
stories. But of course the point is that
that analyzing stories from this literary perspective, according
to, again, the Gutanachment is literally theological, that it's
supposed to give over religious messages.
Why is Akhil I just have told so sparsely?
And what are the the, the, what are the what are the the
midrashim? What are the relative of Hashim
and readers supposed to do? And how they supposed to insert
themselves in the story and participate in it every year
when it's read again on Rosh Hashanah And anyway?
As an example of a literary analysis of a certain story.
But let's move on. Let's move on to the advantages
and disadvantages, if that's OK. All right.
So the advantages of this system is quite obvious and that's why
it's spread with such tremendous success.
One of them is, I mean it presents very much a coherence
and a unity to the Tanakh itself, right, and shows the
brilliance behind the Tanakh. Now, you had on here a couple
months ago, Rabbi David Foreman of the Alabita website, and
basically that's what he does, he all of his stuff.
And it's very much part of the gush Tanakh world, even if he
not exactly, but very much adjacent to it, basically
showing the intimate, intricate connections to different
stories, the Tanaka, the language and the structures and
the characters and this and that, and basically showing how
the whole thing fits together so brilliantly and so beautifully.
And that gives, of course, the religious, you know, June
nowadays a lot of comfort and a lot of encouragement, right.
This is the holy book. This is supposed to be telling
us and giving us the instruction that we need, the religious
instruction. And it's nice to know that it is
also a phenomenal work of literary genius, you know.
And in fact the more you study it, the more you discover layers
upon layers upon layers and put layers of of of different levels
of interconnection and and and significance which and again
this is the sort of thing you might expect from a divine text
let's say or you know a very important religious text.
And therefore the Guchtenach method it gives its gives its
readers that very strong, that very strong feeling without
resorting to the Farshim. Because the problem is you can
always use Midrashim and Farshim to sort of plug gaps.
If you're constantly trying to plug holes in the text, you feel
like the Tanakh itself is somewhat deficient as it stands,
whereas. No, Yes, I'm agreeing.
Yeah. Exactly.
Whereas the Guchtenak method is the exact opposite neuro the
Tanakh is incredibly rich and suffused with meaning and and
you know is constantly playing this game of of drawing in the
reader and having them participate in the act of of
exegesis and and again you know for someone who's hoping for
religious meaning from that book that is extremely encouraging
right. It's you know it lays it it
gives us all purity and simplicity to that.
It also serves a little bit and and you or I form and mentioned
this a little bit as well, let's say an implicit rejoinder to the
biblical critics. Right.
Because the biblical critics say, look at this, look at this
mess, look at this anthology of different texts from different
time periods and different authors, and none of them really
fit together very well. And you can clearly see the
seams between them. They're all contradictory and
they're all, you know, they're full of redundancies and full
of, you know, different, you know, issues and problems with
the text where the problem comes along, the Guchtenach method
comes along and basically says no, the opposite is actually the
case. The case is that it's not full
of, you know, difficulties and redundancies, actually full of
very subtle and very brilliant sort of, you know, methods,
techniques and content and and basically something that is
sufficient for the religious seeker to gain from.
To a tremendous degree. It is an implicit rejoin and
that's why I do, I think it spreads so well.
It also spreads so well because it is quite sophisticated in the
sense, as I mentioned before, that if it is methodologically
broad, if it's omnivorous, if it does, you know, take a bit from
from history and from linguistics and from archaeology
and from, you know, geography of Israel, from flora and fauna and
science and that and you know, and literary analysis and and
and all of that. So, so you feel like you're in
this very vast and exciting conversation with many different
disciplines. You're kind of sewing everything
together. And again, that that is to a
large degree intellectually satisfying for many.
It's also like built on the on the shoulders of giants.
You know, it's it's really, it's like like the the the fact that
we have technology today to find intertextual links, for example,
or chiastic structures that didn't exist, you know, 100
years ago, 200 years ago. So that advantage we have today
is even I think that's why it's so popular.
Yes, that it does play quite well to the, yes, you're right
to to new discoveries all the time in in in you know
archaeology and history etcetera.
But also new discoveries in the text due to you know search
engines and AI and all the things that we can do now with
text that we couldn't, that would that were incredibly
difficult to do back in the days of our computers.
Because you had to have someone who knew the entire text back
and forth in order to to start to even start doing that.
I should OK, I should also should have probably done this
at the beginning but I shouldn't make a point that many of the
elements one of the characteristics of the Gustanach
method. You can find elements of in
Khazal. Find elements of it among the
the Rashonim among the acronym. You want to mention that, yes.
Yes, correct this is. This is perhaps something I
should have mentioned a long time ago.
I'm not claiming the Gustanach method is anything I would say
radically new. It is a synthesis of various
things that were there, that have been there all along, but
to a much, you know, much sharper, a much more
self-conscious degree as well. And then that's something
important, that's something important to mention.
Yes. So, so, yeah.
So these are the major elements I think of advantage, the
coherence, the implicit rejoinder to a little criticism,
the the kind of the air of sophistication.
And and this to a certain degree to my mind is what is behind its
tremendous spread among the religious Zion as well among
modern author as well in the United States and England.
And rabbis are using it, teachers are using it.
You have Jonathan Sacks and you have the foundation, the VBM
website. You have a ton of stuff that
I'll have beat all these things that are using it.
OK those are the those are the advantages.
Now what? What are the critiques that
could possibly be levelled against this And this is
obviously there's a lot and again I want to go through three
of them, one to each of the major characteristic dimensions.
The first characterization that I mentioned is is pshat.
OK. The the the pursuit of pursuit
of the Pshat level and the and the major critique to be
levelled here is well who is to say that understanding the pshat
of the Sukim is actually the main thing you should be doing.
Who's to say that that is the most important that the sort of
the level of of of significance that is most important.
Right. I'll read you a short passage in
Zohar actually which is brought which is quoted by Remote
Lichtenstein his his essay here in the book Hisi Khati.
I'll first translate it in. I'll first I'll first read a
little bit of it in in in the original Aramaic of the Zohar.
Because basically there's upon the Zohar which says that the
the words of the Torah, the word that we have written are merely
the garment, right. Whereas the actual whereas the
whereas the actual kabbalistic meaning, the deep meaning that
is again proposed in Propanza and the Zohar that is the real
from that, that's sort of the goof.
That's the the main thing underneath it's the thing which
is enclosed and of course the the implication being that that
only fools would take a look purely at the garment and not
take a look and not focus on what is what is beneath.
And and you know the line here I want to read is afterwards a
high gufa midlabscha bill vouchin the inland spur in the
high Alma Tipschin fools the alma long mystically.
Ella Baha hava levusha the ehus for the orator Velo yad E yatir
Velo Mr. Klim Bamad the ehu takat hahu levusha right in yad
in yatir lo Mr. Klim Belusha. Ella Begufa the ehu tahat hahu
lavousi, you know on the surface level it's actually to be found
in the deepest deepest you know substrata of meaning namely the
Kabbalistic significance is given to the the words of sukim
and and and you know the which is essentially the interactions
between the various sphere art and the the four worlds etcetera
etcetera. And and that for the Kabbalists
is the main point and therefore stating or or learning to not as
if the main religious messages to be found are to be found on
the Prashad level from the Kabbalistic level.
From a Kabbalistic perspective is is absolutely wrong.
And also might I add from the Maimonides and philosophical
level it's also wrong to a certain degree.
Because even though both the Kabbalists and Maimonides would
give some degree of legitimacy to learning the shots, but they
would say that actually the main meat and potatoes of the main
message is to be found in the the the deeply submerged wisdom.
And for Maimonides, that was of course physics and metaphysics
of his time, the neo Aristotelian philosophy of his
time, yeah. But even then, Maimonides
doesn't do violence to the text, whereas Kabbalah does violence
to the text. So we're talking about two
completely different ways of going about that.
I'm afraid while I sort of agree with you, I sort of agree with
you. It depends very much who you ask
because many would say that for example, Maimonides depiction of
God as not only not having a body but not having emotions.
That's the my modern team perspective for some that's
doing tremendous violence. The text, the text repeatedly
said God gets angry, God regrets God does this, God does that.
You know, and and my mother basically says none of this.
I don't know if you can call that violence.
That's more something that doesn't fit within within our
sensibilities. It has to be worked out.
Listen, violence is when you say the text doesn't mean what it
says for no other reason than we have a secret tradition.
So. Right.
So, so I I understand your point even though I stand by what I
said before that that one man's reinterpretation is another
man's violence. It really depends on which side.
You're right. Meaning, you know, it's it's a
matter at the end of the day of of personal ideological
proclivity. But I want to just if I can play
devil's advocate for a moment which is that for the from the
kabbalistic perspective, there's also another problem with with
sort of chasing Prashad, which is there's some parts of the
Tanakh where the Pshad level seems strange.
OK. For example, the last third
quarter or no, I don't know exactly how much of partial by
Vaishlax, but four tips or Kim just detailing the the AL Uffet
Edom, The Chieftains of Edom, what's that doing there?
You know, in in Genesis where you have tons and in fact
different, I mean other places you have a lot, a lot of
genealogies. What's it doing there?
You know, who cares if if you're going to defend everything, say
shut level is the most important and that's where you have the
religious significance. So that's fine.
When you're talking about Akira Yitzhak, that's fine.
When you're talking about, you know, there's some very meaty
parts to the Tanakh, but also parts the Tanakh.
You're not entirely sure what is going on and why it's there.
And it doesn't seem to have really a good explanation of
shuttle. However the capitalists say no,
you don't understand and the the chiefs of Edom that you know the
Citra Accra and this symbolizes that and this is this fear and
you know and they they they weave A tremendous sort of
cosmos of of significance. And if you buy it, if you're
willing to swallow that pill, then those parts of the torrent
parts of the tunnel become very meaningful.
In other words, the another problem with with chasing the
Shard or centralizing the Shard is the Shard doesn't always, at
least to us, to our minds in 21st, it doesn't always appear
as if it's the most satisfying. These were religiously
meaningful part of, you know, part of the Torah.
Which it's a critique, again, doesn't need to be a devastating
one, but it's there, should be acknowledged, and it's there.
OK, so that's point #2. That's point number one.
Sorry, that's the critique Contra the deep shot.
Now there's another critique Contra Contra to the Torah
tadam, Torah tadam. Again, the centrality of the
human story in the human drama is what I call the historicist
critique. Historicist critique goes a
little bit as follows. It's that.
It's that basically to say, let me put it as follows to say that
that we should be reading the Tanakh and following the human
drama sort of presupposes there are a set of of human questions
or human quandaries which which are universal and timeless,
right. And which were were present in
the Tanakh and could be understood and and you know, and
wrestled with today. Right.
So we read the story of Yosef and his brothers and we see, you
know, the the, the, the hatred of the brothers and the
fratricides and the arc of Chuvan.
You know, we can read it. We can understand it.
We can take lessons from it. That's the that's the whole
point of it. But that presupposes there is a
timeless quality to those stories which which can be fully
empathized with today. OK, the problem is that the
Tanakh took place a long time ago in a very foreign
environment, right? To place over three, you know,
between the time and Tanakh, between 3 1/2 and 2 1/2 thousand
years ago, give or take. That's when it was supposed to
have taken place. And and the assumptions and and
the world of that time was just incredibly different, right.
Let's take the the figure of Yaakov.
Right. The sorts of things that Yaakov
goes through in his life. Very difficult for us to
understand or sympathize with today and the fact that his
brothers willing to kill him over the birthright you know
marrying 2 Sisters but the but the father-in-law switching them
out, you know favouring one child over the other.
You know fleeing and and and basically you know when the
father-in-law comes in searching for the idols the one searching
the idols he says oh whoever has it will kill them because he's
the father. He can just do what he likes.
You know the the Shimon and Levy killing.
There's all sorts of things going on in the story of Yakov,
which which many would say the the region in the 21st century
can't make head or tails of this, right.
Can't make head or tails If the relationship between parents and
children are so different or the relationships between let's say
a king and a subject in the 21st century is so different.
The relationship between family members or or or, you know, the
the religious experience in general of people in the 21st
century is so radically different that it's actually
sort of fruitless to try and, you know, read the Tanakh and
gain exactly the messages that were there 2000 years ago, 1000
years ago and are now here today.
And what the the argument is that our world's a bit too
different. And the truth is that this is a
critique that's level, not just at the Tanakh.
So for example, let's take Shakespeare, right.
There are wonderful plays of Shakespeare, you know, many
works of absolute genius and some of them do, some of them do
broach very universal human themes, the plays of
Shakespeare. But some of them broach the
sorts of themes, you know, Henry the fifth, let's say, or
whatever, which would be difficult for us to understand
today, right. The the, the expectation of a
soldier to follow his king to the death, let's say, or or or
to the kings of absolute power of life and death of anyone
else. And you know, uneasy is the
head, the rest of the crown or pick out whatever quote you
might. And these are, these are things
that actually aren't so readily transferable today, right?
And if it's Shakespeare, we can put that to one side.
But if the whole point of the Gushnach method is to to
understand the Torata Adam, to to tease it out and to to sort
of say that those situations and those questions, those
quandaries are directly transferable to us three and
1000 years later, well, that might be asking a little bit too
much of of those texts and of those ideas.
Because people change. We we no longer have the
relationships between fathers and sons and and kings and
subjects and social norms change.
Sorry. Social norms.
Social norms have changed. Technology has changed.
You know, can we can we relate to a world in which in which,
you know, 50% of infants die before the age of three, or in
which one in four women die of childbirth?
Or in which, you know, people really believed animistic
spirits to be alive and really, you know, sacrificed human
children to try and appease gods again.
So the point is so much the Tanakh seems so foreign to us
that if Toronto Adam is at the very centre of your Tanakh
Tanakh sort of learning, then then maybe you're you're
throwing your students into a world which which just doesn't
speak to people so well that doesn't have the same
assumptions and therefore what are the kinds of lessons we can
draw from it and you don't seem very happy, but yes.
Forgive me, but I I, I I don't know.
I don't see it that way from the standpoint that yes, the
expression, the context, the time has its own way of
expressing human nature in certain, in a certain way at
that time. But human nature is still human
nature. Just even if you want to say we
have social norms changed, human nature is still being applied.
It's just being applied to in a different context.
You know, people might not believe in, you know, you know,
1000 demons running around around us, but people believe in
other superstitions today, maybe more sophisticated than it used
to be, but the ideas are sort of still timeless to me.
And another thing also with the gush method is that a lot of the
things that you mentioned is actually they do a great job
going into it and and bringing out what is actually consistent
within those stories that we can apply to ourselves today.
So I don't know about that. You know, so the truth is that
that that would have to be the response of those who who are
part of the gush method. In other words, the critique
that I levelled, I'm not sure I fully believe in it myself, but
but, but you can see where they would be coming from, right?
Where they're coming from, yes. I can hear you're coming from.
Let me let me sort of the reason why I called it the Historicist
Critique is because historicism is.
I mean, it means various different things actually,
depending on the context. One of the things it means is
it's a, it's a way of reading history which basically says
that all people or all you know, processes and events are product
of their time. Right, right.
So, you know, whatever Shakespeare was a product of his
time and Julius Caesar was a product of his time and Napoleon
was a product of the social and economic for and you know,
religious forces of his time and etcetera, etcetera, etcetera
going there wherever you want. You don't have people who stand
on their own. Everything's sort of a product
of their time. And the sources critique is to
say that the stories in the Tanakh, you know, are part of
their time share in a great deal of the assumptions and and
background information of their time.
And since things are so radically different in the West
in the 21st century from the Middle East of of the the 10th
century BCE. So it's actually very difficult
to make the the, the transition. And The funny thing is, is that,
and this is a little bit underrated, is that the Rumbum,
some of the Rumbums philosophy actually dives into this.
The Rumbum becomes in some parts of the guide and even in
mission, Torah becomes whatever. An amateur historian,
anthropologist. Right.
So, for example, when he talks about, you know, why is there
that is? So why is there the prohibition
of cutting off the payouts, of cutting off the sort of the
corners of the head? Because ancient idolatrous
priests used to have shaved heads on the side and therefore
we can't do that now, right. Or similar with the Korba, not
similar with the sacrifices, right.
You know, there were these sacrificial cults and the Torah
sort of participated in Enable, wasn't so happy about it and
therefore slowly abolish it, blah blah.
Now this is actually very interesting and actually quite
radical and daring of the Rambam to say something like that,
because what he's saying is at least some of them is at least
part of the Torah system, is mired in a distinctly ancient
Near Eastern milieu. It has a very strong context and
and we cannot understand it without the context, right?
In other words, had the Torah been given, let's say 1000 years
later in ancient Greece or ancient Rome or medieval France,
so maybe he wouldn't have had the sort of to shave the the
pale to not to do sacrifices, because that wouldn't have been
relevant to the time. He was also not responding to
like like archaeological findings where you feel like you
have to answer these things. He he just did it on his own,
you know, it's like it's. Great.
Well the truth is the rumble was basing on the best information
he had at the time, which to be honest wasn't very good.
But you know copies in Arabic he had of of ancient Babylonian or
Greek historians basically and sort of very ancient very sort
of vague anthropologist And and it's actually one of the
fascinating things of of what I mentioned at the beginning of
this podcast some of the pirishim of the 19th century.
You know people like Shadal or Benamos egg or others.
They were very in tune to the fact that they were living in a
time where a lot of great discoveries coming out about the
ancient Near East and they tried to to include it within their
within that commentary in Torah because they took this sort of
maimonity in line which is hey, as much as the Torah is sort of
a time, you know, treated as the time has document and you know,
hopefully it's it's values, let's say or its commandments
are timeless. However, there is a time bound
sort of a contextual element to the Torah, namely the ancient
Near Eastern, Canaanite, Israelite, you know, or Egyptian
or Babylonian context in which it existed.
And anyway, so that would be the nature of that particular
critique. Once again, not saying and none
of these critiques that I'm saying are devastating.
What I am saying is that they are they're there.
One has the background where I'm trying to.
You know, when I I say I'm going to read the story of Yosef and
his brother Zuyak or whatever, and and and deduce timeless
human sort of morals and lessons and religious lessons from it.
Well, you know, maybe you're sort of getting the wrong end of
the state, because your world is not the world of someone who,
you know, would sacrifice his Son if God told him to.
But even in the examples you gave, OK, so there's the mitzvah
of the Pieta Roshan, because you know, the the the adultery.
You still we don't do it. The idea is still timeless
within the mitzvah. That applies to us very much
today in terms of what it's trying to tell us.
Sure, it has a context because the Torah has to start.
The vision of the Torah has to start where it is, right?
That's the only way to get people out of idolatrous
thinking is to work within the confines of the context that the
Torah began with. That doesn't mean that the ideas
are not relevant anymore. Maybe the the the specific act,
OK, could have been different or not.
You know the the the specific mitzvah or or Isul, right?
Because it's based on a specific context, was done a certain way
right? And maybe could have been done
differently if not, like you said.
But the idea in itself of removing ourselves from all
idolatry very much alive and strong, the idea still carries
over. So.
It doesn't bother me so much these are all these are all very
I would say good counter arguments and and because look
because I'm sort of on the side of the Gushman again I have my
my reservations with it and I think it's perfect blah blah but
but the truth is that you know there are I think reasonable
responses to some of these criticisms but but but I would
hope that you admit at least a little bit the force of some of
these criticisms that the world of the Torah isn't always an
easy world for us to jump into or to understand.
I mean you know this comes to this certainly comes to a four
you know in the in the stories of let's say Yoshua and Shaftim
where battles ensue and people just massacre entire cities back
left right and centre. I mean even cities within Israel
or even you know it's just it's the sort of world where that
thing would happen where if you're going up against the
neighbour you do in fact wipe them entirely off the face of
the earth. It's just something that
difficult for us to get ourselves into that mindset.
Modern sensibilities don't, really.
Modern sensibilities yes and and just different assumptions about
what what is what is even conceivable like what is on our
radar. The cloud is I think different
the the. So that's that's critique #2.
So that is that is the historicist critique which which
goes against the the idea of Torah Adam.
The the problem of of centralized Torah Adam is is
that and the third critique is one that you mentioned Ben
earlier. You know against the, I would
say methodological eclecticism of the Gustanak method.
Is is the obvious academic critique right, Which is that
you can't pick and choose. You can't pick and choose.
You're not allowed to to plunder different different disciplines
in search of of things that you already in search of, of a of a
conclusion that you decided beforehand, right?
It has to fit your narrative. So to me, this is the strongest
I'm I'm saying all the arguments are important.
But it's only strong if you're looking at it as whether
something is evidence versus non evidence.
Can you consider this enough evidence or not evidence?
But when you're using it as supportive evidence, people do
that all the time. So let him explain what what?
It is, yes. But OK, so here's the problem.
The problem basically is, is that either when you're
approaching academic discipline, either you submit yourself to
the to sort of to the methods and the findings of a certain
discipline, or you don't, right? In other words, if you're in the
Haredi position, you say, I don't care what historians say,
historians ancient history is nonsense.
Archaeology is just what they happened to find on a Tuesday
when they once dug in the thing. They've actually no idea how
ancient civilizations really look like in any way.
Half of them are are crooked or anti religious anyway.
Whatever. I'm just going to ignore
archaeology, I'm ignore history. Linguistics as well, Very
speculative. Who knows how they really spoke,
who knows where really the lexical origins of origins of
various words are from and therefore, you know, I'm going
to push it to one side. So that is in a funny way a sort
of an internally coherent way of approaching the world, right?
You're saying this discipline is Tref.
I'm not going to touch it. It's nonsense.
It contravenes, but I believe to be true and therefore I won't
dismiss it entirely. Or the other way of approaching
the world is saying, listen, I believe that history and
historians are, you know, are doing serious work and based on
good evidence and you know, and the archaeologists and the
lingual linguists. And therefore I'm going to
follow wherever the archaeological and historical
evidence is strongest, leads us best like, you know, with the
reasonable caveat that you know historians sometimes get it
wrong and archaeologists sometimes get it wrong.
But basically submit yourself to the proposition that all
academics submit themselves to, which is that I'm going to start
with the premises of the discipline.
I'm going to follow wherever the evidence leads and my
conclusions will simply be where the where the where the evidence
currently leads us. Right.
Whereas the gush, those who follow the Gushnach method and
again generalizing but the ethos of that method is that we have a
prefabricated view of what this book is the Tanakh or this
library this anthology is, this is divine word.
It is historically accurate. It is, you know it is what it
says it is essentially And if I can find you know a good
artifact in the Israel Museum I'll, I'll bring it in.
If I can find you know an archaeological Finder is very
much to my liking. Oh, I'll bring that in if I can
find you know a clever piece of linguistic play that oh you
know, I'm going to bring that I'm going to basically take from
all the discoveries that have and and use it towards my
prefabricating conclusions was the academics.
Listen, you can't do that, buddy.
You either you take history seriously or you don't.
If you take it seriously then you must say listen, this is the
evidence that we have and the evidence that we have.
Let's say Nagir points to, you know, for example, one important
theory. I mean, it's one theory, many.
But one strong theory among ancient historians in Israel is
that there was no massive influx of people at any time.
Otherwise denies the Exodus narrative.
It simply says that we don't have any evidence of this
massive influx. All we have is evidence of a
slow incremental growth of of indigenous people in the Land of
Israel, and that's and that's basically how the people of
Israel came to be. This whole idea of a massive
influx of people coming from the outside, that would leave
evidence. We don't have the evidence,
etcetera. Now if you're a gush or
basically a religious Jew, you'll say, OK, that's nice that
the history historians don't have the evidence now, but the
truth is that I believe in something else.
I believe all Tanaka is true and I believe in the Exodus.
There's a huge influx of Jews and that's just it.
I'm not interested in. Evidence it's not evidence of.
Right. Exactly.
But that's the point, though, since there's no actual evidence
one way or another. Well then, what exactly are you?
I'm supposed to be 100% loyal to a system that doesn't have all
the answers. No, from an academic
perspective. So for example let's say I'll
I'll, I'll try to give an example and maybe go but one one
academic. You know I would say unanimous
academics understanding of of the Bible would say that Judaism
evolved from a minolitrous kind of belief in God.
Well they're because they'll base it on archaeological
findings of but statues of different gods fine.
But he's I'm trying to explain what the critique is OK whether
we obviously we don't agree with all of them but at the same time
then we'll we'll say that you know we'll we'll we'll focus on
the Moshe's name as you know coming from an Egyptian name
because it's it's it's from Moses and at Moses see a
problem. With that.
I don't it's not about seeing a problem.
What I'm trying to say is, is that they're also theorizing.
They're also it. It's not a science.
And I don't see what I'm trying to say is if you had clear
proof. Clear proof.
Oh, by the way, JJ, we lost you. You.
There. I'm here.
Your screen is frozen. Oh, you're still there.
OK. I'm here.
My screen is free. I'm terribly sorry.
I'm trying to turn my camera off and on again.
One second. OK, there you go.
My apologies, OK, I was. Maybe I'm misunderstanding.
It could be. But in order to critique
against, look, if you follow, if you follow this discovery of
mine, you got to follow everything I say.
That would mean that what that person says has to have been
fully proven true, and that he's not actually theorizing about
anything. He's taking certain evidence
that he's found, and then he's putting his own spin or his own,
his own dialect around his findings.
But is that a fact? What he his theories are not
facts towards what he finds. I agree with that.
I. Can't say also use that for
their theory, so I'm trying to. I agree with you.
But what he would say is OK, I have my I have my theories based
on the evidence that we have. If you want to counter it, if
you want to, you know, prove it wrong, then prove it wrong
within the boundaries of our discipline, within the
boundaries of history. In other words, come at me with
alternative, historically based theories based on your own
archaeology, or based on your based on your own linguistics,
or based on your own findings. Whatever it is, don't come to me
and say I have a religious tradition that that contravenes
it, because again, the academic might not even get angry with
you. They're just saying you're
playing a different game. And if you're playing a
different game, don't come into my game and borrow things from
my game. If you want to play your game,
be the huraidy guy and play your game.
But don't. Don't borrow from from me
because I'm playing my own game. If you want to come into my
thing fair enough but respect my rules respect my time and that's
that's again. Now again it's it's it's a it's
a good critique but it's not absolutely a knock down critique
because again you you could well there are various ways of of
countering. One of them is to point out
again the the essential we're not tendentious, but but
precariousness or the precarity of some of these or some of
these ancient disciplines, right?
What do we know really about archaeology?
What do we know really about ancient history?
That was my point. Still discovering things all the
time, and that's not an unreasonable thing to say, but
nonetheless, there, you know. There's a minimalist, there's
maximalist, there's so many different.
Approaches. You're talking about a field
that is, so it's still developing and we have within
the field itself. There's such a split, like you
said, minimalist, maximalist to now tell.
It's just weird to me like that. You're basically saying that you
have to you, you have to take a certain sector of how this
discipline has been unearthed and you have to give it full
legitimacy in order to borrow any idea out of it, in order to
use as supporting evidence towards your own theory.
To me that's a little bit much, but that's.
It. I understand where you're coming
from, but you know, you know, I. But again, this is a point I
think made by James Kugel which was recorded in an essay by
Tamara Ross where he basically says, look, it's very nice.
You know, religious Bible scholars like this like using
sometimes Uguritic or Acadian or other languages to to to shed
light to illuminate what Hebrew words mean.
Right. So an excellent example of this
is is, you know the famous phrase, right, forget Jerusalem,
let my right hand forget. Right.
It's a bit of an awkward phrase translating English forget what?
So the King James my right hand forget it's cunning or something
like that but but actually but apparently so I've been told,
according to I think one of his Angel language Ugaritic or
something, the word thakka that the sort of the verb means to
wither, right. Imagine Tishka Kamini.
It's a pun meaning if I forget Jerusalem made my right hand.
Shakka in that case made my right hand wither May it just
sort of like full limp basically and that's how it actually
translated in some modern bibles.
And that's sort of a more satisfactory thing.
And again, this is, this is a way of using an external
discipline. However, if you go to an ancient
linguist and say, you see, I'm, I'm just borrowing, I'm
borrowing some parts of your lexicon to to to to base what
I'm what I'm saying, they'll say, well, I assume you'll turn
the page in the lexicon and see what what is the academic
consensus on, let's say, the origins of the word ivory, you
know, and where the Eve room come from and what and the
implications of that on Jewish history.
And you'll say, no, I don't fancy turning the page of that
lexicon, thank you very much. I'm just going to use page 20
and not page 21. It's, it's.
You're right, you're right. But again.
Might not be very happy with you say stop using my lexicon.
If they were more disciplined about their discipline, I'd I'd
appreciate that argument more. But when you have, you know,
it's not like, it's not like biblical criticism is like
uniform in the way it thinks. We have such a spectrum over
here. You know what I mean?
There is rabbinics. Now there's rabbinics, That's
why there's well, the Gooch method is is not necessarily
rabbinics, right? It it, it allows for its own to
for its own interpretation to be put in.
What I'm trying to say is though is that the discipline itself is
is heavily argued in terms of its content in its within its
own school. So.
Yeah, no, I would agree to a certain degree that that's
definitely true with regards to to source criticism, because so
at the moment that the picture of source criticism is actually
quite a grim 1. Otherwise, there's enormous
amount of disagreement among the various scholars or it's
something more like, let's say archaeology or sort of ancient.
Archaeology, But then again. Then.
Again, then again, with archaeology, it's hard to take a
text like the Torah and to try to fit in an exactly with
archaeology, because what? How exactly do we even
understand what the is the Torah completely historical text?
We don't know. OK, so so we're not even.
Kind of worms that that I haven't.
OK, I'm not. Gonna do that.
We're not gonna do that, I mean. Maybe in the future we can
discuss that because that that's that's that's an important point
as well that's what. I'm saying it doesn't
necessarily have to disagree. That's what I'm trying.
Oh, no, no, not at all. But, but that's part of The
thing is that is that the gush, the advantage of the gush method
is now turned on its head because one advantage of the
gush method is it does use these external disciplines.
Like I want to talk about a battle that happens.
I can say, hey, guess what, they actually dug up this battle.
You know, and we have evidence of, you know, the kind of tools
they used. And we have the kind of, you
know, the coroner now putting out these, these volumes of
Tanakh Eretis or whatever it's called, exactly where, you know,
all sorts of artifacts and all sorts of things have been done.
You know, the discipline of archaeology in some respects and
in some ways is fantastic for the study of the Bible.
And actually we'd be forced to ignore it because hey, you know,
they've dug up some phenomenal things and and you know,
they've, they've shed incredible light on ancient Israelite
civilization and and what it was fighting against, et cetera.
And however, it's opening a Pandora's box.
I think that's the best way of putting this criticism to open
the Pandora's box and that is hard and you can't shout it from
that so, so much out regular. Just to reiterate, the the three
characteristics are the centralization of chat or the
focus on chat is the main locus of of of content and of
religious messages. The centralization of torata
Adam, the human concerns and the the methodological
omnivorousness or eclecticism within the heart of the of the
gush method and the critiques of each one.
And the critique of the of the shat is, you know, maybe shat so
not all that cracked up to be. And maybe actually there are
deeper levels of meaning which should really be focused on and
only according to Zohar, only a fool would focus on shat.
And who's to say that shat is so satisfying anyway?
And of course the Torata Adam, Well, is the historicist
critique. Well, maybe the Adam we're
talking about 3 1/2 thousand years ago is difficult to talk
about difficult to read about difficult to transpose neatly
into three millennia later. And and finally which is the the
methodological point which is that OK, if you're opening a
Pandora's box and and if you're not going to be consistent, then
maybe you shouldn't do it at all.
That is my reading the map and and I will say to the to the
listeners and to the to the audience who are we're listening
to this which is that as I said before I'm merely a an
enthusiastic amateur analyst of this thing and I'd be very
pleased indeed if there are any. You know if any of you have have
different readings or different understandings of what this
method is or maybe I've missed something out or maybe I've
overstated something or understated something.
I'd be very happy. Because again I want to
understand this phenomenon as best as I can and I don't
believe that my reading is necessarily superior to anyone
else's and therefore you know please please do come at me with
with with anything you want. And the second thing and and you
know with this I sort of, I guess I'll finish my piece, is
that if anyone who understands Hebrew, there's a wonderful
series of videos that Yashiro Harrison puts out every week
which is called Khedush Mehagush.
OK. And it is is 2 scholars of the
Ghosh, namely Raviako Mehdan of Amnon Bazak sitting together and
for about 5 or 10 minutes just discussing the Parsha.
And they have, they've been doing this for a few years.
They have a few of these little videos on each parsha.
So you put, you know whatever it is and and it is in those
discussions that you'll see some you know, the gush method as
sort of in action as they're talking about, as discussing.
And you'll see what are they interested in discussing and and
how do they reach their conclusions, what is considered
a good piece of data and what isn't etcetera, etcetera.
And you know, I mean if you have the Hebrew it's it's just a
wonderful experience, a great way to prepare for the parsha
anyway and and also to my mind the best way to see this sort of
inaction as it's developing. So again, I would recommend to
all who who can and yeah, I think that's.
I think that was a really amazing, but it's almost like we
we watched you play chess against yourself.
You really just, you know, you you showed.
You pulled the shut. Down.
Yeah, you pulled the shut down. Yes, yes, you.
Pulled the shut down. Exactly.
And and and honestly, it's very important because you know, in
this century especially we're, we need to know what we're up
against and we need to also be intellectually honest in
understanding or that like there are shortcomings to every single
method. And it's OK.
Sometimes we don't have an answer.
We're digging, we're looking. I think that obviously we didn't
respond, we didn't really critique the critiques like for
example, the Kabbalah point that you brought up.
But again, these are things that we've discussed on other
episodes. I think Rabbi Foreman, for
anybody who wants to understand the response against biblical
criticism, check out that episode that we did.
Yes, absolutely Foreman. And you know, I think this was
an amazing breakdown. Really enjoyable.
Fantastic. And by the way, the reason why I
was I was trimming it over there is because I'm very passionate
about this. As you could tell, it's a good
thing to be passionate about. And if and if someone reaches
out to you maybe who has, you know another take on this or or
critiques of the critiques as you said or something else, you
know this is this is very much a conversation worth having.
I I fully agree. So.
Yeah, go ahead. You were gonna say something?
No, no. Yeah.
I was gonna just ask you what is, what do you think the future
of this is? Because we're noticing actually
there's like a shift right now. It's exploding.
Like you go to you go to any farm store and they have like a
whole the front, the the window section is all like you know the
the Magid studies on Tanakh. We love, I mean.
We're trying to, we, we we we're trying to, you know, we want to
eventually interview every single author if we can.
We've interviewed a few of them already.
And you know, I'm seeing that there's people are a lot like
even these conversations that we had in the past about like
rationalism versus mysticism and all that there.
I think a lot of it is just like part of that same fervor for,
you know, it's it's kind of there's some, I don't know if
you if you agree with me on that, but I feel like people are
more interested in, in getting to the fundamentals and they
were maybe 20 years ago. I don't remember anyone talking
about the Rambam 20 years ago. I don't remember people talking
about, you know, intertextuality.
I never heard that phrase growing up, you know.
I I 100% agree with you. There's a growing fast for this
stuff. One understand I will say that
that certainly with the Korean maggot thing, this whole gush
method a lot of it is down to the the vision of of Matthew
Miller who's the owner and and the director of of of Maggot
Press of anyone who knows him. He's a very sort of, I mean he's
a great guy, but very, you know, he has a vision and he really
follows through with it. And basically he's he's, he's
brought this from this kind of fringe.
Yeshiva approach. You know a few scholars approach
to you know if you put it in really attractive books and you
know and and make sure the high quality and and edited very
well, etcetera and then put them on everyone's bookshelf.
The same with the Stein's art such as basically everything the
maggot are doing. It's really in a funny way
creating almost a a, a maggot and Karan have created a kind of
space for Modern Orthodox communities to be their own
community. Because I don't know if you
remember this growing up in Modern Orthodox Schulz, all the
Sidoruma Art Scroll and all the Humashima arts grow, right, But
which is a hurriedly thing, right?
And basically you sort of you imbibed that growing up.
I mean some had hurts or whatever, but basically they
dominated whereas because of this new part of the publishing
industry. So.
So you have you know Modern Orthodoxy is creating its own
Tanakh method, has its own machine, its own Shas.
Now with the Stein's thing, it has its own Sidorim for
Yomatsmojami Richelaim. I don't know if you've seen this
like it has its own Mahzorim with the Jonathan Sacks
introductions and and it's really, it's carving out for
itself its own niche. Now regarding the future of it,
I think the Tanakh, the Gush Tanakh method will always remain
unsatisfying to some. It will always remain a little
bit too daring and a little bit too modern for some.
Out-of-the-box, it's a little bit out-of-the-box.
Yeah, yeah. It's too out-of-the-box.
It's too leaves too much up to personal creativity and and to
sort of innovation. And innovation is something that
a lot of people don't like nowadays and therefore it will
always not appeal to them. And it always won't appeal to
the more academic purists who will say, listen, if I'm if I
want to find that ancient history, I'm going to read
ancient history and that's it. And it always won't appeal to
them. But there are a lot of, there's
a lot of people in the centre for whom it will appeal to.
And I agree with you, it's growing and as I can foresee in
the future, I think it will grow precisely this reason people
like the sophisticated, multifaceted, you know,
interesting, curious, innovative form of Tanakh study and you
know, and there's an enormous amount of potential certainly
for educating young people also just of of keeping and retaining
interest among adults. I I I think it's going to grow.
But nonetheless, it should be thought about.
It should be critiqued. It should be ruminated over like
like any set of ideas. Absolutely.
And one thing about it also, I feel that even like you
mentioned the rationalist versus mysticism, or let's put it into
different context, let's say already versus Modern Orthodox,
I feel like this method does have a potential to creep into
the Haredi world. I do.
And I actually see it because when when it's presented in a
way where the fact that it's out-of-the-box is not so much
said, it's not so much pronounced and you you let's say
just dress it as a normal, you know, Drasha, I actually see
that like Kariti people, they're they they they really love it,
you know. And like if you take Rabbi
Foreman and you give Rabbi Foreman and you just, you're
talking to just a regular yeshivish guy, maybe Haredi, but
let's call a yeshivish guy, right.
He listens to an idea from form and he doesn't understand all
the things that are behind it. He's just, you know, the idea
with the with the presentation everything.
They love it. He's he's he's really, really
able to to connect because the guz method more than just being
a method, it, it talks to the soul to rata dam like you're
saying. You know what I mean?
So I do think that it has potential if people can get past
certain barriers of really opening up to a wider sector.
My opinion I could be wrong. I could be very wrong.
I I I tend to agree with you, and I think it raises the
intriguing possibility of having a sort of haredi translator of
the gush method. So.
It. Could be that you'll have, I
don't know, maybe someone like Shmuley Phillips or one of these
people who you've had a yes. He sort of dresses it a bit.
Yeah, dresses a bit. He straddled the two worlds and
is able to to sort of put it in a way, in a manner that's
palatable for more. I wonder if we'll see maybe a
rise of like Art scroll dressed version.
I was thinking that I was thinking about that as you was.
I really think that that is a real possibility.
It is that good and it is. It's it's it's it's an not just
in terms of the method itself, but the ideas that are being
produced through the method is just incredible sometimes.
So I think that it has potential you know to really grow as we're
saying. And I just wanted to mention if
if if our listeners have not listened to J JS podcast, The
Podcast of Jewish Ideas or Jewish Ideas or of.
Of Jewish ideas of Jewish. I apologize.
Podcast of Jewish ideas. They are.
You guys are missing out. I've listened to quite a few.
It is. It is high level, very, very
intellectual and the conversations are extremely well
done and the topics are amazing. The guests are amazing.
Please listen to this podcast and you also have an upcoming
book which we hope to have you back on again for time.
Yes, thank you very much and I really appreciate this and you
know, I appreciate what you guys are doing as well.
So I hope we're all very successful in what we do.
Amen. Thank you.
We brief you everything. Thank you.
I had a lot of fun with this. You too see you.
Hey guys, thanks so much for tuning into the Judas and
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