The Kosher Bookworm: Yeshiva University’s Tent of Torah

The Kosher Bookworm

by Alan Jay Gerber

While not the first anthology on the parsha featuring both secular scholars and Torah giants,“Mitokh Ha-Ohel: Essays on the Weekly Parshah from the Rabbis and Professors of Yeshiva University” [YU Press, Maggid / Koren Books, 2010] is a welcome addition to the genre. Bar Ilan University was the first to publish a similarly themed book called, “Professors on the Parashah” in 2005, however, this effort from Yeshiva University, whose title means “Within the Tent,” is an effective expansion in both content and volume from Bar Ilan's pioneering effort.

This book of Torah study gives the reader a unique window into the synthesis of traditional and academic commentary on the Torah with a plethora of extensive footnotes to back up the wealth of information that is presented within this well-researched text.

Among the over 50 authors featured in the book are many who are very familiar to the readers of this column thanks to their speaking forays into our community. The book's contributors include Rabbi Mordechai Willig, Rabbi Hershel Schachter, Rabbi Menachem Leibtag, Rabbi Meir Goldwicht, Rabbi David Fohrman, Professor Smadar Rosensweig and Rabbi Daniel Feldman.

At the very center of this book, both literally and figuratively, is Rabbi Dr. Edward Reichman of Woodmere, N.Y. His 13 page essay on Parashat Tazria deals extensively with the sensitive issues discussed in the many areas of medicine in Rabbinic literature, specifically physiology, embryology, anatomy, and gender determination. One thing for sure, none of you have ever learned the parsha in this way before.

Among the experts Rabbi Reichman cites is the noted Jewish medical ethicist, Dr. Fred Rosner of Far Rockaway. This citation together with 24 others helps give this essay the intellectual heft that will be appreciated by readers from all backgrounds.

Rabbi Reichman's work is very much emblematic of the other essays that go very deep into the basic themes of each parsha in a manner not previously used by traditional Jewish thinkers. In other words, this is not the Divrei Torah taught in your Zeide’s beis medresh, but it represents a rather balanced and intellectually healthy blend of both the traditional d’rash and modern secular-based scholarship.

Other noted scholars whose works are to be found in this anthology of Torah scholarship are Dr. Yaakov Elman, perhaps one of today’s greatest interpreters of rabbinic intellectual history and Jewish Biblical exegesis; Rabbi Yosef Blau, the mashgiach ruchani at Yeshiva University, most noted for his editorship of the recently reviewed book, “Lomdus”, and Dr. Shira Weiss who teaches a popular class in Jewish Philosophy at Stern College.

The effective learning of Chumash on a weekly basis has been a tradition among our people since time immemorial. This volume, taken together with the work cited above from Bar Ilan University, goes a long way toward enhancing this learning regimen among our people.

With the beginning of the new cycle of Chumash learning , may I quote from my good friend and fellow Long Islander, Rabbi Dr. Martin Shmuel Cohen, who recently wrote the following apt observation: “Having concluded the last lines of the Torah, we immediately open a different scroll and start reading anew. Intended, I’m sure to encourage us all to feel that the study of Torah never ends and that we are therefore never quite done with our review of the ancient text, the experience of watching the new scroll being opened and hearing the first words of Genesis also reminds us how far there is yet to go, how much yet to learn, how rudimentary my understanding of so much of what the Torah has to teach remains even after all these years of listening and trying to understand.”

Hopefully, this new work generated through the skilled scholarship from some of Yeshiva University’s finest will help Rabbi Cohen and all others who will come into contact with this book better comprehend the impossibly daunting concepts and thoughts in the pages of the Chumash.