A Jewish Reading of Scripture

I'm reading the book Wrestling with God and Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition by Rabbi Steven Greenberg. Rabbi Greenberg is an Orthodox Rabbi and he's also openly gay (he came out many years after his ordination and the first chapter is his story of dealing with the fact that he's gay). Because he's Orthodox he feels compelled to read the Torah as the word of God; because he's gay he has a problem dealing with those verses that condemn male homosexuality. If you're interested in a way of reading the text that both honors it and moves it beyond it's probable original intent this is a great book. But that's not what I'm writing about.

He describes the Rabbinic view of scripture very succinctly, and the way they handle the Torah has always been something that I have greatly admired. So here is his description of Torah from a Jewish point of view:

"While [Judaism] refused to relegate scriptural passages into a distant and irrelevant past, it also refused to read the Torah as if it meant and has always meant only one thing. The Torah is black fire upon white fire, which bears specific and different meanings depending on the living-reading-observing community. In the first century the schools of Hillel and Shammai differed greatly on many issues and often had competely opposing interpretations. The rabbis claimed that 'both these and those are the words of the living God' (Babylonian Talmud Eruvin 13b). If two opposing understandings of Scripture can both be the word of God, there must be no final reading of any verse. All verses in the Torah are pregnant with multiple meanings, some on the surface, others more deeply hidden, and some yet unborn.

"Traditional reading demands that one approach the verses in Leviticaus as covenantal duty. That we ought to be committed in advance of our reading to uphold the verses in question is not to say that we know in advance what they actually forbid or require us to do. Even though they may have meant something particular in the past, they also speak today. As the psalmist teaches, the Torah is given 'today--if you will hearken to his voice' (Ps 95.7).

"Those unfamiliar with Jewish reading of Scripture may find the barage of questions...unusual. Questions are a hallmark of Jewish spirituality. They are a great cultural paradox in that they both destabilize and secure social norms. Questions tend to spread power around; they are a democratizing force. Comfort with questions conveys a fundamental trust in the good sense of people...

"It is for this reason that God loves it when we ask why. We celebrate challenging the Torah to make sense and above all to be a defensible expression of divine goodness. When we ask good questions, the Torah is given anew on Sinai at that very moment."