Actually, I had a good idea why the Jews call God “Lord”, and even “the Name”, but I did not even know that they called God “the Place”, much less why. Live and learn. Or in this case, read and learn.

I’ve invested in yet another e-book, The Torah for Dummies by Arthur Kurzweil. This may seem weird since I am already a ways into my second book by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, who may well write a lively and stimulating prose but whose treatment of the Torah is certainly not for dummies.

Kurzweil’s book is for dummies who understands words like “emanate” and “primordial”. (OK, those are kind of rare, but they are in fact there, and early in the book at that.) Dummies like me, then. I may not generally view myself as a dummy, but when facing the Torah, it would take a lot to not be the dummy. Well, if you begin to understand anything about religion at all, I guess. As I found in my first job, it is easy to speak with confidence – even arrogance – about things I don’t know, as long as I still don’t know how much I don’t know.

In any case, I did some free association on Amazon.com after receiving one of their many letters of recommendation, as it were. This book was not one of those recommended, but was bought by people who bought one of the recommended books. As soon as I saw it I felt drawn to it, realizing that I had kind of put the cart before the horse by reading Kabbalist literature without knowing more deeply how the Jews regard the Torah. As a long-time Christian (of sorts, I guess some may say), I felt that I had a decent understanding of the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses. But reading the sometimes strange interpretations by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz had made me realize that the Torah looks different to the Jews than it does to us. And so I returned a few days later and bought this book.

It is great for me that it exists in Kindle format. I realize that this transitional, fleeting form can be deemed less than dignified for a book dedicated to eternal truth; but on the other hand, I can now literally have it near my heart every day, in my mobile phone resting in my shirt pocket!

Arthur Kurzweil has a writing style that seems a bit similar to Steinsaltz, and this may not be a coincidence: It turns out that Steinsaltz is his teacher for many years, and has made a deep impact on his life and thinking. They have also collaborated on some writing. What great luck for me! In all fairness, my subconscious may have remembered their association from some casual mention in the forewords or on the Amazon.com web site. It need not be a miracle, or not more than the human mind is in the first place. I am not quite sure. I just enjoy it.

I was already becoming aware that the Torah is very special to observant Jews. We Christians respect the Bible for its content, but the Torah is to Jews more what Jesus is to Christians: The Word of God in physical form. The reverence with which they treat the Torah scrolls is perhaps only matched by the way Christian churches treat the Eucharist, and then especially Catholics and others who believe that the bread and wine literally turn into flesh and blood.

This is not to say that Jews only revere the form and not the content. On the contrary, they revere the content to the extreme. It is said that when God was to create the world, he looked to the Torah as his blueprint. In other words, the original Torah – the Word which was with God in the beginning – includes everything in the universe, even the upper worlds or heavens, if I understood correctly. Without the Word, nothing was created of all that which was created.

As I said, we Christians think of Jesus Christ in much the same way. In fact, Jesus reprimanded the scribes of his age because, as he said: “You examine the Scriptures carefully because you suppose that in them you have eternal life. It is these that testify about me, but you are not willing to come to me to have life.”

I could not help thinking about this when I read about how important, even essential, it is to the observant Jew to study the Torah. It is literally considered the way to learn to know God, to move closer to God, and a work that is certain to be rewarded by God as a generous employer rewards his workers, albeit in the next life mainly.

Seeing the sincerity with which they still keep up this work, I wondered if they are leading themselves astray with this intense dedication to every letter of a book. (Literally – it is said that every letter in the Torah is important and corresponds to a particular person’s life.)

Thinking back, I have seen Christians do seemingly the same thing that Jesus spoke about: Apply their intellect to the written word, but not applying the Word to their own soul, that they may be transformed. I am sure both of these ways of reading are still open to the observant Jew as well.

Jesus is no longer physically among us, and neither is Moses. Yet the words left behind are not simply books intended to impart a certain, specific, limited understanding. Rather, they are LIFE. When read in the right way, they become a wellspring that never stops, expanding into something far more than what meets the eye. There is in fact no limit to what can be drawn from Scripture. Let me entertain you with a passage I found on Wikipedia:

At the briefest instant following creation all the matter of the universe was concentrated in a very small place, no larger than a grain of mustard. The matter at this time was very thin, so intangible, that it did not have real substance. It did have, however, a potential to gain substance and form and to become tangible matter. From the initial concentration of this intangible substance in its minute location, the substance expanded, expanding the universe as it did so. As the expansion progressed, a change in the substance occurred. This initially thin noncorporeal substance took on the tangible aspects of matter as we know it.

A pretty straightforward description of the Big Bang with the following period of cosmic inflation and the transition to the atomic phase. Written by the Jewish sage known as the Ramban some time before his death in the year 1270. How in God’s Name did he glean that from the Torah??

The world is full of strange and wonderful things. Scripture is evidently one of them. But, being the dummy that I am, I have a hundred other things that I would also like to do.