Rabbi's Blog

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     Usually, when I am referring to something from a biblical text, I’ll say it is from the Jewish Bible. This evades the conversation about saying Old Testament and its relationship with the New Testament (Which I refer to as the Christian Bible. However, an easier way to deal with this, for those in the know is to refer to it as the תַּנַ״ךְ (TaNaKh).

     תַּנַ״ךְ, as indicated by the two apostrophes, is an acronym. It is made up of three sections, the Torah (the first five books), the Nevi’im (the Prophets) and Ketuvim (the Writings). When taking the first letter of each word we get תַּנַ״ךְ (with the Khaf of Ketuvim changing to a final letter and a Kh sound instead).

     Among Conservative Jews there is a general familiarity with the material in the Torah but less so when it comes to Nevi’im and Ketuvim (NaKh). This includes your rabbi. Yes, I have read many parts of these sections and have studied some of the books in more detail but still have nowhere near the kind of grasp on them as I do the Torah. This is not necessarily surprising when we read the entirety of the Torah each year but don’t generally do so with NaKh.

     So, I am looking for others who want to go on this journey with me. Starting with Simchat Torah, I will be reading a section of Torah, Nevi’im and Ketuvim each day so I can complete the whole TaNaKah in one year. This will mean reading roughly 1/7 of the weekly Torah reading, one chapter of Nevi’im and one chapter of Ketuvim. Sometimes we will have to read more than one Aliyah or more than one chapter but this will be the general approach. There are resources that I will share to help give more insight into the texts and there will be an email group that you can subscribe to to share insights, questions or things that the text made you think about. Hopefully this will lead to conversations about the texts and deeper understanding for us all.

     You can join this conversation by sending a blank email to TaNaKh_with_TI+subscribe@googlegroups.com or by sending me an email requesting to join.

     To assist in keeping track of where we are, I have begun a document where you can find the daily reading from each section as well as links to find those texts in Sefaria, an online library or Jewish texts. You can click here to view this listing.

     There will be more updates in the future as we complete books of the bible and move on to new ones.

     I hope you come along on this journey with us.

     Rabbi Werbow