Following you will find a message from Rabbi A. Charles Shalman to his congregants in Shaarey Zedek, Buffalo, New York. This brief, lucid and very interesting synopsis of the Tanakh relates as well, as to the purposes of Perek Yomi. Hopefully, you will find it of interest.

The Rabbi's Message:

The Daily Chapters Continue

I am encouraged that many of you are participating in the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism program of perek yomi, and are spending a few minutes each day reading the "daily chapter" from the assigned Biblical texts. With fortitude and stamina, we shall complete the reading of the entire Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) in the course of the coming two and a half years. Some of you have already registered online at www.uscj.org/perekyomi and are receiving study materials by e-mail; others are picking up the study guides at the Synagogue office. And as for the rest of you, it's not too late to sign up!

There seems to be some confusion about the nature of the text we are studying, not to mention the ultimate goal of the perek yomi program, so let me share a brief sketch of Tanakh and address why I believe you should be studying it daily. Tanakh is the acronym for the three "baskets" of texts that make up the Hebrew Bible. Reading the Bible is more than an academic exercise; it is entering the holy precinct in which we Jews find our relationship with God described and defined. Reading a section of Tanakh each day is an invitation to deepen our relationship with God on a regular basis.

How do we Jews discover God in the text? True to form, Jewish philosophers disagree. As Rabbi Neil Gillman points out in Sacred Fragments, we are free to choose from a broad range of beliefs about how these texts emerge from the relationship of God and Israel, or (preferably) define our own personal declaration of faith.

We find the clearest examples of the range of classical beliefs as we consider the first "basket" of texts. The "T" of Tanakh stands for Torah, the Five Books of Moses, which we read in their entirety every year, a few chapters a week, during Shabbat services. How much of Torah is the Word of God and how much is the word of humans? At one extreme we find Jewish philosophers who assert that God dictated each and every word of the Torah to Moses, who acted as the stenographer who personally contributed nothing original towards the finished product. At the opposite extreme are those who suggest that a group of writers and editors produced the Torah as a purely human effort with no Divine input whatsoever.

In between stand those who most inspire me, those who see Torah as a cooperative effort of the human and the Divine, who find in the Text a meeting-point of heaven and earth. Torah, like the ancient Tent of Meeting, is the place to which we bring our own creative gifts to blend them with gifts from above. How much of the finished product comes from us and how much from God becomes less important than the fact that by reading the text every day, we enter into the holy precinct and prepare ourselves to be transformed. Study is the foundation upon which we build the edifice of our relationship with God.

Those of us who attend Shabbat service regularly become experts in the Torah, but the Five Books of Moses make up only one of the three "baskets" of Tanakh. Those who focus exclusively on the Torah are balancing on a one-legged stool, when three legs are available to offer a more stable foundation for faith. The perek yomi program assumes that we are all conversant with Torah, so it began with Joshua, the first book of the following "basket."

The "N" of Tanakh stands for N'vi-eem, the collection known as Prophets, from which we read a short section every Shabbat (which we call the haftarah). N'vi-eem actually includes two categories of works. "Early Prophets" refers to the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. These books, which come right after Deuteronomy, are called the "historical" books, because they describe the series of events from the death of Moses and the conquest of eretz yisrael through the period of the monarchy which ended with the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE. As we study these books, we confront the question of how we find God's Presence in history, and we are forced to delve into the moral ambiguities of war and conquest, as described in this column last month.

"Later Prophets" is the collection of works ascribed to Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the twelve so-called Minor Prophets: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. (These twelve were no less important than their colleagues, but left behind fewer words; they were the first victims of the "publish or perish" mentality that still pervades academia.) These are known as the "literary prophets" since the books do not primarily retell events, but present collections of prophecies. Reading these timeless words of reproach and of consolation, we too may be challenged and comforted. Living in an age without prophets of our own, we can nevertheless strain to recover the echoes of ancient voices proclaiming God's passion and compassion, as we experience them through study.

The "K" of Tanakh stands for Ketuvim, or Writings, which include three types of literature. First are the "wisdom" books: Psalms is a collection of ancient prayers of despair and exultation, and of longing for God; Proverbs includes precisely what the name implies, and Job confronts the problem of injustice in the world. These are followed by the five Megillot, the scrolls of Song of Songs (a love poem), Ruth (the inspiring tale of the ancestors of King David), Lamentations (a dirge over the destruction of Jerusalem), Ecclesiastes (a rumination on life's meaning), and Esther (a farce about Jewish survival). The books of Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah describe the historical period of Exile and Return, and Chronicles completes the Biblical canon with a recapitulation of history from Adam until the Return to Zion.

Tanakh may seem an odd assortment of books, but the blend provides an opportunity for each of us to find something unique, nourishment for the spirit. Until we have searched out every nook and cranny, and read every chapter, we can only imagine what unclaimed treasures have been awaiting us. The journey has begun. Join us.

Rabbi A. Charles Shalman