“The rabbis, when they read, walk into the text. They bring themselves to it and step across the edge of the scroll onto its body, bouncing a little, believing it will hold their weight. And then on hands and knees crawl through the furrows of words, examining, brushing away dirt, not unlike a botanist examining growth patters and evidence of the soil’s mineral content, water content and whether there is deep clay below the cracks in the soil from which the words emerged. It is the cracks, the gaps, that allows them a way in. The Midrash is the exploration of those gaps. The text is changed by their having been there. There are footprints left behind, indentations, great hallowed out places and covered over, smoothed out portions. The tents of opposing camps are set in the text side by side. Conclusions leaned up against refutations, some decaying, some flourishing. Having once been an oral wisdom that required a speaker–and what is an individual speaker if not a unique interpreter–the text was not allowed to pass into stone, to become hardened, but was kept alive and fertile, even malleable. But with deep and unknown roots.”

This is an excerpt  of Russel Rathbun’s book Midrash on the Juanitos. We are currently reading this didactic novella in our book group and it is a delightfully entertaining tale. The title of the book really describes it well, it is a Midrash (or commentary) on the Juanitos, that is 1st,2nd and 3rd John, or the “little Johns” as the character Rev. Lamblove affectionately labels them.

Our group is breezing through the book (it is a novella after all) and I really am loving Rathburn’s mixture of playful Hunter Thompson style narrative with Biblical/Rabinacal Talmudic teaching. The quote above describes well just how sacred an activity Biblical interpretation is in Judaism. In many cases, wrestling with the text is more important than getting to a “right” answer. I really love this idea. It really does allow the text to become a never ending, truth revealing resource.

Painting by Charles Bragg

Tags:Charles BraggInterpretationJudaismMidrashRussel RathbunTalmud