The Closed Book

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Judaism is often seen as a book-centric religion, centered around the Hebrew Bible and its interpretations. However, Rebecca Scharbach Wollenberg challenges this view, particularly regarding the first thousand years after the Bible's canonization. During this period, late antique and early medieval rabbinic authorities exhibited ambivalence toward the Hebrew Bible, which contains unsettling depictions of impiety and doubt. Consequently, Jews, including rabbis, rarely engaged with the Bible directly. This raises the question of how to maintain a communal identity centered on a text that was largely avoided. To address this, rabbis developed two strategies. First, they incorporated ritualized readings of biblical passages into liturgical gatherings, allowing the text to be recited in a rote manner that discouraged deep reflection. In these gatherings, the Torah scroll was treated as a sacred entity, leading to the establishment of specific rituals for its handling. Second, the rabbis created an extensive body of interpretation known as the "Oral Torah," which included stories, commentary, and laws, often associated with midrash and Talmud. Wollenberg argues that these approaches effectively marginalized the written Hebrew Bible as a source of cultural transmission and knowledge, reshaping the Jewish tradition in significant ways.