{"id":71651,"date":"2020-03-14T22:39:26","date_gmt":"2020-03-14T20:39:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=71651"},"modified":"2020-03-14T22:39:26","modified_gmt":"2020-03-14T20:39:26","slug":"preserving-texts-and-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/preserving-texts-and-truth\/","title":{"rendered":"Preserving Texts And Truth"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[],"acf":{"old_id":"71651","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":64875,"related_cahpter":"436","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"Persevering in dynamic, trying times\r\n\r\n","content":"

This chapter of the Book of Jeremiah opens as the prophet is ordered by God: \u201cTake now this scroll and write upon it all of the words that I have spoken to you.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The magic of the word has captivated Jewish audiences for thousands of years. We are, after all, the People of the Book, with an unparalleled literary inheritance stretching back to the Bible, reaching down the centuries to the Mishnah, the Talmud, countless Midrashim, fragments found in the Cairo Genizah, medieval commentaries, all the way to our modern day scholars and authors, inexplicably entranced by the notion of committing their ideas to paper.<\/span><\/p>\n

If Jews have thought about it, we\u2019ve certainly written it, some time or some place – but do we ever really ask what this means?<\/span><\/p>\n

The written word, on one hand, perhaps gives a sense of validity to the project in question, being set in a static form, making it fairly difficult to dispute or alter.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, Judaism was initially an oral tradition, with our words and teachings coming from our mouths and remembered in the hearts and minds of our students rather than upon their scrolls. To rely on the memory of a single person, or group of people, to jot down every utterance of their master – as Baruch the scribe does for Jeremiah – with complete accuracy may be too much to expect.<\/span><\/p>\n

Remember, too, that history is dynamic; history happens. Texts become lost and refound, become inherently changed as they encounter new cultures and get translated into new languages, and sometimes they even get destroyed, as we learn when the King Jehoiakim burns Baruch\u2019s original scroll, and God commands for another one to be written (Jeremiah 36:26-28). Thus, in reality, how open are our texts to corruption, even as we do our best to preserve them?<\/span><\/p>\n

As such, we are left with two questions –<\/span><\/p>\n

One is the Jewish piece: how is our relationship to our religion altered, knowing that we are at once a People of the Book, but not beholden to it?<\/span><\/p>\n

Two is looking outwards: living in a world of the twenty-four hour news cycle, sometimes it feels like misinformation is the true virus spreading around\u05e5 So, if texts can be alterable and unreliable, what mechanisms do we have in place to ensure we\u2019re getting the truth?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I encourage us to never stop questioning or engaging with our rich textual tradition, both Jewishly and in the rest of our lives, and to keep safe and well in these trying times!<\/span><\/p>\n","image":{"ID":71654,"id":71654,"title":"jer36-heads-books","filename":"jer36-heads-books.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/jer36-heads-books.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/preserving-texts-and-truth\/jer36-heads-books\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"jer36-heads-books","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":71651,"date":"2020-03-14 20:39:07","modified":"2022-05-07 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