I’m struggling with Torah.
I remember the first time I went to shul as a seeker and not just a visitor, and it was a bar mitzvah Saturday morning service, and the Rabbi was speaking briefly and mentioned just in passing the complex Jewish relationship to its text. She said something like, “The text that we love, read, are inspired by, study, struggle with, get angry and infuriated over…”
I’ve been reading the weekly parshas mainly as an act of “living Jewishly”, but really wondering what I’m doing with this text.
I’m having flashbacks of my Mormon days, when I would pore over scripture trying to extract something meaningful or useful at all, or trying to decipher what some 2000 year dead Jewish faith-healer supposedly said, or what Joseph Smith’s imagination could have possibly wrought of worth. I have reminiscent feelings of obligation and duty, and unrequited desire for the truth.
It seems there are levels of reading Torah, some of which make me squirm with discomfort.
1) Literalist: This is a true history of God with His people. This one is not even on the table for me.
2) Metaphorical but Sacred: This I can respect and it dovetails with a very common move that many Europeans and Americans started making in liberal religion in the 19th century. But this also makes me uncomfortable because it feels to me, in my post-mormon rawness, like an effort to put humpty-dumpty back together again.
3) As a historical artifact: This appeals to my scholarly side and I have to admit that the URJ’s Torah has some fantastic notes and commentary in it that I *have* found to be intellectually engaging and interesting. But I’m not sure if historical curiosity alone for me is enough to sustain an interest in reading Torah.
4) As a cultural touchstone: Now as a Jew-by-choice, a book worm, a wannabe philologist, and a sociologist, one of the most incredible phenomena about Judaism is the 2000 year (approx.) accretion of discussion about Torah. So it’s not Torah itself, but rather diving into a 2000 year old tradition of discussing and arguing about Torah with fellow Jews. And that so much of it is written down and part of this vast incredible textual heritage of Judaism, from Talmud, to Midrash, to philosophers and modern thinkers. In this way, the text of Torah has grown to stunningly immense proportions, far bigger then the Torah itself.
5) As literature. This appeals to me. With two lit degrees (one in English and one in French), and having been a heavy fiction reader growing up, there’s something comforting and also really stimulating about talking about literature and its meaning. Treating the characters of Torah as characters in a novel, talking about motivations, psychologies, etc.; imagining them as real people; and trying to understand the authors and their motivations and politics. Seeing the Torah as aesthetic, though, is also problematic for me, because I come at scripture with a deep mistrust about the truth-claims that are made about it, which can sometimes block me from seeing it as a beautiful product of human imagination.
6) As mystical text. One of the two main branches of jewish mysticism focuses on Torah study, where Hebrew, its letters and words, are themselves vehicles to a mystical communion with God. Here the words, letters, and language themselves convey meaning that is deeper than the surface. I’m fascinated by this practice, but don’t yet have the skills to engage it.
7) As a vehicle for social interaction: Arguing about Torah with other liberal Jews could be (I don’t know, but I think) could really be a great way to engage in larger discussions about the life, ethics, morality, social justice, the sacred, etc., and the anchor of important social bonds. So Torah could serve as an anchor for present social group cohesion. It definitely does that on a large scale for Jews (and Christians and Muslims); but I mean for small, intimate intellectual and spiritual social bonds as well.
In the end, I still have two blocks: First, my religious past makes me emotionally distrustful of the text itself and especially of the way religious groups use of scripture; and second, I’m a trained social scientist and I know the history and scholarship about the production of the text which has demystified it.
teku
Becoming Jewish 
It seems that our relationship to Tanakh is very alike; I could present this post, minus any reference to your Mormon background, to my girlfriend and she’d probably accept it as my voice.
That being the case, it seems that your specific reservations don’t necessarily prevent you from accessing or expriencing the text as history, cultural touchstone, literature, or catalyst for discussion. Sure, a historical appreciation isn’t enough to keep us coming back and, yes, we must be vigilant about the bigoted, foolish ideas spawned by literalism, but an appreciation that draws on all of those aspects or uses of the texts that do appeal to you can still be a full, satisfying one. In fact, outside of the Orthodox communities, wrestling with our texts is common, and would be even more so if more Jews gave the texts serious thought.
Actually, not being Orthodox at all, I know for a fact that the Orthodox community does wrestle as well, just not from the same cornerstone as conservative, reform, recon. etc.
It is important not to dismiss Orthodox, as they were the basis for what is practiced now. Don’t need to accept but to learn from.
I don’t know about that. The scholarship on what we today call “orthodoxy” pretty clearly shows that orthodoxy is as much a response to modernity as the Reform and conservative movements. Within judaism, a lot of power has been ceded to the those who claim (without basis) that they represent the purer or older Judaism. In reality, judaism has always been diverse and multiple and contested from within; and the things which the orthodox claim to be “pure” or “authentic” judaism are in fact modernist readings (i.e., literalist) of texts and practice, which the historical record from before the 18th century does not support as being “traditional” or historically somehow “more real” than what the Reform, Conservative, or Reconstructionist movements do. There was a really great article about this in Tablet recently. I’ll see if I can dig it up and post it. What I’m saying here is pretty much the consensus among historians of judaism. So the question becomes why do liberal, progressive, rationalist jews cede authenticity to the reactionary—but nonetheless thoroughly modern—orthodox movements?