questioning them, struggling with them. The Hebrew Bible is not a set of finished stories and unchanging laws; it is not a static body of dogmatic truths but a living enigma that must be questioned, grappled with, and interpreted afresh in every generation. For, as it is said, the guidance that the Torah can offer in one generation is very different from that which it waits to offer in another. This ongoing tradition of textual interpretation and commentary, and of commentary upon earlier commentary, has given rise to the numerous postbiblical texts of the Jewish tradition, from the Mishnah, the Talmud, and the collections of midrash, to the Zohar and other Kabbalistic works. Collectively, all these texts are known as the ‘Oral Torah,’ since they all originated in oral discussion and commentary upon the ‘Written Torah,’ upon the teachings ostensibly revealed to Moses, the first Jewish scribe, atop Mount Sinai. The process of writing down oral commentaries and interpretations, with the intent of preserving them, began in the second or third century C.E. The first of such compilations, the Talmud, is today printed with the primary layer of text, the Mishnah, in the center of each page, and with subsequent commentaries upon that text arrayed around it—in successive layers, as it were. Thus, in its visible arrangement the Talmud displays a sense of the written text not as a definitive and finished object but as an organic, open-ended process to be entered into, an evolving being to be confronted and engaged.
FIRE We talk of fires Ones that purify Yet remind our children that Fire is not a toy And not to get too close We hedge in and contain In grills of metal In ovens of brick In kilns of clay We desire And pay homage to An all-consuming fire Yet continue to build fires That merely smolder and smoke Afraid, perhaps That if we were to build them Wild And Raging That something might actually Burn. - Jared Himstedt
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