Scripture and Israeli Secular Culture 311that many others are utterly foreign to us. Under no circumstances should
we busy ourselves with spinning midrash-like interpretations that trample
over verses while lending them meanings that they do not convey, only so
that we will feel comfortable with them. Such violent acts are never of any
help and will never make readers feel less alienated. We must, from the
start, forgo any identifi cation with the Bible and its world. Th is renuncia-
tion in no way means that we also renounce knowledge, understanding,
appreciation, or even admiration: admiration for the Bible’s glorious ka-
leidoscope of worldviews and for the artistic vessel into which was poured
such creative spirit. Th e humble reader who is prepared to silence his or
her own voice in the presence of the Bible’s great chorus, who is prepared
to learn what the Bible has and not impose onto it what it has not, is the
reader for whom I long.
Until now I have spoken about the study of the Bible itself, emphasiz-
ing the dimension of peshat. Th at said, the Bible constitutes the foundation
of our experience, not its entirety. A boundless universe spreads out and
grows from the Bible — a universe of Jewish texts that emanate from and
develop out of the Bible. Indeed, every writer is infl uenced by the books on
his or her bookshelves — works that he or she has read and assimilated and
that have become integrated into his or her being — and these come to be
expressed, either overtly or covertly, in the writer’s own work. Each return
to an ancient text is a new one; the hundred and fi rst reading of a work
is unlike the hundredth. Every generation, indeed, every person, looks at
a verse diff erently. While their interpretative works should not aff ect our
reading of the biblical peshat — we cannot impose our ideologies onto the
text — these works are legitimate (and even welcome) works of midrash. To
what can this be compared? To the taste of the manna the Israelites ate in
the wilderness, about which the midrash tells, “He brought down for them
the manna, in which all kinds of fl avors lodged, so that each Israelite could
taste therein anything he particularly liked” (Exodus Rabbah 25:3). Th e
midrash is a continually renewed body that revitalizes the Bible’s archaic
letters, fertilizes leaves that are worn with age, and returns to endow them
with freshness, pertinence, and relevance.
Th is tradition of a thousand and one readings, a thousand and one in-
terpretations that, once written down, become the basis for further inter-
pretations, which will, in turn, be recorded for future generations, began
in the library that is the Bible. Th e Bible is an interbranching network
connecting distant texts and binding them one to another. Writings from
various historical periods and literary genres call out to and interpret one