312 Yair Zakovitch
another, with the interpreted texts then refl ecting back, somewhat altered,
from a multitude of mirrors. Poets interpret stories, storytellers interpret
poetry, prophets interpret the Pentateuch. No literary unit in the Bible
stands alone, isolated and independent, with no other text drawing from its
reservoir and, in return, illuminating it with new light.26
For the reader of the Bible who is unaware or unfamiliar with this web
of internal conversations and who has not the tools to search for and re-
veal them, a shallow and impoverished reading is guaranteed. Of course,
he or she might race through chapters. It is not speed readers that we want,
however, but those willing to read slowly, to plow the Bible’s verses, turning
their soil and revealing the deep layers that reach all the way to the very
foundations of our culture.
Every literary unit of the Bible, then, responds to numerous readings:
one can read it, if only apparently, on its own, in isolation, but one must
read it, too, in connection to literary units from which it feeds and which
it interprets. It is worthwhile, moreover, to go even further and to read it
through the eyes of the literary units that use it as their starting point and
that are in dialogue with it. Indeed, each reading will grant the text that is
being examined a new dimension of meaning.27
What is true for the multiple meanings of each unit in the Bible is true
even more for reading each unit in the ever-expanding context of Jewish
literature. Th e Bible is the reservoir for all the genes in our literary makeup.
On each layer that is added to the tower of our literature, we fi nd the im-
print of previous layers, and so it goes until the modern age — Haim Nach-
man Bialik and Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Yehudah Amichai, Moshe Shamir,
Nathan Zach, and Meir Shalev.
I have referred to genetics, to a cultural-literary heredity, but the use
of metaphors loaned from other fi elds requires great care: heredity is in-
evitable and passive. Th e same cannot be said of a cultural ancestry, of the
inheritance of knowledge: this requires constant study. Each generation
must study the literature of previous generations if it wants to continue the
chain, to inherit and to bequeath. Th ose who do not learn, who do not
reach out to sample some of the wealth, will be unable to off er anything
to those who follow. Th e beginning of this chain of giving is manifested in
the well-known saying of the sages at the opening of the wisdom tractate of
the Mishna, Pirkei Abot: “Moses received the Torah on Sinai and passed it
to Joshua, and Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets, and the
prophets passed it on to the men of the Great Assembly.” Th e links of liter-
ary heredity continue from generation to generation, in Israel and in the