Jewish Concepts of Scripture

Scripture and Israeli Secular Culture 313

Diaspora, in each and every place that “Jewish” is read and taught, in every
place “Jewish” is written.
It is incumbent on us to bequeath to the generations to come, too, the
spirit of the canon — a great spirit that grows and spreads, both extend-
ing its roots and stretching to new heights. Th e canonical spirit, the divine
spirit that fl oats above our writings, is what will guarantee the existence
of Jewish culture and a Jewish people that lives its culture and expands its
inheritance. It is the spirit that promises us a historical memory common
to all, a network of associations, a shared Jewish language that makes it
possible for each individual to communicate with fellow Jews, even when
their worldviews are very diff erent. Th e ability to communicate is essential;
it is the glue that will make connections possible between the secular and
the religious (even ultraorthodox) Jew and between Israeli Jews and Jews
in the Diaspora. Knowledge of the Bible and the literary sources that fl ow
from it will strengthen also the connection to the land of Israel and will
supply answers to skeptics who question why we live in that place. Th ose
who study the Bible and Jewish texts will no longer view themselves as Is-
raeli (since what is an identity based on a sixty-year-old country?) but as
Jews whose heritage rests on solid foundations of three millennia of Jewish
culture. Th e people of Israel need another giving of the Law, a Law that is
not forced onto them but is received willingly, a Law that teaches of a re-
turn to the ancient legacy, the Jewish bookcase.

Receive my greetings, ancient parchments,

and desire my mouth’s kiss, you who sleep in the dust.

From sailing to foreign islands, my soul has returned,

and like a wandering dove, weary-winged and worried,

will fl ap again on the entryway to the nest of her youth. 28

First signs of a recognition of the need to combine biblical studies with
the study of Jewish literature that is based on it are apparent, for example,
in the coursework in the Department of Bible at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem. In the past, a juvenile fear reigned among Israeli biblical schol-
ars that biblical scholarship in Israel will be too “midrashic-like,” and they
wanted it to be indistinguishable from the study of Bible in European uni-
versities (except for the language of instruction, which, of course, would
be Hebrew). Jewish sources, such as the apocryphal and pseudepigraphal
literature and rabbinic literature, were not included in classroom consid-
erations. To be sure, medieval exegesis was studied, but separately, within