Reading the Torah: Beyond the Fundamentalist and Scientific Approaches

2016 French Voices Award Winner   April 2017 | paper | ISBN 978-0-8207-0706-8 | 220 pages Book Information: Fundamentalist readings of the sacred texts of major world religions are often regarded as an ever-increasing threat to personal and democratic freedoms. Historical and critical readings, alternatively, purport to be objective and teach us to understand these texts by relating them to the past and to their authors’ intentions. But while counteracting some of fundamentalism’s dangers, does not this scientific refutation of such interpretations omit essential questions? Is it not likely to overlook the spirituality conveyed by the very language in which the text is written? In Reading the Torah, philosopher and Judaic studies scholar Catherine Chalier addresses these very timely issues and explains how a spiritual reading—in this case according to the Jewish tradition — leads to an understanding of aspects of these important texts that are otherwise missed. Jewish tradition, in pa