Rabbi’s Column
RTPV November 2025
What are Jews? “Religion” is too limiting. “Race?” No – one cannot convert into a race. Ethnicity? – must be plural. A People? Too broad.
I am currently reading Sarah Hurwitz’s bookAs a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story from Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us. In it, she writes in a way I find very inviting (p. 49), “It’s hard to find the right label for us. “Peoplehood,’ ‘tribe,’ ‘civilization,’ and ‘big, messy family that’s always fighting but occasionally pulls together when something really bad happens’ are close, though the last one is a bit long for a census form.” Then she quotes Israeli author Amos Oz and historian Fania Oz-Salzberger, “Ours is not a bloodline but a textline.”
What Jews have in common are sacred texts, starting with the Torah and going from there. Ours is a tradition that studies, questions, examines, challenges, argues with our sacred texts which results in them always being relevant. The texts don’t change year to year but we do. We read the story of the Garden of Eden one year and the very next, we read it with different eyes, asking different questions, considering it from a different perspective. One year it might be: Whose fault was the whole fruit incident? And the next: What are models of good communication? And the one after that: Was this a parable about human evolution?
We engage with Judaism (the word “engage” is used in the blessing before studying Torah), simply by opening up our sacred texts. This is the time: we just started over and are back in Genesis. I invite you to type this in your browser: “Sefaria Genesis 1” if you want to start at the beginning or go to https://www.hebcal.com/
We have a monthly Torah study on the Second Tuesday of every month. Whether you have already read the portion or not, please join us. After all, we need your voice because yours is a textline.
L’shalom,
Barbara
Rabbi Barbara AB Symons