Lucid and thought-provoking introductions to the weekly Torah readings. The pieces may be too short and elementary for people who've studied Torah for years, but were perfect for my beginning level. ( )

This book takes each Torah portion and overviews the subject matter. The points it choses to explore in each portion and the point of view it takes both seem to be fairly traditionalist/orthodox in my estimation, so much that I seem to disagree with almost every view presented in the book, or at least I feel that way as I read it. This isn't all bad, because it remains thought provoking and the controversy becomes a useful thing in itself.

The book seems to take the view that the Torah is pure revelation from God, with no precursor material upon which it was based. This actually becomes humorous in some cases, for example, when the author points out similarities between the story of Noach with the equivalent ancient Assyrian/Babylonian myth of the Flood, and hails the virtues of the Divine pattern because of the foundation of the story in morality (the fact that Noach was described to be a righteous man) over that of the older story, where the person who survived was merely an arbitrary favorite of the Deity. In my opinion, the realistic position is that the author of the Torah added comments about Noach in order to justify some of the reasoning behind the myth that he was transcribing, or in other words, that the point about Noach's righteousness was invented by the scribe, and not part of the original myth. I found that by going so far in the other direction while still referencing the preexisting materials, the author of this book has actually served to underscore the ridiculous nature of the "traditional" view. Because of this pattern, this book would serve as a good starting point for either viewpoint, as long as one is open to utilizing ideas that disagree with one's own ideas as a springboard for further study.

This book was printed on nice white paper, but the typesetting was unimpressive compared to other, more carefully produced volumes that I've seen from Gefen. ( )

Hammer breaks down each of the fifty-two Torah portion into four to
six page chapters. They are listed in their yearly order and as they
fall into the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
Each are clearly divided into 1) description and 2) analysis. Hammer
states this was compiled from his writings in the Jerusalem Post over
a number of years.

I am not particularly knowledgable about the Torah and don't even
remember which portion I read at my Bar Mitzvah. However I found "Entering
Torah" to have a good format and a managable and interesting content. The
overall themes discussed and the details tied together or speculated
upon gave me a much better understanding of Judaism and the confidence
to discuss it when opportunities arise. ( )

This book expounds the weekly Sabbath readings from the Torah. A heading lists the passage, which the reader will need to find in his own copy of the Torah. Then, in six or seven pages, the passage is explained. Sometimes the explanation takes the form of a close reading of a text, but usually the explanation relates the passage to its place in Judaism. For example, the first reading is the account of creation in Genesis, which the author uses to explain his view of the relation between faith and reason in Judaism. As a Christian who is familiar with these texts from a Christian interpretation, I found this book to be a useful introduction to understanding the Torah from one Jewish perspective.

(I received a copy of this book to review.)

I generally agree with the following part of Nuadu's review, below: "Reuven Hammer's _Entering Torah_ is precisely what the book claims to be, an introductory text dedicated to teaching about basic ways to read Torah passages. As such it is a fairly simple text, both in language and in thought making it very accessible and though it is geared towards the observant Jew it is readable by anyone who has an interest in Jewish ways of interpreting Jewish scripture. _Entering Torah_ makes use of various Mishna in order to give a wide ranging interpretive view, though traditional kabbalistic interpretations are noticeably lacking." However, I would give this book much higher marks than he/she does.

First of all, what this volume "claims to be" is an INTRODUCTION to the parshas [weekly Torah portion] that are read by Jews worldwide on Shabbat and the Holidays. In that respect, it is excellent. The author attempts to at least mention most of the major interpretations of the themes of each parsha, while adopting one or more as his own. This is in the mainline of the Jewish tradition of continually sifting and resifting what the Torah has to say to us – that is, acknowledging what has been said before by knowledgeable people and adding to it.

The lack of kabbalistic interpretations is not a defect, since only the well grounded Jew who had attained a mastery of the Talmud was traditionally to be exposed to kabbala. You don't put tensor calculus in a text on addition and subtraction. Further, the interpretations Reuven Hammer offers are not just from the Mishna, but range over the tractates of the Talmud and into more modern sources.

The perspective of this book is Conservative, with the somewhat more Orthodox overtones characteristic of the Masorti movement in Britain and Israel. It is, therefore, somewhat surprising that the essays comprising the book apparently appeared in an earlier form as columns in the rightwing Jerusalem Post. Certainly, there is nothing in the present volume that would reflect such an origin.

This is NOT a theological text. It is intended to be, and it is, an easy reading [if sometimes profound] commentary on the Torah of which there have been hundreds in the past and will be hundreds in the future. This volume is, however, exceptionally well written and often insightful.

Entering Torah could be read with profit by the "average Jew in the pew" or to a Gentile trying to get a feel for what Judaism and Jewish reasoning are all about. It does not, however, contain the elaborate scholarly apparatus of footnotes and bibliography that surrounds a scholarly text. With that caveat, however, I recommend it highly to the appropriate reader. ( )