Many people view traditional religious and modern critical orientations to Tanakh study as mutually exclusive. So, if the core goal of a teacher or institution is to preserve Judaism’s foundational beliefs and nurture students’ Jewish identities, then Tanakh education should be steeped in the teachings of classical rabbinic interpretation, while academic ideas that might raise doubts about the Torah’s unified and divine authorship are shunned as heretical. If the aim is instead to prepare students for living rationally in the modern age, then the learning should downplay “primitive” rabbinic notions and fanciful stories in favor of more intellectual analyses that recognize the Tanakh’s historical contexts and development. Yet, presenting these two approaches as oppositional, with only one holding a claim to the “real” truth, forces students to choose between the curiosity of their minds and the yearnings of their souls, rather than cultivating and nourishing both aspects of their personhood as fully committed Jews living in the modern world. Jewish education has the capacity to engage in teaching critical academic and traditional religious perspectives alongside one another, so that students can see the value of both approaches in uncovering the Tanakh’s multivalent meaningfulness and come to embrace the texts of their heritage “with all their hearts, minds, and souls.”

After all, modern scholars and traditional exegetes both grapple with the same difficulties in the text, which are the very same issues that confound and trouble our own inquisitive students. Whether such concerns are caused by areas of seeming disjuncture or contradiction in the Torah’s presentation, by the ethically questionable behaviors of its central heroes, or by laws and teachings that might be religiously problematic, our students are not the first to notice them and call them into question. Teaching students how both classical Jewish sages and modern academics have addressed those difficulties can offer them a variety of possible answers to their important questions. Even better, equipping our students with the tools to follow in their footsteps by unpacking the text in multiple ways can help students to wrestle directly with the issues themselves and arrive at their own understandings. To be sure, classical and critical commentators’ differing assumptions and methodologies often lead them to quite divergent and even conflicting conclusions. But if their differing interpretations are presented as equally valid forms of Jewish meaning-making, that diversity itself can be both enlightening and encouraging for a diverse student body of thinkers who likewise come to the text with various backgrounds and perspectives.

To illustrate that point, this article will focus on two frequently troublesome passages in the Torah text and examine how a deliberately multivocal approach toward their study might help students both struggle through the challenges and arrive at acceptable conclusions and meaningful takeaways. The goal, I should state clearly from the start, is not to reach a completely satisfying or perfect solution that gives students a warm, happy feeling about everything in their tradition, either by providing superficial answers or by glossing over unappealing aspects of their collective heritage. That may work fine for younger children, but in my experience, it is inadequate for high-school and even middle-school thinkers who seriously want to challenge the text and be challenged by it. Students may not walk away from class believing that the problem no longer exists, but they will ideally feel that they addressed it head-on, authentically. Moreover, they can develop the crucial skills and insights necessary to continue to grapple with that issue and others like it, all while living firmly and proudly with their received traditions, and consequently also with their Jewish identities not only intact but thriving.

THE “CURSE OF HAM” & RACE RELATIONS

Genesis 9:18-27 presents Ham as committing a grievous sin against Noah, who then curses his descendants to be punished eternally as slaves. The Torah is unclear about the exact nature of Ham’s crime, and simply reporting his father’s nakedness may seem in students’ eyes to be rather innocuous or even a little humorous at first. However, the harshness of the resulting punishment leads the rabbis to interpret that Ham took advantage of his father’s drunken state by castrating Noah or by committing incestual rape with Noah or his wife (see, for example, Genesis Rabbah 36:7; BT Sanhedrin 70a). Moreover, since Ham is identified in Genesis 10 as the father of African peoples, his sexual misconduct has engendered an association in certain rabbinic texts between sexual perversion and the “affliction” of black skin (see BT Sanhedrin 108b and JT Ta’anit 7a). Though these interpretations do not go as far as certain Christian and Islamic readings that use Genesis 9 to justify the enslavement and oppression of African peoples, the fact that our Jewish tradition contains insinuations toward stereotypes against the Black community is uncomfortable if not deeply offensive. Still, it is important that we openly acknowledge their existence with our more mature students, in addition to sharing the positive statements towards Black people that have also been expressed by leaders of the Jewish community from medieval to modern times (for more on this issue, see David M. Goldenberg’s article in Struggles in the Promised Land).

Yet, I have found that it is also immensely helpful for students to engage in an exploration of the roots of those views within the Torah’s possible development. The rabbis themselves note an oddity in the text, since although it is Ham who sins in Genesis 9:22, it is Canaan who is cursed in 9:25-27 (see their creative solutions in Genesis Rabbah 36:7, for example). Moreover, Ham is referred to as Noah’s “youngest” son in 9:24 despite always appearing in the middle of the list with Shem and Yefet, and those two uncles of Canaan are confusingly designated as his “brothers” in 9:25-27. Many academic scholars who trace the text’s formative process diachronically therefore separate the narrative of Genesis 9:20-27 from its surrounding context, proposing that two separate traditions involving Noah’s sons have been merged (see, for example, pp. 120-124 in The Formation of Genesis 1-11: Biblical and Other Precursors). Whereas Genesis 9:18-19 and Genesis 10 envision Noah’s sons as the well-known Shem, Ham, and Yefet, Genesis 9:20-27 may have originally presented Noah’s sons as Shem, Yefet, and Canaan, so that it was Noah’s youngest son Canaan who sinned against his father and was cursed as a result (an explanation that bears some interesting similarities with Rabbi Nehemiah’s view in Genesis Rabbah).

Those two text blocks had very different agendas, neither of which involved the slighting of Black people or Africans. The “Table of Nations” in Genesis 10 was designed to explain the origins of the world’s peoples, including (both White and Black) Africans who descend from Ham, but without expressing a particular bias for or against any specific population. Meanwhile, Genesis 9:20-27 did indeed pass judgment on (White) Canaanites by castigating their eponymous ancestor, but scholars point out that this was for the purpose of rationalizing the subjugation of a long-gone enemy in Israel’s mythic past, rather than prescribing the cruel treatment of any current or future peoples. Even the joining of these two traditions was not meant to introduce a racist perspective. The combiner merely hoped to coordinate two distinct traditions that each featured a slightly different triad of sons, by turning Canaan into Noah’s grandson rather than his son through the insertion of an additional phrase within each block (“Ham was the father of Canaan” at the end of Genesis 9:18 and “Ham, father of” at the start of 9:22). Thus, none of the Torah’s contributors had any intention to endorse either judging people by the color of their skin or enslaving Black Africans. That Genesis 9 has been used for such appalling purposes is undeniable, but teaching the text’s historical evolution can reassure students that their Torah does not at all promote unethical conduct towards the Black community. Moreover, that knowledge can motivate students to speak up against the Torah’s inappropriate usage in support of racist ideologies when they next encounter it.

“SODOMY” & HOMOSEXUALITY

When studying the story of Lot and Sodom in Genesis 19 and its rabbinic interpretations, students can be proud that the Jewish tradition did not become enmeshed in the highly problematic and entirely erroneous readings often seen in the works of Church Fathers such as Augustine and Chrysostom. Rather than presenting the Sodomites’ crime as homosexuality as is so often seen in Christian exegetical literature, rabbinic works such as BT Sanhedrin 109 and Pirkei deRabbi Eliezer 25 emphasize the sins of inhospitality, stinginess, greed, and xenophobia, thereby drawing lessons from the Torah text to teach the virtue of kindness to strangers, rather than hatred of the LGBTQ+ community.

Unfortunately, Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 are far more difficult to reconcile with many students’ inclusive sensibilities, since they speak unambiguously against homosexual behavior. The commonly-used ArtScroll series Stone Edition Chumash’s explanation of these verses (p. 653) only exacerbates things with its harshly homophobic and particularly strongly worded language. Noting that Jewish law only forbids homosexual practices but not the people themselves is hardly comforting, and contextualizing the Torah within an ancient world that had different value constructs from our own likewise does little to ameliorate the problem.

Nevertheless, here too, a diachronic investigation into the possible formation process of Leviticus 18 alongside a study of the text’s rabbinic reception can offer some assistance. Rather than taking Leviticus 18:22 out of context, it is useful to examine the laws leading up to it. The list of forbidden sexual relations addressed to the male audience of Leviticus 18 all focus on women, but it is curious that verses 7 and 14 first identify the man (father and uncle) before then clarifying that this refers to his wife. This oddity yields a rabbinic discussion in BT Sanhedrin 54a as to whether the Torah intends to prohibit sex with one’s father or mother, since if it is the mother (as a Baraita is said to read it), then the law duplicates 18:8 (see Bekhor Shor), whereas if it is the father (which is actually stated as the majority position), this would already be covered by the rule against homosexuality in 18:22.

Idan Dershowitz has suggested that the law against gay relations in 18:22 was a later addition to the list, forcing glosses in 18:7 and 18:14 that reinterpreted prohibitions originally against male-male incest as referring to their wives in an effort to reduce the consequent redundancy. Initially, though, the list would have included prohibitions against sex with close family members of both genders. This implies that men’s relations with non-relatives of either gender were initially deemed acceptable, meaning that in earlier biblical law, incest was forbidden but homosexuality was not.

Such toleration of homosexuality may in fact align better with certain other Tanakh texts. For instance, many readers of the Tanakh have found good reason to regard the repeatedly-highlighted friendship between David and Jonathan as a romantically gay relationship (see I Samuel 18:1-4; 20:17, 41-42; and especially II Samuel 1:26). And yet the bond between these two very positively-depicted men (including the founder of the Davidic dynasty and forerunner of the Messiah) is beautifully presented as particularly exemplary. In fact, it is the only case in the Tanakh where someone is said to fulfill Rabbi Akiva’s favorite Torah maxim of “loving one’s fellow as oneself,” a teaching that comes from the very same context in Leviticus (19:18). Students can now come to see that the Tanakh expresses a wide spectrum of viewpoints on homosexuality that ranges from its abhorrence through its toleration and even to its glorification as a model loving relationship, without feeling compelled to privilege one of those views over any other.

Of course, these discussions of the Torah’s possible development over time, presented in tandem with classical rabbinic sources, do not negate the devastating effects that these texts’ reception has had throughout history when employed to justify bigotry and hatred of Black people or the LGBTQ+ community. However, recognizing the changes that occurred not only in the Tanakh’s history of interpretation but also in its own formation can help students see that Jewish views were never monolithic but were instead always in flux and encompassing of a wide variety of differing viewpoints. Although they will not agree equally with all of those views, students can find a place for themselves and their personal convictions within Judaism’s richly pluriform tradition, and see the beauty in their religion’s capacity to accommodate such a diversity of perspectives.

A multivocal Tanakh education that incorporates both traditional and modern orientations to Tanakh study and highlights the valuable contributions of each approach can therefore deepen students’ understanding of the text and also help them deal with its troublesome issues. The potential for classical rabbinic commentaries and midrashim to engage students’ intellects, inspire their spirituality, and instill ethical principles and behavior is already commonly appreciated within the world of Jewish education, so this essay did not focus on emphasizing their value. But Tanakh educators would benefit from also acknowledging the potential of critical academic approaches to serve many of those same goals, just in a different way. Moreover, enriching Tanakh learning with these modern orientations can effectively capture the interest of those who are disenchanted by the traditional approach, while also introducing more religiously-minded students to academic methodologies within a specifically Jewish setting so that their faith systems are not shattered by sudden exposure to such findings outside of a nurturing Jewish environment.

To be sure, it should be stressed that academically critical notions must be presented with great care and sensitivity, and with full awareness of the backgrounds, needs, and sophistication levels of the target audience. It is also essential that the form of Tanakh education that teachers adopt for their students be suitably aligned with their institution’s particular ideology and mission. I teach at a decidedly pluralistic Jewish day school that deliberately embraces multiformity and diverse perspectives, so these pedagogical methods fit my institution’s educational goals perfectly. Readers will have to determine to what extent the same is true for their own settings. But if a multi-approach study of Tanakh might be a good match for your educational environment, I hope that this article has piqued your interest and promoted its potential usage. In my over twenty years of teaching Tanakh through this format, I could not be happier with the positive effects that it has had on my students as burgeoning Jewish scholars. As developing thinkers, it has improved their critical thinking skills and their understanding of the importance of recognizing various perspectives and multiple truths in life. And as journeyers finding their own Jewish paths, it has also cultivated their Jewish identities and deepened their commitment to Judaism by enhancing their appreciation for the many levels of meaning found within the texts of their heritage.