Rabbinic Judaism
“Hence in Rabbinic Judaism there is no higher calling than to wrestle with God and others over the meaning of God’s Torah.” (RWT, p. 85)
Explain what the idea of wrestling with God means for Jews. The textbook refers to the story from Genesis chapter 32 in which Jacob is renamed Israel. Go beyond this story to explain how wrestling with “God and others” over the meaning of Torah plays out in the lives of Jewish people. What kind of activities might count as manifesting this interpretive struggle? And why should we include these activities in the notion of a “higher calling” for Jews? In what sense is this image of wrestling as an ongoing struggle emblematic of what it means to be Jewish? (that is, what it means to be Israel)
2 pages, typed and double-spaced.
