Consequently, the source material about Judaism is mind-bogglingly vast—millions of pages written over thousands of years, much of it in Hebrew and other languages many of us don’t understand.

I learned that just about all of Judaism is rooted in its words, that did not exactly fill me with confidence. I found parts of it to be moving and relatable, but with its bizarre rituals, fallible characters, supernatural occurrences, and not so warm and fuzzy God, the Torah did not strike me as an ideal text upon which to base a major world relig

through our individual seeking and grappling, we don’t just discover, but collectively help create, the kind of Judaism that is worth grabbing hold of.

Revelation thus cannot be viewed as “a pure expression of God’s will,” but rather “as an expression of God’s will filtered through the mindset and mores of its intended audience.”

The second rationale for treating animals humanely has to do with us. How we treat animals—whether we exercise restraint in how we kill and use them—affects our character. The

Rabbi Art Green writes: In the midst of life, our ordinariness is interrupted. This may take place as we touch one of the edges of life, in a great confrontation with the new life of a child, or of an approaching death. We may see it in wonders of nature, sunrises and sunsets, mountains and oceans. It may happen to us in the course of loving and de

And about fifty years later, when Babylonia was conquered by the Persians, a number of the exiles returned to Judah, where they rebuilt the Temple in Jerusalem and began referring to themselves as “Yehudim” or “Jews” (and I will similarly make this switch, using “Jews” from now on, instead of “Israelites”).

As Rabbi Emanuel Rackman stated (and note that he was an Orthodox rabbi), “A Jew dare not live with absolute certainty, not only because certainty is the hallmark of the fanatic and Judaism abhors fanaticism, but also because doubt is good for the human soul.”

What was unusual about the Torah was its concern not just for vulnerable Israelites, but for vulnerable non-Israelites as well. They too, the Torah insists, are in God’s image.