Through the Process, we are invited to bring our authentic questions, needs, and struggles to the page and open to what emerges.

Etymologically, the word “Torah,” commonly translated as “instruction” or “law,” comes from the Hebrew root yud-resh-hei. This root is shared by many words, including “moreh” (teacher) and “lirot” (to cast or shoot), linking their individual meanings in an etymological web of shared significance.6 Some rabbis also postulate that the root of Torah

On one hand, we might hear this interpretation as conditional, that it is only if we support those in need that God will choose to do so as well. But we might also hear this as relational: to the extent that we are able to open our aperture to let God in, God is able to open and flow to us and through us, into the world.

beit midrash is a space set aside for Jewish learning. Yet, this phrase (like so many others we will explore throughout the book) allows for multiple interpretations, each of which invites new possibilities. Beit midrash refers not only to a space, but also to a sacred process of learning and exploration. The word “midrash” comes from the verb

To invert reality is not only holy; it is healthy. “In order to break limiting patterns, it is often necessary to take a distinctly different posture, or stance, such as turning ourselves upside down to get another view of a restrictive pattern or stuck place in consciousness that is being experienced” writes Angeles Arrien in The Tarot Handbook.13

See Genesis 12:1 in Mei haShiloach (c. 1840–1860; Sifrei Izhbitza-Radzin: Bnei Brak, 2005).

Have you ever heard a call of this nature? Something potent and yet inchoate that seemed to be asking you to drastically change your life and set out for somewhere in search of something that doesn’t even have a name. How did you respond? Did you push the feeling away? Discuss it with a friend? Doubt the call itself? Say yes immediately?

Across time, a core aspect of Judaism has been its iterative capacity: its invitation to return over and over to the same materials but with new questions and understandings, lending our texts a limitless ability to shift and change as circumstances demand. This is, in part, what has allowed the textual

The Process approaches Torah with the belief that the text welcomes all of us and all of who we are, granting us the freedom to read Torah in ways that are true to the text, and true to ourselves, even if what emerges is perhaps quite different from interpretations we’ve heard in the past.