It Takes Two To Torah
Abigail Pogrebin and Rabbi Dov Linzer
September 10, 2024 Fig Tree Books
320 pages
The holiday of Shavuot is best known for the tradition of staying up all night and learning Torah, but it is also the moment when the Jewish people went from a ragtag band of former slaves on the run to a full fledged nation, unified in our common covenant with our God. That unity is what I like to focus on. There are many ways of interpreting that covenant, and our Torah, but it should never divide us. Rabbi Dov Linzer and journalist Abigail Pogrebin epitomize that ethos in their book It Takes Two Torah.
Rabbi Linzer, a Modern Orthodox Rabbi, is more willing to seek outside perspective and acknowledge it as valid than most people associate with any kind of Orthodox Judaism. Meanwhile, Pogrebin is more insightful and clearly dedicated to Torah study than people tend to give Reform Jews credit for. Learning together on their podcast, one torah portion a week, they challenged those stereotypes and each other. Now their conversations have been gathered into one volume.
As a person who struggles with audio formats, I was grateful to have this conversation in print. The discussion was lively, and they did not shy away from some of the sketchier topics – sotah anyone? They also never gave away their original premise. Rabbi Linzer views the Torah as a divine blueprint for life while Pogrebin sees it more as a touchstone text to learn about Jewish ethics without an obligation to necessarily follow all the rules therein as our understanding of the world and social justice evolves. However, there is one common denominator. As Jews we believe it is our goal to grapple with our text, to turn it over and over, rather than just blindly accept it. And these two deliver on that concept!
Although Rabbi Linzer admittedly knows more of the text by heart than Pogrebin (side effect of his day job I suppose) we never get the sense that one of the two is teaching the other. Instead, they are struggling together, each bringing in thoughts from their own traditions to teach the other, and trying to reach some form of conclusion. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t. But conclusions aren’t the point. The point is the argument itself. That is how we engage in Torah and keep it relevant.
It Takes Two To Torah is rooted in its time. There are references to the COVID pandemic and BLM protests. But it is also a durable document. A roadmap for how to engage with each other across denominations in polite, but no less heated, scholarly discourse. In that way, it emulates the everlasting Torah itself. A worthy aspiration.
BookishyJewish received a finished copy of this book from the publisher.