THE TORAH
I
The Torah is not a book of salvation, it is not a book for a future and messianic world, it is not a book of morals or one that presents metaphysical aspects.
II
The Torah is a Book of “living life on the road,” of “crossing real seas and deserts,” of pondering the processes of world formation and the formation of a People, from their Semitic, Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Canaanite, and then Hebraic, Israelite, and Jewish origins.
III
The Torah is this: Bereshit (reflections on the origin and the ethical and Abrahamic foundations of the Hebrews); Shemot (the names, principled rights, and foundational lives of the Israelites); Vayikrá (the calling to the religious processes of ancient sacrificial cults and priestly regulations); Bamidbar (the experience of the desert and life as it is) and Devarim (the words that reclaim and establish principles that constitute the Jewish world).
IV
There is no metaphysics or celestial projection in the Torah; there are real experiences of the here and now. There are no morals; there is Ethics and principles of coexistence! There is nothing messianic and nothing of “heaven and beyond the sea.” In the Torah, there are the first lessons of human dignity, of human rights, and of rights for coexistence.
V
The Torah is not the Old Testament or the Ancient Testament, for it does not precede any text. The Torah is! The Torah is the connection between Bereshit (the first word) and Israel (the last word).
VI
In short, the Torah is not a book of “arrival,” it is a book of Abrahamic, Hebraic, Israelite, and Jewish processes. It is a book of departure and journey…
VII
That is it, in brief, and a bit more.
*
(Pietro Nardella-Dellova)
NOTES
- Extracts from texts by Pietro Nardella-Dellova, in A Crise Sacrificial do Direito (USP, 2000); A Morte do Poeta nos Penhascos (2009) and Judaísmo e Direitos Humanos (PUC/SP, 2020).