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Jews Should Stop Being Ashamed of the Torah

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Written by Rabbi Levi Brackman

Friday, 09 May 2008

Cory Booker, the Mayor of Newark, New Jersey, recently spoke to a Jewish audience. He started his talk with what he called a Dvar Torah, or a thought from that weeks’ Torah portion. He prefaced his comments by saying, “Before I go into this week’s Torah portion I want to tell you why this goy is talking about Torah.” He related how as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University he had become interested in Judaism after a chance meeting with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach. He explained that, “The more I learned about Judaism, the more I learned about me.”

Upon reading this I immediately asked myself whether we Jews value our own Torah as much as Cory Booker does. Or do some Jews find the word “Torah” too Jewish for their own liking?

Case in point, over the last eight months I have been working on a book project about Torah concepts that inform successful business practices. Numerous people who work within the Jewish community told me that having the word “Torah” in the title would adversely affect the book’s prospects. “Why?” I would ask. “It sounds too Orthodox and many Jews just won’t buy it,” they told me. They suggested that I avoid the word Torah like the plague. Interestingly non-Jews had the exact opposite opinion—gentiles that I surveyed felt that the word Torah in the title would compliment the book.

The major Jewish outreach organization Aish, formerly Aish HaTorah, is known to have dropped the word “Torah” from its name because they found that it was bad for their image with many secular Jews. Now the word Torah is missing in action from most of Aish’s literature about itself.

For many their only impression of the Torah is from media reports and some people that give it a bad name. Over the last many years some have come to see the Torah as an anachronistic book that is studied by backward and blinkered people who still believe in its myths and fables. This could not be farther from the reality. In actuality, the wisdom that is found within the Torah is as relevant today as it was three thousand years ago—a fact that is evident to anyone who has seriously studied it.

Clearly, the Torah needs an image makeover so that people realize that it is not just a book about an angry G-d with unreasonable demands—rather, it is one that contains much needed wisdom for today’s world.

So I took the risk and insisted that the word “Torah” remain in the title of my book, which will be called Jewish Wisdom for Business Success: Lessons from the Torah and Other Ancient Texts (Amacom, September 2008). it’s time to take the stigma out of the word “Torah”. The Torah should be respected, loved and appreciated by all Jews at least as much as the Christian Bible and the Koran are cherished and revered by Christians and Muslims respectively. As people increasingly gain access to the Torah’s profound teachings and as more of us use the word Torah unabashedly this will no doubt occur.

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