Well, I’m going to have to go with the five books of Moses.

I don’t think there is any meaning to Judaism without the Torah. That’s not even a religious statement. Whether you understand it in a religious way, in a historical way, as how we have defined ourselves as a people, as the story we are passing down between generations, as a gift that our people have given the world—all of those things are true, and none of them means anything unless you actually read the book. That is a challenge that modern readers need to meet. Luckily there are many people—and in fact thousands of years’ worth of people— who are here to help you along the way.

As you read the Torah over and over again, you see that the book doesn’t change, but you do. Because of that, it’s different every time you read it. Reading the story of the binding of Isaac as a child is different from reading it as a parent. Everything about the way you understand the text is different.

Many people are surprised when they encounter the texts as an adult— this is a radical revolutionary document. This is about overthrowing a social order and creating a new one, a vision of how a society can be. I think that any person with an open mind is going to be challenged by it. It’s a book for thinking people. Reading and reinterpreting the book is the religion. By being a reader, you are participating in that tradition Because of that, this is an eternally open book. What makes the Torah the Torah is not just the text itself but the thousands of years of conversations about what it might mean. This fact that those conversations are still continuing means that every reader gets to participate in them.

There are a million ways to engage with the Torah. This is not a book you’re supposed to read sitting by yourself. In fact, the whole idea of reading by yourself is very recent in Judaism. Almost all the modern He- brew and Yiddish writers have some story of how they come out of the yeshiva world, and then they go to a secular library in a modern European city, and they are stunned because everyone’s sitting quietly, reading books. They’ve never seen someone read silently. The whole idea of read- ing to yourself is not part of Judaism. You’re always reading in dialogue in a community or in dialogue with other people.

What’s the most amazing to me is, it’s very unusual in ancient literature to have characters who change. If you look at somebody like Odysseus, he goes off, fights the Trojan War, he comes back 20 years later, and he’s the same guy as when he left. The same wife is still waiting for him. But that’s not true for these biblical figures who start in one place and end up somewhere totally different. They emphasize this idea of restoration, this idea of change. If you look at some- body like Jacob who starts out as this person who’s cheating his brother and tricking his blind father, you see how he changes as he gets older, and how he reconciles with his brother. It’s this amazing and realistic story of the way people change over time. These people are so familiar. They only become more familiar as you become older.