By Rabbi Dr. Hillel Goldberg
Rowman & Littlefield
Maryland, 2025
376 pages
Reviewed by Rabbi Shalom Carmy
Don’t be alarmed by a daunting subtitle. This one promises “fifty-four fields of human knowledge” (corresponding to the parashiyot in the Torah). Are there not already too many 400-page books offering the Torah perspective on everything? Are fifty-four fields not more than most writers can illuminate, and much more than one reviewer can presume to judge?
Better to judge the book by its author. My old classmate, Rabbi Dr. Hillel Goldberg, comes to you with a versatile record of literary and intellectual achievement. He has written scholarly books on Rabbi Yisrael Salanter and other modern Jewish figures, and he has also produced books on these and other matters that are accessible to non-academics. He has given us two lengthy and highly technical Hebrew tomes dealing with the Vilna Gaon’s analysis of mikvaot and halachic probabilities and has also made a career as editor of the Intermountain Jewish News.
Rabbi Goldberg’s book is not one more attempt at a compendium of Judaism. Nor is it a work of sustained Torah exegesis. True, it contains thoughtful and thought-provoking insights on the Biblical readings, but often the insight will strike when you close the book and engage in further reflection. Rabbi Goldberg speaks from mainstream Orthodoxy even while communicating the lifetime study and musings of an individual. When appropriate, he presents something like a general survey of a subject. Frequently, though, his point of departure and destination is much more personal. It is a combination, I think, that is needed in our time and place.
A few randomly selected examples may convey the range, style and value of Rabbi Goldberg’s accomplishment.
Take the opening essay, “Science,” which looks like the typical science-and-religion chapter. For the most part, it speaks of Darwinian evolution as it is preached in contemporary culture, and criticizes the tendency, at the popular and semi-popular level, to give Darwinism an ideological weight beyond its scientific warrant. At the end of most of these essays, Rabbi Goldberg appends a list of references. In this first piece, the sources include sophisticated academic or scientific contributions together with more popular texts on the implications of biological theory; he also mentions important works of intellectual history. The result is that intelligent readers can see Rabbi Goldberg’s preparation for themselves and follow in his footsteps if so inclined.
Rabbi Goldberg’s lists elsewhere in the volume are rarely this detailed. Some chapters have none, and many are limited to the sources that Rabbi Goldberg quotes. Where he does provide such a list, it helps avoid oversimplification, and it situates his thoughts in a broader cultural and religious context.
Rabbi Goldberg speaks from mainstream Orthodoxy even while communicating the lifetime study and musings of an individual.
Thus, for example, the section on Chukkat begins with thoughts on death associated with the commandments linked to the defilement of death and the “death by a kiss” of Miriam and her brothers. Rabbi Goldberg here meditates on what it means to approach the end of life. He then reflects on worldliness and asceticism, searching for a realistic balance between the two. The essay cites three earlier writers: the German-Jewish scholar Nahum N. Glatzer, contemplating the death of his mother at the age of 101; Maimonides in his famous discussion, in a pivotal chapter of the Guide, of the greatest individuals cleaving unto G-d; and the late nineteenth-century Chassidic rebbe, Rav Tzadok HaKohen of Lublin. Though the final product is Rabbi Goldberg’s, each of these disparate thinkers has a role to play in the article.
Often the connection to the parashah is not evident until midway through the essay. The header of the one on Balak is “Humor.” Most of it is taken up with a story about the author’s chair, and he feels the need to remind the reader that he will indeed connect it to the Torah subject. An important treatment of Yitro (“Sleuthing”) begins with an anecdote in which Rabbi Goldberg brings his own students to the home of his teacher, the venerable Rabbi Ben Zion Bruk. When Rabbi Bruk leaves the students’ questions unanswered, the moral is that not all questions have answers that can be delivered on the spot. Later in the essay, Rabbi Goldberg moves on to develop an insight about the Decalogue that is directly bound up with the Torah text.
Finally, let us examine the first three essays on Vayikra. The first takes up the general idea of sacrificial worship. Rabbi Goldberg emphasizes two points that are not always given prominence in such accounts. One is the very fact that human beings are attracted and fascinated by the idea of offering up an animal to G-d. The second is the degree to which the laws of sacrifice in the Torah are not merely about offering the blood of the animal but also about human beings eating a significant portion of the meat; as well as the prevalence of cereal sacrifices that do not involve meat at all.
The sacrifices too have attracted various homiletical or allegorical interpretations. Rabbi Goldberg on Tzav (“Allegory”) produces quite a few such possibilities that are of inherent interest. However, he also raises the implicit question of what makes such approaches plausible when they are successful. One would suggest that here, as elsewhere in this book, Rabbi Goldberg invites a more sustained reflection than is apparent on the surface.
The essay on Shemini, “Eulogy,” refers to Aharon’s silence when two of his sons die. The essay is, in fact, a eulogy for Rabbi Dr. Yitzhak Twersky that was originally published in 1998. Rabbi Goldberg considers the silences that accompanied Rabbi Twersky’s varied work as a scholar, talmid chacham, Chassidic rebbe and son and son-in-law. He also adds some salient comments about Rabbi Twersky’s eloquent style of writing. The content is ostensibly distant from the specific details in the Torah, yet it suggests depths beyond a routine reading of the Torah. I was impressed by this essay when I read it thirty years ago. I am pleased to read it again and to end on this note my brief comments on a work that will no doubt offer knowledge and reflection to its readers.
Rabbi Shalom Carmy teaches philosophy and Jewish studies at Yeshiva University. He is editor emeritus of Tradition and contributing editor at First Things.