The Torah Can Be Made to Say Almost Anything

The Torah Can Be Made to Say Almost Anything

This Shabbat, like every Shabbat, rabbis around the world will share words of wisdom purportedly gleaned from the weekly Torah portion. This rabbi’s advice?  Take them all with a grain of salt.Generations of rabbis have known that it is easy to make the Torah say almost anything we want it to say. Indeed, doing so is a sign of good homiletical technique. In the Talmud (Sanhedrin 17a), the sage Abba bar Ayvoh (known simply as Rav) says that to se…