On Devarim, for Simchat Torah
Every time I experience a major shift in my life, I see my entire history with new eyes. I understand the events of my past as precursors to this moment, in ways I couldn’t have done before this moment, and so I tweak the story of my life, just a little. Over the course of the past few years, the story of my life as a seminary student went like this: I’m here to get credentialed as a religious professional. I’m here to unlearn the damaging theologies of my childhood. I’m here to learn how to be a scholar. Erm, I actually have no idea what I’m doing here. It’s only now that I’ve graduated that I can look back on the entire arc of my experience and tell you a new story I didn’t know before: I went to a Christian seminary in order to discover and ultimately convert to Judaism. This new story doesn’t overwrite the others—I’m still going to do some kind of religious or scholarly work, probably—but it gives the old stories new flavor and more nuance. The book of Deuteronomy is a sim