Read It Again

Joan Wickersham's column today in the Boston Globe perfectly expresses my feelings about the joy of re-reading.  I would add that the traditional Jewish practice of re-reading the Torah every year is the best example.

• When I was a child, I looked to the Torah for heroes and villains and models of how to behave.  
• As a grown man, I read it for deeper insights into how reality works, and what we are called to do in this world. (See my book Political Discourse in Exile for some of those insights.)
• As a man growing older, I continue to read (or as the idiom goes, to learn) Torah.  But I re-read it these days with more appreciation for other points of view and for psychological insights that my exclusively political readings would have left out.  

 My series of blog entries on Avivah Zornberg's The Particulars of Rapture shows that appreciation.  (And I also appreciate those of you who are following along with me!)