ABSTRACT
For several years running David Hartman and the author would break the tedium of the Yom Kippur service by taking a walk together in and around our synagogue's premises. They found in each other a common vision of the ideals of Judaism, of the present crises in it, of the sectarianism that saps its strength. The traditional Jewish reader approaches the Bible with the expectation that he will be edified and improved by it; that it will strengthen his character, give him hope, uplift him above ephemeral concerns. The approach to the morally problematic passages in the Bible utilizes the remedy that medieval thinkers found for the intellectual scandal of biblical anthropomorphisms, namely the "scripture speaks in human terms". The conception of the Bible as a flat, perspectiveless canvas in which nothing is new after the Torah is indeed a "traditional Jewish reading".
