ABSTRACT
Ladin explicates her understanding of the Torah and God’s difference from being human as related to her own differences from others. She writes that, as she got older, she could not ignore the fact that the Torah portrays relationships in which individual human beings (notably Abraham and Moses) accept God’s differences and are able to relate to God even though, like her, God does not fit human categories such as gender.
To Ladin, the most horrifying aspect of the Israelites’ idolatry around the Golden Calf was not their disobedience, but the fact that, like her family, they prefer a relationship with an image they understand to a relationship with a real being they can’t.
Through her interpretations of the Torah, Ladin concludes: to serve God, we must serve the needs of a stranger. To grow close to God, we must become intimate with a stranger. To open ourselves to God, we must open ourselves to a stranger.
