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Rabbi Bloom off. It's so great to see you and thank you so much for this time to be with me. Um I really appreciate it. I know you're very busy. Um And I wanted to

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start by just thanking you for the hospitality in which you welcomed me into this space, uh inviting me to come to a Sabbath service uh couple months ago . Um And several things that I noticed right away

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. The first one was um the different ways that we uh receive the holy book. So in a church worship service, we have like a Bible that's out front. Um But we don't typically have a

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display where we bring it out and bring it among people, but that was exactly what happened here. There was a big part where um the the Torah scrolls were brought out from behind these doors and literally

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carried throughout the sanctuary where people came out and touched it, maybe even kissed it. Uh And would love to hear more about uh about what was going on there. Uh Because I think it was just

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, it was a really beautiful moment and love to hear you reflect more on, on what was happening ? Thanks, Doctor Helsel. It's really great to share this time with you and to discuss uh ideas

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of worship and spirituality and Judaism and Christianity. And I really appreciate your generosity. So we're sitting right now in our sanctuary, which is modeled to look like the tent of meeting, as described in the

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Hebrew Bible, a place where God's presence was shown not only to Moses but to the Children of Israel . And when we are engaged in prayer or in worship, one of the things that is central to

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us is the revelation that Moses received at Mount Sinai , which traditionally, we believe was a direct apprehension or a direct witness, face to face of God . And in fact, the Children of Israel too

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, if you look at uh at least the beginning of the 10 commandments, it says that God is the indivisible only God. And it seems in fact that God is speaking directly to the Children of Israel

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and the Children of Israel were so overwhelmed by that , that they're like, you know what Moses you take the rest of these, we'll be fine and we'll listen to you. It didn't turn out so

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great with the golden calf. But that's another conversation . So when we gather here in the sanctuary for our Sabbath services, which are uh Saturday morning, we are trying to recreate spiritually the moment of revelation

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at Mount Sinai. So when the Torah is taken from the ark and is brought amid the people. It is as if the Torah is coming directly from God in this moment of witnessing together. And the

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reason why people either touch or kiss or acknowledge the Torah is because the Torah is, uh, is our life and it is the foundation on which all of our questions are asked and the life that we

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endeavor to live. Hm. That's beautiful. One of the other things that I noticed was that when it was brought out to be read, uh the Torah scroll wasn't read by the religious leader, but

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by members of the community and different members of the community were invited up to, to read from the Torah and they didn't just read it, they were , they were chanting it. Uh And, and

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it was all in Hebrew. So uh the service being in Hebrew uh was was wonderful for me having uh been uh to seminary where I had to learn Hebrew, which was very difficult for me. You're

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going right to left and the vowels and punctuation, all of these kinds of things that are missing that you expect uh was really, really challenging for me . Uh And yet here, members of the congregation

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are very familiar and are able to come up and access this ancient language and chant it in front of everyone else. Um So I just wanna say thank you because I know that the reason why we have

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this beautiful ancient language among Christians and part of our uh religious training as, as pastors um comes from the graciousness of Jewish scholars who throughout the centuries have uh have shared this knowledge of this ancient language with

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us. Um So I, I just wanna thank you for that. And also um can you say a little bit more about why it's important for members of the community to come up and, and read

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from the, the Hebrew text uh in, in the sanctuary. Thank you. Having a volunteers basically read the Torah is perhaps one of the things I'm proudest of, of this community. And the Torah

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. First of all are the five books of Moses , Genesis, Exodus Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. And in every given week, we start at the beginning. And throughout the entire year, we read

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the entire Torah that the word Torah means instruction. Uh Some people think it means law, but it literally means instruction or teaching and we go and progress , we don't leave stuff out. So we go

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from the fall from Genesis and then to the next fall, we end in Deuteronomy. And in fact , the holiday where we turn the tours back just occurred. It's called Simha Torah. And the thing

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that we celebrate is the moving from the end back to the beginning. So volunteers learn how to chant the Torah, they learn Hebrew and then they learn the system sort of akin to if you will like

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um Gregorian chanting to a degree there would be no on some of the uh the words to represent a series of notes. So we have a similar system , it's called cantell or trope or in Hebrew to

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Ame Hami gra the music or the taste of the , the reading. And people learn to interpret those different symbols that are both above and below the words and they learn how to do it. And,

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and that is actually a very important aspect of training our Children as well. So when someone becomes a Bar Mitzvah or a bat mitzvah, a boy or a girl, bar Mitzvah for a boy, a

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bat mitzvah for a girl, they learn how to chant, not only the Torah, but we also have another section of the service called uh the Ha Tara doesn't mean half Tora, but it's the prophetic

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reading that responds to a degree to the Torah reading as well. And while the systems of Ta Mija Mira are the same, the music or the melody is different. So they actually learn a system and

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then they learn various melodies that go with each system . Hm. Wow. Uh It's a lot to learn. It's impressive that it sounds more than, I mean, it's great. But people, we

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don't just like, hey, two weeks, you're running a Bar Mitzvah. Uh people, the kids start to learn Hebrew when they're in third grade even earlier, but they start reading in third grade and

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then we start training them how to chant it in , in around fifth grade. Wow. Wow, that's fascinating. Uh And so much of a whole uh history is in that teaching, passing on this

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language to people. Uh you know, these young people that are so immersed in, you know, technology these days, you know, to be immersed in an ancient language, like this is really uh

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really profound and the scroll which is hand written, hand lettered and written by like a quill. So it's not just written with a pen or something like that. So I, I think your point is

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really well taken that they appreciate not only the transmission of the tradition but the ancient ways of, of writing and holding a sacred tradition embodied within the material of what it is itself. It would be very

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easy to have a big screen and perhaps people can just follow along with, you know, highlighted words . But we, we, there's, I think a beauty and an importance in keeping things uh to

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the point where people um learn from that based on maybe the discomfort or the strangeness of old technology. Mm hm. And speaking of old, how old are the scrolls that you have here uh at your

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sanctuary? Well, every synagogue has different stories told with the different scrolls. Uh We have scrolls that range from commissions that we have asked people to write . Uh the people who write a scroll are called

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a sofa or a woman writing as a. So ferret. So we've commissioned two Torahs in the last 26 years, we commissioned um one in 2018. That's our latest. So we have that. And

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in fact that Torah is the very first Torah in the state of Texas that was written by a woman . Traditionally, they're written by men. So that's a very important aspect of our values of that.

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Judaism is open to anyone and anyone can take on these ideas of responsibility and tradition and observance. Uh The oldest tours that we have maybe date from the beginning of the 19th century. And in fact,

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perhaps earlier as well. And we actually have uncommonly , maybe around here, we have two Torahs that were rescued from the shoah or from the Holocaust. Two. Wow, one from uh sort of central

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Europe and one from uh Germany itself and a Torah that was taken out or smuggled out of Germany during the night of the broken glass called Crystal Nacht, which was November 9th, 1938. So that Torah

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resides here proudly. Another Torah was rescued and repaired after the Holocaust and is on permanent loan in our community, uh which is, and we read from both of them to this day. Do each of

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the scrolls have all five books of the Torah in them? So every Torah is exactly the same, although obviously penmanship is different, depending on the sofa or sofa. Uh But yes, every Torah has

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the five books in them again, Genesis. Exodus Leviticus, numbers, Deuteronomy or in Hebrew, Breit Schmo, Vra Bid Bar Diva. Those are the five books as a, as Christians. We have

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in our, our, what we call Our Old Testament. We have those five books and then we have the prophetic literature and other writings. Uh And then we have Our New Testament and I know in

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many churches, people are much more familiar with a lot of other elements of, of scripture. A lot of times they know The New Testament maybe better than some of the other writings. Um And I've

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heard you talk about uh you know how there's kind of, there's Torah and then there's oral Torah. Uh So there's only one Torah I've heard you say , and everything else is oral Torah. So all

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of the prophetic literature and all of the other writings uh are oral Torah as well as other things um that have been written about the Torah as oral Torah . Um Can you say a little bit more about

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that? Because I think as, as Christians, we're so used to seeing the Bible. All is this one thing. Uh And I know for sure that many Christians are unfamiliar with at least two of

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the books of the Torah. I, I don't know many people who know Leviticus or numbers very well . Um But can you speak more about kind of why the Torah itself is lifted up uh above say

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, the prophetic literature or other writings the Psalms and , and so forth. We have what's called the Hebrew Bible or in Hebrew, it's called the Tanna , which are three sections. The Torah, Nivi

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, E and Ku Tanna. The Torah, as I said means writings or teachings. Nim is the word for prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah Ezekiel and Kove are the writings. So I don't know about you

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, but in my house we have maybe a drawer . If you don't know what to do with stuff , you kind of put it in that drawer and there's like rubber bands and tape and band aids.

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And actually we have a whole floor in mind. But so that's the writings is kind of that kind of assorted books, Psalms, Proverbs, lamentations, um Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, things like this

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. The Torah, as I want to say is a central aspect of the giving of a relationship directly between God and the Children of Israel. So that is manifested in the Torah itself, the five books

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, the prophetic literature, the writings and anything else , all of the rabbinic literature, even this conversation is part of the oral tradition, which means that we are still commenting or thinking about or asking questions

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, which is a very important aspect of Judaism. In fact, I would maintain that questions are much more important than the answers. So the Hebrew Bible is all inclusive. The Torah is the beginning.

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It's the icebreaker. It's the conversation for us to think about questions of matter questions of being of existence , of ideas. And we get to devote our lives to asking those big questions, seeing what other

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people wrote in different times and places and contributing our own voices as well. So the written Torah is the physical Torah scroll, the five books and the oral Torah is everything that has come after that,

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including this and including the great people who get to learn from our videos as well. Wow, that's powerful. It reminds me of what you were talking about with bringing people in to read uh the the

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Torah scrolls and that even the interpretation or the understanding the learning. This isn't just set aside for the religious leaders, but it's, it's everyone's job. It's everyone's uh calling so to speak, uh to

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be able to have these conversations and to uh reflect on who God is and how God is uh calling us to live in the world. My title is rabbi and it literally means teacher. So it doesn't

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mean anything other than trying to empower others to begin to ask the questions of their life and to interrogate the tradition in a way that is meaningful. Well , thank you so much. This has been such

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a fruitful conversation. I really appreciate your time with