Is halacha still binding if one accepts biblical criticism?

Why and how do so many Modern Orthodox individuals who participate in the modern world so fully, turn to fundamentalist apologetics in order to justify their belief in Torah-Mi-Sinai?

The more we mine for meaning, the more likely we are to agree with the words of the Psalmist, who declared the Torah’s words to be enduring, enlightening, and abidingly true

Torah calls us to a life of meaning, integrity, concern for others, and connectedness to community and to God.

When I was introduced to modern biblical scholarship in all its fields, I was amazed at its potential as an interpretive tool.

Believers have spent two millennia interpreting the Torah and refining their faith without being dogmatic—certainly without taking the simple sense of the Torah as necessarily authoritative.

Biblical criticism is not a theory that one can accept or reject at will. Once one is exposed to its methods and findings, there is no choice but to acknowledge the issues these raise.

By privileging interpretation over literalism, our tradition encourages us to live through the Torah and not die through it or promote violence through its teachings.

Teaching a nuanced approach to Torah MiSinai from a young age will prepare the student for the more complex teachings of modern scholarship later on.

How are we to relate to religious texts and a religious tradition that almost exclusively reflect the androcentric ideology of their male authors?

An ideal balance in Torah study allows for both critical study of the text as well as traditional study, ideally putting the two in conversation with each other.

The pursuit of the peshat can be an essential element in recapturing the religious spirit and function of the Torah

[E]ven if you accept the narrative of biblical criticism, you can consistently entertain the belief, or the hope, that God has appropriated the text of the Pentateuch, making it his – word for word.

Almost every methodological approach used by modern Bible critics finds a parallel in the works of the medieval “traditional” Jewish exegetes.

Academic study challenges us to transcend our communal affiliations and biases as we attempt to understand what the Torah and other biblical texts meant to the ancient Israelites, and thus, might mean to us.

I believe that current biblical scholarship which undermines the traditional belief in the textual integrity of the Torah and its accurate historicity provides a precious opportunity to engender a spiritual revitalization of traditional Judaism.

Torah need not be fearful of any human question or critique.

It is foolish and wrong to interpret the Torah in a way that makes Torah conflict with the unequivocal truths of science and reason.

It could well be that our own, “enlightened,” moral views will one day be outmoded; let us hope that our descendants will feel bound not by our frail words, but by the robust spiritual tradition.

We are now in the opening stage of the debate in the modern Orthodox community on how to deal with critical biblical studies.

For too long Orthodox Jews have looked on Bible scholarship as a threat rather than an opportunity.