Short Meaning
About the book
Short Meaning offers a fresh reading of the Torah through peshat, its plain meaning. The book contains about 170 short, self-contained chapters arranged by the weekly Torah portions. Each begins with a question, difficulty, or apparent contradiction and offers an original interpretation through close attention to language, structure, and context, in conversation with traditional commentary and biblical scholarship.
The book allows room for cautious interpretive freedom, sometimes exploring bold possibilities when they can reasonably arise from the plain meaning of Scripture. Its chapters address narratives, characters, commandments, theological ideas, and moral questions, while tracing patterns and ideas that recur throughout the Torah.
At its heart is the experience of discovery: returning to familiar verses and uncovering new and surprising ways to read them.