God Spoke Once, I Heard Twice: The Torah’s Lens on Fifty-Four Fields of Human Knowledge

Moving from cosmology to creativity to criminology, the Torah explores the breadth of human existence: ethics and ritual, narratives of Patriarchs and Matriarchs, history and a philosophy of history--all of these drive the first five books of Hebrew Scripture. But as Rabbi Hillel Goldberg explains in this probing and insightful commentary, these sacred texts are governed by one idea--one God. God blesses the human being with power, and also imposes limits. A human being may not kill, not commit any sacrilege, not act unjustly. God retains ultimate power, including the prerogative to make ethical, ritual, and spiritual laws, which fill the Torah. The Torah is a kaleidoscope, and Rabbi Goldberg refracts it through its fifty-four prisms--its fifty-four chapters. But a single reality undergirds all--one God.

Rabbi Goldberg’s exploration of the diversity of disciplines in the Torah demonstrates how naturally the idea of monotheism emerges. In Genesis, God chooses one family to carry out His mission in history. The book of Exodus narrates God’s liberation of this family’s descendants in order to bring His mission to fruition. Leviticus details the laws by which God’s people serve Him through ethics, ritual, even agriculture. Numbers begins with the metahistory of God’s people as He sustains it with manna and guides it with a pillar of fire and a pillar of cloud; then resumes the history of His people as it wages war and prepares to conquer the promised land. Fearful of idolatry there, Moses in Deuteronomy concludes his exhortation to remain faithful to the invisible presence of God.

Bible commentary, according to Rabbi Goldberg, should mirror the many ways God enters into the human experience. Offering philosophic inquiry, personal reflection, and fresh exegesis--plus a touch of poetry, humor, and storytelling--God Spoke Once, I Heard Twice is a brilliant, learned, and inspired contribution to an ongoing chronicle of faith.

Rabbi Hillel Goldberg is an independent scholar, writer and the author of major studies on the Musar movement, including The Fire Within as well as Israel Salanter: Text, Structure, Idea, winner of an Academic Book of the Year award from Choice. A former lecturer in Jewish intellectual history at the Hebrew University, he is the longtime senior editor at Tradition and original contributing editor for the Jewish Action.As editor and publisher of the Intermountain Jewish News, he has many Simon Rockower Awards for Excellence in Jewish Journalism. His most recent work consists of two acclaimed Hebrew volumes on the Vilna Gaon’s commentary on the Code of Jewish Law. He lives in Denver.