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BARRY W. HOLTZ
A Lifetime of Reading
S
oon
a f t e r t h e
Jewish Book Annual
asked me to contribute a life
time reading plan for Jewish literature, I began to wonder about
that very phrase, “lifetime reading plan.” Every word in that sim
ple formulation, in fact, suddenly seemed to echo with questions.
In what sense was Jewish “reading” reading at all? Was there such
a thing as a reading “plan” in our tradition? And how does read
ing fit into the “lifetime” of the individual Jew? These are not sim
ple matters and quite rapidly that little innocuous phrase had
wormed itself into my mind and began to raise questions.
Take “plan” to begin with. Let us suppose that I have decided
to master a particular field, any field. For my own curiosity, I
want to learn everything I can possibly learn about, say, comput
ers. I can begin to map a program of learning for myself. I can
consult some basic popular books about computers and begin to
get a sense of the dimensions of the field; I can follow those sim
ple books to more complex investigations; I can use the bibliogra
phies that I find in some books to build other bibliographies. I will
soon get an idea about the aspects of computers that interest me
and those that do not — I might want to learn about program
ming, but not about microchips. And with intelligence and dili
gence I will get as far as my abilities will take me. I create a plan;
probably not a lifetime plan, but who knows? I can spend as long
on it as I like.
Is this what we mean by a lifetime reading plan inJudaism? Is it
mastery? Is it “covering material,” as teachers sometimes like to
say? A reading plan, as I have implied, suggests an important
notion: you read one thing, master it, finish it, and then you move
on to the next thing. This is not a surprising idea. Most of West
ern education follows the same approach. And yet it also may be
very far away from traditional Jewish ideas about these matters.
Think for a moment: In Judaism we read our key book and
then we read it again. And again. The weekly cycle of Torah
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