As we begin the new annual cycle of the Torah reading, we’re delighted to engage in a conversation with the authors of a rich new resource, It Takes Two to Torah. This book provides short but wide-ranging dialogues between its authors, journalist Abigail Pogrebin and Rabbi Dov Linzer, on each weekly Torah portion. They explore the meaning of the text through traditional interpretations and their own distinct perspectives as a Reform Jew and an Orthodox rabbi. In keeping with the dialogic spirit of their book, we asked Pogrebin and Linzer to reflect with us together on their unique project.

It’s fairly unusual for a serious chevruta (study partner) relationship to develop among people coming from different denominations and Jewish practices. How did you meet and decide to undertake your study project together?  

It’s true that we found ourselves becoming The Odd Couple Talking Torah; you’re right that it isn’t every day that two Jews of such different backgrounds and orientations—when it comes to Jewish law, prayer, and faith—would decide to unpack every parsha [weekly Torah portion] together in real time. 

But we struck up an unlikely friendship when we met fourteen years ago at a conference convened by The Jewish Week called “The Conversation,” which invited Jewish clergy, nonprofit heads, journalists, and writers to come to Baltimore for three days and talk about the pressing questions of the moment for the Jewish community. We somehow kept landing in the same breakout groups and learned from each other—despite deep differences in scholarship and perspective. We stayed in touch and sought each other’s advice when it came to a work project or Jewish question we were wrestling with. Then in 2018, Dov suggested that we talk Torah together—out loud, unrehearsed, for a podcast—so that we’d not only see where our different lenses pushed each other, but where a pluralistic conversation can find common ground.

Tablet magazine produced Parsha in Progress, a podcast in which we unpacked the parsha of the week for just ten minutes, and our disputes and discoveries taught us both more than we expected, especially as we saw in high relief how ancient verses speak to modern questions—specifically the immigration battles raging in America, the racial reckoning after George Floyd’s murder, and the surreal upheaval of the Covid pandemic. 

Many listeners told us they enjoyed our banter, candor, and scholarship, but they wished every episode lived in one place, one volume that they could read and return to, so they could take the Torah journey cover to cover and ultimately revisit the parsha of the week when it returned on the calendar. That led us to adapt our dialogue to book form, and we were happily surprised to see that it feels just as spontaneous on the page. 

How did having Torah study as the foundation of your relationship shape your friendship?  

There is a kind of exquisite discipline and relationship that Torah study requires— preparing for each parsha conversation by revisiting and talking through the verses, seeing which leap out as being especially challenging, moving, or confusing—and then zeroing on a few verses or questions that we are each eager to discuss together. The mutual respect we felt for each other’s outlook, not to mention the way we forced each other to take that second look at our assessments or assumptions, was honestly the crucible in which a lasting friendship was forged. 

Why did you choose to maintain the dialogic structure of your podcast conversations in this book? 

We both felt so strongly that the immediacy of our exchange was key—not just to the joy and honesty of our Torah journey together, but to the chevrutah model that has endured for centuries. Torah gets discussed and argued in pairs, and we wanted to preserve that tradition. Readers have told us they feel like they’re at the kitchen table with us—they can hear our voices, and they feel spurred to weigh in with their own opinions. That was exactly our hope, to invite readers in. 

 For most of history, Torah study partners have been exclusively male. How did your different gender identities and experiences shape your conversations? 

 There was never any hesitation on Dov’s part—at least not that Abby could discern—to embark on this conversation despite our different gender identities and experiences. That was no small detail, because no matter how open and inclusive Dov’s Orthodox Judaism may be in some respects, there are still red lines he will not cross, in terms of women’s participation in worship especially. I think he appreciated the ways I came at many parshas through a more modern prism—for instance, Abraham's expulsion of his wife’s servant, Hagar, the disturbing sotah ritual introduced in Parsha Nasso, and the fact that Moses was barred from the Promised Land. I never want to suggest that my Torah takes were more “emotional,” because that confirms a sexist stereotype that I reject; but I will say that I undeniably kept insisting that Dov reconcile the storyline that I viewed as unjust. 

You’ve published this book at a moment when the Jewish community, along with society at large, is increasingly polarized, and conversations across difference are rare and often contentious. Your book models an alternative. What tools did you learn from your chevruta that might be useful to others who are trying to navigate this difficult moment? 

 We have seen how, in this American moment, the value of listening is often invoked with good intentions but largely ignored. It's harder than we sometimes admit to really consider another person’s perspective or life experience. Hopefully readers will see that we were committed to really hearing each other (and pushing each other), despite deep differences in our Jewish practice, faith, and sense of obligation to Jewish law. Our greatest wish is that others pick a study partner and join our dialogue—adding their own opinions, while maintaining a civility and openness that’s all too rare in this country and in our Jewish community right now. 

Both of you, in the book, describe your conversations as in some way “sacred.” What does that mean to each of you?

 For Dov, this ancient book obligates him in the sense that he reads it daily, teaches it weekly, believes it comes from God, and must always find the positive lessons and wisdom in its verses and stories, even when they are challenging. For Abby, the Torah is sacred because it’s been the glue of Jews around the globe for millennia, because its stories and ethics raise questions that feel uncannily relevant, even urgent, in every moment, and because the power of reading these same chapters again and again mirrors the resilience of a people and a religion that so many haters have tried to snuff out. 

One of my favorite moments of Jewish practice is on the holiday of Simchat Torah, when we finish reading the very last piece of the last book of the Torah and then start right back at the beginning—with, of course, some lively celebrating in between! It’s a beautiful representation of the never-ending nature of Torah and Torah study. Implicit in this practice is the assertion that every year, we’ll bring new questions and find new insights in the text. As we begin the Torah cycle of 5785, what’s one new question you’re bringing to your study? 

 At a time when the Torah is being weaponized by some to justify their extreme political views, Dov is asking how we can move away from the search for absolutes, and find a way to engage the Torah that embraces complexity, contradiction and nuance. Abby is asking what it means to love the stranger if the stranger doesn’t love you back.