Richard Elliot Friedman, “Does the Torah End with ‘The End’?” (2013), thetorah.com. Accessed 10.23.26.
The Torah contains prose, poetry, and law, as well as lists, records, and genealogies. It is composed of these many things, but in certain ways the law stands out — so much so that Rashi’s famous first comment on the Torah was: why does it start with the story of creation instead of starting directly with the first law to Israel, which doesn’t come until Exodus 12.
When a person says “I live my life according to Torah,” people normally understand him or her to mean mainly that he or she follows its laws — not that he or she sings the Song of Miriam daily or that he or she is dedicated to fight against anyone who would doubt that the world began with two naked people, two magic trees, and a talking snake. And so in the book of Nehemiah, when the entire Torah is read to the people (for the first time in history, I believe), the description of what follows is about the people’s taking actions to fulfill its laws (Nehemiah 8-10).
