And fascinatingly enough there are two things that I've said throughout my life when I've addressed Jewish audiences....... One is that nowhere in the whole of the Tanakh does it say that a whole people can make themselves holy through study of texts. That's a purely Platonic idea, and comes out of Plato's Laws.
It is always instructive to overhear a well-read person's thoughts on religion, and Harold Bloom certainly has the credentials. In the rarified environment of one of the most elite colleges of the Ivey Leagues, prestigious Yale, Bloom sits like God among the gods. Bloom's interviewer and He Himself seem delighted to dismiss with so much wit and whiskey cake Yahweh and any spin-offs that may have occured since the Zimzum zammed. He is a voracious reader and writer and he may get the last word--if not the last book--in collating data on the subject of Dieties of the Western world. But his comment from paragraph 53 that so infuriates his Jewish audiences denies that a whole people can make themselves holy through study of texts likewise dismisses the value of his own vast study in constructing a holy relationship with Yahweh/ Jehovah and Jeshua/Jesus.
The tempation to try to engage Bloom on his own terms is far from me-- I am not a college graduate, I have seven children and have lived most of my adult years in rustic living situations and little money. But I believe I would ask him to engage on on my ground instead of his--for the very reasons that he named above: books alone just can't do it. Instead I would advance the idea that the likes of Mary of Bethany, unlettered and derided for her gender and moral inferiority might find that holiness ahead of Bible scholars --and the likes of Bloom.
HWe could meet on some common ground however. Bloom, and others familiar with the Hebrew scriptures believe there have been writers who have worked a smoothly edited narrative of Bible history--A horror story to some Christians. But even accepting this possibility, I am intrigued that the seminal story of the Hebrew people, the story of Abraham and his test at Genesis 22 is the solitary portion exempt from the editorial work suspected by scholars. And it is the story of Abraham that offers for such as myself and others who do not have a chance to know God through extensive study. Abraham offers the compelling model that holiness is available not through a committee, a college, an organization. Holiness is available to the unwashed masses. Truly.
I would put before Bloom that the primitive expressions of ancient Hebrew in the area of verses dealing with "Abraham's listening to God" was holy enough in tradition that it was never altered to achieve a smoother style. What it had to say was was too holy for smoother words. It is ifunny to think that the study of this text does show why Bloom is right. Whole peoples cannot make themselves holy through the study of texts: God is only known in the act of worship itself, in the sudden provision of insight you never expected to find.