Never content with simple answers where complex ones are available (we do have four different new year’s days, after all), the rabbis of the Babylonian Talmud (in Qidushin 30a) identify three different midpoints: one midpoint if you count letters, one if you count words, and one if you count verses. One guess as to which of these I care about for this, the one-word Torah project.

NḤM is a root that may be familiar in a somewhat different guise: It is the root that rings out twice at the start of the famous passage of consolation in Yəshayáhu 40:1 — “Comfort, comfort My people!” But here it’s inflected differently, and has less to do with consolation than with regret. In the form used in Shəmot 13:17, NḤM/yinaḥeim means to feel bad, frequently because of your own actions. It also carries connotations of feeling pity or compassion for — we might even say solidarity with — others. Why should G-d be afraid of this?

I am often daunted by the sheer volume of commentary on our sacred texts. Between ancient midrash and modern scholarship, the weight of accumulated words written about Torah is overwhelming. How can I even begin to have my own thoughts until I’ve read everything there is to read first?

This is not the Judaism that haSheim desired. G-d wanted us all to know the workings of the cult, even if we aren’t all qualified to run it — just as we might want everyone in our society to know the workings of the government (both its abstract principles and, via FOIA and related legislation, its specific records and actions) even if we aren’t all qualified to enact new legislation. Judaism is a public affair, for the whole community; the central mechanisms for interacting with G-d aren’t the secret knowledge of a select few.