Turn the Future Into the Past

The Tagged Tanakh (TT) turns the future into the past by making Torah study front and center in the Jewish educational experience. The Tagged Tanakh takes the Old Testament and places it in a contemporary format and context to suit the needs of current generations. Using the TT, educators can build new curricula, conduct faster research, prepare D’vrei Torah, and help foster communities of practice around Jewish text.

For everyone else, the TT offers an easy and engaging way to learn Torah L’shma, learning just for the sake of it.

Previously on this blog, we noted that the Talmud dominated the intellectual discourse of Jewish thought for more than a millennium. However, both halakhah(Jewish Law) and haggadah (Midrash) use biblical prooftexts to validate and ground their arguments. The foundations of Jewish scholarship, ethics, and imagination are found in the Tanakh.

Scholar Geoffrey Hartman says that, “There is much to learn from a religious culture in which the creative energies went almost totally into commentary and the same basic method of reading was used for law (Halakah) and lore (Hagadah).” Hartman goes on to say that, “there is an associative way of going from topic to topic that characterizes Jewish writing.” With the Tagged Tanakh, Hartman’s theories can at last be put into practice by the entire Jewish community, not just erudite scholars or learned rabbis.

The Tagged Tanakh was imagined as a vehicle to reconnect Jews and other interested people to the multi-faceted richness of the Jewish Bible. It was conceived as a response to the changing demographics and needs of the Jewish community. But it’s goals are quite simple…get people back to the origin of Judaism, the place where it began–the Torah.

Anyone familiar with my writing on the JPS Interactive blog knows that design thinking has been at the forefront of my process from the beginning of this project. Roger Martin, the Dean of the Rotman School of Management has recently coined the phrase, “Turn the future into the past,” for his new book, The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage. In a recent lecture given by Martin in NYC, he explains the relationship between business and design and how the idea of turning the future into the past is the core of this concept.

Jump to the 35 minute mark to get to the meatiest parts of the lecture. However, I encourage serious consideration of the points he raises at the 24 minute mark as well.

Feel free to share your comments as to how you imagine the Tagged Tanakh turning the future into the past.

Blog image courtesy of SlipperyBrick