I, Jonathan Stiebel, come to share with you the simple meaning of the Hebrew Bible as I learned it from my teachers in Israel and as I taught it in Hebrew to Israeli Rabbinical students. The Hebrew Bible is the fundamental authoritative source of Jewish law, custom, and tradition. My teachers are immersed in the geography of Israel, the language of the Hebrew Bible, and our history as we continue to live it.

I led a team that transliterated the entire Hebrew Bible. My teachers learned directly from Rabbi Breuer who reconstructed the Aleppo Codex based on commentaries that cited it over the centuries. In accordance with what I have learned from my Rabbis, I will correct the Aleppo Codex based on the Leningrad Codex.

Some make fun of Rabbi Akiva Ben Joseph for learning meaning and law from conjunctions and particles in the Hebrew Bible. In jest, they say that he is learning the meaning from the crowns of the calligraphy. To the uninitiated, the nuances in the Hebrew text seem as readily understood as the crowns themselves. I have learned from intertextuality and can uncover meanings in the text that many have covered over.

Some day, a midrash will be told in an American synagogue of how Rabbi Akiva watched a child learn to read the Torah and to understand it. Rabbi Akiva will sit from afar, perplexed. How was the Oral tradition of teaching chanting of the Torah revived using software? How would something that seems so neutral become a carrier to transmit tradition from one generation to the next? Then, the student will explain a passage being learned and say, this is the way that Rabbi Akiva would have explained it. And Rabbi Akiva will be satisfied.

I learned Torah from my teacher of many years, Rabbi Yoel Ben Nun who is one of the co-founders of the Herzog College for Biblical Studies at the Gush Etzion Yeshiva and of the scholarly periodical Megadim. I learned from Rabbi Yaakov Meidan who later became Rosh Yeshiva of Gush Etzion. I learned from Rabbi David Nativ to appreciate the value of simply reading the text aloud. I learned from Parliament member Chanan Porat how to love my fellow Jew, to instill personal joy, and be resolute.

Rabbi Yoel Ben Nun teaches that the Torah is Song. It is Oral. It has melody. It has cadence. I intend to lead the team that makes chanting the Torah and Haftorah as close as possible to a universally mastered skill for every b’nei mitzvah.

Medieval commentators would be envious of the powerful tools my teachers bring to understand our Jewish Bible. Some commentators lived in Europe where the climate, language, and geography were different. Someone living in such a distant place may not experience life in the way our forefathers would.

My team has built a speech recognition engine specializing in cantillated Biblical Hebrew. My team can take the chanting of any Jewish Cantor or Rabbi and synchronize it with the Hebrew Bible text word by word. This enables B’nei Mitzvah students to learn and practice at home with voice of their own cantor.

I am grateful to Rabbi Chaim Drukman, former member of parliament, and head of all of the Yeshivas of B’nei Akiva. He opened the door to a young conservative Jew who struggled with his lack of belief in God. I specifically acknowledge Rabbi Shimon Lapid, his son-in-law, who adopted me and shepherded me.

When I lived in Israel, we experienced prophesy and the presence of God. It is the land before the LORD. It is the land where the LORD’s eyes are from the beginning of the year to the end of the year.

I learned Jewish law from the former Minster of Religions and head of the National Religious Party while he guided my legal research at Tel Aviv University. I learned the Hebrew Bible at the Master’s level at Tel Aviv University under Professor Ed Greenstein. I wrote a paper on the Biblical Law of Interest for a seminar from Rabbi Chaim Dichovsky, head of the Rabbinical Appeals court in Jerusalem. I learned regularly with Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Bar-Ilan, vice Rabbi of Rehovot and descendent of the Netziv. I learned regularly with Rabbi Simcha HaCohen Kook, chief Rabbi of Rechovot. My study partner was Rabbi Reuven Prince, Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat HaDarom.