"Surely, Id think, they werent dealing with simply the Torah. I learned from this uncle specifically what he did, but its not even something I remember.What I do remember is, to my grandfather, a simple Jew in the best sense of the term, studying the Torah is the most quintessentially Jewish thing one can do.When he noticed that I, as a kid coming from an interfaith family, was developing a deeply unhealthy relationship with Catholicism, he told my grandmother, Get Cody the Torah to read.How the Torah expanded for me into the Talmud, the Tanya, and countless other works is a story for another time. But whats important to me is they all flow from the same origin.The story begins, if it begins anywhere, at the foothills of Mount Sinai, Liel Leibovitz writes in the introduction to How the Talmud Can Change Your Life: Surprisingly Modern Advice from a Very Old Book. There, circa 1313 BCE, Moses receives from the Almighty not one gift but two."