more you understand. Make sure to write down all your discussion points. You don't want to forget what you said. You may need to refer to it later.
It helps a lot to bounce ideas off of one another but we are also very lucky to have a rich tradition of commentary, parush, from some of the greatest thinkers of the past two thousand years. Commentary is someone's personal explanation of the text. So many people have offered their explanations that as we read them they begin to appear as a dialogue across the generations. Here are two links that will help you get started discussing answers to key issues raised in the Torah portion as well as presenting modern commentary for you to read. You will now have the opportunity to join in this continuing dialogue.
Now that you have a sense of the basic story in your parsha, what we refer to as the "p'shat" or the simple telling, it is time to dig a little deeper.
We will now start to look for hints from the text itself. The Hebrew word for hint is "remez". Looking for hints means remembering what you have read and relating it to other parts of the story to get to a deeper understanding. How do the events in one part of the story affect another part? You might see similarities in two stories or similar use of words that will help you to view the Torah a little differently. The Torah itself is giving you hints. This is why outlining your parsha is so important. It forces you to look at the words, the relationships and the order of events in a more critical way.
You'll be receiving study and discussion questions from your tutor to help you begin this process. Here is where Torah study starts to become fun. Everyone in the group having read the parsha is ready to answer the questions. One person may answer a question and then another in the group may remember something else that was read to justify another line of thinking. It's almost like peeling away the layers of a detective story. The more you discuss, the
Click on the question mark for midrashim that will help you in your search for the answers
Then go to More>D'var Torah Outline
In addition to commentary, the rabbis of the Talmud have further enriched our understanding of Torah through the use of midrashim. A midrash is defined as the process of interpretation by which the rabbis filled in gaps found in the Torah. Through the use of story telling, aggadah, they work out different scenarios to seek out answers as to why things happen and what might have been going on between the lines. We call these descriptive approaches "d'rash".