Welcome to Torah From Narnia!

Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again (dedication of, "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe," to Lucy) Welcome to Torah from Narnia! 

My attraction to the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis began when I was nine years old. I loved everything about the books: the stories, the characters and the adventure. Even then, as a fourth grader in an Orthodox Jewish private day school, I knew that there was a Christian component to the stories. Honestly though, I never really paid much attention to it. 

Some time much later I became old enough to read fairy tales again and returned to the Chronicles of Narnia. As I read and re-read the Chronicles (I tend to read books over and over again), it was not only the Christian themes that struck me, but the universal ones. Eventually, I started making connections between Lewis’ themes and those of my traditional Jewish lifestyle. I started incorporating quotes and elements of the Chronicles into talks I would occasionally give on the weekly Torah portion or the Jewish Holidays. Certainly, there were people who felt it was slightly (or perhaps more than slightly) unorthodox, but for me it became a natural way to bring out important Jewish themes. 

For a while, I’ve been threatening to start a blog and, finally, here it is: Torah from Narnia. Of course, I have no idea if anyone else is interested in overlaps between Jewish thought and C.S. Lewis so I'll use this blog to help concretize my thoughts by being forced to put them into written words. But maybe I'm wrong. So, if you do find anything here interesting, no matter what your faith, I would love to hear from you. You can leave a comment or email me at: torahfromnarnia@gmail.com In the meantime, enjoy!