Response: Learning Together, A Dvar on Faith and Fate

Abstract

Integrating Jewish Studies into college humanities classes taught at schools of higher learning, public and private, is a constant in my decades of teaching, writing, lecturing, and editing in the wellspring of Judaica and its tributaries. The impact (light, dark, and myriad grey shadows between) is reflected upon by the essayists and discussants of the Maven, who analyze my historiosophy, methodology, and Torahtology. What they say and write is learning (academics, exegesis), what I teach and profess is laerning (existential faith knowledge, eisegesis). How so and why so, is the ikkar of my response delivered in the genre of a shiur to the panelists of the Mavenfest and audience.

I deeply appreciate the efforts of my colleagues Steven L. Jacobs, Joel Gereboff, Leonard Greenspoon, Roberta Sabbath, and Emily Leah Silverman in their evaluation of my teaching methodology and samples of my scholarly writing. Collectively, they reflect intuitively on my signature historiosophy, paradigmatic philosophy, midrashic parshanut, and post- Shoah Jewish-Christian dialogical encounter. Here I offer a dvar teshuva, touching on thoughts said or unsaid.

1. Not at the Ivory Tower (Gereboff, Greenspoon)

Information on Judaica in American colleges, universities, and seminaries is scattered through a variety of sources. National surveys, school catalogues, dissertations, opinion columns, etc., have something to say about the scope of the discipline. What is clear is that Jewish Studies is a relatively new curriculum in American higher education (public and private), but its success and failure are not reported evenly by advocates of ethnicity or religion. ¹ Rarely is there a word on the teaching of Jewish Studies in a two-year public college with the exception of my pioneering articles.² They reflect on the rationale, curriculum, and ideology which I introduced in the early 1970s to set up the first-ever public Jewish Studies program funded by the State of California.

Different disciplines have their own particular patterns of thinking, inquiry, or information gathering and processing. For example, scientific inquiry calls for classification, explanation of technical processes, detailed statements of fact often containing a definition or statement of principle, problem solving, and experiment reporting which involves discriminating observation, careful explanation, and considered conclusions. Many of the Jewish Studies courses taught at Los Angeles Valley College are interdisciplinary in scope. As such, the Jewish Studies program is an instructional form of the humanities, and its emphasis is on reading, writing, and reasoning.

What is the proper way of instructing these skills? There are as many approaches to teaching Jewish Studies as there are instructors in the discipline. At the two-year college level, however, teacher-student interchange is paramount. Take my approach to teaching Hebrew literature, for example.

A slogan of nineteenth-century Wissenschaft des Judentums (Zunz, Scheinschneider, Jost) prevails in “higher” Jewish Studies: every writer must be a “digger,” and all scholars antiquarians. The traditional methods of teaching modern Hebrew literature (as well as Bible, rabbinics, medieval literature) in the original, found in upper division and graduate courses, namely, translation, expounding of grammatical intricacies, hoary lectures, etc., prove less than adequate at an introductory level. In its place, I use an historical-critical method which stresses contemporary literature as an interpretation of history and in light of other literary works in general and contemporary Hebrew works in particular.

A moderate number of readings from Hebrew poetry, prose, and essay is given. One-third of the class time constitutes lectures on the socio-historical forces which motivated and shaped Jewish life in the last two centuries. Two-thirds of the class hour are devoted to a direct interpretation of the assigned texts in order to discern the major values and trends of modern Hebrew literature. A study of literature must not be confused with the history of literature, and thus a confrontation with textual sources more than histories and commentaries is of primary importance.

A deeper appreciation of Hebrew literature develops if the professor plays more of a passive role than is traditionally assigned to him/her. By encouraging the student to do research at home in order to explicate the text in class, and answer questions of difficulty from a peer group, the professor is planting in the students seeds of loyalty to some great literature, which otherwise would not grow from the total lecture method that often detaches the student from the material. Furthermore, the student gains self-reliance from such an exposure, his/her own germane ideas are able to sprout, and a relaxed teacher-student relationship is created.

By playing the role of a class catalyst, professors have many opportunities to present their own contribution and to refine it in light of class feedback to a greater degree than the straight lecture method. An ideal educational experience is thus fulfilled since the goal of discovering provocative ideas of great men and women is brought about by professor and student exploring together.

This is aptly expressed by a parable narrated by S. Y. Agnon, Nobel Laureate in Literature (1966), in his novel Guest for the Night (1939):

It is like an architect who asked for a stone and they gave him a brick, for he intended to build a temple, while they intended to build a house to live in.

Clearly, the intent at Los Angeles Valley College is to provide a secure home for Jewish Studies in the San Fernando Valley. Our home is not an ivory tower temple—all who are hungry for Jewish knowledge are welcome to hear our words and join in the dialogue.

2. Teaching Zionism and Facing Palestinianism (Sabbath)

Teaching Zionism should be seen in terms of its central affirmations. The goal is to familiarize the student with what the Zionist tradition regards as its essential genius, and to provide an opportunity for an appreciation of the similarities and the differences between the ideologues and divisions within greater Zionism, which arguably are the tributaries that feed the stream of Jewish peoplehood today. The jury may be out on whether or not the State of Israel is the pinnacle of Zionism, but it is certain that the Zionist idea challenged the notion that the Jewish People must remain a victim of world history; and the Zionist revolution, like an Ezekielian voice in the valley of the bones, caused the people to rise from the deadly weight of Shoah to the statehood in Eretz Yisrael. Of paramount importance, too, is discussion and exposure to Palestinian nationalist affirmation and dialogue.

If the prospects for Arab-Israeli dialogue are not bright, then it is the business of responsible intellectuals and thinkers among the combatants to make them bright. Learning the complexity of the historical, religious, cultural, psychological, and political factors of the Palestinian national movement is imperative for Jews. Similarly, Arabs must come to realize that Jewish self-pride as expressed in peoplehood, religion, and the statehood of Israel are answers to Jewish identity, survival and anti-Semitism. And both peoples must learn that blatant immoral acts by individual or state can never be condoned and prejudicial, passionate ideology which feeds these atrocities must never be tolerated.

3. Post-Shoah Christian-Jewish Dialogue (Jacobs)

Post-Shoah Christian-Jewish dialogue offers a context for asking questions, and provides a frame of reference for insights on the background, meaning of anti-Judaism and the practice of anti-Semitism. Dialogical encounter balances discussion of complicated religious and theological problems of contra-Judaeos and seeks a better understanding of Jewish-Christian visions of the other. It battles Nazism’s “dislike of the unlike” with the battle cry, “Never Again” for us and them. And suggests that the message of the Shoah for Christian and Jew, ever since Calvary, is the Sinaitic covenant of survival with morality.

4. Saint Edith Stein (Silverman)

My writings on Edith Stein focus on her contested religious identity, claimed as a Jew (heritage, descent) and a Christian (conversion, Cologne Carmelite Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross). Stein’s biographers and defenders claim that she remained loyal to her Jewish roots and publicly proclaimed her Jewish identity, as a form of protest against virulent German anti-Semitism. I agree, but her voluntary act of the acceptance of Jesus as Lord, God, and Savior compromises the rabbinic argument of once an Israelite, always an Israelite even though one has sinned. Her alleged last words, to her sister, Rosa, also a convert to Catholicism, “Let us go, we will die for (not with) our people” confirms her Christological wish “that the Lord has taken my life in exchange for all (sins of the Jews).”³ I honor her Catholicism by not hyphenating her as a Jew; and I acknowledge that the Catholic faithful (and others) are baptized into the ashes of Auschwitz by learning the life, tribulation, and burning death of the Blessed Edith Stein.

5. Whither Jewish Studies?

At the annual convention of the Association of Jewish Studies (Boston, December 1998), Professor Hava Tirosh-Samuelson (Arizona State University), chair of the Maven plenary session, opined that the perceived dichotomy between objective scholarship and commitment to Jewish spirituality has rendered Jewish Studies irrelevant to young Jews. To correct this fault, she suggested, “we must make it very clear that the academic study of Judaism is not just about facts but also about values” (“The Chronicle of Higher Education,” February 26, 1999). As expected, this ignited a heated discussion on the merits of Jewish Studies and the Jewish community at the meeting and afterwards a rambling who-is-who-isn’t teaching correctly the subject on the Internet.

This debate is not new to me. In my Introduction to Methodology in the Academic Teaching of Judaism (University Press of America, 1986), I raised the issue, what constitutes Jewish Studies, how to teach it, to whom, etc., and I observed that contemporary Wissenschaft des Judentums is being broadly transformed from an exclusive institution to an inclusive one. Thus the “facts” only school, where the student sits back and absorbs like a sponge the knowledge of a professor’s lecture, would simply not do. The Jewish Studies scholar should attempt to teach Judaism (faith and fate) creatively and objectively without indoctrination. One must have the right to challenge students and to set and maintain scholarly standards but one is also responsible to respect the students’ right to learn, to ask questions, to defend beliefs, to express opinions, or disagree without repression or reprisal.

Not whither but whether practitioners of Jewish Studies heed the eitsah is the question. Let the laerning begin.