Dr. Moshe Sokolow (msokolow@yu.edu) is the Fanya Gottesfeld-Heller Professor of Jewish Education at the Azrieli Graduate School of Yeshiva University. This paper is an outcome of a project entitled: “Reclaiming Interpretation” that was funded by an ignition grant from The Covenant Foundation in 2008. The theory, developed in the company of leading Tanakh teachers from across the United States, was tested successfully in pedagogical practice in their classrooms.
Moshe Sokolow describes an approach to teaching Tanakh which returns the students to the primary texts and the classical exegetes, empowering them as active learners engaging the texts.
Synopsis
More often than not, day schools today do not teach students how to interpret Tanakh on their own; rather, they teach them how Tanakh was interpreted by great scholars of the past – some of whom lived as many as one or even two thousand years ago. Not day schools alone, but yeshivot gedolot, too, display the identical reluctance to have their talmidim directly confront the biblical text (Cherlow, 2003). As authoritative as those classical and medieval commentaries are, they cannot completely substitute for students constructing their own interpretations.
In this essay, we shall indicate the value of autonomous interpretation, and then we shall recommend a practical pedagogical procedure by which means teachers can lead their students in independent forays into the world of parshanut.
Parshanut as pedagogy
What, ultimately, distinguishes an educated person from an uneducated one? Arguably, it is the ability to make “educated” choices: to verify data, establish a preference among reasonable alternatives, and anticipate their respective implications and consequences. Granting this stipulation, I would like to submit the following proposition: autonomous interpretation is the ideal pedagogical activity in which modern Orthodox day schools can engage.
The problem is that whereas Tanakh (Bible) is the subject to which modern Orthodox day schools allocate the most curricular time over the average student’s tenure (K-12), many schools appear unequipped, unprepared or unwilling to have their students concentrate their analytical abilities directly on the Tanakh. Instead, they interpose parshanut (exegesis) between the student and the text, subtly shifting the focus of Tanakh study from the Bible itself to the history of its classical and medieval interpretation.
It is our contention that this shift of emphasis is unnecessary, unwarranted and even detrimental to our students’ religious growth and maturation. Pedagogy has long recognized that knowledge and values that students “construct” themselves are more likely to be internalized by them than those that are “imposed” upon them from the outside. [Arguably, the troubling phenomenon of yeshiva high school graduates “flipping” (i.e., adopting a more rigorous religious stance than that of their parents) – often after a year’s study in Israel – is related to this process, by which an external authority is substituted for one’s own rational, critical investigation and analysis of Judaism’s authoritative sources.]
A more direct approach to Tanakh, then, is not only more faithful to the history of biblical exegesis, but is likely to enhance the students’ overall religious education as well. We seek in this essay to persuade day school Tanakh educators to relinquish their exclusive reliance on previous interpretations and train and encourage their students to examine the text of Tanakh without unnecessary outside intervention.
It is our assertion and expectation that educators will acknowledge that traditional exegesis affirms independence and creativity and they will seek to instill these capacities in themselves and their students. It is our further expectation that the direct encounter with the text will enhance students’ love of Torah and love of learning.
Philip Schlechty (2001) offered the following optimal definition of schoolwork:
In sum, the business of schools is to produce work that engages students, that is so compelling that students persist when they experience difficulties, and that is so challenging that students have a sense of accomplishment, of satisfaction – indeed, of delight – when they successfully accomplish the tasks assigned. (58)
These laudable objectives, which we may call ahavat torah, can be achieved via autonomous interpretation. As Bible Professor Ed Greenstein of Bar-Ilan University has observed (1982):
When you are waiting for something to happen, when you have this expectation, you are involved in what is going on. You’re constantly being enlisted in the creative process, because you, yourself are, in a sense, subconsciously creating together with the artist… This participation is a source of pleasure… The experience is the total and cumulative effect of what happens to you, what goes through your head, during the entire course of reading or listening. (36, 38)
Not Karaites
This proposal calls for a direct encounter with the biblical text mediated by parshanut, rather than one that is completely subordinated to a classical, medieval or modern commentary. The task we have set ourselves in this essay is to advocate for direct encounters between the biblical text and the modern Orthodox reader through the benevolent medium of autonomous interpretation.
We are not promoting a “Karaite” approach to Scripture. We do not deny the validity or necessity of parshanut. Au contraire, we believe that encouraging and enabling students to conduct their own investigations of Tanakh and of its traditional commentators will produce an even greater appreciation of and respect for parshanut. It is precisely those students who attempt to interpret Scripture on their own who are most likely to see just how aware traditional interpretation is of peshuto shel mikra, the plain sense of the text, as they endeavor to arrive, themselves, at its very conclusions.
Nehama Leibowitz (1986) was challenged on her assertion that students should be encouraged to question traditional commentaries and formulate their own opinions about their validity. She replied:
On the contrary, respect for sages is to study what they have written in depth. Rashi, who was modest enough to say: “I don’t know,” would certainly approve if by means of the study and analysis of his works the students would, at times, even arrive at the conclusion that his grandson Rashbam’s commentary is preferable, or they would tend more to agree with his critic, Ramban. (28-9)
A developmental perspective: Piaget and Perry
Piaget postulated that children learn through an ongoing process of resolving discrepancies. The synergy between acceptance and assimilation, on the one hand, and rejection and accommodation, on the other, was responsible, he maintained, for the transitions between the various stages of their development. He had particular regard for “disequilibrium” (which others have called “cognitive dissonance”) as the key process in this development. The ambiguities we have gathered here can ably serve the purpose of sowing disequilibrium and, hence, serving as the catalysts for the students’ progress.
Subsequent researchers into cognitive and moral development adopted a “neo-Piagetian” approach, whose three principal stages have been described as (Gottlieb, 2007):
- an initial “objectivist” stage (in which knowledge is absolute),
- an intermediate “subjectivist” stage (which attributes knowledge to personal preference), and
- a final “evaluativist” stage (which decides knowledge by evaluating alternatives)
The illustrations we shall provide below are patterned along those developmental lines.
While Piaget’s model is most helpful in understanding the stages that characterize infancy and childhood, there are adaptations of Piaget’s cognitive principles that offer greater insight into adolescence and post-adolescence. Among these is William Perry Jr.’s theory of collegiate cognitive and ethical development.
According to Perry’s model, pre-collegiate students generally believe that things are either entirely right or entirely wrong. In other words, they initially view knowledge as decidedly unambiguous, and only in college does that belief yield to uncertainty and ambiguity, resulting from cognitive conflict or dissonance.
Perry posits three stages in this process:
- The basic assumptions of the dualistic stage are that the differences between right and wrong, good and bad, we and they, are categorical. Knowledge is quantitative, to be acquired via memorization, and “agency” is external (e.g., teachers, test scores, the right job).
- In multiplicity, uncertainty, which was previously perceived as a form of error, is now viewed as acceptable, albeit pending the eventual discovery of the truth. Opinions are seen in isolation from one another, without pattern or system, and no resolution can be made among them. [“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion.”]
- Relativism is the recognition that knowledge is qualitative and dependent on contexts. Opinions will diverge when they are grounded in diverse sources or examined though diverse lenses and some will be found worthless. Each individual must decide on his own truths, while respecting the views of others. [“Reasonable people will reasonably disagree.”]
Linguistic ambiguities
There are four types of linguistic ambiguities (Steiner, 2010):
- lexical
- syntactic
- orthographic
- referential
The first three are attested to in Talmudic and midrashic literature; our principal interest lies in the fourth.
To the same extent that we may – through either deliberation or inadvertence – fabricate imprecise messages in ordinary speech [e.g. Pildash and Yidlaf had lunch at his house; each proper noun is masculine singular and can serve as the referent of his], we have come to recognize the same in the Bible. Periodically, we will encounter a verse using a verb or a pronoun that has more than one grammatically appropriate referent. Our objective here is to identify a number of these verses and explore the possibilities for offering our own resolutions.
It is our contention that the most direct way to engage students in autonomous interpretation of Tanakh and to empower them to construct their own meanings of its text is through the resolution of such ambiguities.
Sa`adyah Gaon (882-942), the first rabbinic biblical exegete, established the philosophical framework for the recognition and resolution of ambiguities in Tanakh. He stipulated:
Each and every word must, perforce, have either one unambiguous meaning or several meanings. Since every language is so constructed, and the Torah was revealed in one of these languages, every interpreter is obliged to regard everything that agrees with the [rational] facts preceding it and the [reliable] traditions that follow it as words of a single meaning, and to regard everything that contradicts either of these two [propositions] as possessing various meanings.
In other words, interpretation consists of identifying incongruities in Tanakh – such as ambiguities – and resolving them through the use of reason and tradition.
Text vs. context
In each case, there are, essentially, two strategies we can invoke to resolve a verse’s ambiguity: textual, and contextual. The textual approach, guided by the conventions of biblical syntax, requires us to relate the ambiguous pronoun to the nearest noun with which it agrees in number and gender. The contextual approach, however, requires us to use the canons of logic and reason to determine, on the basis of the situation, which the likeliest referent is.
We shall offer here two such ambiguities, one appropriate for primary grades and the other for middle school. At this initial stage, we will overlook the exegetical history of these verses – not because it is insignificant, but because we are intent on demonstrating to our students that they are eminently capable of anticipating the full range of exegetical possibilities on their own. The question of whether the principal medieval exegetes were consistent in their own treatments of such ambiguities will have to await another forum.
1. Yosef has threatened to imprison Binyamin. Yehudah, who has pledged himself as surety for his youngest brother, approaches Yosef and reminds him that he had precipitated the crisis himself by demanding that Binyamin be brought to him, despite his brothers’ plaintive arguments that to leave his father would be fatal.
Genesis 44:22
We said to my lord: The young man cannot leave his father; were he to leave his father, he would die.
- Is it the young man (Binyamin) who would die, or his father (Yaakov)?
Applying the norms of biblical syntax to the text, the subject of “he would die” should be the same as the subject of the other third-person singular masculine verb in the sentence: “were he to leave.” Since the subject of “were he to leave his father” is implicitly Binyamin, he must be the subject of “he would die” as well. In other words, having previously told the Egyptian viceroy that the young man’s brother had already died (vs. 20), Yehudah was intimating that separation from kith and kin was potentially fatal to his sibling, too.
According to the context, however, the likeliest candidate for premature death is not Binyamin – approximately 30 years old and the virile father of ten! – but Yaakov, presently 130 years old and never completely recovered from the earlier death of his favorite wife, Rachel, and the presumed death of his favorite son, Yosef. Yehudah, in other words, is trying to “guilt” the Egyptian viceroy into releasing Binyamin by implying that to do otherwise would effectively seal the elderly patriarch’s death warrant.
Of course, it occurs to us that we need not necessarily resolve this ambiguity at all. Unsure, perhaps, at which of Yosef’s heart-strings to tug, Yehudah may have been deliberately ambiguous—inviting Yosef to draw whichever conclusion he might.
2. Another, slightly more sophisticated, example is found in the confrontation of Saul and Samuel following the former’s failure to implement God’s instructions regarding Amalek. After Samuel delivers to Saul the message that his monarchy will be terminated, Saul asks him to remain by his side. Samuel, however, spurns the king’s entreaties and leaves him:
1 Samuel 15:27
Samuel turned to go; he gripped the corner of his cloak and it tore.
- Who tore whose cloak?
Since both Samuel and Saul qualify grammatically as subjects of the verbs to turn and to tear, and since it is not unreasonable to assume that each was wearing a cloak, there are actually four logical possibilities: either Samuel or Saul tore his own cloak, or the other’s cloak.
The textual approach, focusing once again on the pattern of subject-verb correspondence, identifies Samuel, who is the subject of “he turned,” as the subject of “he gripped.” Hence, it was Samuel who, turning to leave Saul, tore the cloak. The question of whose cloak he tore is moot: It might have been his own – as a sign of mourning over the impending end of Saul’s monarchy, in which he was highly invested—or it might have been Saul’s, symbolizing the tearing apart of the monarchy. [Cf. 1 Kings 11:29-31.]
The contextual approach, on the other hand, starts by stipulating that Saul, at this juncture, has been desperately imploring Samuel to stay by his side as he returns to face the people. When Samuel turns away, Saul grabs him to prevent his departure, tearing Samuel’s cloak in the process. Indeed, the appearance in the verse of the passive form of the verb, “it tore” – implying an accidental tear, reinforces this approach, since any other possibility would entail a deliberate tearing, which would require the active form “and he tore it” (Sokolow, 1991).
To illustrate the value of autonomy in advanced secondary classes or in college, I shall use the issue of Nimrod’s character – a question that evokes paradigmatic comments from Rashi, Ibn Ezra and Ramban, while yet leaving room for students to maneuver.
3. Genesis 10:9 describes Nimrod as gibbor tzayyid lifnei hashem, a brave hunter before God. Ostensibly, this only depicts his profession while saying nothing about his personality. However, Rashi, following Talmudic aggadah, takes the verse as a denunciation of his character: Nimrod used his glibness of speech to snare people to rebel against God during the generation of the dispersion [i.e., the tower of Babel]. At this point, I would challenge students to explain what prompted Rashi to abandon the obvious meaning of the verse for the aggadic interpretation. In other words, how does this constitute an aggadah ha-meyashevet divrei mikra (=an aggadah which resolves the reading of the text [one of Rashi’s self-declared criteria for selecting aggadic interpretation, ZG])? Past experience has shown that the best case that can be made for condemning Nimrod is entirely circumstantial: His name itself connotes rebellion and the inclusion of Babel in his kingdom (10:10) anticipates the tower episode (Genesis 11:1-9), placing him at its head.
Ibn Ezra, though, stresses that according to the manifest meaning of the text (peshuto) all we can say of Nimrod was that he was an intrepid hunter who succeeded in demonstrating the superiority of man over beast. Moreover, he adds – somewhat gratuitously, unless it is a deliberate swipe at the aggadah – that lifnei hashem implies that Nimrod would offer the beasts he trapped as sacrifices to God. Given Ibn Ezra’s admitted awareness of the derash, I would ask the students why he is so intent here on rejecting Rashi and the aggadah? Prior experience, again, has shown that students who are acquainted with Ibn Ezra’s critique of aggadah – exemplified by his commentary on Exodus 25:5 (va-`atzei shittim) – quickly distinguish this aggadah as a sevarah, speculation, which is not binding, rather than a kabbalah (historical tradition), whose acceptance would be compulsory.
At this juncture, I might challenge the students to choose, themselves, between these two interpretations, providing they cite both the supporting evidence and argumentation for their favored position as well as that which refutes the alternative. It will be interesting to see where they line up according to Perry’s taxonomy, as well as whether they are able to anticipate Ramban’s critique.
Ramban, who delineates his attitudes towards Rashi and Ibn Ezra in the introductory poem preceding his Torah commentary, serves frequently as an arbitrator between them. After citing Rashi verbatim, he adds – somewhat gratuitously, unless it is a swipe at Ibn Ezra – that this is also the position taken by the Sages. Next, he notes that Rabbi Abraham [Ibn Ezra] reached a contradictory conclusion based on the peshat, adding: “Behold, he vindicates an evildoer, for our Sages knew of his wickedness through an historical tradition.”
The question here is: How can Ramban be so certain that this particular aggadah is a binding kabbalah rather than an optional sevarah? Does he know something we don’t? If so, he fails to record it, leaving us to speculate about his reasoning. Past experience here has shown that students usually need a hint to get this part of the process rolling. The hint I offer is: What is the only thing worse than vindicating an evildoer (matzdik rasha`)? Someone always comes up with: Condemning a righteous person (marshi`a tzadik). From this point, it is relatively easy to conclude that Ramban dismisses Ibn Ezra’s peshat interpretation because he cannot imagine that the Sages would have engaged in the character assassination of Nimrod were it not an historical fact.
And how would Ibn Ezra reply to Ramban? Do you think he would accede to the point about the Sages being too proper to vilify an otherwise righteous person, or do you think that his commitment to peshuto shel mikra would override all other considerations? Ve-hadar kushya le-dukhteih (=we return to the original question)!
Conclusion
We contend that it is not beyond the capacity of students to tackle textual ambiguities autonomously and we have presented a theoretical pedagogical argument and practical methodological illustrations in support.
We urge you to give it a try. Teachers who have employed this methodology report that after their students are introduced to it, they nearly always divide themselves naturally into “textualists” or “contextualists” as they pursue the same paths taken before them by the parshanim.
While we have used only referential ambiguities, the same purpose can be served by equivocation (Exodus 14:30, 19:2), anonymity (Genesis 14:13, 48:1), and ellipsis (Joshua 1:7). I would be pleased to provide additional examples and recommendations to interested educators and to hear of their experiences in their implementation.
The philosopher Leon Roth (1956) offered the following encomium for autonomous interpretation, which is a particularly apt epilogue for our study:
It is ultimately the determining of an ideal of life, the establishing of a preference among possible ends. It is the ordering of types of action in an ascending and descending scale of better and worse, an ordering which shapes the kind of life we choose to live… Interpretation thus becomes the gateway to life, and in this wide sense is synonymous with education. (20-21)
References
Alter, R. (2004) The five books of Moses. NY: Norton.
Cherlow, Y. (2003). “Preface” to Yoel Bin Nun: Pirkei Ha’Avot. Alon Shevut: Tevunot, 7-28.
Empson, W. (1947). 7 types of ambiguity. New York: New Directions.
Gottlieb, E. (2007). Learning how to believe: Epistemic development in cultural context. The journal of the learning sciences 16(1), 5-35.
Greenstein, E. (1982). Against interpreting the bible. Ikka D’Amrei (A Student Journal of JTSA), IV.
Leibowitz, N. (1986). On teaching tanakh. New York: Jewish Agency.
Perry, W.G. (1970). Forms of intellectual and ethical development in the college years; A scheme. NY: Holt, Rhinehart, Winston.
Roth,L. (1956). .Some reflections on the interpretation of scripture. The Montefiore lectures. London.
Schlechty, P. (2001). Inventing better schools. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Sokolow, M. (1991). Ambiguity and disambiguity: The Case of 1 Samuel 15:27. Ten Da`at 5:2, 27-28.
Steiner, R. (2010). “Linguistic ambiguity in the Bible from the viewpoint of the sages and the medieval exegetes,” National Association of Professors of Hebrew (oral presentation).