I was hoping Professor Levine's post would generate more of a response than it did as Rabbi Wein raises many interesting points worthy of consideration. If I am not mistaken the original post was made during the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy which delayed my personal response and it might have delayed others as well.
One issue Rabbi Wein raises is that of teaching midrash as pshat which I agree happens all the time in Yeshivas and Day Schools. For younger students the midrash makes a great addition to any story and as such the most fantastic aggadot are taught as pshat even when there is no compelling reason to do so. For example, which child doesn't know that the daughter of Paroh extended her hand to take Moshe out of the Nile and when she did so her hand extended like Inspector Gadget? However, Rashi himself says this is not the simple meaning of the verse but rather she sent her maid to get the child. Yet, we as educators incorporate this midrash into our teachings as if is were written into the Chumash.
In my mind, I wonder how much long term damage we do to our students by telling them fantastically incredible tales that hardly sound believable. Many Rishonim suggest that aggadot were not meant to be taken at face value. I once heard from my Rebbi, Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe zt"l that agaddata is the hardest portion of Shas. For in the non-aggadic portions of Shas the Rabbis were interested in revealing the meaning of the laws of the Torah, whereas in aggadata (i.e. midrash) they were primarily interested in concealing their teachings. Midrash is almost always an allusion to some sort of deeper teaching (be it ethical or otherwise) which the Rabbis put in the guise of a story so that only the brightest scholars would be able to discern its true intended meaning. Thus, to understand these midrashim at face value is in essence to obfuscate the true meaning of the medrash itself. Of course it would seem more pious to accept a midrash at face value, but it is most likely that the midrash itself did not intend for itself to be taken at face value.
Be that as it may, I think the problem starts with the fact that Rashi often incorporates the drash into his commentary on Chumash in order to accommodate a textual nuance. Readers then confuse that with pshat. Rashi himself in Gensis 3:8 [
www.chabad.org] writes that he is primarily interested in pshat and brings in the drash only to resolve textual incongruities. Resolving a textual incongruity does not make something pshat, it simply allocates the incongruity to the portion of Torah called drash which is not to be confused with pshat. Rashbam in the beginning of Vayeishev [
www.daat.ac.il] writes that he personally argued with Rashi about the incorporation of drash into his commentary and Rashi agreed with him that if he had time he would write another commentary based on the pshat. (The Rashbam there explains why many commentators chose to follow drash over pshat.)
I would humbly suggest that our generation is not on the level of understanding the true intentions of many of these midrashim. Therefore, if we cannot explain midrashim properly, perhaps we should skip Rashis that incorporate fantastic midrashim just as many teachers skip dikduk Rashis which they don't understand. The only thing is, it is much easier to fool yourself into thinking you understand a midrash Rashi than a dikduk Rashi. If such a change will come to the standard day school curriculum remains to be be seen. I truly believe students would be better off if it did.
Tzvi Daum
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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/18/2012 06:54AM by mlb.
