I agree with Rabbi Kahn’s concern about the importance of maintaining the authentic tradition of learning Chumash with Rashi. Please realize that I did not suggest replacing Rashi with Rashbam as a commentary for Chumash. What I did suggest was that when teaching Rashi a clear distinction should be made between pshat and drash. Meaning, don’t teach fantastically incredible midrashim as pshat (even if they are quoted in Rashi), when they are clearly in the realm of drash. If a teacher has a plausible explanation for the drash which students will accept, then by all means teachers should go ahead and teach it, but if not, it might be more appropriate to skip those Rashis rather than risk teaching them at face value.
To give an example, I am now teaching the end of Parshat Chukat where Rashi alludes to a Gemarah (Berachot 54b) which every child knows that Og wanted to destroy the Jews whose camp was three parsaot by three parsaot so he uprooted a mountain that size and lifted it over his head to throw on the Jews and kill them. However, worms came and made holes in the mountain which caused the mountain to disintegrate over Og. When Og wanted to lift the mountain off himself his teeth became elongated and stuck in the mountain. At that point, Moshe who was ten amot tall, took his stick which was ten amot tall and jumped ten amot into the air and hit Og on the shins. That was enough to cause the mountain to fall over Og and kill him. The Gemarah also says that one who sees these leftover stones needs to recite a blessing thanking God for the miracle that took place there.
At face value, it seems the Gemarah expects us to take this story quite literally. After all, the Gemarah does say if you see the remaining stones you should recite a blessing which certainly sounds like the Gemarah considered this to be an historical event. The Gemarah is even quoted in Shulchan Aruch.
Now, any teacher reciting this midrash “as is” in the classroom, will most likely end up with students who are either getting reinforcement for the notion in their heart that all of Judaism is a bunch of fairy tales or they are encouraging their students to grow up without being able to think deeply about their faith. We expect students to accept the words of Chazal with “emunah psutah” and leave it at that. Some do and some don’t.
The problem is, in their heart, the student is right. He or she might be too kind to tell you this directly, but the midrash is in fact totally bizarre on so many different levels. Each sentence is more bizarre than the next one. Yet, we don’t care and leave it at that.
Before calling me an apikores for saying the midrash is bizarre, please note I have good company. The Maharsha for example, calls this midrash “very strange” and every commentator tries to explain this Gemarah in way that makes it more plausible.
The Rashba for example (see Artscroll note 17) interprets the mountain as being symbolic, the three sets of ten amot represent a) Moshe’s own greatness, b) that of the Jewish nation and c) the greatness of the avot. According to the Rashba, what Og actually wanted to do was throw a boulder or a number of boulders at the Jews. When the Gemarah says to recite a blessing on the leftover stones, it is referring to the few stones that Og wanted to throw but not that he actually lifted an entire mountain. Maharal also interprets most of the midrash allegorically and says Og wanted to throw a stone at Moshe who is considered equivalent to all of Yisroel. Even Be’ur Halacha who accepts most of the midrash “as is” adds that one needs to say that Og was literally the sons of angels and thus his superhuman strength was possible.
My point is not to determine which of these explanations is “right” or plausible. My point is, the worst possible explanation for this midrash is the simple one. The midrash was never intended to be taken at face value and to explain it in a classroom as such is totally reckless and irresponsible. There is surely a time and place to teach the notion of emunah in the words of Chazal, but why do teachers feel the need to risk turning off students for absolutely no good reason? Thus, when faced with such a midrash, teachers should either do their homework and come up with an explanation they and their students will find plausible or perhaps they should simply skip it. If you can call a Rambam you can’t explain “shver” why can’t you do the same for a Rashi? We know there are four level of Torah - Pshat, Remez, Drash and Sod. Just as most people don’t feel embarrassed to say they don’t understand Sod they don’t have to be embarrassed to say they don’t understand Drash. If you come across a fantastic drash Rashi, you can either skip the Rashi entirely, or you can highlight the textual nuances that Rashi and the Midrash were concerned about, or you can even mention the drash but as long as students know how to handle drash, i.e. they understand the midrash might not have been meant to be taken at face value and it most likely is trying to teach us something on a deeper level albeit we might not know exactly what.
One final example, all students seem to know that Rivka was three when she was drew water from the well for Eliezer and his ten camels. My question is, why do we feel the need to flaunt this strange midrash? Students look at the whole thing so strangely. Why would a three year old girl draw water for a grown man? How could she draw so much water? Why would Yitchok marry a three year old? If sounds so bizarre in today’s day and age. If so, when teaching parsha to our youngest students, why can’t we teach the opinion that Rivka was fourteen as standard? It makes it so much easier to deal with, why do we need to look for trouble? (For a great discussion about this Rashi see this post by Rabbi Avi Billet and the ensuing comments which makes some great reading [
www.vosizneias.com].)
In conclusion, the issue initially raised by Rabbi Wein is that our well-intended but misguided notion of teaching of fantastic midrashim as pshat, might actually have negative consequences in today’s day and age. As such, it might time to rethink the curriculum and our approach to such midrashim. I hope we do.
Tzvi Daum
[
torahskills.org]
[
twitter.com]
