I think we need to distinguish between nikkud and punctuation, and translation and popular commentary.
I think that there is a good case to be made for using texts with nikkud and punctuation when available. However, even here it is not so simple. Learning to read an unpointed Hebrew text is fundamental to basic Hebrew literacy and crucial to any serious development in Torah. Attaining this skill can and should be a goal for our students. Furthermore, modern punctuation and nikkud is ultimately an interpretation of the text which can be subjective. At some point, students need to learn to confront the raw text.
The question of translations and popular commentaries is more complex. Reading texts in translation is ultimately "about it" and not "it". We don't study the chumash and the gemara to learn about "Judaism" rather the act of studying chumash and gemara *is* Judaism. First and foremost it is the process of Talmud Torah that we are attempting to transmit to our students.
A student who only uses translations and popular commentaries will never gain actually textual proficiency and independence. They will not be literate Jews. The problem is particularly acute with regard to Artscoll. Unlike Steinsaltz, which tries function as a "chevruta" filling textual blanks but still forcing the student to think through the sugya to a large degree, (R. Steinsaltz declares about his work- "this is not Gerber!") Artscroll functions like a teacher who holds the hand of the student at every step. A person can read through all of shas with Artscroll and still be a total Am Haaretz unable to read even a simple gemara on his or her own.
The problem is that what Artscroll has done is significantly raise the level of understanding for which basic textual literacy is needed. I would like to think that for a MO school "success" for most students would be a student who grows up, gets up in the morning, learn Daf Yomi, goes off to work comes home and is engaged in his family and perhaps goes out to additional shiur or chevruta over the course of the week. When I was a kid, in order to be able to learn Gemara for simple peshat a daf a day, one had to spend years studying, not only learning to make a "leining" but learning rishonim and achronim to get a broader appreciation of the gemara and halakha. Now this experience is easily accessible to anyone who opens an Artscroll.
This begs the question, since even in the best of circumstances very few of our students will in the long term study much more than the equivalent of gemara-Rashi, why should kids in high school and post high school "programs" struggle with these texts?
This is a very serious question. I still think that this is an important endeavor, but I don't think that it is an easy sell to most students or the community at large.
For the first time since the Hellenistic era, "Judaism" is now accessible without recourse to Hebrew. This is a tremendous revolution. It allows knowledge to spread to a far great population than ever before, but it also means that really direct in-depth knowledge is increasingly accessible only to a small elite, as even many of our rabbis are textually illiterate. This elite, pre-digests "Judasim" for the masses who access it only as baby food. As it turns out, most of the people doing this pre-digestion, in the Orthodox world, have strong ideological biases and are not really interested in presenting a complex range of understandings. Indeed, both in YU and in the charedi world, much of the religious elite have an authoritarian vision in which they think that only they have a right to have opinions about crucial issues in Judaism.
This is not a future that I want and neither am I sure that it is feasible. When was the last time anyone here meet a Jew who reads the Septuagint in shul every shabbos?
Dr. Moshe Simon-Shoshan
[
huji.academia.edu]
Author of
Stories of the Law: Narrative discourse and the construction of authority in the Mishnah
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/03/2015 07:43AM by mlb.
