Yair Sheleg’s column of a few weeks ago is premised on an odd if not downright backwards observation about the relationship between a particular approach to Tanakh study and sociological trends within the religious community. It is unclear from the column what his vantage point is and what data led him to his claim that the “new approach†to the study of the Book of Books is one of the root causes of the excessive animosity growing in segments of our community towards the Arab population - animosity which found its most violent expression in the horrific “blood weddingâ€. There is nothing that I can see, either from his article or from any other studies, that supports the claim that studying Tanakh independently of the classical or modern commentators leads to this disturbing perspective. I would argue that the very opposite is true – not just in theory, but also in practice – but first, a word of clarity on the “new†approach to Tanakh study. (I mark “new†as such since there is nothing new about it; indeed, the method advocated in our Beit Midrash is far more traditional and hallowed by age than the relatively modern approach adopted in the Haredi sector).
There is no serious student or scholar of Tanakh who ignores or completely bypasses the traditional commentators or the history of Parshanut. What separates our school from that which has taken root in the last 300 years in European-based Orthodox education can be boiled down to three points: (A) We are interested in studying the text alongside the Rishonim, not from them. We wish to experience that same challenge, tension, anticipation and excitement felt by generations of Torah students who were faced with the dilemma of a curious turn of the phrase, a seemingly unmatched chronology, an unusual sequence in the narrative, an oddly placed law etc. While we will enrich our approach with as many traditional sources as we need, our goal is to discover a solution on our own. We wish to make our Torah just that – our Torah (cf. BT Kiddushin 32b). While we try – and sometimes succeed – to solve textual difficulties, our overall method, the values and messages we endeavor to find in – and extract from – the text are wholly informed by generations upon generations of teachers of Torah. (
We are adherents to the rabbinic distinction between “Torah†and “Wisdom†– the latter, if found among the nations, is of value and to be appreciated. When there is an archeological discovery, a philological/etymological connection, or an anthropological theory which helps to clarify the meaning of a text, we are not concerned with the ethnic background or the religious training of the scholar whose work helps us. The response which I often hear from Haredi acquaintances when sharing an insight - “Who said it?†- is a question that we hardly understand. (C) Our approach is anchored in a firm belief that absolute certainty about a specific text is elusive at best and that the spectrum of approaches and perceptions represents (with obvious limits) a range of legitimate ways of understanding and teaching Tanakh. It is against the monolithic approach to reading a text – that there is only one answer to the question of who sold Yoseph or only one way to interpret “Berit bein haBetarim†etc. – that we regularly do battle. The fertile battleground is often in our own classrooms where students come with the desire to see the text in black-and-white terms and often have been given that one way to see it (Pharaoh’s daughter really stretched her arms out and, though an Egyptian, named Moshe using Hebrew etymology). The second most frequent response I get from Haredi friends when I share a new insight is “but we know that it means…†as if a tradition of analytic study, critical reading and healthy dispute is part of someone else’s legacy.
Back to Sheleg and his claim. The school which has been identified (by its detractors) as “Tanakh b’Govah Einayim†is anchored in Yeshivat Har Etzion and Michlelet Herzog, two institutions which are about as far from the disheartening and disgusting antics at the “blood wedding†as one could imagine. If anything, these two wonderful schools and their founders and leaders have often been accused of being “too†accommodating to other segments of our population. As an example, one of the founding scholars in our academy is Rav Yoel Bin-Nun. Whatever one thinks of his politics, he could never be realistically identified with the current right-wing extreme to which Sheleg was referring; he has fought at great risk, against these very trends.
We teach critical thinking, intellectual honesty and humility and essential Torah values including but not limited to a love for God and all of His creations which must, out of need and only temporarily, be mitigated against national survival. Those who would turn the Tanakh into a source of “inspiration†to hate and kill have no place in our academy.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/13/2016 05:21PM by mlb.
