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Dear Shalom and Lookjed readers,
Allow me to try to find some middle ground between Aharon Frazer and Avi
Shmidman regarding critical reading of divrei Torah.
Aharon Frazer demands that we teach our students to unceremoniously rip
apart those divrei torah which he finds apologetic. He seems to have an
existing conception of what Jewish truth is, and knows quite clearly which
divrei Torah meet those standards and which do not. We simply need to
teach our students to distinguish between what is obviously Torah, and
what is obviously apologetics or politics. Avi Shmidman, on the other
hand, presents things as a kind of either/or. Once I begin thinking
critically about the message in a devar torah, I am forced into a kind of
Cartesian skepticism about every stated or unstated assumption. This, he
claims, leads to unhealthy educational results. Alternatively, I simply
allow any devar Torah its legitimacy, provided it is internally consistent
and coherent. Furthermore, Shmidman continues, how do we know whose
really right or wrong? Let us allow for maximal chiddush. After all, one
person's emet is another's sad apologetics. =20
Yet, we are dealing with real life, with hashkafat olam, and not with
theoretical questions of epistemology. We must have the backbone to stand
up and say to our students that not everything which looks and sounds like
a derashah is true, valid, or written by a real talmid chacham. We must
be able to identify why simply quoting a midrash does not give one the
halakhic or hashkafic authority to tell me how to vote, which
demonstrations to attend, or which schools to send our children to. We
must be able to identify the political and hashkafic agendas, at times the
self-interest, which hide behind the structure and language of a devar
torah. (Unfortunately, in an increasing way, we must also be able to
identify moral evils disguised as divrei Torah which don't seem to
surprise anybody when they appear on the bimah in shul. But, that is
another can of worms.) Afterwards, we must be critical about those
political and hashkafic agendas, to determine our attitude toward them.
We can not afford complete academic distance from issues which stand at
the center of our lives and service of God. =20
At the same time, some humility would be in order. Derashah has always
been a medium through which Jews express contemporary concerns in the
language and authority of the texts of the past. We must allow
contemporary darshanim to continue that tradition. Furthermore, if we
disagree or reject the hashkafah or politics in a certain devar torah, we
ought to be careful how quickly we label it "outside the pale," "not real
Judaism," or "nonsense." Sometimes, occasionally, in an age when anybody
with a few thousand dollars can publish a devar Torah sheet, we have to do
so. But, usually we must point out where we disagree and why,
respectfully aware that "other considerations may supervene to cast doubt
[on our sense of Truth]" (Sartre). That, it seems to me, is good,
healthy, machloket leshem shamayim. =20
Educationally, I do not think that we need any formal curriculum to teach
this. If we have serious courses in hashkafah, and if we train our
students to healthy critical thinking in general, than divrei Torah are
small potatoes. If we don't, than criticizing divrei Torah will provide
neither hashkafah nor critical thinking. In the context of a good
educational environment, an occasional classroom tangent can accomplish
the same result as the curriculum that Aharon Frazer suggests. =20
Sincerely,
Yoel Finkelman</HTML>
