My good friend, Jeff Saks' post, on "Do We Believe What We Teach" and the subsequent discussion was very engaging.
As the years pass, I have found one area where this is a particular challenge for many teachers who I have spoken with, observed or directed and that is in the use of basic lomdus in the analysis of various sugyot and rishonim. Some (?Many) teachers who were raised and bred on a deep analytical approach to gemara sometimes find themselves in the rough and tumble of teaching to high school students asking themselves whether their use of certain classic lomdeshe readings of lines of gemara or rishonim really stand up to questioning of students, the fresh eyes of kids reading sources for the first time, and the totality of the sugya they are learning. They begin to ask whether sometimes they are simply engaging in word semantics or hagdoros that have no, as they say in Israel, kisui, behind them. For some, it may be rooted in the fact that their own understandings of the analytical issues was not full and complete ala R. Chaim's famous quip that a hisaron be-hasbarah iz geven a hisaron be-havanah. Sometimes it is rooted in the fact that the teacher has explored and studied other methodologies of reading texts whether academic, existential etc. And sometimes it is just that analytical explanation doesn't quite cut it in terms of the language, of the details or of the plausibility structure of the gemara and its issues- e.g. making sense of the whole thing.
Just adding another area where the question Jeff raised seem to emerge for some teachers.
Kol tuv,
Nati Helfgot
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Rabbi Nathaniel Helfgot
Chair, Dept. of Talmud, SAR High School
Rabbi, Congregation Netivot Shalom
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/16/2017 08:27PM by mlb.
