A Menu of Orientations to the Teaching of Rabbinic Literature

Abstract

Following the work of Grossman (1991) in the teaching of English literature and Holtz (2003) in the teaching of Bible, this article develops a menu of orientations for the teaching of rabbinic literature. First, the author explores and clarifies the idea of orientations. Then, each of ten orientations to the teaching of rabbinic literature is described and discussed: the Torah Orientation; the Contextual Orientation; the Jurisprudential Orientation; the Halakhic Orientation; the Literary Orientation; the Cultural Studies Orientation; the Historical Orientation; the Bekiut Orientation; the Interpretive Orientation; and the Skills Orientation. Finally, the conclusion identifies some purposes for developing this menu.

Wendy Amsellem, Yehuda Ben-Dor, Rahel Berkovits, Marc Brettler, Josh Cypess, David Ehrenkranz, Susan P. Fendrick, David Gordis, Beverly Gribetz, Barry Holtz, Meesh Hammer-Kossoy, Nati Helfgot, Ido Hevroni, Ben Jacobs, Tammy Jacobowitz, Jane Kanarek, Judith Kates, David Kraemer, Yehuda Kurtzer, Aaron Panken, Karen Reiss Medwed, David Schnall, Lisa Schlaff, Jon Spira-Savett, Jeff Spitzer, Devora Steinmetz, Barry Wimpfheimer, and the anonymous reviewers of the manuscript all contributed to this research, along with many other anonymous instructors of rabbinic literature in various settings. Support for the project was provided by the Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University. The errors and omissions are, of course, mine.

Notes

¹Naturally, this is not to deny that there are also significant commonalities. Grossman and Stodolsky (1995) argue that efforts to understand and change secondary school often founder because of a lack of awareness of subject subcultures, the way that the work of teaching math is (in certain respects) unlike the work of teaching history.

²Wineburg, Wilson, and Grossman all initiated this research while doctoral students at Stanford University School of Education, working on projects under the directorship of Lee Shulman and heavily influenced by his call for a new paradigm of teacher research, namely, research on subject-specific (rather than subject-neutral) pedagogy (Shulman, 1986, 1987). Thus, in an echo of Shulman's manifesto, Grossman (1991) writes: “These orientations become visible in classrooms, however, only by paying close attention to the content of classroom instruction, by looking not only at the number of questions asked, but at the literary implications of those questions, by looking not only at the number of papers assigned, but at the topics of those papers” (p. 260).

³I do not mean to suggest that the idea of orientations sprang forth fully formed in 1991. In “Teachers of Substance,” Grossman, Wilson, and Shulman (1989) employ an idea of orientations—which they explain as “[teachers'] conceptions of what is important to know [about a particular subject] and how one knows” (p. 31)—and refer to earlier articles emerging from the Knowledge Growth in a Profession Project at Stanford, authored or coauthored by Grossman, dating back several years (e.g., Grossman, Reynolds, Ringstaff, & Sykes, 1985).

⁴“What emerges from our work,” Grossman and her colleagues (1989) argue, “is the notion that prospective teachers' beliefs about subject matter are as powerful and influential as their beliefs about teaching and learning. Teacher educators must, therefore, provide opportunities for prospective teachers to identify and examine the beliefs that they have about the content they teach” (p. 32).

⁵Anecdotally, this issue receives a great deal of time and energy among practitioners. But I am suggesting that these discussions may be occurring without sufficiently robust conceptions of the teaching of rabbinic literature. Indeed, one measure of the success of my argument in this article might be that practitioners will argue for or against teaching a tractate sequentially or teaching thematically in terms of a larger conceptual model of teaching rabbinic literature, rather than merely arguing about the technique outside of any orientational context.

⁶See Amid (2001) and Kanarek (2002). Also see Hayman's (1997) dismissive stance toward technological innovations in teaching Talmud: “Flowcharts, sophisticated technologies, computer simulations and hypertext applications, even more-effective teachers, cannot solve today's crisis in Talmud study because the crisis is not fundamentally didactic … didactic creativity cannot adequately compensate for fundamental methodological misconceptions.” I would not endorse Hayman's use of “misconceptions,” because there are multiple potentially appropriate conceptions, but I agree with his general point: the challenge is not primarily a technical one but a conceptual one.

⁷See Israel Scheffler's (1965/1989) well-known essay, “Philosophical Models of Teaching,” in which he suggests that “models do not so much aim to describe teaching as to orient it, by weaving together a coherent picture out of epistemological, psychological, and normative elements. Like all models, [models of teaching] simplify, but such simplification is a legitimate way of highlighting what are thought to be important features of the subject” (pp. 67–68). It is important to note, here, that while I am clearly building on earlier work in developing my conception of a teaching orientation, there are other usages within the educational research literature—or more specifically, within the literature on the teaching of Jewish studies—that differ slightly from my own. I should mention, first, the work of Inbar Galili Schachter (2002, 2009). In her empirical study of 12 teachers of Jewish thought in Israel high schools, Galili Schachter (2002) generated five pedagogic hermeneutic orientations—five distinct conceptions of the nature of textual interpretation and the respective roles of the teacher and student in the process. While there are interesting connections between the orientations to the teaching of Jewish thought and the orientations to the teaching of rabbinic literature developed in this article, methodologically, Galili Schachter is more interested in teachers' conceptions of the interpretive process and less interested in their conceptions of the subject matter (in her case, Jewish thought). On the other hand, given that teachers of rabbinic literature are in the business of textual interpretation, her findings are informative; see the discussion below of the Torah orientation. A second usage is found in Shkedi (2001), who identifies four orientations toward the “cultural understanding of the Biblical text and its place in [the] world [of teachers and students]” (p. 334). These stances toward the text are significant, to be sure, but they are orientations toward the specific subject (Bible) rather than toward the teaching of the subject. As such, they may provide a useful lens through which to examine teachers' beliefs and conceptions (especially relative to the students' beliefs and conceptions, which is what Shkedi does in this article), but they do not encompass a set of pedagogic practices. Finally, Y. Schwartz's (2002) study of rabbinics curricula in Israel generates six approaches to the study of Mishnah in state-religious schools, six approaches to the study of Mishnah in state-secular schools, six approaches to the study of Talmud in state-religious schools, and seven approaches to the study of Talmud in state-secular schools. As in Shkedi's orientations, ideological issues are paramount. So while the categories are both thought-provoking and useful, they are focused exclusively on the conceptualization of the subject (e.g., what Mishnah is about and especially why it is worth studying) rather than encompassing the practices of teaching.

⁸I discuss the contextual orientation in greater detail in Levisohn (2008), from which this paragraph is adapted.

⁹This does not mean that every era has its own (single) orientation, but rather that the set of orientations that we discover in our own time and place is not necessarily the set that we might find in another time and place.

¹⁰The issue here is conceptual mutual exclusivity, not practical. After all, even on the strong view, particular teachers might usefully combine orientations in their practice. I return to this point at the end of the article.

¹¹On the “structure of a discipline,” see Schwab (1961/1978), who introduced the idea that disciplines have both a syntactic and a substantive structure, and Hirst (1965), who argued that the several disciplines represent “forms of knowledge,” each of which is “a distinct way in which our experience becomes structured” (p. 128). The work on orientations undermines the idea that a discipline or subject has one, unified syntactic and substantive structure. But Schwab himself was careful to avoid this claim: “few, if any, disciplines have a single structure” (p. 239). Hirst at least qualified the claim by acknowledging that alongside the “forms of knowledge” are other groupings that he called “fields of knowledge”. Furthermore, Holtz notes (2003, p. 46) that work on orientations is much more concerned with the teachers' own constructed understanding of the subject than with structure of the discipline in itself (as it were).

¹²One might wonder why, if two orientations seem to happily coexist, they ought to be conceptually distinguished from each other. I will have more to say on this issue below.

¹³I owe this idea to Susan P. Fendrick (personal communication, October 2007).

¹⁴The diversity of the initial focus groups was limited by the fact that the instructors all identified as Jews and moreover as American Jews. So while they taught in schools and universities, yeshivot and synagogues, to children and adults, in ideologically diverse settings, and while some had familiarity with the teaching of rabbinic literature in various institutions in Israel or to non-Jews (e.g., in university settings), the initial menu of orientations was surely shaped by that limitation. Moreover, the vast majority of the secondary literature that informed the development of the orientations was focused on North America as well. This is not to say that the pedagogic practices in Israel or elsewhere would necessarily constitute a divergent set of orientations. At the same time, it does seem clear that the menu of orientations that I present here is contingent not only historically (i.e., it is characteristic of this particular time) but also geographically. See Segal and Bekerman (2009) for references to studies of the teaching of rabbinic literature in Israel, and see especially Y. Schwartz (2002) for a comprehensive review and categorization of approaches to the teaching of rabbinic literature in Israel in the twentieth century. See, as well, note 66 below.

¹⁵See Holtz (2003, p. 52 ff.), where he cites Dorph's (1993) argument in favor of this claim as well. Wineburg and Wilson (1988/2001) say the same thing, interestingly enough, at the end of “Models of Wisdom.” But while the idea of teachers holding deep and flexible subject matter knowledge is compelling—and in particular, there is something intuitively correct about flexibility as an important pedagogic quality, as argued by McDiarmid et al. (1989)—it is not clear to me why the instructor who employs multiple orientations is a better teacher than the one who employs a single orientation well. In other words, the concept of pedagogic flexibility requires some clarification; it should not be considered synonymous with “capacity to employ multiple orientations.”

¹⁶The total number of teachers of rabbinic literature with whom I have shared the menu of orientations, in some form, and from whom I have sought feedback approaches 300. Naturally, however, only a fraction of these have actually provided input—I will occasionally introduce that input into my discussions of individual orientations below—and I cannot conclude that most would endorse the menu as it stands. But see note 18 for a more optimistic perspective.

¹⁷Of course, how to acknowledge that response is always a matter of interpretive judgment. Perhaps a practitioner has identified a genuine lacuna in the menu of orientations. Alternatively, perhaps her own pedagogy is idiosyncratic and nonrepresentative of a larger cultural practice, or perhaps she misunderstands her own practice, or perhaps her observation points to a way in which we need to expand our conception of one of the orientations already on the menu rather than constructing an entirely new one. As in any inquiry, the discovery of contradictory data does not, by itself, tell us how to adjust our theory to accommodate the data, only that we must in some way do so. See note 66 below.

¹⁸These orientations were introduced at the Conference on Teaching Rabbinic Literature at Brandeis University in January 2008, in front of over 200 people—university instructors, day school teachers, rabbis, and others. When the conference evaluations were analyzed, the idea of orientations frequently came up among the highlights. Subsequently, a number of schools have reported using the menu of orientations for professional development purposes among their faculty. One correspondent wrote that the menu “helped [teachers] speak more definitively about the reading strategies they were undertaking, and in some cases to contrast two readings with each other and analyze that very experience.” This suggests that, whether or not all the details are correct, the menu of orientations is a helpful conceptual tool.

¹⁹See the discussion of this point, made by “Moshe,” in Levisohn (2008).

²⁰This parenthetical remark is intended to emphasize the point made above about the inadequacy of ideology as an analytical lens through which to understand pedagogy. I do not mean to suggest that religious ideology is irrelevant to pedagogy, of course. I do mean to suggest, however, that the standard dichotomies (traditional versus liberal, or academic versus devotional, or historical-critical versus religious) do not get us very far. They may conceal more than they reveal. (See Kahana, 1990, which the author notes is based on an earlier version from 1977, for an example of an overly simplistic comparison of academic and traditional study based on highly schematic and stereotyped dichotomies. The yeshiva is educational, the university is inquiry based; the yeshiva is closed while the university is intellectually open; the university is oriented toward the past whereas the yeshiva is oriented toward the present and future; etc.). Instead, I will argue that each one of the 10 orientations is compatible with a range of ideological commitments. I appreciate the questions of an anonymous reviewer, which have helped me articulate this point.

²¹This formulation raises questions about the interpretive encounter between the student and the text that, alas, I cannot focus on here. But I might mention, again, Galili Schechter (2002, 2009), who uncovers five distinct conceptions of textual interpretation among teachers of Jewish thought in Israeli high schools (where “Jewish thought” is taught primarily via a Torah orientation-like encounter with classical texts).

²²Consider the focus on rabbinic texts on Tefillin in a class of seventh grade boys who will be engaging in the practice of Tefillin daily (Segal & Bekerman, 2009), motivated by a sense that engagement with these texts will (not only provide practical guidance but also) make their practice of Tefillin more meaningful. However, given what we learn about the actual instruction in that setting, the Torah orientation does not appear to be the dominant orientation.

²³Adult education does not usually focus on cultivating textual-analytic skills, but may have a different skill in mind—namely, the skill of responsibly mining texts for meaning. See the discussion of the skills orientation below.

²⁴One educator writes: “We have found … that much of our informal teaching centers around rabbinic texts … We are developing a curriculum of concepts, morals, messages we want to get across over a four-year high school experience.”

²⁵On “teaching Jewish values,” see Rosenak (1986). Those who are committed to teaching a tractate in sequence sometimes wonder how (and whether) to deal with aggadic material. A common defense of aggada—in terms of its capacity to promote values, ideals, or philosophical insights (Blau, 2003)—assumes the propriety of the Torah orientation for teaching aggada. However, one can also argue for other orientations to teaching aggada as well (most obviously, the literary orientation and the cultural orientation, but others too).

²⁶There is a connection, therefore, between the Torah orientation to rabbinic literature and the ideational orientation to Bible. Why not simply reuse the same orientational label? The label “Torah orientation” conveys the sense that the commitment to construct opportunities to engage with the text is not limited to a (or even more than one) big idea.

²⁷Beverly Gribetz and Meesh Hammer-Kossoy helped clarify my thinking on this issue.

²⁸I owe this point to Barry Wimpfheimer; see also Elman (1996, p. 251 ff). Also see Halivni (1979) for a cogent explanation of what he calls “dialectical criticism,” an approach to the text that can fairly be categorized within the contextual orientation and which he defends in terms of the authenticity of its reading of the text.

²⁹See Sperber (1996) and Eliav (2008).

³⁰Wineburg's theory is based on empirical research on historians of more recent periods, rather than scholars of classical texts, but it is a reasonable hypothesis (worthy of empirical investigation) that it would apply equally well to the latter as well. In the case of Bible, the sourcing heuristic is displayed in the tendency of Bible scholars to immediately notice the source (J, E, P, D, or H) of a particular text. In the case of rabbinic literature, the same sourcing heuristic is displayed in the tendency of rabbinics scholars to immediately attend to the language of the text, the rabbis cited and their dates and locations, and when available, parallel texts, in order to provisionally fix the historical provenance of the text. Whether it is possible to determine that historical provenance reliably, or whether we cannot do so, is of course a matter of scholarly debate.

³¹By way of contrast, Sperber (1996) argues for the indispensability of historical-critical scholarship to the pursuit of traditionalist goals of discerning halakhic implications. In other words, in his case, historical study is in support of the halakhic orientation (see below). What this shows is that not every use of historical-critical scholarship in teaching, necessarily represents an example of the contextual orientation. Purpose matters.

³²This is not meant to imply that teachers within the contextual orientation to Bible are committed to undermining the authority of the text, either, as they are sometimes caricatured. Nevertheless, the ideological issues play out differently in the two cases. We might say that the catchword of the historical-critical instructor of Bible is pluralism: She is attuned to and committed to nurturing sensitivity to the pluralism of the disparate sources within the received text. The catchword of the historical-critical instructor of rabbinic literature, on the other hand, is creativity: She is attuned to and committed to nurturing sensitivity to the cultural creativity of the rabbis. (On the comparison between methodology in Bible and in Talmud, see Halivni, 1979, p. 200, n. 16.)

³³The use of the language of “concepts” and “conceptual” here is not meant to indicate a preference (within the jurisprudential orientation) for what is sometimes called the “conceptual approach” or elsewhere is called the “Brisker method” of Talmud study (see Blau, 2005), the method that focuses on clarification of central legal concepts—and clarification of divergent views about those concepts—as the key to understanding discordant texts. In fact, the jurisprudential orientation encompasses both the Brisker method and other competing approaches as well. The method of pilpul, for example, which arguably characterizes much contemporary haredi Talmud study (and which is sometimes criticized for its substitution of originality as the interpretive ideal, rather than truth), also entails an engagement with the Talmud's conceptual universe. See the discussion of the interpretive orientation.

³⁴Michael Rosenzweig (2005), focusing not on pedagogy but on “methodology,” emphasizes that contemporary yeshivot conform to the pattern established over the last century and a half. “This is noteworthy,” he adds, “given the fact that access to a plethora of historical material … … might conceivably have challenged the continuity in yeshivah study by redirecting the focus away from the classical, ahistorical emphasis that has long prevailed” (p. 113)—might have, but, in fact, did not.

³⁵Also see the discussion in Hammer-Kossoy (2001, p. 34 ff). Some might wonder whether we ought to say, instead, that the status of the text is rooted in the ideological conviction of God as “He who commands.” That conviction is clearly present for Lichtenstein. But the point here is that, in order for the ideological conviction to make sense, we must first understand Talmud as, paradigmatically, a legal text.

³⁶See also Lichtenstein (2003, p. 43 and ff), where he expresses a commitment to the jurisprudential orientation and a rejection of the historical and literary orientations (although of course he does not use those terms).

³⁷This assessment is based on an understanding that, differences among darkei ha-limmud notwithstanding, traditionalists teaching within the jurisprudential orientation share important features: They tend to select tractates (rather than specific texts) and follow the order of the tractate or the chapter within it; the tractates tend to be the “yeshivish” ones that are heavy on jurisprudential concepts and debates; they bracket or avoid altogether both the practical-halakhic implications of the texts and the personal-spiritual implications; to the extent that they are focused on the development of the skills of textual analysis, those skills are heavily jurisprudential (understanding Talmudic argument rather than, for example, understanding literary tropes); and, as mentioned above, teaching and learning is conceptualized not just as an occasion for understanding the text and its difficulties but especially as an occasion for hiddush, innovation in the resolution of textual difficulties. At the same time, the differences among darkei ha-limmud are surely deep and significant. As Elman notes (1996, p. 253), the field would benefit greatly from straightforward, non-polemical comparative analyses of the various approaches. (For some efforts in this direction, see Halivni, 1979; Rosenzweig 2005; Shapiro, 2005; and, as already noted, on the Brisker method specifically, see Blau, 2006.)

³⁸To outsiders, the use of a phrase like “word of God”—or even “the embodiment of the will of God” (Schreiber, 2003, p. 232)—to refer to rabbinic texts may seem surprising. After all, the statements and discussions in these texts are attributed to specific human figures on every page. But, within a particular religious context, these phrases are unproblematic, indeed unremarkable. Those who use these phrases do not believe that rabbinic literature has been divinely revealed word for word. Precisely what, then, do they believe? That is a centrally important question, not only for ideological reasons but for pedagogical ones—but such an inquiry is outside the scope of this article.

³⁹Also see Brandes (2007) for another contemporary expression of this view. However, Kress and Lehman (2003) focus on the dialogical and argumentative nature of the text of the Babylonian Talmud as a pedagogical resource more broadly; they do not appear to limit themselves to the jurisprudential orientation.

⁴⁰ Rosenzweig (2005, p. 116) points out that there are “notable exceptions”—for example, Tractate Shabbat is typically studied beginning in the middle of the seventh chapter (folio 73a)—but these exceptions prove the rule that tractates are studied not only sequentially but beginning at the beginning (either of a tractate or, sometimes, a chapter).

⁴¹Based on her research on contemporary teachers and students, Hammer-Kossoy (2001) frames this point in religious terms: “Perhaps the most tangible and accessible religious experience identified by students and teacher alike is the power of studying something that has been studied for generations, joining in the dialogue between [the Talmudic rabbis] Abaye and Rava, the [medieval commentator] Ritva and [the modern commentator] Rav Hayim. This sense of continuity often inspires many students to dedicate themselves to Talmud study” (p. 6). This observation makes sense within the jurisprudential orientation, where “Talmud study” means, specifically, plumbing the depths of the legal arguments that are carried forward from generation to generation. Outside of the jurisprudential orientation, in other orientations, it is less compelling.

⁴²On the relationship of legal and non-legal (narrative) texts within a legal, prescriptive tradition, see the often-cited, influential article by Cover (1983/1995). For recent discussions, see Simon-Shoshan (2005) and Wimpfheimer (2005).

⁴³ Lichtenstein (1996/2007) is motivated by his awareness of the unfortunately corrosive effects of traditional Talmud study in contemporary Orthodox schools and his hope that a shift to an engagement with halakhic material might serve better to accomplish his religious goals: “If we manage to implant a connection to Torah [using this nontraditional approach], the hope exists that we will succeed to embed the most precious of all, yirat shamayim, the fear of Heaven” (p. 21). It is worth recalling, however, that any orientation can be pursued poorly or well. The question then becomes: Even if one assumes that a certain kind of religious devotion (which may be helpful in supporting a particular pedagogy) is increasingly rare among one's students, should one abandon the orientation in favor of another, or might one rather experiment with a different pedagogy within that orientation? Interestingly, writing several years later, Lichtenstein (2003, p. 57) is no less concerned about the state of Talmud study—but now concludes with a rejection of any proposal (like his own in 1996) that deviates from the jurisprudential orientation.

⁴⁴ Lichtenstein (1996/2007) himself frames his proposal in terms of a shift from an emphasis on the study of Talmud to an emphasis on the study of Mishnah. But it is not clear to me how the “deep drillings” to which he refers, studying topics “from the foundations to the attic,” might be accomplished by a study of Mishnah (exclusively or even primarily). I, therefore, assume that Mishnah, in his essay, is used as a kind of shorthand for study that avoids the intricacies of Talmudic argumentation while placing greater emphasis on the development of the halakhic tradition.

⁴⁵See Elman (1996, pp. 261–276).

⁴⁶ Rubenstein (2008) makes a similar argument.

⁴⁷Alongside the tools of the cultural anthropologist, the cultural orientation may also employ the related tools of the academic folklorist, focusing in particular on narratives that fit the paradigms of folklore, as Bialik and Ravnitzky did in their Sefer ha-Aggadah. I am indebted to Barry Wimpfheimer (personal communication, February 22, 2009) for this point and others related to the cultural orientation.

⁴⁸ Hasan-Rokem (2000) frames the relationship between feminism and rabbinic literature in the following way. “Feminist assumptions encourage two main types of critical reading […]: on the one hand, exposing patriarchal trends in the text while pointing to the oppression and discrimination of women; on the other hand, pointing to anti-patriarchal elements within the text, as well as to womens' voices and other subversive elements” (pp. 109–110; I was pointed toward this passage by a post on academictalmud.blogspot.com). This indicates the way that different kinds of feminist inquiry in rabbinic literature represent different orientations—the historical orientation, for example, in the case of readings that attempt to uncover women's experiences, or the halakhic orientation, in the case of studies of the evolving status of women in halakha. Also see Lehman (2006).

⁴⁹See Sperber (1996) and Wimpfheimer (2009).

⁵⁰See S. Schwartz (2002) for a rich discussion of the history of the historiography of the rabbinic period, which surfaces many of the conceptual fault lines between various historiographical approaches.

⁵¹This is quoted on the Dei'ah veDibur Web site, which reports on a eulogy for Rabbi Shach by Gershon Eidelstein: http://chareidi.shemayisrael.com/archives5766/lech/olechlch66.htm. Naturally, I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the account, but the very fact that it is reported is significant regardless.

⁵²The Day Yomi program was publicly initiated in 1923 by Meir Shapira, at the Agudas Yisroel convention in Vienna.

⁵³See, for example, Heilman (1987) for an extensive description and analysis of a regular, informal Talmud class for adult Orthodox men. In an earlier article, Heilman (1981) argues that “the Talmud … … is regularly studied as part of the ritual and religious life of all Orthodox Jews” (p. 228–229). His assessment of its universality may be contested. For our purposes, however, it is worth noting that the framework of regular (weekly) Talmud classes typically conforms to a bekiut orientation. More generally, Heilman (1981) emphasizes, rightly, that a class is never just one thing: it may be a teaching moment, and a social occasion, and a religious act, and an opportunity for self-reflection, and so on (p. 240).

⁵⁴Teasing apart the concept of Torah Lish'ma is notoriously difficult. We can easily identify the opposite of Torah Lish'ma, namely, study for extrinsic purposes such as career advancement or practical guidance or scholarly reputation. But what does it mean to study something for its own sake? What if one studies for the sake of becoming a more adept student—is that Torah Lish'ma? Or for the sake of heightened self-consciousness or moral attunement? In some views, even study for the purpose of religious enlightenment—“cleaving to God”—violates the strict standard of Torah Lish'ma (although, according to other views, that is precisely the correct meaning of Torah Lish'ma). The classic study of Torah Lish'ma is Lamm (1989); also see Rosenak (1995, pp. 231–234). Note, here, that while the bekiut orientation is often pursued in the context of an ideological commitment to Torah Lish'ma, the latter commitment is not by any means limited to the bekiut orientation. Other orientations may also be pursued lishma.

⁵⁵Citing Boyarin (1990) in this context may raise the question, for those readers familiar with his work, of how to distinguish the interpretive orientation from the cultural orientation. My response, here as elsewhere, is to turn from theory to practice: In the interpretive orientation, questions about how the rabbis interpret will tend to crowd out other questions about culture. Of course, many instructors may smoothly integrate the interpretive and cultural orientations.

⁵⁶Notable exceptions, here, include the commentaries on Bible by Yaakov Tzevi Mecklenburg (1785–1865), Ha-Ketav ve-ha-Kabbalah; by Meir Leibush (1809–1879), the “Malbim”; and by Baruch Epstein (1860–1941), Torah Temimah; each which was devoted to exploring and defending the interpretational links between rabbinic literature and biblical sources. While these are commentaries on Bible rather than works of scholarship on rabbinic literature, they are certainly potentially valuable resources for an instructor within the interpretational orientation. I owe this point to an anonymous reviewer of this article.

⁵⁷To be sure, Sigel (2009) also discusses the children's encounter with “Jewish values” that comes about through the study of midrash (pp. 71–72), and she affirms that the ultimate purpose of studying midrash is the cultivation of Jewish identity (p. 72). But her primary and overwhelming pedagogic focus is on developing an understanding of midrash as interpretive literature.

⁵⁸See, too, “Rachel,” one of the subjects in Reiss Medwed (2005, p. 146 ff.), who rejects the idea of introducing rabbinic literature through mishnah and instead focuses on midrash as the paradigmatic “language of the rabbis.”

⁵⁹See Lehman (2002) for an example of a conscious combination (what I call, in my conclusion to this paper, a “principled eclecticism”) of the cultural orientation, the contextual orientation, and the interpretive orientation.

⁶⁰See Kaunfer (1992) on teaching midrash as a creative activity. Note, however, a distinction between his focus on the creative work of interpretation as a means to the end of students' understanding of classical midrash, and my suggestion that some teachers may use the interpretive orientation toward classical midrash as a means to the end of the creative work of interpretation. The means in Kaunfer (creative interpretation) is the end in my suggestion, and the end in Kaunfer (understanding of classical midrash) is the means in my suggestion.

⁶¹Thus, Goldsmith (2002) offers an analysis of the Talmud using the lens of reading and discourse research, identifying the obstacles to comprehension that students must develop the textual skills to overcome.

⁶² Finkelman (2003) argues, in effect, that the vast majority of shiurim (Talmud classes) in modern Orthodox men's yeshivot in Israel, where American students spend a year or more of post-high school study, are committed to the jurisprudential orientation (with its particular pathologies), while a small minority of shiurim in those yeshivot employ a skills orientation (and he helpfully delineates six aspects of those “skills-oriented classes”). Whereas the latter have a reasonable chance of teaching the skills that the instructors claim to value, the former have little hope of doing so. He argues, further, that this educational mystery can be explained by the socialization function that the more traditional, jurisprudential orientation classes perform.

⁶³In Israeli secular educational settings, there is a parallel phenomenon where rabbinic literature—or sometimes the “Jewish bookshelf”—is taught in order to reclaim it from the Orthodox establishment, to redeem it for a secular Jewish identity. This occurs both in Israeli secular public schools (see, e.g., Shkedi, 2002, for a discussion of three teachers who perceive their teaching in this way) and especially in adult education settings. However, while the rhetoric of access and empowerment is familiar from these Israel secular settings, it is unclear to me whether teachers in these settings enact these purposes by employing the pedagogic practices that are characteristic of the skills orientation. I suspect, rather, that teaching in these settings is typically located within the Torah orientation.

⁶⁴ Grossman and Stodolsky (1995) cite “sequentiality” among significant variables of subject subcultures, the way that teachers of some subjects believe that one must first study a followed by b and then c. Languages and math have greater perceived sequentiality; social studies and history have less. Talmud typically has little sequentiality—except for some instructors within the skills orientation.

⁶⁵I have in mind, here, instances where instructors choose a rabbinic text to teach—but the choice might have been otherwise. The instructor might have chosen a text from Maimonides, or from Yehuda Amichai, or something else entirely. I do not mean to denigrate the teaching or learning that occurs under these conditions, but it seems unavoidable that these are not instances of teaching the subject of rabbinic literature. So while these instances of teaching may well appear, in some respects, like the Torah orientation, the absence of pedagogic commitment to rabbinic literature as a subject is significant. Jon Spira-Savett helped me clarify this point.

⁶⁶I have tried to refrain from claiming that the menu is exhaustive, while arguing for its basic comprehensiveness (at least within a specific historical and geographic location). Colleagues have offered proposals for other orientations: a mystical orientation; an existential orientation; a vocational orientation (in which the study of rabbinic texts is oriented toward an ongoing, lifelong career of studying the texts); a biblical orientation (in which the study of rabbinic texts is subordinate to the larger objective of studying the biblical text); or a pilpil orientation (in which the objective is to harmonize texts, regardless of the implausibility of the solution). In each case, after exploring the issue, I concluded that the proposed orientation does not meet the criteria that I set for an orientation to teaching rabbinic texts, or that it is appropriately encompassed by another orientation, or (as in the case of the proposed mystical orientation) that I am simply not familiar enough with this practice to be able to judge. It is also noteworthy that none of these proposals came from individuals who claim to practice the orientation themselves; a principled articulation of a new orientation would be more compelling if the presenter were to describe her own practice.

⁶⁷See, for example, Fox (2000, p. 36 ff). Holtz (2008, p. 228) uses this phrase to describe his orientations work as well.

⁶⁸See Gribetz (2003), who argues against a misperception that the teaching of rabbinic literature to novices or the young can safely avoid complicated issues of history and methodology.

⁶⁹See Holtz (2003, p. 50), for a parallel discussion of the ways that orientations can contribute to practice. And see Levisohn (2009, p. 313, n. 4) for a brief discussion of other literature that embraces, implicity or explicity, the idea that awareness of methodological choices will contribute to the improvement of pedagogy. As I note there, this hypothesis—while reasonable—deserves a patient, critical examination.

⁷⁰On the state of discourse in the field, consider a finding in Reiss Medwed (2005): “None of the teachers [in this study] expressed a sense of being part of a larger tradition of teaching and learning Talmud and Rabbinics, a larger tradition of content pedagogy” (p. 177). Blau (2006), a delightful collection of articles about the “conceptual approach” to Talmud study (i.e., the Brisker method) by a set of distinguished modern Orthodox practitioners of the approach, does not consider pedagogic practice at all.

⁷¹A commitment to teaching a tractate sequentially need not necessarily imply a corollary commitment to principled eclecticism, of course. Above I noted that the bekiut orientation, in particular, adopts the former commitment, but obviously not the latter. So whereas the bekiut orientation also emphasizes sequential coverage, the kind of principled eclecticism that I have in mind, here, is associated with a more in-depth engagement with the text. For each sugya, the instructor will ask which orientation seems most appropriate, and pursue that orientation for that particular sugya—implicitly expressing a conviction not only about the richness of the text but also about the appropriateness of multiple forms of engagement. I am indebted to Rahel Berkovits for this point.

⁷²Neither Lehman (2002) nor Walfish (2003) uses the language of orientations. Nevertheless, I believe that they would endorse this characterization.

⁷³As noted above, in footnote 15, Holtz and Dorph endorse what I am calling “principled eclecticism” as a form of flexibility that is desirable in all teachers. It is unclear to me whether and why flexibility must necessarily entail, specifically, orientational flexibility.