Do We Know an Orientation When We See It? Continuing the Conversation About the Teaching of Rabbinic Literature

Abstract

This article extends the conversation begun by Levisohn in “A Menu of Orientations to the Teaching of Rabbinic Literature” (volume 76, issue 1 of this Journal), and continued by a number of respondents (volume 76, issue 2). After discussing several insights offered by respondents, the article takes up the question of whether the menu is accurate. Are there other orientations not on the menu? Are there orientations that are on the menu that should not be? Finally, the article considers a proposal to simplify the menu radically, but argues that the proposed simplification will miss significant, observable differences in pedagogic practice—and thus would not serve the purpose of the menu.

Notes

¹The “cultural environment” that I have in mind, here, is the secularized modern West where historical-critical approaches to the text are granted primary authority. Stendahl, in other words, is offering one response to what became known at the end of the 19th century as the “crisis of historicism.”

²This is the position, in response to historicism, articulated by Hans-Georg Gadamer (1960/1989). For a recent, insightful discussion of these issues, by a scholar who rejects the dichotomy between (non-normative) historical artifact and (normative) sacred text, see Sommer (2010).