Journal of Ecumenical Studies

I. Teaching Torah in the Academy

Successful teaching, I believe, is a learning exchange. Learning involves not only the information given but also the recipient’s critical application of what that knowledge means to oneself as an individual and as a member of a community (faith-bound, or not). As a classroom teacher, my major concern is that I am less of a knowledge-dispenser and more of a knowledge-facilitator, who leads my students to make discoveries and articulate values and conclusions. From my teaching experience, I find that students learn better and appreciate more their understanding of the subject matter if they are actively involved in learning rather than being passively taught.

Flexibility, innovation, implementation, enthusiasm, and relevancy are characteristic of a good teaching methodology. The college classroom should not serve as a podium for intellectual exhibitionism or be a forum for undisciplined free-for-all ranting. Some information and delight may result from such activities, but they are achieved at the expense of compromising student learning and scholarship. Instruction in the classroom ought to be student-oriented so that students are involved in comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation rather than becoming amen-sayers to authoritative professorial ranting.

My pedagogic philosophy in teaching the Hebrew Bible is infused with a binary midrashic model: midrash `atsmi (self exegesis and eisegesis) and midrash tsiburi (explorations of others). In teaching the Hebrew Bible, for example, I encourage my students to engage the text as is (peshat), and, in return, the scripture begs darshani (derash, “expound me”); by sharing research and by learning from class discussion, seeds of midrashic activity are planted. Furthermore, the student gains self-respect from such an exposure, [End Page 121] his or her germane ideas are able to sprout, dialogistical learning commences, and a relaxed teacher-student symbiosis is created. Also, I grow in stature as an educator. By playing the role of a class catalyst, I have opportunities to present my own contribution and to refine it in light of class feedback to a greater degree than by a purely lecture method. My goal is to integrate teaching and learning, rooted in the way of Midrash, and the reward is in the participatory doing.

I respect torah mi-sinai. The doctrine of the eternity of the Torah is implicit in verses that speak of individual teachings of Torah in phrases such as the following: “A perpetual statute throughout your generations in all your (lands of) dwellings” (Lev. 3:17), and “throughout the ages as a covenant for all time” (Ex. 3:16). Biblical (Proverbs, in which Torah equals wisdom), Apocryphal (the wisdom of Ben Sira), and Aggadic (Genesis Rabbah) traditions speak of the preexistence of Torah in Heaven. Though the Talmud acknowledges the pre-revelatory Heavenly Torah, which the Sages claimed was revealed to Moses at Sinai, it concentrates more on the Torah’s eternal humanistic values. Indeed, the rabbinic mind speaks of two strains: revelation (“everything which a scholar will ask in the future is already known to Moses at Sinai”; see BT Menach. 29b), and the power of intellectual reasoning, as suggested in BT Pes. 21b, Ketub. 22a, B.K. 46b, Chul. 114b, Nid. 25a, B.M. 59b, and so forth. By twinning the two dialectics, it appears, the Sages taught more Torah than was received at Sinai.

So do I, with a twist. I combine modern biblical scholarship and classical Jewish learning to make sense of the Tanakh in the life of the people then and now. I conflate profane and sacred ways to return to Sinai and back, using source criticism to unravel complexities in transmission (composition, dating, events) and perplexities in thought (Israelite religion, biblical theology) but wholly concerned with faith questions—such as what does the wholistic Torah teach?

In sum, my teaching Tanakh at a public community college, critically speaking, accepts the existential position that God’s teaching was shared at Sinai/Horeb, face into face (Dt. 5:4), with all of Israel, present and future. “Present” implies that God’s primary revelation occurred and that the Torah is the memory of this unique theophany; “future” hints that Israel’s dialogue with...