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Do We Know an Orientation When WeSee It? Continuing the ConversationAbout the Teaching of RabbinicLiteratureJon A. LevisohnPublished online: 10 Sep 2010.

To cite this article: Jon A. Levisohn (2010) Do We Know an Orientation When We See It? Continuingthe Conversation About the Teaching of Rabbinic Literature, Journal of Jewish Education, 76:3,272-283, DOI: 10.1080/15244113.2010.503129

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Journal of Jewish Education, 76:272–283, 2010Copyright © Network for Research in Jewish EducationISSN: 1524-4113 print / 1554-611X onlineDOI: 10.1080/15244113.2010.503129

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

JON A. LEVISOHN

This article extends the conversation begun by Levisohn in “A Menuof 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 byrespondents, the article takes up the question of whether the menuis accurate. Are there other orientations not on the menu? Are thereorientations 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 notserve the purpose of the menu.

The collection of responses to “A Menu of Orientations to the Teachingof Rabbinic Literature” (Levisohn, 2010) in the pages of this Journalare exceedingly generous, crediting the article with the potential forfostering communal discourse (Fagen, 2010), for increasing “didactic self-consciousness” (Fonrobert, 2010), and for promoting clarity of purposes(Gutoff, 2010). It is even praised (by Zisenwine, 2010) as “required readingfor educators.” This is all enormously gratifying, and slightly embarrassing.But the responses also represent the beginning of the kind of robust engage-ment that I had hoped the article might engender. In a sense, then, anyfurther response is beside the point: having offered the article as a contri-bution to the field, and now having these responses to frame subsequentdiscussion, it matters little what I have to say. The conversation has begun.May it continue, in staffrooms and professional development workshops andpedagogic colloquia. If we are very lucky, may it also continue around thoseconference tables where future research directions are planned.

Jon A. Levisohn is Assistant Academic Director of the Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education,and Assistant Professor of Jewish Education, at Brandeis University. E-mail: levisohn@brandeis.edu

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But, of course, the opportunity offered by the editors of the Journalto add my further thoughts can hardly be ignored. The responses containcountless kernels of insight that are worthy of serious consideration. RuthFagen (2010), for example, observes that “curricular decisions . . . are attimes made without considering whether those doing the actual teachinghave the skills and dispositions to be able to teach well within these ori-entations” (p. 101). This is surely correct, and it raises the very importantquestion of precisely what skills and dispositions—and knowledge—is actu-ally necessary for the various orientations, and how teachers might gainthose capacities. In other words, the familiar idea of “subject matter knowl-edge for teaching” may well be too broad. We may need, instead, a morerefined conception of “subject matter knowledge for teaching within a par-ticular orientation.” Of course, we want teachers to know everything. Butsince that is impossible, we would be well-served by articulating what back-ground a teacher requires in order to teach rabbinic literature within (say)the literary orientation or the skills orientation, with as much specificity aspossible.

Elliot Goldberg picks up on the issue of orientational eclecticism versusorientational purity or focus. I argue, in the article, that there are reasons todefend both eclecticism (a principled eclecticism, employing multiple orien-tations consciously rather than idiosyncratically) and purity. Goldberg (2010)responds that, in the context of high schools where students are beginners,and where curricular materials are scarce, focus should trump eclecticism.“The advantages of such stability are worth the cost to orientational flexi-bility” (p. 112). I admire his courage is staking out the position. I wonder,however, which orientational focus would actually suffice for his pedagogicpurposes. Is he willing to place a wager on the literary orientation, or thehistorical, or the halakhic? Goldberg’s high school students, after all, may beinterested in either halakha or history, or neither. They may be interested inliterary analysis or existential meaning. This may be the only rabbinic liter-ature they ever study, but on the other hand, they may encounter (and theschool may feel a responsibility to prepare them for) rabbinic literature inother settings later in their schooling or their lives. Given that range, my owninclination—less as a matter of pedagogic conviction and more as a matterof curricular hedging-of-bets—might be to choose three or four orientationsand to work diligently to make those orientations accessible and intelligibleto the students.

Joshua Gutoff (2010) wants to call our attention to the range of “maturerelationships” to rabbinic texts that serve as our guideposts, our visions of theoutcome of teaching this material. I take him to be asking the question, whatdoes a successful education in rabbinic literature look like? Or to be moreprecise, what habits and dispositions does a successful student (of what-ever educational institution in which rabbinic literature is taught) possessand display? Reading closely, Gutoff is concerned that I have constructed

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the range of successful outcomes too narrowly. “We would want to expandthe scope of our inquiry beyond the academy,” he writes, “to seek themodels of serious Jewish encounters with rabbinic texts as practiced byboth academic scholars and religious thinkers” (p. 114). I entirely agreethat academic scholars should not be our only models. I agree, further,that we would be well-served by the development of carefully constructed,finely drawn images of those multiple models. What is the role of this liter-ature in a healthy Jewish identity? In what sense is an education in rabbinicliterature—or an ongoing engagement with this literature—an essential com-ponent of a particular picture of human flourishing? But I would also offera word of caution here. It seems to me that this is enormously difficultwork at the intersection of religion, moral philosophy, hermeneutics, andsocial psychology, and the gestures in this direction with which I’m familiarrarely go beyond clichés of piety. The idea of the “learned ba’al ha-bayit(layperson),” for example, conceals more than it reveals.

In the article, I dealt with the question of the boundaries of rabbinic lit-erature in a rather cavalier way. Some subgenres are clearly in—the Mishnah,the Bavli—but others, I suggested, are to be included depending on thechoice of orientation. The siddur is included, if we are pursuing the Torahorientation and want to engage (for the purposes of instruction) with rab-binic insight into prayer. Medieval legal compendia? Certainly, if we arepursuing the jurisprudential orientation. Jane Kanarek (2010a), however, isnot satisfied with this stance. Instead, she asks the penetrating question,“What do we stand to gain by grouping all of these texts together and whatdo we stand to lose?” (p. 115). Her main point here is that we may be ableto use the rubric of the orientations to discipline our thinking, to criticallyexamine our assumptions about the subgenres. We might initially assume, forexample, that a particular talmudic sugya should be approached within thejurisprudential orientation. But if we are pursuing the interpretive orienta-tion, we might ask interpretive-orientation questions not just about tannaiticmidrash but about that talmudic passage as well. This is not an argument forrestricting the category of rabbinic literature to Talmud and eliminating theteaching of, say, medieval midrash. Instead, it is an argument on behalf ofreading more closely, of seeing more complexity in the texts than we mayhave appreciated. Indeed, this is work that Kanarek has pursued in her owncreative scholarship on the ways that the rabbis read biblical narratives forlegal purposes (see most recently Kanarek, 2010b).

Beyond these insights, the most consistent theme in the responses tomy article—and in other conversations that I have had about the menu oforientations—is the ongoing question of whether these 10 orientations arethe right ones, whether the menu is as accurately reflective of our timeand place as it claims to be, whether it encompasses the range of teach-ing practices in our time and place as it claims to do. In the article, Ipropose that we should approach this question pragmatically. “Do [these

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orientations] illuminate the practice of teaching in this field in a helpful way?”(Levisohn, 2010, p. 15). I note, further, that we ought to expect some ambi-guity here. There is clearly room for judgment, and not everyone sees thingsthe way that I do. Some (Marjorie Lehman and Charlotte Fonrobert) suggestadding an orientation, responding to a perceived lacuna in the menu. Others(Fonrobert and others) suggest eliminating an orientation. Marjorie Lehmanalso suggests that the cultural orientation may function as a kind of indis-pensable meta-orientation. And Michael Gillis offers the broadest critique,wondering whether I have succumbed to a danger that I myself warnedagainst—the danger of a proliferation of orientations. I will respond to eachof these challenges in turn.

Lehman (2010) proposes to add an orientation called the spiritual orien-tation, which promotes the question, “What aspect or issue raised in a giventext moved me forward in my own spiritual or religious journey?” (p. 119).Fonrobert (2010) proposes to add an orientation called the philological ori-entation, which is focused on “how to read manuscripts, how to establishmanuscript traditions, how to negotiate manuscript variances, etc.” (p. 106).Note here that both of these proposals have an advantage over the fiveproposals that I briefly considered, and rejected, in a footnote in my article(Levisohn, 2010, n. 66, p. 42). None of those five, I noted, came from indi-viduals who claim to practice the orientation themselves. But in this case,Lehman is indeed describing her own practice, and Fonrobert is describinga practice with which she (and many of us) are quite familiar.

So shall we make room in the menu for a spiritual orientation? Lehman(2010) writes that “this orientation is the first step in reaching the objec-tives” (p. 119) of another orientation, the Torah/instruction orientation. Thatorientation, we will recall, is focused on the way in which rabbinic lit-erature is taken to be a source of teaching; within the Torah orientation,“the encounter with this sacred literature has the potential to be illuminat-ing, or inspirational, or instructive” (Levisohn, 2010, p. 16). Lehman’s pointis that her students—rabbinical students who are thinking about teachingthe texts to others—must consider carefully how the text has had or mighthave had meaning for them before they can proceed to construct a learningopportunity in which the text might come to have meaning for others.

Lehman’s pedagogic advice is sound, and is especially important whenwading into the complicated, challenging waters of the Torah orientation.The goal of instruction (in the sense used here) is inherently fraught, emo-tionally and morally; it carries overtones of charismatic pedagogy and thepossibility of subverting the students’ autonomy. What am I asking studentsto do, when I try to help them hear what the text might have to say to them?What am I asking them to risk, and how can I prepare them appropriatelyfor that kind of work? How can I respect their autonomy while also promot-ing a substantive engagement with a normative textual tradition? The morethat the teacher has become aware of the nuances of her own response to

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the text, the better she will be able to negotiate these questions with agility,with maturity, and with the appropriate respect for her students.

But the very construction of the advice undermines its claim to bea distinct orientation. This kind of spiritual exploration, Lehman has said,is a “first step” in preparing to teach a text. It is not, itself, a mode ofteaching; it is preparation for teaching. Interpretive self-awareness is alwaysan important quality in a teacher (as in a student), and we might well agreewith Lehman that its importance is magnified when the teaching that oneintends to do raises the kind of questions to which I referred in the precedingparagraph. But I am not convinced that the sustained attention to interpretiveself-awareness that Lehman is promoting qualifies as a distinct orientation.

Fonrobert’s (2010) suggestion of a philological orientation, on the otherhand, is harder to reject. She describes this orientation as “committed tothe singular importance of establishing (or for that matter questioning) thetext-ness of the Talmud” (p. 106). Within this orientation, “work with themanuscripts turns into a goal in and by itself” (p. 106). Students are taughtto critically examine those manuscripts, and the excavation of the originaltext is a regulative ideal if not a practical goal. The contextual orientation, itsclose cousin, is likewise concerned with an academic, critical investigation ofthe text—but without the singular philological focus on the form of the text.She notes that this orientation may not have surfaced, in my menu, becauseit is visible most clearly in Israel, and in particular, within the rarified air ofthe Hebrew University Department of Talmud.

She is surely correct. The stance of the philological orientation is ratherthin on the ground in North America. Why this is so—why Talmud study inNorth America, even in universities, does not look like it does at HebrewUniversity—is a matter of the intellectual history of the various universities,and the influence of particular individuals, and the context of the respectiveacademic and non-academic cultures. But it is helpful to consider the philo-logical orientation as an addition to the menu, even as we do not imaginethat it will enjoy a surge in popularity anytime soon. At the same time, con-sidering the philological orientation allows us to reiterate an important pointabout orientations in general. It is surely the case that other orientationsemploy philology, or a concern with textual variants and with discerningaccuracy of texts whenever possible—but this does not necessarily meanthat those instructors are, at the same time, teaching within the philologicalorientation.

An example may be helpful here. Consider the line in the Mishnah, RoshHashanah 1:2, familiar to many of us from the High Holiday liturgical poem,“U’netaneh Tokef.” The familiar text reads, “On Rosh Hashanah, all mortalcreatures pass before him kivnei maron.” The final phrase is unclear, not justto us but already in the Bavli, where it receives three possible interpretations(bRosh Hashanah 18a). But by the time of the composition of “U’netanehTokef” in the 11th century, the author of the poem could assume that the

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meaning was clear: kivnei maron means “like sheep,” which is the firstinterpretation in the Bavli.

When we turn to the Kaufmann Manuscript of the Mishnah, however,we find instead the alternative final word “kivenumeron,” which we cantranslate—more intelligibly—as “like a regimental inspection” (Roth, 1998).Instead of an image of passive sheep meandering in single file under watch-ful and evaluative gaze, then, the text of Rosh Hashanah is proposing a verydifferent image, in which all humans march in organized fashion before Godin a kind of military parade. The image may still suggest inspection by theSovereign, but the object of inspection is a radically different one.

In teaching the text of this mishnah—or in teaching the text of thepiyyut—the philological inquiry seems essential and unavoidable. Once wehave seen the Kaufmann manuscript, we can no longer read the efforts ofthe Bavli to make sense of the mishnah in quite the same way. But doesthis mean that we are inevitably employing Fonrobert’s proposed philolog-ical orientation? No, it does not. The issue here is parallel to the case ofthe literary orientation. Not every instance of literary analysis qualifies asan instance of teaching within the literary orientation; so too, not everyinstance of philological clarification qualifies as an instance of teachingwithin the philological orientation. Instead, in the literary orientation, “lit-erary analysis is foregrounded and made the explicit focus of discussionor inquiry” (Levisohn, 2010, p. 29). So too, in the philological orientation,philological analysis is foregrounded and made the explicit focus of discus-sion and inquiry, perhaps even to the exclusion of all other concerns. AsFonrobert (2010) notes, within the philological orientation, “work with themanuscripts turns into a goal in and by itself” (p. 106).

At the same time as proposing the addition of a new orientation,Fonrobert (2010) also suggests eliminating the skills orientation. “It sim-ply seems too strained to elevate the conveyance of tools for decoding thetalmudic dialogues to the level of ‘orientation,’ ” she writes. “After all, theacquisition of tools operates first and foremost on the level of serving as ameans to an end, and not an end in and of itself” (p. 105). She acknowledgesthat my initial argument anticipated this objection. But my response to theanticipated objection “fails to convince.” In my article, I argue that “there aretimes and settings where this focus [on skills] crowds out other purposes andpractices to a significant extent, where teachers teach and students learn withthe express purpose of mastering the secret code” (Levisohn, 2010, p. 39).Why do they adopt this focus? They do so “for a culturally specific reason,namely, the enormous cultural capital that accrues (in certain environments)to those who are able to access these texts” (p. 39). This is the point thatFonrobert finds unconvincing.

Now, if she was not convinced the first time, it is unlikely that repeatingthe point will make a difference! And surely this is a matter of judgment onwhich reasonable people can disagree. Yet, to continue the conversation, it

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seems worthwhile to offer two observations. First, Fonrobert may well becorrect that the cultural capital that I have in mind accrues not from theskills themselves but from the access—and sometimes, from the coverage ofcontent—that the skills enable. But that is no matter. The question is not apseudo-empirical one, of when precisely a previously excluded student nowfeels included, of what moment of learning generates the cultural capital.The question is rather a matter of conceptualizing the motivation behindthe learning. If students are motivated to engage in a kind of study that isfocused on the acquisition of skills first and foremost, even at the expense ofother kinds of textual analysis, and if teachers are aligned with the studentsin their pursuit, that is sufficient.

And second, recall that Fonrobert’s (2010) own suggestion of a philo-logical orientation takes a particular aspect of textual inquiry (philologicalinvestigation) that is frequently perceived to be of instrumental value andturns it from a means into an end—or at least, into a relative end. Shewrites, as already noted, that “work with the manuscripts turns into a goal inand by itself” (p. 106). We should not object that philological investigationis really just a means to some larger end or that it ought to be understoodthat way; within the orientation, its intrinsic value is unquestioned. And afterall, one of the hallmarks of a practice is the way in which that which seemsto have instrumental value to those outside of the practice is taken to haveintrinsic value to those inside the practice. Something similar is happeninghere. The skills orientation takes a particular aspect of study (the devel-opment of textual skills) that is frequently perceived to be of instrumentalvalue and turns it from a means into a relative end, at least temporarily,at least within the teaching and learning context. (We are only concernedabout relative ends, here, not ultimate ends.) We should not object thatthe development of textual skills is really just a means to some larger end;within the orientation and within the context, its relative intrinsic value isunquestioned.

We turn, next, to Lehman’s (2010) suggestion that “some of the orien-tations . . . are more essential than others and cannot be readily rejected infavor of another orientation” (p. 118). This is the case, in particular, for thecultural orientation, which “is so central . . . to formulating the questions nec-essary for understanding how to teach rabbinic literature that to pass overit in favor of another orientation is to overlook a fundamental approach toteaching rabbinic texts” (p. 118). In other words, she does not challengethe idea of the cultural orientation but believes that it deserves special sta-tus, perhaps as a kind of primus inter pares, perhaps as a foundationalorientation logically or epistemologically prior to the others.

There are two ways to read Lehman’s claim. On one reading, Lehmanis simply arguing on behalf of the importance of the cultural orientationin the settings with which she is most familiar and in which she expects

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her students will themselves be teaching. “I believe that by looking at rab-binic texts from this perspective,” she writes, “teachers pinpoint the mostexciting and most useful questions about the rabbis who authored thesetexts” (Lehman, 2010, p. 118). This is what she believes about the value ofthese texts and how we ought to use them, and she wants to advocate (inher writing about teaching and in her teaching) for this belief. On the sec-ond reading, however, Lehman is arguing that it is impossible not to employthe cultural orientation (or, that it is impossible to teach responsibly withoutemploying the cultural orientation). It is “essential” and “cannot be readilyrejected in favor of another orientation.” It is “fundamental” (p. 188). Thislanguage suggests a kind of logical necessity.

But the second claim—the claim according to the second reading ofLehman’s position—is not true. When pursuing the halakhic orientation,for example, an instructor may not find it necessary at all to employ thecultural orientation. That is, in pursuing an inquiry into the developmentof halakhic positions or in teaching about that development, she may notask the questions that are the hallmark of the cultural orientation about therabbis, and we would be hard pressed to find fault with that instructor. As Iargue in the original article, any orientation can be pursued well or poorly,and some orientations may be more appropriate in certain settings, but thereis no absolute hierarchy of orientations. So the claim of logical necessity (fora particular orientation) cannot be maintained.

On the other hand, if Lehman has in mind something closer to thefirst reading, then I am sympathetic to her point. The cultural orientationis readily combined with the historical orientation, with the literary orien-tation, with the Torah orientation, and perhaps others as well. It representsa stance toward, and a set of questions about, who the rabbis were thatacknowledges their profound influence but also treats them as historicalagents and cultural creators. Recently, in teaching a talmudic midrash, thekey pedagogic moment in the class came when a student shifted our collec-tive attention from what the text was saying (about a biblical text) to whatthe particular amora was doing, what he was concerned about, the culturalwork in which he was engaged. My student intended no disrespect; on thecontrary, her move helped us to understand the text and to hear it moredeeply. Lehman’s (2010) advice to her rabbinical students —“I advise themnever to walk into a class without asking themselves the questions that [arecharacteristic of the cultural orientation]”—is sound (p. 118).

Finally, Michael Gillis (2010) offers the broadest critique of the menu oforientations. There are too many! “If the purpose of the taxonomy is to helpus orient ourselves, does the sheer number of possibilities carry the risk ofconfusion?” (p. 108) His answer is in the affirmative. He proposes, therefore,to eliminate some orientations (the bekiut orientation, the interpretive ori-entation, and the skills orientation) and reduce the others to three: (a) theTorah orientation, incorporating the halakhic orientation and a version of the

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literary orientation; (b) the jurisprudential orientation; and (c) the historicalorientation, incorporating the contextual orientation, the cultural orientation,and a different version of the literary orientation.

On the question of whether the sheer number of orientations is too con-fusing, the only criterion is a pragmatic one. Does the menu of orientationsin its current form help instructors and others make sense of the teaching ofrabbinic literature, or does it not? Of course, there’s no simple answer to thisquestion. Likewise, regarding the orientations that Gillis proposes to elimi-nate, reasonable people can disagree. I have already discussed the issue ofthe possible elimination of the skills orientation, above. I do not believe thatbekiut or the interpretive orientation is merely a pedagogic technique, asGillis does, but rather represent a robust set of convictions about the pur-poses of studying rabbinic literature together with characteristic practices. Ican envision these orientations in practice. Gillis, on the other hand, is notconvinced; like Fonrobert earlier, he doesn’t see it.

But regarding the concrete proposal to combine the orientations intothree, I am less sanguine. Gillis (2010) suggests that the Torah orientationought to encompass any approaches that “treat rabbinic literature as textsthat address us directly as teaching texts in the present” (p. 109). Whatis important about the halakhic orientation, he might say, is that we takethe text as normative for the purpose of determining Jewish legal practice.We ask, “What are the implications of this literature in the here and now?”(p. 109), and we operate on the assumption that it does indeed have implica-tions for our lives today. That assumption of normativity is aligned with theTorah orientation, and my attempt to divide them—where the Torah orienta-tion focuses on encountering the rabbinic text as a source of instruction in aloose way, and the halakhic orientation focuses on the specific implicationsof the rabbinic text for the Jewish legal tradition—is artificial.

On the other hand, Gillis (2010) proposes, there are other orientationsthat treat the text as an historical artifact. In these approaches, focused onthe past, the text is not presumed to carry implications for our lives today;there is no assumption of normativity. Instead, these approaches are pri-marily concerned with determining the text’s “original meaning,” as he says(p. 109), the meaning in its original context. They ask, “What did the textoriginally mean?” and “What can we learn from it about the past?” (p. 109).In contrast to the approaches subsumed under the Torah orientation, all ofthese approaches should be lumped together in one historical orientation.

Notice, however, that Gillis is not merely making a claim about peda-gogic orientations in the world. In fact, he is making a hermeneutic claimabout the normativity of texts. And so my response, in part, is a rejection ofthe idea that we can divide sharply between an approach that treats textsas normative and an approach that treats them as merely historical. To besure, this is a well-trod path. Krister Stendahl (1984), for example, proposesto distinguish between what the text means and what the text meant. As an

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attempt to make room for normativity in a cultural environment where textsare assumed to be historical artifacts1, this is an understandable move. Butit is misguided. As I argue elsewhere (Levisohn, 2008, pp. 69–70), the dis-tinction does not hold up. Texts speak to us in many ways, and the adverb“merely” that so often appears in these contexts—I used it above, in thephrase “merely historical”—mischaracterizes the values and commitmentsthat we bring to our inquiries. Why, after all, do we even care about the“original meaning”? Why is that a value for us in general, or regarding anyspecific text? Surely there are many instructors of rabbinic literature (as ofother sacred texts) for whom the Torah orientation—seeking to create themoments of encounter to facilitate instruction—is built upon a foundationof determining the original meaning, as best as we can. Surely there aremany for whom the effort to understand the culture of the rabbis, likewise,is no “mere” historical endeavor. It is simply incorrect, as a matter of descrip-tive accuracy regarding the interpretive process, to claim that an historicalinquiry denies the normativity of the text.2

Moreover, Gillis’ proposal is not helpful for our understanding of thediversity of pedagogic approaches. My claim in distinguishing between thehalakhic orientation and the Torah orientation, for example, is that theyreally do look different in practice. The rabbi who constructs a learningopportunity for her adult congregants to encounter a rich rabbinic narrative,to consider its norms and what the text might have to teach us for our lives,is doing one thing. The instructor who leads her students on an explorationof the development of a particular halakhic practice is doing somethingquite different. To conflate those two pedagogic approaches—their differ-ent selection of texts, the questions that they ask, how they construct theirlearning environments, the learning goals that they might articulate for theirstudents—because of a shared belief in the normative value of the text, is tomiss all the important pedagogic choices that those two instructors make.

That is only one example, of course. My belief, as I have tried to artic-ulate, is that each of the orientations encompasses a cluster of distinctivepurposes and practices. Gillis believes that the most important pedagogicalfault line is whether texts are taken to be normative or whether they arenot. I do not believe this to be the case. In fact, I would state the pointeven more strongly: I believe that a focus on the issue of normativity servesto coarsen our pedagogic discourse rather than sharpen it. “In the study ofJewish texts,” I claim, “such an abstract conception may be theologically

1The “cultural environment” that I have in mind, here, is the secularized modern West wherehistorical-critical approaches to the text are granted primary authority. Stendahl, in other words, is offeringone 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).

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meaningful but pedagogically inert” (Levisohn 2010, p. 9). Gillis may wellbe correct that there are too many items on my menu of orientations. Butif we are to reduce them, the categories will have to represent pedagogies,not merely ideologies.

There is one final point to be made, regarding Gillis’ (2010) passingsuggestion that the jurisprudential orientation encompasses all instances ofstudy as a “self-validating activity—Torah lishmah” (p. 109). Here, again, theisolation of a particular ideological stance toward study does not serve uswell. After all, as I noted previously, a hallmark of a practice in a healthycondition is that its practitioners are sufficiently inside of the robust world ofthat practice that they consider it to be intrinsically valuable. Thus, I mightpursue any orientation as a self-validating activity—the literary orientationor the historical, the bekiut orientation or the cultural. And, on the otherhand, any of these might be pursued for other motives, whether profes-sional or egotistical or more narrowly instrumental. As important as it is, theideal of Torah lishmah does not help us identify any particular pedagogy. Acommitment to Torah lishmah does not help me select which texts to teach,and what questions to ask about those texts, and what skills to try to fosteramong my students. And that, in the end, is the purpose of the menu oforientations: to clarify the range of pedagogic choices that we might make,to make visible the real work of pedagogical decision-making, and thereby,to elevate our shared discourse around the teaching of rabbinic literature.

REFERENCES

Fagen, R. (2010). Learning in community: Using the menu to improve teachingpractice. Journal of Jewish Education, 76 , 100–103.

Fonrobert, C. E. (2010). A philological orientation? Journal of Jewish Education,76 , 104–107.

Gadamer, H.-G. (1989). Truth and method (2nd rev. ed.; J. Weinsheimer &D. Marshall, Trans.). New York: Continuum. (Original work published 1960)

Gillis, M. (2010). Disorienting orientations. Journal of Jewish Education,76 , 108–110.

Goldberg, E. (2010). Applying the menu of orientations to the Jewish high schoolsetting. Journal of Jewish Education, 76 , 111–112.

Gutoff, J. (2010). Whose orientations? Journal of Jewish Education, 76 , 113–114.Kanarek, J. (2010a). Defining rabbinic literature: Pedagogy and genre. Journal of

Jewish Education, 76 , 115–116.Kanarek, J. (2010b). He took the knife: Biblical narrative and the formation of

rabbinic law. AJS Review, 34(1), 65–90.Lehman, M. (2010). Levisohn’s orientations: A response from the classroom. Journal

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