towards a moral-imaginative pedagogy of talmudic narratives

Running head: THE MORAL IMAGINATION AND TALMUDIC NARRATIVES 1

Towards a Moral-Imaginative Pedagogy of Talmudic Narratives

Joshua Gutoff

Gratz College

Abstract: This article proposes a theoretical framework for understanding the possibility of

Talmudic stories (as well as other narratives and scenes of interactions among two or more

characters) to nurture the growth of the moral imagination as it is expressed in two related but

distinct ways. At the intersection of work by educators, literary critics, and Talumdists, the

approach suggested in this article offers a foundation for a Talmud pedagogy that provides a

sophisticated, nuanced, and morally imaginative engagement with the text that is not restricted to

technically or linguistically advanced students, and is independent of the subject matter of the

text and other curricular goals.

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in the Journal of

Jewish Education, 81:3 (September 2015) available online

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15244113.2015.1063034

THE MORAL IMAGINATION AND TALMUDIC NARRATIVES 2

Towards a Moral-Imaginative Pedagogy of Talmudic Narratives

Recent advances in both literary studies, and Talmud research, have opened up

possibilities for educational goals and pedagogical approaches to the teaching of Talmud for

young people and for adults. In particular, they suggest that Talmud study could be a especially

apt setting for the nurturing of the moral imagination. This aim need not replace some of the

more conventional educational goals such as the development of text skills or the acquisition of

content. The moral-imaginative lens is rather an additional dimension that could help serve to

add depth and relevance to existing approaches.

This paper identifies a connection between reading narrative and the moral imagination,

and applies that understanding to the problem of Talmud education for students in high school

and beyond, suggesting possible directions and strategies. The theoretical background brings

together work addressing several different questions, and what follows is a listing of the key

questions and the scholars consulted:

The use and value of moral investigation in reading fiction: Wayne C. Booth and

Martha Nussbaum;

The hermeneutics of rabbinic narratives, both on their own and in context of the

sugya: Daniel Boyarin, Avraham Walfish, and Barry Wimpfheimer;

The pedagogy of Jewish texts: Barry Holtz, Elie Holzer, Jeffrey Kress, and

Marjorie Lehman.

In addition, I was informed by the work of psychologists James M. Day, Lynn Mikel

Brown and Carol Gilligan on the importance of “narrative frame” for how we make sense of our

own and others’ lives, as well by educational theorist Kieran Egan’s on the importance of

narrative as a path to understanding in general (Egan).


My reading of this material has both informed, and been informed by, my reflection on

several decades of teaching rabbinic texts to adolescents and adults: in environments including

day schools, supplementary schools, rabbinical schools, and continuing education programs.

The resulting approach is an attempt to locate possibilities suggested by theory to the lived

reality of teachers and students.

It is one thing to say that a morally sensitive reading of a narrative will be attentive to the

tensions, interactions, and relationships between and among the various characters. But not all

characters are meant to be understood as independent moral agents; not all plots are driven by the

logic of human psychology. Different kinds of narrative use plot and character in different ways

and towards different ends, and as a consequence require different reading strategies. Following

a brief review of some of the relevant background in the use of stories in both rabbinic and moral

education, I identify five distinct narrative types found in the Talmud based on the different

reading challenges and opportunities they offer, and explore the particular issues raised by each

for a moral-imaginative pedagogy.

Didactic stories are those whose primary purpose is to teach a lesson, and so the narrative

is driven by the needs of that lesson, and the action and thoughts of their characters may be of

less interest than that of the implied author. Like didactic stories, certain genre tales are also

constructed around the formal logic of the plot rather than the inner lives of their characters;

absent a religious or ethical lesson, and while in their apparent amorality and simplicity they may

at first seem of little interest to developing the moral imagination, they deserve some attention.

On the other hand, elements of fantasy may disguise the emotional and/or moral seriousness of

other stories. Less driven by a clear plot are halakhic narratives, ostensibly true accounts of

cases or deliberations; here, too, the human components of the interaction are often ignored, in


these instances because of the tendency to focus on their role in furthering the legal argument.

Lastly, I look at the possibility of treating the apparently character-free “pure” dialectics for

which the Talmud is famous as part of the narrative continuum. For each, I offer an example

and, as a way of exploring the pedagogical concerns, suggest ways in which the text could be

explored in the classroom.

The Moral Imagination

When I speak of the moral imagination, I refer to the faculty or faculties that allow one to

envision possibilities within those aspects of experience that have to do with inter-subjective

behavior - that is, with concerns that are triggered by an encounter with an “other.” In what

follows, I deal with the moral imagination as it is expressed in two related but distinct ways.

One is concerned with the kind of creative empathy by which we try to conjecture, if not project

ourselves into, the condition and mind set of someone else. “How else but by imagination can

one pass beyond the observable evidence for people’s thoughts to get at the thoughts

themselves?” (Degenhardt and McKay, 1988) Ingall, too, writes of empathy as “key to the

building of a moral imagination” (1999, p. 124). While this stance towards an other is clearly

connected to the “ethic of caring” described by Nel Noddings (2005), it is both less active (as

one can understand without acting), and less dependent on the response of the other than what

Nodding prescribes.

The ability to imaginatively construct an image of an other’s internal state - to empathize

- is crucial for both general and Jewish ethics. But the ethical imagination functions on another

scale as well. The second, which involves a broader range of vision and perhaps resembles what


is more intuitively understood as “imaginative,” has to do with the ability to see situations as rich

with possible moral significance and complexity, and its development would be expressed in an

expanded horizon of awareness or a broadened sense of the different persons and connections

that might be considered in a given situation

As with empathy, this form of the moral imagination is built on the possibility of

surprise, in this case surprise at what might be called the interpretive frame. I am using “frame”

here to mean the demarcation of the boundaries of significance: the event involves these people

in this time frame in these ways. Now, frames are of course necessary to meaningful perception;

without distinguishing figure from ground we are unable to make any sense at all of what we see:

the world collapses into tohu va-vohu, the unformed and void. It is precisely because of this,

because frame-making is such a central part of seeing, that we are frequently unaware of where

the frame is, or that we have chosen it. The moral imagination allows one to say, “I had thought

this event was about X, but it may also be about Y and Z.”

Stories in Talmud Education

Stories have an important role to play in Talmud education; for some, like Jeffery

Rubenstein (2010) and Yitzchak Blau (2003), they are crucial. Stories are often self-contained,

which make them ideal for single sessions or short units. They can be amusing, as in the story of

Rabbi Joshua and the emperor’s daughter (Hullin 60a), or moving, as in the death of Eliezar b.

Hyrcanus (Sanh. 68a). By presenting the sages as people, not just as repositories of law, they

make it possible for the uninitiated to experience a connection with them that discussions of the

teaching alone might inhibit.

Blau’s assumption– that rabbinic values are taught primarily through stories – is

particularly germane to this project, less for what it says about the Talmud than as an example of


the difficulty that some (who may be presumed to be at least reasonably intelligent and at least

reasonably learned) may have in making sense of the Talmud. To be sure, he is wrong. Of

course laws express values, most obviously in those laws that govern interpersonal relations.

Yet there can be no doubt stories teach in ways that simple prescriptions do not, and will have

their own particular role to play in an educational setting. The skills for uncovering the values

behind a law are different than those demanded by stories, and Blau’s own preference indicates

that for some – teachers and students alike – narrative may simply be more accessible. For

issues where no general law is given, aggadot fill in many important lacunae. Finally, because

stories present sages acting and interacting, they offer a window into the values manifested by

those sages’ lives – whether real or fictional.

There are, important differences between an approach that reads rabbinic narratives as

more-or-less accurate reports of the lives of the sages (Rothstein, 1999), and that practiced by

modern scholars like Rubenstein, for whom aggadot are “closer to didactic fiction.”

Such stories need not be seen as preserving any “historical kernel” or containing any

reliable information about the characters, but rather should be studied like other literary

sources and approached with the same tools and methods. The focus accordingly shifts

from the characters to the storytellers, and the key questions become: What lessons are

the storytellers trying to communicate with this story? What values do they promote?

With what tensions are they grappling? What literary techniques do they employ and

how do these help transmit their meanings? (Rubenstein, 2010, pp. 3-4)

We will spend more time below on the pedagogical implications of these differences; for

the moment it will suffice to notice that whatever interpretive frame a reader applies to these


stories, he or she is still watching characters interact, is still observing a scene of potential moral

import.

Stories and Moral Education

Stories occupy a privileged position in our moral lives. James Day has demonstrated the

extent to which individuals create and use narratives to make sense of their own experiences and

choices (Day, 1991); while Lynn Mikel Brown and Carol Gilligan have developed a relationship-

building approach to listening, which explicitly treats the speaker’s report as a “story,” bringing

literary as well as clinical techniques to the interaction (Brown & Gilligan, 1991). A little

reflection can suggest a number of reasons for the power of stories in moral development.

Stories, after all, offer the possibility that the world is not entirely chaotic but that events are

connected. “The king died, and the queen died is a narrative,” E. M Forster famously put it. “The

king died, and the queen died of grief is a plot” (1955, p. 86). In the world of the story actions

have both causes and consequences. One could, of course, imagine a contemporary work – a

book, perhaps, or a film, which portrays a series of disconnected events, random and arbitrary,

but such interest as it commanded would be only in its subversion of the normal expectations of

narrative. It is even possible that we are so much creatures of stories that our minds would insist

on finding some connection among the various moments, imposing our own narrative order on

the chaos.

The order that we find in stories is not just that of simple causality, it is a broader

experience of theme and character. The individual events have meaning because they contribute

to a greater narrative arc that contextualizes them; they point toward something. Further, it is in

a story that we see what it is to be a character, that is, a person whose life “means something”,

has an essential truth to it, and plays a role in a greater plot. It is in seeing ourselves as


characters, MacIntyre suggests, that both moral life and moral discourse becomes possible,

because it is in the context of our “roles” that we come to understand our goals and obligations.

(MacIntyre, 1984, p.34)

Stories introduce us to the mental lives of others. “The grasshopper just wanted to play

all day;” “Mouse felt sorry for the lion.” Children would probably develop a theory of mind

without being presented such illustrations; nevertheless, one of the most important gifts a story

has to offer is a glimpse into the inner life of an other. In some cases a character may be broadly

drawn and we are amused by it, or confirmed in our beliefs about human nature; in others, he or

she may be finely and subtly imagined, and we are surprised and enlightened about human

possibilities. And of course in some cases the work of describing an other mind is done so

poorly that we reject the whole narrative offering. My own experience is that “I didn’t like the

characters” is a far less damning criticism than “I didn’t believe the characters,” implicitly

acknowledging the centrality of psychology to the story-experience.

Finally, of course, we use stories to present examples of behavior, good and bad. This is

the way a hero acts, or a loyal child, or a faithful servant, or a mensch. And this is what you

should never, ever do. They may be as simple as Parson Weems’ famous tale of the young

George Washington and the cherry tree, or as complex as one of the Henry James novels so

beloved of Nussbaum; and the lesson may be explicit or not. But from Aesop and before, to

William Bennett and after, stories have been used to illustrate moral lessons.

Didactic Stories

That a didactic tale like one of Aesop’s fables will not support the kind of nuanced

reading of emotions and behaviors that Nussbaum models in her readings of Henry James (1990)

is not primarily a function of its brevity, nor does it indicate some kind of failure on the part of


the story teller. The difference between a long bit of Aesop and a short bit of Henry James is not

necessarily in which is more true, but where the putative truth is found. Aesop’s fables are

known for their clarity, grace, and even humor; but as with all didactic stories the narrative

serves as a package for the message. The fable by its nature is not about the characters or even

the situation as a whole, but is there to serve the message. While we may appropriately criticize

the skill with which it does so, the primary claim of that kind of story is for the truth of that

moral.

But not all stories function in the same way or have the same kind of concern. Booth

suggests that all texts, from jokes to novels, can be thought of as would-be friends, each offering

particular gifts, and we judge them both in terms of the worth of the offer and as to how well the

text actually delivers (Booth, 1988, pp. 174-5). It is part of the reader’s task to recognize what

kind of questions are appropriate in any particular case; where a text invites examination and

where it does not. In many cases the gifts presented are found in the aesthetic or emotional

experience of reading or hearing or seeing the text, but often the text suggests that it is speaking

about the world outside of itself, and that it offers some wisdom or insight or clarity. It claims

that the reader will find not just pleasure, but some kind of truth: about human interactions, about

the world at large, or about his or her own self.

It is in that message that the story makes its truth claim, and it is that message that we

would explore in examining the story’s moral import. In fact, once a class has identified the

message of such a story – to be sure, not always a simple task – it can be addressed

independently.


Further, even in the case of didactic stories, the way a message is presented is itself a

legitimate subject for moral examination. Let us take as an example a mashal, an allegory,

which appears in the context of a discussion of the yetzer ha-rah, the “Evil Inclination:”

The Rabbis taught in a beraita: [Concerning the verse] “V’samtem (you shall place)

these words on your heart,” (Deut. 6:6) read it as ‘samtam,’ a perfect elixir. Torah is

compared to a life-giving elixir. An analogy can be drawn to a man that dealt his son a

great blow and then places a bandage upon his wound saying to him: ‘My son, so long as

this bandage remains on your wound, you may eat whatever you desire, drink whatever

you desire, and bathe in hot or cold water, and you need not fear that any harm will come

to you by these actions. But if you remove this bandage, your wound will surely fester.

So too has the Holy Blessed One said to Israel, ‘My children, I have created the evil

inclination and I have created Torah as its antidote. If you involve yourselves in Torah,

you will not be delivered into its hand, as it says in Genesis 4:7, “certainly if you correct

yourself, you will prevail.” But if you do not involve yourselves in Torah, you will be

delivered into its hand, as it says in Genesis 4:7, “it rests at the door.” And what is more,

all the pursuits of the evil inclination concern you, as it says there, “and you are its

desire.” But if you wish, you can master the evil inclination, as it says there, “but you can

conquer it.” (Kiddushin 30b)

The characters who inhabit an allegory are not individuals whose thoughts and feelings

we are invited to imagine; they are and are meant to be stock figures: “a king,” and “a son”

without back stories or inner lives for the readers to imagine. If the empathetic imagination is to

be exercised, it will not be with them.


Assuming that the students in a Rabbinics class are at least somewhat familiar with the

way midrashic allegory works; the teacher’s first task is to help the students understand what

point is being made. This example is a somewhat complex one, involving a number of elements

to be identified, and operating on not the usual two levels (the allegory and the referent), but

three (allegory, biblical referent, real-world referent); it may be useful for the teacher to use a

chart, which begins with a list of the elements in the story itself. A bit of prompting will lead the

students to recognize the glaring absence of one further element, the reason for the wound.

Using both the Talmudic text, and the biblical prooftexts, the students – with the teacher’s help,

if necessary – can make the appropriate connections. When the chart is completed, it would look

something like this:

Allegory Theological Referent Biblical Referent

Father God God

Son Israel Cain

Wound The Yetzer ha-rah Rejected sacrifice

Reason? (unstated) (unstated)

Danger Sinful behavior Sin (specifically, murder)

Medicine Torah The warning – “You can

defeat the urge”

The teacher can then lead the students to an understanding of the lesson being conveyed

by the parallels: that living in the post-Edenic world means that on occasion one’s work – one’s

sacrifice – may be rejected for no apparent reason; that this rejection, this ego-wound, is the

source of the “yetzer ha-rah;” and that the discipline of Torah allows one to function normally in

spite of this wound. In being asked the kinds of questions presented there, the students are

invited to explore the moral vision being expressed about the world, about the source (or a

source) of sin, and about the function of Torah. To do so, they must measure that vision against

their own. Is it indeed the case that failure and rejection sometimes happens arbitrarily? Does


that experience really cause a “wound” which could lead to behavior that endangers both the

actor and others? A close, engaged reading of this text must exercise the broad-scope moral

imagination.

The fact that the characters are less individuals than signposts pointing towards their

referents does not preclude a serious examination of the story itself and the choices the writer

made. What does it mean to portray God as a king? As a father? As a father who would hit his

son severely enough to cause a dangerous wound – perhaps, even as an abusive father? Students

may well be upset by this image of God, as indeed the teacher might be. It is precisely at a point

like this that it is important to push the students to go beyond their own reactions, to try to

understand – not agree with, not apologize for – a view they reject. Part of that work would be to

acknowledge the difference in cultural assumptions; it is only relatively recently that corporal

punishment was not taken for granted as an appropriate form of discipline. Even that

acknowledgement, though, leaves unaddressed the absence of a cause for the blow, and the fact

that it resulted in a life-threatening wound. Would these, too, have been part of the picture of a

“good enough” father, even then?

What kind of picture of God would the students prefer? A perfect father, perhaps, who

always lovingly accepts his children’s offerings? Why did the writer not use that image? What

would we say about a story that painted a world in which everything always worked out? Or a

world in which misfortune only befell the wicked? The midrash represents of a set of choices: to

describe a recognizable world, rather than a fantasy; to attribute to God, and not chaos or Satan,

responsibility for everything that happens; to allow that misfortune may have no discernible

reason, rather than it always being a punishment for sin. Further, what is the reader to make of a

story in which God is presented as abusive, while Cain is representative of humanity? How does


text that subverts the readers’ understandings of literary characters affect the way those readers

might understand actual people? By seeing the midrash in terms of the authorial choices, and by

trying to understand the import of those choices, the students gain practice both in close reading

of a text, and in the kind of empathetic imagination required to understand an other as a person

of integrity and imagination.

Genre Stories, Jokes, and Other Stories Without “People"

A truism: we can only model ourselves on those who we believe to be in some way like

us, and we can only understand the psychology of those who, in fact, have a psychology. The

implication of this truism is that while it may not be important (or possible) to distinguish

historically accurate stories from fictions, it is crucial to distinguish stories that purport to

present real people – those driven by real human personalities and functioning in a world of real

moral boundaries – from those where the characters are playing what might be called formal

roles, driven by narrative rather than human necessity. We can think of the difference between a

comedy of manners and a Marx Brothers movie: both are fictions, but the former claims a kind

of truth and is driven by the internal logic of human behavior, while the latter is driven by the

more formal logic of humor:

A man goes to a doctor. “Doc,” he says, “I’m worried about my wife. She thinks she’s a

chicken.” “That sounds pretty serious,” says the doctor. “When did this start?” “Oh,

about eight months ago.” “Eight months ago? Why didn’t you come to me earlier?”

“Well,” said the man, “We needed the eggs.”

We would not try to understand the psychology of the man in this anecdote, for the

simple reason that the “man” does not have a psychology or an inner life; he is not so much a

man as a piece of narrative machinery whose only purpose is to serve the punch line. This is not


a function of the story’s fictional status, or its brevity. Think, in contrast, of the loving elderly

couple Baucis and Philemon (Metamorphosis VIII). Offered a reward for hosting the disguised

Zeus and Hermes, they ask to be able to die simultaneously so that neither one has to live

without the other, and on their death the two are turned into intertwining trees. The story invites

– demands – our consideration of the emotional lives of the couple, their fears of living alone,

the power of their relationship. If we were imagine the internal life of a husband who really

could say such a thing to his wife’s doctor we would be horrified; we are able to laugh because

we know that this is not presented as a story about real people, even real fictional people. It’s a

joke. That it is a joke does not mean it is beyond the scope of moral criticism. One might reject

a joke because even as a caricature it reinforces a cruel stereotype in the mind of the listener, for

example. But to reject it because a husband wouldn’t really act like that would be playing this

particular interpretive game by the wrong set of rules.

And so while we may or may not laugh at the story, we generally don’t respond by

worrying about the state of the couple’s marriage, because we are used to hearing both jokes and

“real” stories in everyday discourse, and have learned to distinguish the two. The ability to

identify real stories in the Talmud is equally important:

The Emperor’s daughter once said to R. Joshua ben Hananiah, “Your God is a carpenter,

for it is written, Who layeth the beams of His upper chambers in the waters (Ps. 104:4).

Ask him to make me a spool!” He replied, “Very well!” He prayed for her and she was

smitten with leprosy. She was then removed to the open square of Rome and was given a

spool. (For so it was the custom in Rome, whoever was smitten with leprosy was given a

spool and removed to the open square, and was given skeins to wind, so that people may

see them and pray for their recovery). One day as R. Joshua was passing he saw her


sitting in the open squire of Rome and winding the skeins on her spool. He remarked,

“My God has given you a beautiful spool!” She said, “I pray you, ask your God to take

back what He has given me.” He replied, “Our God grants a request but never takes it

back” (Hullin 60a).

Most modern readers would assume this story is fiction. But the question of the historical

truth of the story, or even the presumed readers’ assumptions as to its historical truth, is

secondary to the kind of story it is, and the kinds of questions we are invited to ask of it.

It is worth looking at the highly stylized nature of the story. In its structure – set up,

reversal, punch line – it displays the formal rigor of a Road Runner cartoon or a folk tale.

Unlike the version of Rabbi Joshua presented in the equally fictional “Tannur shel Achnai” story

(Baba Metzia 59b), or in the (historically plausible) struggle over the calendar (M. Rosh

Hashanah 2: 8, 9), the Rabbi Joshua here makes no claims even on psychological reality. He is

perhaps a caricature, perhaps a type, perhaps even an archetype, an avatar of the Trickster; as

such, we cannot inquire into his inner life the way we might in other stories because he does not

have one, and the reader is expected to understand that. But that fact does not mean that a text

like this cannot engage the empathetic imagination – only that it may be directed more towards

the implied author than the main characters.

Excursus: Respect for the Text

It is true that for some religious sensibilities the very idea of reading rabbinic texts as

anything less than fully serious would be anathema, as Walfish (2003) points out. I would

argue, though, that respect for a text involves careful reading, and that ignoring when a text is

being playful, for example, is as great an act of intellectual violence as failing to recognize a

metaphor. My own experience suggests that the idea that not all rabbinic texts are meant to be


taken at face value does not diminish the Talmud in the eyes of the student; indeed, it can

increase his or her respect for the Talmud, because what may have appeared nonsensical or

bizarre if read without irony now has a reasonable context.

The danger is that this possibility can be used as an escape hatch, letting us disarm any

difficult text, which would surely be as disrespectful of the Talmud’s own integrity as an

indiscriminate pietism would be. The problem of identifying when stories are meant to be read

straight and when ironically, when we are supposed to try to understand the characters and when

not, is itself a moral question because at its heart it is a question of how we respond to otherness.

This realization only adds urgency to the interpretive question, how can we know? There is no

algorithm for identifying irony, for distinguishing between a story meant to be heard as a joke

and one meant to be heard as an exemplary tale. And there will surely be controversial cases –

but there are always disagreements among scholars as to how certain texts should be understood.

Again, though, how do we know? What makes us think that it would be more appropriate

to respond to this story with a chuckle than to try to determine the identity of the Emperor’s

daughter who challenged Rabbi Joshua (Which, amazingly, was the project of M.D. Herr

(1971).)? We can point to the imbalances – between the extent of R. Joshua’s power used to

make a rhetorical point (when that power is never used elsewhere, and certainly not against a real

enemy); between the catastrophe that has befallen the princess and R. Joshua’s response. We

can notice the wordplay and the structure: the setup, disconnected development, and punch line.

We can compare the effect on us of a serious and a humorous reading, and perhaps conclude that

the latter is far more satisfying.

We must take care, though, that our desire to harmonize the text with our own values

does not lead us to strained or unsupportable interpretations merely to avoid morally problematic


views. In the absence of other clues, like the imbalance between language and content we saw

above, we need to be prepared to encounter challenging, even outrageous, ethical visions – while

trying to imaginatively understand the thinking behind them.

True Fantasy

Elements of fantasy do not necessarily deny the possibility of moral or psychological

seriousness. We know that from our own experience of literature and film, where we recognize

and honor those instances which, as the reviewer of a recent science-fiction movie put it, “insists

on the emotional truth of its absurd story” (Dargas, 2011). As Booth observes, citing Peter

Rabinowitz,

The distinction between fixed norms [which claim to function in the real world] and

nonce beliefs [that the narrator and the reader embrace only for the duration of the story]

is employed by even the most inexperienced readers. We all easily perform acrobatic

leaps back and forth between our roles as “narrative audience,” credulous about golden

eggs, and our implied roles as “authorial audience,” sophisticated about how eggs are laid

but willing, whenever a tale is fully successful, to embrace its fixed norms (Rabinowitz

1977). We may of course have considerable difficulty in deciding which norms are for

the nonce and which are fixed. And we may, finally, on reflection, reject even the fixed

norms: that is precisely what much ethical criticism does. But as responsive readers we

will, at any given moment in our reading, find ourselves dwelling with an author (in one

sense, of course, our own creation) who only plays with some beliefs while offering

others as holding for all human worlds. (Booth, 1988, p. 143)

The ability to recognize emotional truth or criticize its absence even in unbelievable

settings is not confined to those settings where the reader shares with the (implied) author


recognition of the distinction between nonce and fixed norms, as in fantasy. We are, for

example, able to read sacred narratives for their human element without for a moment believing

in the various gods, demons, angels, miracles or other supernatural phenomena assumed as real

by those texts. Thus, Steinbeck’s extended secular meditation on the human dynamics of the

Cain and Abel story that is East of Eden, and thus the possibility suggested by both Holtz (2003),

and Holzer (2007) that biblical narratives could be profitably read without committing to a belief

in God.

Unlike what we find in the Bible, the Talmud contains a somewhat haphazard mixture of

the natural and supernatural. God is not a regular character, and when the miraculous happens it

is often with little or no fanfare. And so it is not unusual to encounter a passage like this one:

[We learned in a beraita: - If he must study, and his son must study, he takes precedence

over his son. R. Judah said, if his son is industrious, bright, and retentive, his son takes

precedence over him. As in the case where] R. Jacob the son of R. Aha bar Jacob was

sent by his father to [study] before Abaye. When he returned, [the father] saw that he had

not retained what he had learned. He said to him, “I am better than you; remain here, and

I will go.” Abaye heard that he was coming. Now, a certain demon was in Abaye’s

study hall, so that when [one or] two entered, even during the day, they were injured. He

said, “Let no one give him a place to stay; perhaps a miracle will happen. So he [Aha]

entered and spent the night in that schoolhouse, and it appeared to him as a seven-headed

monster. Every time he fell to his knees, a head fell off. The next day [Aha] said, “If a

miracle had not happened, you would have put me in danger.” (Kiddushin 29b. The

bracketed section introduces the story, but is not part of it.)


Let us look at the behavior of the characters: Abaye has compelled the newly-arrived

Aha to spend the night in the haunted house of study, thus forcing a miraculous defeat of the

demon that had been plaguing his school. Once again, we have an account of a rabbi performing

– or, through prayer, instigating – a miracle. And while the miracle described here is much more

dramatic, and indeed much more “miraculous” than that performed for R. Joshua, this story feels

like it is much more about real people. A teacher working with this story might begin, in fact,

with a discussion of the difference between nonce and fixed norms, helping the students

differentiate between the fantastic elements of a story’s setting and the moral or psychological

dynamics that are at play.

While elements of this story are clearly implausible, the students can see how the core of

the story can be examined independently of them.

Turning to that core, what is particularly compelling and particularly human is its moral

ambiguity. Sternberg (1985) argues that biblical narratives are morally over-determined, that

any attentive reader will be “manipulated into the desired judgment” (p. 493), and whether or not

that is always the case, the reader frequently knows who the good guy is an any given episode, or

whether a particular action is to be praised or criticized. But our anecdote offers no such easy

resolution. The demon is evil, of course, and needs to be destroyed, but R. Aha’s nighttime

conflict is hardly the central conflict; it is a “MacGuffin” – a plot device that in itself is not

important, but it serves to drive the real action. In a movie, a MacGuffin might be a suitcase the

unsuspecting hero mistakenly picks up, thrusting him into a world of danger. What is in the

suitcase doesn’t really matter; what matters is the action that swirls around it. So here: we do not

read this story to hear about a demon and its destruction, but about the human behavior

surrounding it.


It has been my experience that some students will find their attention drawn to that plot

device; surely if one were making a movie, a battle with a seven-headed monster would be the

climactic scene, the high point of the film. If that is the case, and perhaps even if not, the teacher

may ask the students to plot the emotional temperature of the passage, identifying the emotional

signifiers, those points where there is evidence of human feeling of some kind or another. If this

is hard, and it may be particularly for concrete thinkers, the teacher can back up a step:

“How do we know how someone is feeling? What kind of clues do we use? His or her

actions – do all actions show emotion? If I put down this pencil does that tell you

anything? How about if I put it down like this [slamming the pencil]? Or this [puts it

down very slowly, with a threatening look]? What’s the difference? Right – where I’m

doing additional stuff, beyond what’s needed to accomplish the task. What else? Facial

expressions, good. Anything else? Yes! Words! We learn what someone is feeling from

what they say and how they say it. Now, where in the text do we see any of these

things…?”

These signifiers are not merely literary markers, and the students are not only learning

text skills. In helping the students identify the emotional centers of the anecdote, the teacher is

providing an important skill, one crucial to the empathetic imagination (see Elias, 2004 for its

importance in Social and Emotional Learning). If the teacher reinforces this skill, and models its

translation to live interactions (“Did you hear the Mayor on the radio last night? Did you pay

attention to the Principal at the assembly today? What did she seem most concerned about?

How could you tell?”), the students begin to become more consciously focused listeners, more

present to where the concerns of the other lie.


Moreover, the story illustrates that there is not just one “other” whose concerns need to

be understood, or even one interaction or one relationship that should be examined. Besides

Abaye and R. Aha, there is the abashed and silent R. Jacob, and the apparently passive collection

of students who populate the house of study, and between and among them all is a complex web

of connections; even in a work of fantasy, the awareness of an underlying emotional truth makes

the work of identifying them and raising them up for examination is a powerful exercise of the

broad-focus imagination.

Excursus: Moral Ambiguity

Given that the emotional energy of the anecdote seems to be almost anywhere except in

the battle with the monster, we can see how morally unresolved this story is, and how different

the experience in reading it is from the experience of moral clarity Sternberg claims for biblical

narrative. One easy guidepost in biblical stories is the existence of clearly identified heroes,

characters who have a presumption of righteousness in conflicts with others. Of course, even

they (Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Rebecca, Moses, etc.) are not beyond criticism, but there is often

some clear judgment rendered by the text. This may be through an explicit statement either from

God, or even from another person (as in Jacob’s deathbed condemnation of the destruction of

Shechem); or it may be in how the character fares afterwards.

Our passage offers no such clarity. Both R. Aha and Abaye are sages, officially heroes of

the Talmud. Abaye is an important enough scholar that it is worth Aha’s while to study with

him, albeit at the cost of a conflict with his son. Aha, meanwhile, is of sufficient spiritual power

or importance that he is somehow responsible for a miracle that Abaye himself was unable to

summon. This moral equivalence is played out in the story: while Abaye seems to have been

acting out of the best of intentions, and while his gambit proves to be successful, Aha’s


complaint goes unanswered. Are we to understand that as the last word Aha’s rebuke stands as

definitive?

Before spending too much time trying to unravel any one point, it would make sense for

the teacher to lead the students to engage their broad-focus imagination in identifying all of the

moments of ethical import, a task which may require some scaffolding work. Students will

undoubtedly be exercised by the opening part of the story, Aha’s interaction with his son, and

many of them may see in it a reflection of their own anxieties about living up to their parents’

expectations, and react strongly to the interaction. Precisely because of this, the teacher should

encourage them to pause and look at the moment closely. What is it that is most troubling:

Aha’s decision to replace his son in the study hall, or his way of expressing it?

Students should become accustomed to the idea that understanding precedes judgment.

What emotions is Aha expressing? With some help, students will see that an understanding of

Aha’s response is tied to an understanding of Torah study. Is it a personal pleasure? A family

business? A responsibility to the community? Looking at these different meanings opens up the

range of possible understandings of Aha’s comment: is he being moved by anger? Frustration?

Disappointment? Resignation? Nor should the silent R. Jacob be forgotten. What might he have

been feeling? What does his silence mean? What might he have said, what might he say later?

It is worth noting here (and pointing out to the students) that since the story is introduced as a

support of R. Judah’s teaching that a son takes precedence over his father in access to learning

only if he is particularly sharp, there is at least the possibility that both Aha and Jacob had

understood that Jacob’s going to study with Abaye was exceptional, based on an assumption of

Jacob’s talent. Does that reading change the way we understand Aha here, or the story as a

whole? Finally we are left with the question of what would have happened if R. Jacob had been


allowed to return to the study hall. Would he, a student of no great ability, have been able to

defeat the demon that was terrorizing the others, at least some of whom must have been at least

his equal?

The goal is not to arrive at a way of justifying Aha, or Abaye for that matter, but to

understand them; again, judgment can only follow understanding. The best reading is not

necessarily the one that preserves the rabbis’ reputation as exemplars of wisdom and derekh

eretz. As a matter of respect to both the students as thinking people and the text itself, best

readings must be those that are most sensitive to both the words on the page and what we know

of human nature. This story may not even have a best reading, if by that we mean a single

“point.” Instead, it shows us imperfect humans making choices that are perhaps necessary but

nevertheless cause emotional pain, damaging if not destroying relationships. The lack of

resolution or moral clarity may make it less satisfying as a literary construction, but it does give

us something that is closer to the world we inhabit and as such it provides us with practice in

imaginatively viewing the moral landscape in all its complexity. Most of our lives are not spent

among heroes and villains, but among fallible, struggling humans like ourselves, making

decisions as best we can, but frequently hurting those (like children and students) who look to us

for protection. In such a world, it may be more useful to practice looking at the rich, painful

complexity of experience than to determine the moral winners and losers.

One further point: As MacIntyre (1984) points out, while we might be comforted by the

idea that the right decision in a particular case will leave no cause for regrets, that is only

possible in a world where goods are commensurate, all claims and desires combined in a single

equation with a single solution. But all goods are not commensurate, and even the best decision

may involve a loss that is not made up by the necessity of the eventual choice. This is the tragic


view of life, and it is what Nussbaum (1990) suggests can only be fully learned in narrative. Our

story leaves open the uncomfortable possibility that Abaye felt he needed to trick Aha to

vanquish the demon, and that Aha’s understanding of the needs of Torah meant that even if he

could have expressed himself better to his son, there was nothing Aha could have said that would

not have been hurtful. The move away from an expectation that the world can be mapped to a

simple “good vs. bad” scheme is central to a mature moral imagination.

What we encounter in this short passage – the moral ambiguity, the lack of a single good

choice that resolves all difficulties – is, I would suggest, not at all uncommon in rabbinic

narrative. It is concomitant with the fact that the most of the characters are rabbis and students:

generally learned, committed to God and the Covenant, and of at least reasonable integrity. Such

tensions and conflicts as appear, then, are generally between people of more or less equal moral

stature. Just as sporting events are more interesting when the competitors are evenly matched,

the rough equivalence of the characters in rabbinic narratives is what makes them so rich for

ethical observation.

Talmudic stories are not the novels that Nussbaum would have us read as part of a

program of moral growth; they are often not even the kind of artfully crafted narratives that make

the Bible such a rich field for similar work (Sternberg 1985, Holtz 2003, Holzer 2007b). What I

hope to have shown is that even a brief anecdote can present rich opportunities for exercising the

moral imagination.

Long Stories and Story Cycles

The examples I have given have been more like anecdotes than the fully developed

stories and story cycles that have become increasingly familiar to even lay readers of rabbinic

literature. They have inspired scholars, artists, and philosophers, and as Beth Berkowitz


observes, “Some aggadot have been scrutinized by so many scholarly eyes - the oven of Akhnai,

the heresy of Elisha ben Abuya, the partnership of Rabbi Yohanan and Resh Lakish—that they

seem to constitute a new Jewish core curriculum.” (Berkowitz, 2011, pp. 125-126). Would they

not provide material for ethical reflection even richer than the shorter, simpler and flatter

passages? Certainly the subtlety and detail that form the basis of the kind of ethically

enlightening experience that Nussbaum hails would seem to require a canvas of a certain size;

her focus is specifically on novels. Similarly, in their discussions of teaching and/or reading

strategies for biblical narrative, both Holtz and Holzer dealt with those sections long enough to

allow for the unfolding, if not of a developed character, at least of a realized plot .

But I would suggest, nevertheless, that the pedagogical strategies for using those longer

and more elaborate narratives would be largely extensions of the ones already discussed.

Precisely because they are more fully developed, frequently offering more elaborate and nuanced

examples of human interaction, the task of using those stories for our purposes is in some ways

simpler than in the flatter passages. Not that they are easier to teach, but that the task is more

clearly defined, the emotional and moral landscape more clearly identified as such. The kinds of

questions being asked – Who is being affected? How? What is this person thinking or feeling?

Why? – remain the same, even if the evidence to hand is different.

Halakhic Narratives

While the material of the Talmud is frequently understood as being divided between

halakha and aggada – law and lore, as some have it – there is a substantial overlap; Walfish

observes that “Halakhic stories far outnumber aggadic stories in Talmudic literature” (2008, p.

264) often in the form of an exemplary case or an encounter among rabbis around a point of

teaching. Recently, scholars have begun to turn their attention to these halakhic narratives,


either on their own (Wimpfheimer, 2005) or in their relation to the anonymous, univocal

presentation of normative propositions (Boyarin, 2009).

I noted above that Talmudic narratives often do not have the moral clarity of biblical

stories; as encounters between and among the soi-disant religious elite they lack the clear

markers of hero and villain, of right and wrong behaviors. The same lack of resolution is found

even in halakhic narratives, where the establishment of a single, definitive teaching is the

ostensible purpose, at least for the disputants. It is characteristic of the Talmud, however, that

the conflicting views and voices within the narratives, like the points of view represented in the

juxtaposition of different passages and narratives, often remain indeterminate; the individual

dialogues and the overall constructed sugyot are mirrors of each other as examples of multi-

voiced and multi-directional teaching.

Jeffrey Kress and Marjorie Lehmanhave stressed the compatibility between Talmudic

dialectic and sound educational practice.

We have been inspired by Vygotzky’s theories to postulate that the redactors of the

Talmud themselves recognized the pedagogical value of dialogue. The argumentative

style of the Bavli represents a commitment to social engagement around an issue, albeit

with no fixed goal in mind. We believe that Vygotzky would see the sugya as modeling a

necessary interactive setting and the stammaim as showing concern for cognitive process,

rather than outcome. (Kress & Lehman, 2003, p. 62)

The recorders, redactors, and authors of the rabbinic traditions frequently chose to present

teachings in the form of encounters between and among the voices of independent subjects. In

doing so, they engage our moral sensibilities in two ways.


First, those encounters offer the opportunity not only to evaluate propositions, but to

listen to individual voices. Recall that an important moral faculty is empathy, the ability to

imaginatively encounter the internal life of an other subject. Recall, too, that while the

imagination is crucial to distinguish empathy from projection, granting the other a way of

making sense of the world that is substantially different from one’s own, it had to be rooted in

attentiveness to what that other was presenting to keep it from being purely fantasy. Empathy, in

other words, requires listening as much as it does imagination. As presentations of human

behavior, and frequently of human voices, stories (as well as dialogues and other interactions that

might not be developed enough to be considered stories) invite that same close and yet

imaginative listening that one would want to exercise in human interactions.

Note, for example, the way in which techniques for responding to a voice on a page and a

voice from a living human being are merged by Brown and Gilligan:

Our “Guide to Listening,” concerned as it is with voice, is both a literary and a clinical

method: responsive to the layered nature of the psyche, the harmonics of psychic life, the

nonlinear, nontransparent orchestration of thoughts and feelings, the polyphonic nature of

any utterance, and the symbolic nature not only of what is said but also what is not said

(Brown & Gilligan, 1991, p. 44).

The second way in which halakhic dialogues engage our moral faculties is that they

become perforce not only expositions of ideas, but examples of human interaction. They

demonstrate not only how those individuals thought about specific points of Jewish teaching, but

how they acted with and towards one another, as well. The human elements of the interaction,

the emotional and moral dynamics, will be present to varying extents in various passages. I am

not trying to claim that every exchange will prove fruitful ground for an extended analysis; I am


suggesting that in the texts, as in life, inter-subjective encounters are morally charged, even when

unexceptional.

Because it is precisely in the encounter between independent subjects that moral

significance arises, no human encounters are beneath the threshold of moral significance. And

so the way in which sages conduct their dialectics is no less worthy of consideration than the

content of those dialectics. Wimpfheimer recognizes this, and sets out his project with that

consideration foremost in mind:

The emotional marker, a seemingly gratuitous detail, is the heart of a more textured

understanding of these stories that puts law in conversation with the emotional realities of

human life. In shifting the focus of these stories from their normative to their affective

registers, I am attempting to undermine the ubiquity of law as a lens for reading even as I

reintroduce a highly nuanced understanding of law as an important context for

comprehending the affective lives of these stories…. (Wimpfheimer, 2004, p. 52).

Attention to the emotional markers contained within halakhic discourse is of signal

importance to an awareness of and sensitivity to the moral dimensions of the text, and

Wimpfheimer’s foregrounding of those markers, his determination to “undermine the ubiquity of

law as a lens for reading,” (2004, p. 52) is an important model for the approach outlined here.

As Holzer points out, it is in encountering the voices in the text as characters, as individuals with

interior lives of their own (interior lives which give rise to, and are indicated by, emotional

markers) that a reader engages his or her moral imagination.

Thanks to the complex work of imagination, the reader dwells as a reactive, judging,

feeling and perceptive agent in the world of the text. She interacts with the fictional

characters, comparing, contrasting, and finally making judgments about them (Evans,


1995; Ricoeur, 1988). This is how specific literary approaches and the development of

the moral imagination and moral judgment are connected (Pardales, 2002; Nussbaum,

1995, 1990). The focus of this conceptualization is the reader’s encounters with the inner

lives of characters and life situations. Through participation in what Ricoeur calls ‘the

world of the text’, the reader is invited to undergo an imaginative variation of her ego

(Ricoeur, 1981 p. 189). The experiential elements of this exposure affect the reader and

invite her to wonder about herself in relation to similar moral issues (Nussbaum, 1990;

Ricoeur, 1988). (Holzer, 2007)

Hannah Arendt coined the expression, to go visiting for imaginatively entering into the

internal world of another, and she stressed its importance in the development of moral vision

(quoted in Hanna & Echeverria, p. xv). The ability to do that with a halakhic narrative can be

hampered, though, because of the temptation to see the characters as agents of text’s overarching

polemic. The instinct to read the narrative in relation to its polemical context can reduce the

narrative to a mere tool of polemic. This flattening frustrates the possibility of experiencing the

characters as individuals, rather than as actors in a large and complex argument. Here, for

example, is Wimpfheimer’s understanding of the role of the narrative:

Legal stories contextualize law by illustrating law’s own need to go beyond the

boundaries of its technical rules. These stories empower other realities, sometimes

problematically, to veto legal rules and theoretical arguments (Wimpfheimer, 2005,

p.121).

Wimpfheimer examines a passage from Bava Metzia 97a in which the sage Rava is

involved in several different interactions with his disciples, and an extended look at his reading

will illuminate some of the opportunities – as well as pitfalls – his approach offers..


Mar bar Hanina rented his mule to Bei Hozai. [Mar bar Hanina] went out to lift up a load

with [Bei Hozai]. They were negligent with it and it died. When they came before Rava,

he obligated [Bei Hozai] (to pay). The Rabbis [his disciples] said to Rava: But it is

negligence with the owner [present and helping, in which case the renter should be

exempt]! He was ashamed (Baba Metzia 97a, adapted from Wimpfheimer, 2004 p. 62).

Rava has issued a ruling in a matter of civil law, his students subsequently suggest that

his ruling was in error, and Rava, realizing that they are correct, is rendered speechless with

shame. We do not need to understand the halakhic points involved to see with Wimpfheimer the

potential of this passage for the imaginative “encounter with the inner lives of the characters”

which “invite[s] [the reader] to wonder about herself in relation to similar moral issues.” Is

there anything that has quite the same effect on an observer as the shame of another?

Wimpfheimer recognizes its especially compelling nature:

Shame is a human and emotional response. It has resonance beyond that of the cold

statute or dry legal history. It transforms judgment, ordinarily seen as calculating and

impersonal, into an instance of poignant human relationship and response. A judge can

be an errant teacher. Shame embraces the reader, encouraging an empathy that transports

the reader into the story. We are drawn into Rava’s courtroom because his shame is

humanly familiar. The rarity of a shame narrative in the Talmud piques our curiosity,

drawing us closer… Rava’s shame… presents a window into his psyche and into the

various power dynamics within which the situation is inscribed (Wimpfheimer, 2004, p.

66-7).

Is Rava thinking of the face he has lost in regard to his own students, of his responsibility

toward the disputants, of his own self-image? What is the experience of the students, serious


scholars in their own rights, to see their master abashed? Do they take a certain pleasure in

seeing his mistake, do they feel sympathy for his pain, or is their response something more

complex? The expansive aspect of the moral imagination is exercised in recognizing that

multiple parties to an event, even onlookers can be implicated, and the focused aspect of the

moral imagination comes in to play in trying to determine what each of those various parties

might be thinking or feeling. Even in a passage like this, which is closer to being a moment than

a narrative, both those imaginative approaches would be valuable.

This value demands attending to the characters as though they were possessed of rich and

individualized inner lives, something that can be lost when the passages are read in the context of

(and in service to) the broader setting:

Rava is ashamed because he has been contextualized – rendered part of the fabric of law

that his students navigate their way around. Rava is ashamed because he has been

historicized; his mistake suggests the beginning of his students’ ascent, and his own

antiquation (68).

This may be an illuminating and useful observation in trying to understand the Talmud’s point,

but it flattens the character of Rava into a construct; to say that he “is ashamed because he has

been contextualized” is an act of literary interpretation rather than empathetic imagination.

“Pure” Dialectic

While it may have been brief and without much in the way of plot, the episode with Rava

is still identifiably a narrative. What happens when the story aspect of a dialectic disappears

entirely?

The following passage is part of a discussion of a Seder, the ritual Passover meal. The

Mishna requires that a slightly bitter green leafy vegetable called hazeret be dipped and eaten


twice, once at the beginning of the meal, where today we eat karpas, generally a green vegetable,

and again as the maror, or bitter herb. The gemara discusses this doubling: (I have kept the

punctuation to a minimum here to allow a sense of some of what faces the student of the text)

Resh Lakish said, This indicates that mitzvot require kavannah, for, since he does not eat

it at the time for maror, he ate it with the blessing, “Who created the fruit of the ground,”

[rather than, “Who commanded us concerning eating maror”] so perhaps he did not

intend to eat it as maror. Therefore, he has to go back and dip it again for the sake of

eating maror. For if you were to think that mitzvot do not require kavannah, why two

dippings – he has already dipped it once! How so? Perhaps mitzvot never require

kavannah and when you say why two dippings, it is so the children will take notice. And

if you were to say, if so, the Mishna should have taught about vegetables in general [for

the first dipping] – if the Mishna had taught about vegetables in general, I would say that

only in the case of another vegetable [for the first dipping] are two dippings required, but

where hazeret is eaten first, two dippings are not required. Thus we are taught that even

when hazeret is eaten first we require two dippings so that the children will take notice

(Pesachim 114b. .).

Resh Lakish understands the two instances of hazeret as indicating that mitzvot require

kavannah; his anonymous opponent offers that the Mishna demands only that some vegetable be

dipped at the beginning of the meal in order to prompt the interest of the children present.

Passages of this kind are common in the gemara, and it is particularly with regard to

untangling their arguments (especially in the traditional, un-punctuated, edition) that teachers

speak of text skills. While this is clearly an argument between two points of view, is it narrative?


Walfish cites a particularly broad definition brought by Simon-Shoshan in regard to rabbinic

narrative:

Defining the term “narrative” as a text that represents two or more interrelated and

concrete one-time events, Simon-Shoshan identifies two characteristic features of such

texts: “dynamism,” in the transition between the two events, and “specificity,” namely,

the claim that the events referred to happened – whether in reality or in fiction – at a

particular time and place, as opposed to “non-specific” texts that describe a repeatable

pattern of events (Walfish, 2008, p.265).

While the initial statement is explicitly attributed to Resh Lakish as a specific utterance at

a particular time, the objection is not so tethered. Neither attributed to a particular person (even

an anonymous “they”) nor located at a particular time by a past tense verb (“said,” “responded”),

the passage lacks the specificity that is demanded by even these most minimal of requirements

for narrative.

What happens, though, when we try to read the dialectic? What happens when we try to

teach it? For most students the primary challenge will be simply determining who is saying what

to whom, particularly given the nested hypothetical arguments, the “if you were to say this, I

would respond with that,” which are a hallmark of Talmudic style. The attempt to read it

demands an attention to the interwoven voices, and indeed the teacher may well invoke – or

invite students to invoke – specific voices in rendering each side of the argument: Here is how

the second opinion, the objection to Resh Lakish, might be presented:

Where are you getting this from? This doesn’t have to have anything to do with

kavannah. There are two dippings in order to make the children curious. Now, I know

what you’re going to say. You’re going to say, “Well, if that’s all the Mishna wanted, it


should have said “They bring out a vegetable” at the beginning, not just hazeret.” But if

the Mishna had said that, then I might have wondered what would have happened if that

first vegetable had been hazeret – perhaps he wouldn’t have had to have it a second time

since he would already have fulfilled the requirement for something bitter. So the

Mishna refers to hazeret for the first dipping to tell me that even if that first vegetable had

been a bitter herb, we still require two dippings to spark the children’s interest.

Once the passage moves into the classroom, or even into a reader’s mind and mouth, it

acquires the very specificity it lacked on the page and the interpersonal or transactional aspect

that was implicit in the language of the dialectic (the “why else’s” and “if you were to say”)

becomes fully realized. In turning the anonymous voice into a character, in embodying the

impersonal and abstract argument in a specific conversation between specific – if unnamed –

individuals, the reader is neither merely uncovering what was already there nor creating out of

whole cloth. Recasting what had been an argument between two positions as an argument

between two people, he or she acccepts the text’s invitation engage in an act of imagination. The

argument in the text may not be narrative, but it virtually demands to become drama when read.

Using specific voices and emotional tones in reading a passage like this not only serves to

keep track of the flow of the argument, it allows the reader to explore the human element in what

should be a logical debate. The fact that those voices and emotional tones must be supplied by

the reader both draws the reader into the text, and allows the reader to explore the possible

stances that the disputants might take towards each other, to evaluate those possibilities and their

implications for what it means to argue while taking both the subject and one’s opponent

seriously. The lack of information about the disputants does not foreclose the possibility of

involving the empathetic imagination, but it does expand the work that must be done. Imagining


the kind of character who might be taking a particular role, the reader must infer those details of

behavior, tone, etc, that would express that character, which in turn might lead the reader to a

more nuanced understanding of that character.

There is so little of what might be described as interpersonal interaction in a passage like

this that what is there is especially noteworthy. What does it mean that here, like so frequently

elsewhere, the Talmud has one voice presenting an opinion that an other voice might raise only

to show why that opinion will not stand? The “you might say” of this passage is not the kind of

empathy one might look for in a fraught emotional conversation – “I can imagine that you’re

probably feeling pretty betrayed by what I did, but here’s what I was thinking” – and in fact pre-

empting one’s opponent can be a powerful rhetorical strategy. Still, it is a moment in which one

consciousness addresses the consciousness of the other, and the value that the Talmud places on

the ability to anticipate an objection, what might be called intellectual empathy, is significant in

itself, and involves a skill related to the emotional empathy we are trying to nurture.

The Romance of the Talmud

There is additional value in attending to, or imagining, the two sides of an argument as

individuated voices, rather than examining the differing ideas as though they existed

independently of human minds to hold them, like Platonic ideals. Passages such as this remind

the reader that ideas, and arguments, belong to people.

The fact that ideas arise in, and are championed by, individuals has potentially important

educational implications, especially for adolescents. Kieran Egan suggests that in the modern

world human minds go through a number of developmental stages in the way they relate to ideas

and information. From the ages of about 8 to 15, children use what he labels a “romantic”

approach. Romantic understanding, he writes, “is constructed by seeing the object of study in the


context of someone’s or some people’s thoughts, intentions, hopes, or fears” (Egan, 1997, p. 93).

In identifying an idea with a human struggle or effort, by seeing it as an expression of a kind of

greatness or what Egan calls a “transcendent quality” we turn that abstract idea into an object of

romantic understanding.

We can understand rock formations, Latin conjugations, chemical processes, grammatical

structures, and anything else, by locating within it a human quality in transcendent degree

with which students can associate. Anything can be made the object of a romantic

association if we see it in the appropriate light, and doing so is the key to successful

teaching and learning during this period. (p. 91).

“Dialogues between two rabbis debating a point of halakha may also be seen as a form of

narrative,” (Walfish, 2008, p. 268). Walfish rightly argues that in studying the way the rabbis

argued, we learn something of who they were, and by extension who we might strive to become:

….the Sages of the Talmud would need to be presented as human beings, who don’t have

all the answers ready-made, and are not possessed of superhuman wisdom in mining

profound meanings from texts. Their greatness is measured by the honesty, wisdom, and

depth with which they confronted the tensions that encountered them (Walfish, 2003, p.

284).

Egan (1997) suggests, however, that by attending to the arguments and the individuals

engaged in them, we gain a particular connection to the issues at stake. Even when the

disputants are barely there as real characters, as in our passage, the teacher can help the students

imagine them as champions of the different views, each view expressive related to a human

quality: a proud humanism, perhaps, in the insistence on kavannah; a deep mercy for human


weakness in its dismissal. “What kind of person sees the world in this way? What might be at

stake for Resh Lakish here? Or for his opponent?”

While the students are creating, not interpreting, their creative activity is invited by the

nature of the text itself. Ideas are connected to voices; opinions do not exist “out there” but are

held by people. The path the Talmud provides for entering into the argument is a Romantic one

in Egan’s terminology, for it is found through one of those voices, one of those people – even if,

in the end, that person exists only as an imaginative construct of the reader. And in keeping

attention focused on both the voice and the idea, the person and the vision, the reader is pressed

to exercise both the tightly focused imagination of empathy, and the broad imagination of

meaning and consequence.

Conclusion

In this paper, I have tried to demonstrate that Talmudic narrative passages, from fully

developed stories to allegories to genre tales to halakhic debates, can be a forum for developing a

way of seeing the world. This way of seeing, identified here as the moral imagination, involves

(as the term suggests) the ability to develop a sense of morally significant possibilities that are as

yet unknown, based on the known. These possibilities can involve the otherwise inaccessible

inner life of an other person, the implications of an action, etc., etc.

Although different kinds of narrative will demand different reading strategies, there are

certain generally applicable practices that will help to nurture the student reader’s moral

imagination. These can be thought of as questions and/or tasks for the reader to address at

various points in his or her encounter with the text:

How does the narrative present itself? What kinds of truth claims does it make?

What are the nonce and fixed norms?What kinds of questions does it invite?

Identify the various parties implicated, not just the obvious ones, or main

characters. Whose voices are not being heard?


Identify the moments of moral import, and how they might affect the involved

parties.

Pay attention to the emotional content of an interaction; identify what emotional

markers may be found.

Identify, and try to understand, the choices being made, both by the characters and

the author. What is at stake in those choices?

Identify the moral vision implicit in those choices, and compare them with one’s

own. What experiences or understandings might account for the differences?

It will be seen, though, that the approach I am suggesting addresses not only abilities, but

dispositions as well; so that a student will begin to develop certain habits of mind, at least insofar

as it relates to the texts. These dispositions – patience, intellectual humility, attention, as well as

openness and creativity - grow out of an awareness of certain principles that have been

articulated throughout the paper:

Understanding precedes judgment.

Because much is unseen and inaccessible, understanding requires imagination as

well as knowledge.

There may not be clear heroes or villains in a given situation

There may be no “right decision” in a given situation that will resolve all

difficulties

Every interaction between people is potentially morally significant.

Rabbi Israel Salanter is famously quoted as having said, “The MaHaRal of Prague

created a golem, and this was a great wonder. But how much more wonderful is to to transform

a corporeal human being into a mensch…” (Etkes:1993. p. 94). To be sure, the experience of

reading Talmudic narratives, even reading them according the approach described here, will not

in itself work that transformation. It can, though, help develop the vision and the attitudes that

are crucial attributes of that process.


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