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Even if we were allscholars: the teacher'sauthorityAlan A. BlockPublished online: 10 Nov 2010.

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International Journal of Leadership in Education: Theory and PracticeISSN 1360-3124 print/ISSN 1464-5092 online Ó 1999 Taylor & Francis Ltd

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Even if we were all scholars: the teacher’sauthority

ALAN A. BLOCK

Perspectives on ‘the crises in education’ might be sought from previous responses to criticalsocial crises. This article does so in an examination of the teacher’s authority in matters ofcurriculum, moral education and ethical rigour. Specifically, destruction of the secondTemple (AD 70) produced a crisis of authority in Jewish society as the role of the highpriests and the ritual sacrifices were eliminated. The ruling hierarchy was destroyed and thesocial fabric torn beyond repair. The entire legal, moral and spiritual structure was upsetand every aspect of practice needed to be redefined. The rabbis’ response was a pedagogicalone that redefined the idea of authority, and involved posing of questions and refusal ofabsolute answers. Authority was vested in the relationship between teacher and student. It isto this process we might look to reframe our educational debates.

Perceptions of the crisis

I have spent the past 25 years as a United States public educator working inthe midst of crisis. Or at least that is what I might think given the vast bodyof literature of recent years. The titles may multiply but the story they tell issimilar: we are, we remain, in the midst of an educational crisis ofunprecedented proportions; and we are, as a nation, at grave risk ifsomething is not soon done to remedy the situation. Sometimes I, as ateacher, am blamed for this crisis. Sometimes I am perceived as merely a cogin a great evil machine. Nevertheless, we are warned that our civilization isthreatened by the severe inadequacies of our educational system; we areconstantly regaled that unless something is done immediately, the wholestructure of our civilization will collapse. Says Lauren Resnick (quoted inBracey 1991: 104), former president of the American Educational ResearchAssociation, ‘We all know how terrible we are’. All voices seem to concurthat the teacher’s authority is (a) suspect, (b) eroded, (c) misplaced, or (d) allof the above. As my grandmother would say, ‘Hoo! Hah!’

Alan A. Block has taught courses in reading and curriculum theory and practice at the University ofWisconsin-Stout. He taught for 18 years in the public schools in the suburbs of New York City beforemoving to the university setting. He has published three books – Anonymous Toil (1992, UniversityPress of America); Occupied Reading (1995, Garland); and I’m Only Bleeding: Education as the Practiceof Social Violence Against Children (1997, Peter Lang) – and articles and book chapters on curriculumand schooling. He is presently working on a book examining issues of contemporary Americaneducation, namely teaching, learning and curriculum, through the lens of the Talmud, a central text ofrabbinic Judaism.Corresponding address: Alan A. Block, E4523 County Road D, Menomonie, WI 54751, USA. Fax: 1715 235 2329.

INT. J. LEADER SHIP IN ED UCATION, 1999, VOL . 2, NO . 4, 337± 351

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I do not mean to minimize the situation. For me, at least, it is toolate. The crisis state, if not real in fact, is certainly real in belief. Thatis, I operate – and have done for the whole of my professional career –under the assumption of crisis. As a teacher I have always lived as ifunder siege. If we are not overly competent, we are at least overpaidand underworked. It has not been an easy 25 years. It has not beeneasy to even think about my authority much less to exercise whatever Iconsider it might have been. Of course, this state of being under siegemay be de rigueur for a practitioner of a helping profession: I shouldask my doctor or my rabbi. Nonetheless, this state puts some strain onthe psyche. Ask my therapist! But every day when I stand before aclass I am intimately confronted with the nature of the teacher’sauthority – with the nature of my authority. I stand several times dailywith my hand on the doorknob to a classroom and several times daily Iexperience terror. Standing at the entrance way, I feel a radicalestrangement. I think of J. Alfred Prufrock who believed there wouldbe time to prepare himself to appear before his public, but was frozenin his doubt.

Diane Ravitch (1995:25) confidently writes that ‘Curriculum stan-dards describe what teachers are supposed to teach and students areexpected to learn . . . Performance standards describe what kind ofperformance represents inadequate, acceptable, or outstanding accom-plishment.’ I am envious of her certainty, doubtful of her claim. Oh, Iknow to what she refers; like Herman Melville’s Bartleby imprisoned Isay ‘I know where I am’. But like Bartleby I say, ‘I prefer not to’. ForRavitch the teacher’s authority is established in the unequal powerrelations between teacher and student that derive from the transferringof required knowledge from the former to the latter. Ravitch (p. 25)writes that ‘Education means to lead forth, but it is impossible to leadanyone anywhere without knowing where you want to go. If you do notknow what you are trying to accomplish, you will not accomplish much.’For Ravitch and others in the standards’ movement, the establishment ofcontent standards would clearly define what is to be taught and whatkind of performance to expect. They always seem to know where theyare and where they are going. They are never strangers. They are certainof their authority.

I know that students look to me as the one who knows; after all, somuch of the architecture of the rooms speaks in this tone: I stand atthe front and they face me; I am Socratically peripatetic and theyremain fixed. I question them while they are in their seats and theyawait my approval for their response. Or worse, they sit silentlyunwilling to risk any disapproval for a wrong answer and I stalk theroom desperate for conversation. They are terrified of my power. Ithink they resent me. I am terrified of my power. I resent them formaking me afraid. I am frightened that all of my knowledge isinadequate to the task that constitutes the classroom. I am terrified thatI have nothing to teach these students. I am terrified that I will notknow what to teach these students. I am terrified that I am alone inthis classroom.

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Oh, yes, this is a problem of authority all right. And the angry cries ofcrisis that fill the pages of the daily newspapers and the academic journalsonly exacerbate the crisis within. I believe authority exists not in what I getmeasurably done or in what I measurably know, but derives from theposition in which I stand in the classroom – and right now I stand here as astranger. I am a stranger and I wonder what authority inheres to the role ofstranger.

I consider the Biblical Joseph, the quintessential stranger and educator,who weeps at the sight of his brothers’ pain: Joseph, who suffers as he seeksfor signs of his brothers’ learning. In what will be a pedagogical encounterwith them he first turns from his brothers and weeps, feeling, perhaps,their struggle, remembering, perhaps, his history. Joseph speaks to hisbrothers as the stranger and not as his brothers’ brother, and certainly notas the Pharaoh’s viceroy. ‘Joseph saw his brothers and he recognized them,but he acted like a stranger toward them and spoke with them harshly’(Genesis 42:7). Joseph desires to know what they now know, what theyhave since learned. Joseph’s authority – from which will derive his power toeducate – comes finally not from his position in the hierarchy, but from hisability to ask questions and inspire answers. He must recall the brothers tothemselves; they must acknowledge who they are and the history of whichthey are a part. ‘From whence do you come?’ Joseph’s authority isimmanent in the space that the question opens. And Joseph’s questions andanswers also recall Joseph to himself: Joseph speaks as a stranger to hisbrothers, even to himself, employing a language that is foreign to them andto him. Indeed, as the Pharaoh’s viceroy Joseph had even taken a newname. His questions finally make him remember that he is Jacob’s son,Joseph. And his ultimate authority derives not from the official position heholds, but from who he becomes in the midst of this social and personalcrisis. Though he earlier had claimed to have forgotten his hardship and hispast, it is exactly that remembrance that leads to his transcendence. Andthat self-knowledge occurs in the pedagogical encounter with his brothersand is inspired by the questioning.

Joseph and his brothers are transformed by curriculum; the authorityJoseph believes he has held he discovers to have been illusory. Indeed, helearns that he has ultimately served ends which have been hidden fromhim; Joseph is now able to reconstruct his life into a new story. Pitzele(1995: 221) writes ‘Joseph reclaims his name . . . The terrible vicissitudes,his own wrestle with power and passion, his exile – all these sacrifices henow weaves into a new story. It is a story he claims as the truth of hisexperience and derives from the response to his questions. God does notcome to Joseph [declaiming truth]; rather, [Joseph] pulls God to him in theflash of his own insight, perhaps from the longing of his own belief.’Joseph’s authority, he learns, derives not from the scientific order – asmight the authority of the positivists and the Ravitches – but from theacknowledgment of a greater power, from an awareness of order in seemingchaos and dissolution. This order is perceived in the process of answeringquestions and constructing narrative. In the midst of this historical andpersonal crisis, Joseph’s insights into the nature of authority suggest to himthat we belong not only to the world of the mundane and material – in

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which Joseph has been a tremendous success – but to the world ofpossibilities of the transcendent as well. ‘Like him’, Pitzele writes (p. 223),‘we can know that we live in two worlds, or that this world is shot throughwith glints and glimmers of mysterious connections, far-fetched connec-tions, far-fetched coincidences that hint to us of immense designs.’ If, thatis, by questioning we open ourselves to these hints. Joseph’s epiphanyredefines his authority and changes the story of his life. Curriculum, afterall, should be redemptive.

So, perhaps, the idea of crisis – real or perceived – is valuable because itforces us to consider some foundational issues: how I as a person respond tothe crisis will derive from and constitute my authority; my responseconstitutes me in the world of school; how as a society we respond to theeducational crisis will constitute the authority of our society; it alsoconstitutes the educational system of our society. I know that studentsresent my position in the hierarchy that assigns me this authority and thatdenies them agency, much as Joseph’s brothers must have resented theauthority of their brother who seemed to have dreams, and of the authorityof the man they did not know was Joseph but who held the power of thegranary. I know that much of my students’ behaviour is resistance not tome personally but to my authority. My authority is definitely a problem.

What is done in moments of social crisis has varied with the politicalstance of the particular Jeremiah and has focused consistently on the natureof authority. I am interested in the reactions to crisis. I have beenresponding for my whole professional life. According to the Oxford EnglishDictionary the word crisis gains its character from its identification (ca.1543) with disease: a crisis is that ‘moment in the progress of a disease whenan important change takes place which is decisive of recovery or death’.Franklin Bobbitt (1918: 45) claimed that the directed curriculum of theschools ought to be discovered ‘in the shortcomings of individuals afterthey have had all that can be given by the undirected training’. DianeRavitch (1995: 103) argues that ‘Teachers who know what the students’preconceptions are can help them understand new ideas and replacemisconceptions’. If only teaching were as easy as removing an appendix andinserting, say, a new stomach! Would that I had the skill much less theauthority to perform these excisions and replacements. It is to thispathologically directed definition of crisis that the Jeremiahs on the left oron the right seem inclined to speak. Education is a fixing of what is broken,a healing of the sick. Authority must be exercised to save the endangeredsocial structure. In the establishment of purpose, order and discipline mustbe rigidly maintained. Fascism becomes a welcome possibility.1

As teachers, we participate in that discipline though we do not direct it;we are its recipients even as we are its agents. For the sake of the system,authority is conferred upon rather than developed by us. Unlike Joseph,our authority does not derive from the discovery of having lived in ourdreams, but from our position in a rigid hierarchy – it is our nightmare. Weremain beleaguered nevertheless. That conferral of power obligates us to ahigher authority. Battle lines are firmly drawn. These, too, represent crisisand could lead to death. As teachers, we have often spoken of ourselves asthose ‘down in the trenches’. I know enough about war to understand that

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the world is narrow down in the trenches and that very few options areavailable from that vantage point. From the trenches, one raises one’s headwith extreme care – paranoia is the only safeguard. Whether the attackswere from the right or the left, we teachers felt ourselves targets of thevitriol directed at the school even as our own victimhood was wellacknowledged. The power hierarchy had disabled us from all but limitedaction. Something had to be done with us if the crisis were to be overcome –we were the disease that had to be overcome. Something had to be done forus if the crisis was to be overcome – the disease had overtaken us. Thebattle lines were drawn. Seen as both disease and cure, the role of teacherswas ever shifting on this embattled terrain. Where would authority besituated when perceptions of the crisis served either to circumscribe ourauthority or to overburden us with it? Authority was not something tointerrogate; rather, authority was something to be lived and exercised inalways desperate times – some would say by teachers and others would sayupon teachers. Authority was a power and not a concept. The danger of thecrisis demanded drastic action.

The wide bureaucratic mechanisms that have evolved have obviouslynot alleviated the desperate condition. The jeremiads multiply. And so itwas interesting to open up David Berliner and Bruce Biddle’s TheManufactured Crisis (1995) to discover that much of the rhetoric of crisisspoken on the right has been constructed with ideological purpose. I amrelieved, though not comforted. For, you see, it is not that there is no crisisin the system: Berliner and Biddle do acknowledge the existence of a crisisstate, but they situate it in the social public sector rather than in theschools. The authors assert that public rhetoric from the right decrying thehorrible state of our schools and the educational system has beenmanufactured for rightward ideological purposes. The focus on thehorrible state of American education enables the right to release resourcesto themselves that should be directed at the schools and educational policy.The manufactured crisis enables the right to argue that the real problem isthe quality of the educational system – the teachers and the students – andnot the monies spent on it, that the real problem is the clientele and not theenvironments in which education takes place. As long as the right can showhow unworthy the ‘great army of incapables’ is, the less must society feelcompelled to spend needless monies on their education. Resources shouldbe allotted to those who would most benefit from them and who wouldmost benefit our society from having received them. It is a wonderfulstrategy to maintain the status quo. To the contrary, Berliner and Biddleshow that the real crisis is social; they do not deny the crisis but simplysituate it in the larger context. The question of authority is dealt with onlyobliquely; authority seems to be a byproduct of substantive reform.

I think the question of the teacher’s authority in this time of crisis,perceived or otherwise, is crucial. How we respond to ‘crisis’ derives fromour positions of authority even as it establishes them. I would like tointerrogate the issue of authority in these moments of crisis; perhaps crisislike an X-ray, illuminates the basic structure. The problem of the teacher’sauthority might be illuminated by looking at a social response to anothercrisis that was resolved by a pedagogy in which authority was a central

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issue. I read of another society threatened with dissolution, another societythreatened with social extinction. The way it responded to crisis contrastsinstructively with our own responses. This ancient response was apedagogical one and redefined the idea of authority. It situated authoritynot in the hierarchy, though they acknowledged one, nor in the impositionof standards, though they instituted stringent ones, but in the relationshipthat derives from relationships in which the presence of each is dependenton the presence of the other. The hierarchy is subverted in its veryinstitution, and the authority exists in the relationship rather than in anyelement of the hierarchy.

Asking questions

The voices in the room rumble to silence. Every face turns towards meexpectantly awaiting my recitation. I have been studying and rehearsing formonths and weeks and days, in school and at home. I clutch the well wornpages with force, holding on to them as if they would leap away without mytenacity. I feel prepared but still experience a sort of terror. I look about atall of the once familiar faces: in the front of the room I see my grandfathernod to me and I rise. I raise the text from my lap and place it on the table; Iquietly clear my throat and begin to chant: Ma nishtah nah halilah hazeh,mecol halailot. How is this night different than all other nights? My dis-easerecedes and the tremour in my voice settles. Time unwinds in the fourquestions as I ask each in turn; in an instant I am finished. I have recitedflawlessly, and when I finally look up I see only the proud eyes of myparents and grandparents and what I like to imagine as the envious eyes ofthe other children. I accept the smiles of the adults and the rivalry of theother children. I sit down slightly wet under the arms and . . . well, wait forthe answers!

The Tosefta says that ‘A person is obliged to engage himself in the[study of the] halakhot (laws)2 of Passover all night, even with only his son,even with only himself, even with only his student.’ As the youngest childin the family, it has been my responsibility to ask The Four Questions. It isthe answer to these questions that impels the Seder on this and everyPassover. It is by the authority of these questions that the entire Seder mealdepends; my questions command the entire evening, and the answers tothese questions constitute the Seder’s purpose and much of its structure.Passover celebrates the liberation of the Jewish people from slavery inEgypt – in Mitzrayim, the ‘narrow place’. It is this event that constitutesthe identity of the Jewish people. And it is my questions that fulfil theBiblical imperative. Three times in Exodus (12: 25–27, 13: 8, 13: 14–16)and once in Deuteronomy (6: 20) the Bible speaks of the obligation ofresponding with the tale of the Exodus to the questions – or even to thequestioning silence – of children. But this entire spectacle of the Seder forwhich my questions are so central seems pointless since the sacrifice spokenof in the Biblical text is no longer performed. And though the answersoffered in the Biblical text are in direct response to the questionsconcerning the performance of the sacrifice of the Paschal lamb and seem

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so straightforward and unambiguous, nevertheless these same answers donot address my present questions. Indeed, this elaborate celebration andmy wonderful performance is not spoken of in the Biblical text at all.Nonetheless, though it is clear that this entire spectacle has been organizedto tell the tale of the Going-out, it is also clear that my questions areimmanent to the ceremony. I must ask questions and they must answer me.Talk about authority! From where does it derive?

Study: that is what education is about. And the origin of study is inquestions. My asking questions inaugurates the story-telling that is theremembrance; my questions are what every child and adult had come tohear that they might tell their tale. No one is exempt from thisresponsibility. ‘Even if we were all scholars, even if we were all sages,even if all of us were elders, it would still be our duty to tell the story of theExodus from Mitzrayim’ (Rabinowicz 1982: 31). Scholarship does notexempt us from the obligation of study, from the tasks of questioning andanswering. And since no answer is directly given, authority seems to beinvested in neither the one who questions nor the one who answers but inthe space between the question and the answer. There is no end to the tale,it is said, once the questions are asked. However, with no explicit answerproferred, there can be no final arbiter of the tale. Answering questions islearning, but the haggadic text keeps subverting the possibility of an answerand, therefore, inspires the asking of additional questions. The textmandates conversation. Indeed, the haggadic command to tell the tale ofthe Going-out requires that there be no end to either the questioning or tothe learning. If we are to fulfil the commandments, the adults must listen tothe child’s questions, and they must respond to them not merely for thechildren’s enrichment but for that of the adults as well. In my questions Ihad obligated adults to answer me; in Levinasian terms, they hadcommanded me to command them to tell me the story. And in Levinasianterms I had obligated them to command me to ask questions. Everythingthat they had done up until now had been organized to provoke myquestions: the arrangement of the table; the divergence from the customs towhich I am accustomed and in which I have been raised; the engagement innew and unfamiliar acts. It is their intent to provoke questions. How do Iget this much authority? When did I give them this much authority?

I think these issues are not irrelevant to the nature of education as theymight have become institutionalized in the manner of the Passover Seder.Questions and answers sit at the very heart of our educational crisis – whoshould ask what questions and to whom should they be asked and for whatpurpose? How should answers be offered? Perhaps the celebratory, yetpedagogical, instrument of the Seder offers a perspective on these problemsand on that of the secular teacher’s authority; for there is authority at theSeder and I consider here its immanence.

Inventing study

In 70 CE the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed and the central image ofJudaism was lost. The Torah had situated the performance of all rites and

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ceremonies in the Temple by a class of priests whose position was passed onby heredity. Celebration was organized as the performance of culticsacrificial rites by these priests for the benefits of a relatively passivepopulace. The Passover sacrifice, which inaugurates and commemoratesthe Exodus, took place only at the Temple and only before the priests.Exodus (12: 14–20) states the manner of celebration of the Passover; but itdoes not sound like our Seder. In the Biblical text Passover is to becelebrated by the (re)enactment of the ritual sacrifice and the explanation tothe children’s questions concerning it. ‘It shall be that when you come tothe land that God will give you . . . you shall observe this service. And itshall be that when your children say to you, ‘‘What is this service to you?’’You shall say, ‘‘It is a pesach feast-offering to God, Who passed over thehouses of the Children of Israel in Egypt when God smote the Egyptians,but God saved our households’’ ’ (Exodus, 12: 27). Recall that Judaism hadbeen originally established on a cult basis. And so the loss of the Temple in70 CE threatened the very existence of Judaism. All the authority of thepriestly caste that had developed as a result of the cult status was lost withthe loss of the Temple; the sacrifice that commemorated the Exodus couldnot take place. The account of the sacrifice held the memory of the Exodus.Without the Temple, however, the priests’ role had become moot. Sacrificecould not occur and the story might be left untold. If Judaism was tosurvive, then authority needed to be reinvented. Martin Jaffe (1997: 82)writes ‘If God required absolute obedience, and if the destruction of thetemple made many of [God’s] commandments impossible to fulfill, then itwas only through traditions preserved outside the textual confines ofscripture . . . that Judaism would survive.’ But those traditions existed inthe oral tradition and as such were not binding. The telling was nottradition; rather, the telling merely explained the sacrifice. Thus, thoughthe commandments for Passover are listed in the Torah – these includedthe sacrifice of the Paschal lamb and the observance of matzos – the entireelaborate Seder which enacts the Going-out is not a part of the commandedcelebration. Without the Temple, there could be no sacrifice; without thesacrifice, there would be no ritual to which the Biblical explanation couldbe given. Without the Passover ritual, the story would not be told andremembrance would not occur. Without the Passover, the entire history ofthe Jewish people might disappear. This was certainly a crisis. Somethinghad to be done. Authority had to be re-established, not in the institution ofanother priestly caste – that would be heretical – but in the necessity forconceiving an opening on to the future, in the necessity for a hermeneuticthat would fix observance in active study and interpretation rather thanpassive ritual and sacrifice. The telling had to be made the tradition, andthe telling had to derive from the interrogation rather than the performanceof that tradition. Not the sacrifice of the Paschal lamb but the order to tellthe children about the Going-out became the central tenet of the Passoverfestival. Authority became fixed in the necessity for questioning and study.

In the immediate decades following the loss of the Temple, the rabbinictradition responded to the crisis by resituating the place and purpose ofritual; the rabbis focused on those aspects of Biblical readings that locatedthe sacrament not in the now-absent Temple but in the home and in study.

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An invented tradition still required textual authority. Despite the absenceof the sacrifice and the Temple, the Torah still spoke of the necessity foranswering the questions of the child. The Torah speaks in four separateand distinct places regarding the necessity of narrating the Passover rite:the text charges that the story be told in language that suggestsconversation. The Torah says: ‘And when your child asks’, ‘And you shalltell your child’, ‘And when your children say to you ‘‘What is this?’’ youshall say . . . ’. Those instances of the child’s questionings concernedoriginally the reasons for the sacrifice: the remembrance was to be of theGoing-out – of the experience and attainment of freedom. But the Templewas destroyed and the event that would impel the story was impossible. Butthe tale needed to be retold; the destruction of the Temple once again (thefirst destruction had occurred in 586 BCE by the Babylonians) and theexperience of exile reminded the rabbis that freedom was still not attained.And so in response to the crisis, the rabbis focused on this pedagogicalencounter of the answering of questions as the centre of the Passoverobservance. And since the sacrifice was gone, a new provocation forquestioning had to be created so that the story might be told. Thus,authority was invested in the space between the question and the answer:the Biblical command is to answer the child’s question but the Biblicalquestion was no longer applicable. And so the retelling and elaboration ofthe story prompted by an environment that had been established to provokequestions became the object of the Passover observance. Temple rites andceremony once performed by priests before a passive population weretransferred to the home; observance was situated in process rather thanproduct. There would be no sacrifice; rather, what was to be performed wasa relationship constituted by the ceaseless asking and answering ofquestions remembering and extending the story of the Going-out. Indeed,this entire symbolic performance constituted by questions and answers wasto replace the ritual sacrifice. The Seder was formed.

The rabbis had sought in the text for justification to reinterpret thefoundation of Judaism, and they discovered it in the idea of study – inquestioning and answering. In the midst of this crisis the rabbis soughttextually to reinvent Judaism from the ashes of the destroyed Temple andto re-establish authority outside the priestly hierarchy. The sacred spacethey created was in practices within the community and within the home;authority was transferred from a now peripheral priestly caste to theenactment of a never-ending development of tradition derived from textualinterpretation. Wolfson and Grishaver (1996: 54) write ‘In order to saveJewish life, it was necessary to reinvent every process and every ritual.’ Toaccomplish this transformation, the rabbis read into the text, the Torah,precedent for situating Judaism within the home rather than the Temple,and the processes and products in which they did so is the history ofRabbinic Judaism. They created a text – indeed, they created textsbeginning even with the Torah – that demanded study and interpretation.The Talmud, the exhaustive and exhausting body of oral law and itsinterpretation, is one product; and the same rabbis who developed theTalmud also developed the Passover Haggadah. While maintainingtradition and a link to the past, the entire tradition was regenerated by its

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interrogation. At the centre of this regeneration was study: ‘[Study]consists of thinking everything that is thinkable in a question, thoroughly,at all costs’ (quoted in Ouaknin 1995: 62). At the centre of study was theteacher, me; at the centre of the teacher was the student, and that, too, isme. It is in this complex that the authority of the teacher might beinterrogated.

In this response to the foundational crisis, the rabbis produced from theTorah a process that would make Israel itself a nation of priests, that wouldestablish authority not in the hierarchy of priests but in the peoplethemselves. At the centre of this reconceptualized practice would be notsacrifice, but prayer, to ensure that religious acts would involve anexperience of the Divine, and study, to ensure that both remembrance andcontinued engagement are maintained. The development of study and theinstitution of the Seder were situated at the centre of Judaism. Theinterpretation of the tradition would depend on the openness of the text andquestions were the instrument that would open that text. ‘Study’, Ouaknin(1995: 63) writes, ‘considered as research, allows one to experience’.Whereas once the priests performed the sacrifice for the people inattendance, now the people within their homes must themselves experiencethe Passover through the medium of study. Perhaps it is for this reason thatthe Haggadah insists that ‘In each generation, every individual should feelas though he or she had actually been redeemed from Mitzrayim.’ In therecitation must be the re-enactment not of mere memory but of personalidentification: the Seder is a dynamic process of enquiry activated byquestions and impelled by answers that are designed to provoke furtherquestions. In the process of reinventing Judaism the rabbis focused not onthe activity of the priests but on that of the people; authority was situated inthe process of questioning. All authority came to reside in the asking ofquestions and in the answering of them – authority is established in thespace created by the question and the answer.

I grow more comfortable in my classroom.

Even if we were all scholars

My child sits down after reciting the four question (I have seen themreferred to as the four puzzlements) and awaits the answers to her queries.Emma looks at me expectantly for the answers. She has asked very specificquestions concerning ritual and practice: why do we perform certain ritualson this night but not on other nights? We solemnly begin: ‘We were slavesto Pharaoh in Mitzrayim, and then Adonai our God brought us out of therewith a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. And if the holy one, praisedbe God, had not taken our ancestors out of Mitzrayim, then we, and ourchildren, and our children’s children, would still be enslaved to Pharaoh.’Emma looks at me confusedly; that is not an answer to any of the questionsshe has posed. Wasn’t I paying attention to her? How are those wordsanswers to my very specific questions?

‘Ah, my darling’, I say in my heart, ‘they are not at all your answers.’It is to this puzzlement that we may look for the remarkable pedagogy

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of the Haggadah and the notion of authority that the Seder enacts. If I wereto singly and directly answer her questions, it would require no thinking ofher own; conversation would cease. All authority would derive from myknowledge and her lack; all authority would reside in the conferral ofknowledge upon her. But my answer leaves her question answered and stillasked. We can go on. She may ask again: the room is set to provokequestions. All questions are acceptable; no answer is given directly orstarkly. The Haggadah tells us that ‘Everyone who enlarges on the tale ofthe Going-out of Mitzrayim deserves praise’ (Levy 1989: 28). Indeed, theHaggadah insists that whosoever should tell the story must never know theanswers. ‘Even if all of us were scholars, even if all of us were sages, even ifall of us were old and venerable, even if all of us were learned in Torah, itwould still be a mitzvah for us to tell the story of the Going-out ofMitzrayim.’ We must leave the space open for our daughters’ questions,and those of others, to unfold. It is in the space that we fill together that allauthority seems to reside. If she asks no questions, then it would be onlypower that coerces her to be there, though not to listen. If she asks noquestions, she does not reach across the space for my hand. Herquestionings are scripted though her questions are not.

The authority that resides in the Passover observance suggests thatit is not the particular questions but the questioning that is central: inthe reinvention of tradition required with the loss of the Temple, thequestioning would replace the now impossible sacrifice; the question-ing replaces the authority of the priests and their role in observance.The Mishnah, a codified oral law, it appears, was not writing thescript but establishing a technique. My students, I regret, prefer thescript: just tell us what to say and do, they command. Like ourdaughters, our students wonder why we don’t answer the questions;they mistake the offered technique for a proffered blank script. Can’tI just give them the prescribed answer and let it rest? But the rabbisknew that it was not the specific question and therefore, not anyspecific answer that is central to curriculum, but rather thequestioning that is important. Questioning is engagement. The Sederis a pedagogical tool that teaches the child to question and obligatesadults to answer, albeit obliquely so that the child may ask again. Thequestion is the opening into which the future will enter: ‘Any questionis a way in. And every question is an act of freedom’ (Waskow 1984:17). The process of the Seder is the experience of the Exodus and offreedom.

The answers to Emma’s questions may respond as well to our ownunvoiced questions during the Seder event. Authority is established in thespace between, rather than within either teacher or student. The questionsof the Seder invite us to re-enact the Exodus that all participants mightalways recall and reinvent freedom. Had the Going-out not occurred, wemight never have experienced the meaning of freedom and been alwayssubject to the things for which Pharaoh and Mitzrayim stood – Mitzrayimmeans, after all, the ‘narrow place’. The Haggadah is filled with spaces forquestions and answers. There is no way to exhaust the depth of meaning ofredemption from Mitzrayim, the narrow place, the place that squeezes the

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life out of a human soul and body. There is no way to exhaust the meaningof freedom.

A simple answer inhibits dialogue. So the story that is told this night isnot the Story but a story with elaboration. Unlike the bedtime story thatmust be identical time and again, this tale must be differently told. But itmust be told. And I think it is here that we might understand the remarkablepedagogical instrument that the Haggadah represents. It is designed toprovoke conversation. And conversation requires more than one participantand denies the institution of authority in any of the participants. Rather,conversation situates authority in between. Perhaps this is the meaning ofRabbi Nachman of Brastlav’s statement that ‘All my life I have grown upbetween the masters’ (in Ouaknin 1995: 87), that is, in conversation withthem.

The rabbis eventually canonized certain texts and situated leadershiproles in themselves, though the corrective to this hegemonic act has, fromits inception, been in process. But in our contemporary educational crisisthe rabbis’ response might afford some original insight. They inserted thesubversion of their own authority into the essence of Judaism bydemanding that questioning be integral to the process. Ouaknin (1995:87) says that ‘Talmudic thought is the thinking of the question, and it is notmere chance that the very first word of the Talmud is a question: Meematai(From what time?).’ Interrogation of tradition was central to rabbinicJudaism. Hence, no question is answered in the manner in which it is askedand all answers are meant to provoke further questions: ‘The answer is fatalfor the question’ (Blanchot in Ouaknin, 1995: 87). In this form ofpedagogy, all authority is invested not in the storyteller but rather in thespace that the question produces. The question derives from thecomplexities of the text. But the teacher never answers the question thechild asks. Rather, the teacher answers the question as a means only toprovoke another question, and the conversation begins. The teacher knowsthat conversation depends on the continual production of space that thequestion effects. The role of the question is to open up the space.

Four separate tellings of the tale are orchestrated into the Haggadah.Each telling is provoked by questions; each question receives an answerthat demands further elaboration and study. Each answer creates a formand purpose of study focused not on the question but on the relationshipbetween the one who questions and the one who answers. The first tellingis in response to my daughter’s specific questions. Our response articulatesthe theme of the festival: we were slaves and God delivered us fromMitzrayim. Within this broad theme perhaps the answers to the specificquestions may be created. The second time the story is recounted it is aresult of various questions of different types of children – a wise child, awicked child, a simple child, and a child who does not even know how toask. Each child asks the question ‘What is this all about?’ though in aslightly different and individualistic manner. The midrash derives thistelling from the attempt to explain a seeming redundancy in the Torah.Four times in four slightly varied ways, the Torah states that you must tellthe story as a response to the children’s questions; the primacy of textrequired that the rabbis explore this seemingly needless though slightly

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varied repetition in the Torah. And so the rabbis told a story – of fourchildren who ask different types of questions. The Mishnah counsels thateach child must be instructed according to his or her intelligence; no onemust be excluded from the story. No question must be left unaddressed,regardless of its form. To each child an answer must be given appropriateto the type of question rather than to the substance of it. Indeed, the fourthchild is described as incapable of asking a question, and to that child ananswer must yet be given. All authority rests in the space opened by thequestion. According to the child’s abilities the answer must be given. Allquestions must receive a response according to the type of question and ourknowledge of the questioner. We are challenged in our answer to know theone who questions us.

The third telling is also prompted by questions: this time of text. Andthe response to this question provides a model of textual exegesis, a formof study, another form of question seeking. The command in theHaggadah is ‘Consider these verses’. Other translations say ‘Go andlearn’. The question is implied but is there nonetheless: what do theseverses of the Torah really mean? The text given is a summary of thehistory of the Jewish people:

My father was a wandering Aramean, and with just a few people he went down to Mitzrayim, andsojourned there. And there he became a great nation, mighty and numerous. The Egyptians dealtharshly with us and oppressed us; and they imposed hard labour upon us. We cried out toAdonai, the God of our ancestors; and Adonai heard our plea and saw our affliction, our miseryand our oppression. Then Adonai took us out of Mitzrayim with a mighty hand and anoutstretched arm, with awesome power, with signs and with wonders (Deuteronomy 26: 5-8).

Why should these verses be examined at all? How could they meananything but what they say? The answer to this puzzlement is, I think, thesubstance of the Haggadah. The rabbis suggest here that the Torah is a textthat requires reading – and every word must be examined for its purpose.The Haggadah presents to us in this answer a model of textual analysis.The text we are shown may be interrogated for its meaning on theassumption that every word is intentional and meaning-laden. The Torahtext, we are taught in the Haggadah, ‘is written in such a way that it impliesthe necessity of being interpreted, unfolded. The text’s complexity iseminently calculated and worked out in a way to seize the reader’sattention’ (Ouaknin 1995: 9). Authority is transferred to the discourse andaway from any one element of it. Without the question and answer, there isno learning.

In the Talmud is the story of Rabbi Johanan who has had an argumentwith his student and brother-in-law, Resh Lakish, and feels affronted andhurt. Now, Resh Lakish is actually a good student and, because Lakishlives in such respect for his teacher and because he feels that he has insultedhim, he actually falls ill at the consideration of the possible insult to thisbeloved teacher. Johanan’s sister, Lakish’s wife, comes to her brotherJohanan to beg him to forgive Lakish that her husband might become well.Johanan refuses to do so and, quoting Scripture, assures his sister that hewill be sufficient to care for her should her husband actually die. In shorttime, indeed, Lakish expires and Johanan grieves deeply. To draw him out

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of his grief, Rabbi Eleazar ben Pedath ‘whose disquisitions are very subtle’is sent to study with Johanan in the hope that the conversation will enliventhe scholar. But Johanan is displeased because Eleazar only agrees with theteacher rather than interrogates him. Johanan chastises Eleazar: ‘. . .when Istated a law, the son of Lakish used to raise twenty-four objections, towhich I gave twenty-four answers, that consequently led to a fullercomprehension of the laws; whilst you say ‘‘A baraitha3 has been taughtwhich supports you’’: do I not know that my dicta are right?’ Then Johananwent on grieving and mourning, crying out ‘Where are you O son ofLakish, where are you O son of Lakish?’ And his grief at the loss of hisstudent drove Johanan mad and he died. The teacher who is not challengedcannot learn; the student who will not challenge needs no teacher. Allauthority is invested in the relationship founded on query and response.The authority of the teacher exists in the authority of the student; theauthority of both resides in the open text.

The fourth and last telling, too, derives from a question and offersspecifically a link to history and to the future. ‘Rabban Gamliel states thatthose who have not explained three things during the Seder have notfulfilled their obligation.’ This explanation is, of course, to questions notdissimilar from those asked by the child many hours ago. We have indeed,been on a long journey. But the final answer to these questions intrigues:‘In every generation every individual should feel as though he or she hadactually been redeemed from Mitzrayim, as it is said, ‘‘You shall tell yourchildren on that day, saying, ‘it is because of what Adonai did for me whenI went out of Mitzrayim’.’’ Not only our ancestors alone did the Holy One,praised be God, redeem; God redeemed us with them, as it is said: ‘‘Godbrought us out of there, so that God might bring us to the land Godpromised our ancestors.’’ ’ The answer is again a question: my daughterasks ‘But we were not enslaved to Pharaoh in Egypt. And we are alreadyfree, aren’t we? I am here, aren’t I?’ We begin anew. All authority resides inthe space opened by the question. It is in that space that freedom lies.

The teacher’s authority

My daughter has asked: why are we here? Why are we doing these things?What does this all mean? If I answer my daughter directly and she acceptsmy answer how will we continue? If I answer her and she rejects myanswer, how will we continue? I offer her answers from the Haggadah,which are openings to other questions. She looks at me puzzled. Butbecause the space has been opened, she asks again. We can go on.

Rabbi Barukh of Medzegezh (in Rabinowicz 1982: 33) said that ‘Toattain truth [each person] must pass forty-nine gates, each opening to a newquestion. Finally the person arrives at the last gate, the last question,beyond which the person could not live without faith.’ Questions are themeans for our going-out; I think the teacher’s authority resides in the spaceopened by the questions and answers that are enacted in the classroom. Aslong as there remains a question we may continue. Free people askquestions.

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My student’s ask: why are we here? Why do we have to take this class?What are we supposed to learn here? I answer: ‘This year we are slaves. Inthe coming year may we all be free! This year we are here. Next year maywe be in the city of peace!’ My answer acknowledges the authoritativespace.

Next question!

Notes

1. In William Carlos Williams’ short story, ‘The Use of Force’, the doctor forces open the mouth ofthe resistant child to examine for evidence of diphtheria. In discovering traces of the disease hejustifies his use of force.

2. Interestingly, the root of halacha means to walk. The parallel to the Greek currere is notuninteresting to me.

3. A baraitha is part of the material in the law code but is not included in the official collection. It isusually brought in during conversation. We might think of it is a reference.

References

Berliner, D. C. and Biddle, B. J. (1995) The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, and the Attack onAmerica’s Public Schools (New York: Addison-Wesley).

Bobbit, F. (1918) Curriculum (New York: Houghton-Mifflin).Bracey, G. (1991) Why can’t they be like we were? Phi Delta Kappan, October, 104–117.Jaffe, M. (1997) Early Judaism (New York: Prentice-Hall).Levy, R. N. (1989) On Wings of Freedom: The Hillel Haggadah for the Nights of Passover (Hoboken,

New Jersey: Ktav Publishing House).Ouaknin, M. A. (1995) The Burnt Book (translated by L. Brown) (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton

University Press).Pitzele, P. (1995) Our Father’s Wells (New York: Harper Collins).Rabinowicz, R. A. (editor) (1982) Passover Haggadah: The Feast of Freedom (New York: The

Rabbinical Assembly).Ravitch, D. (1995) National Standards in Education. (Washington DC: The Brookings Institution).Waskow, A. (1984) The Shalom Seders (New York: Adama Books).Wolfson, R. and Grishaver, J. L. (1996) The Art of Jewish Living: The Passover Seder (Woodstock,

Vermont: Jewish Lights Publishing).

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