Hebrew College Today - And the Word Came into Being

JEWISH TEXTS COMPEL US TO CONFRONT THE PAST, OURSELVES AND ONE ANOTHER

BY EVELYN HERWITZ
Photographs by Dan Vaillancourt

Nehemia Polen pulls a thick brown volume from his office shelves crammed with classic hasidic works and opens to a random page. The book is Keter Shem Tov, a late-18th-century collection of scriptural illuminations by the Baal Shem Tov. Dr. Polen runs his finger down the page of Hebrew and stops at a passage from Jeremiah 14:22. "This is a lovely text," he says, settling into his chair and leaning over his desk to share the book.
"' Art not Thou He, oh Lord our God?'" Riffling through the pages of a well-worn Tanakh, he finds the rest of the biblical passage: "And do we not wait for Thee? You are He, oh Lord our God."

"Seemingly, the Baal Shem Tov picks this verse out of a hat," comments Polen, Professor of Jewish Thought and Director of Hebrew College's Hasidic Text Institute. "That's typical of a hasidic text. You find a verse and go with it."

Next comes the exposition. The discussion zeroes in on the juxtaposition of two pronouns—, the second-person pronoun, you, that opens the phrase—and the next word, , which is the third-person pronoun, he. "The implicit question in the passage is, why the switch from the second to third person?" explains Polen. "You could say that's just an idiosyncratic feature of the biblical text, the pshat, perhaps. But the Baal Shem Tov gives a hasidic interpretation:

"When the person thinks that he is facing God, as described by the pronoun 'You,' then he is actually far from God, signified by the switch to the pronoun 'He.' You is visible, he or she is not in the room. In other words, as soon as you say You, God becomes He. The very nature of God is elusive. If you're overconfident that you've found God, then God slips away."

"The Baal Shem Tov goes on to say, on the other hand, as soon as you say He, that God is other, distant, something I don't understand, then the rest of the verse comes in. That's when God gives his name and reappears."

An inversion of pronouns. A play on verbs. A pattern of letters, words or phrases that links outwardly unrelated passages. These are the ingredients of Jewish text study, the clues that prompt insights, questions, challenges and, ultimately, a deeper connection to and understanding of what it means to be Jewish. This love of the word, the quest for life's meaning through multiple interpretations of sacred texts, is at the core of the Jewish experience and at the heart of the Hebrew College curriculum.

"God's work of creation was the word," says Polen. "The act of speaking is an act of creation, and every act of creation is an act of speaking. Our relationship to God has been mediated by the word."

"Our defining moment as a people is the revelation at Sinai," says Dr. Harvey Shapiro, Dean of the Shoolman Graduate School of Jewish Education. "That moment, the giving and receiving of a text, is where it all starts. Our reason for being in the world is all connected to the receiving of the word. All the rest is commentary."

Forbidden to create graven images of God, exiled for thousands of years, Jews have eschewed the visual and tangible for the verbal and abstract. "Our homeland has been the text," says Shapiro, "a portable homeland that we carry wherever we go." Even in a post-Zionist world, where Eretz Yisrael is a reality, texts remain the common ground of the Jewish people—the place where stories are shared, values are examined and incongruities debated across millennia. Here there are no simple answers. Instead, there is simply dialogue.

"We are text-centered and text-obsessed," says President David M. Gordis, Professor of Rabbinics. "Even as we are focused on the text, we are always challenging it. We home in on contradictions and inconsistencies. And as we read a text, there are always two questions, in tension with each other, which we must address: What does the text expect of us? And what do we expect of the text?"

Text study is not an end in itself, but a starting point in the process of developing critical thinking skills and a deeper perspective on Jewish history and culture.

At Hebrew College, answering those questions involves learning to read and interpret text from multiple perspectives. Faculty bring a wide range of ideological viewpoints and pedagogical approaches to the study of texts, ancient and modern. "We don't want to take the easy, homiletical route," says Provost Barry Mesch, Stone/Teplow Families' Professor of Jewish Thought. "We want to educate the reader in all of the various parts of Jewish tradition to create an understanding of how the text came to be, the forces that shaped it, the influence of and impact on other traditions and groups, and the universal elements. As we engage in this process, however, we also want to emphasize that text study is not an end in itself, but a starting point in the process of developing critical thinking skills and a deeper perspective on Jewish history and culture."

On the wall in Polen's office is a large map of Eastern Europe dotted with multicolored pushpins marking centers of hasidic study. But the Baal Shem Tov's home is actually beyond the right edge of the map, much farther east, in Medzibezh, Podolia—what is now southern Ukraine. One of the most influential figures in the Hasidic Movement, who lived from 1700 to 1760, "the Baal Shem Tov brings a new vitality into Jewish discourse," says Polen. "He teaches that you can never be too certain of anything when it comes to God. Some think that if you follow the laws exactly, you will be closer to God. He says not necessarily. But that doesn't mean throw the laws out. You must always be questioning; neither hubris nor despair is the appropriate answer."

The Baal Shem Tov delivered this message at a pivotal time in Eastern European Jewish history. "There was a lot of power in the rabbinic hierarchy that was self-serving and smug," explains Polen. "He was challenging the given assumptions of that religious hierarchy without overturning them. Historically, Hasidism finds a way to remain inside the Jewish community by challenging its assumptions and structures from within."

The key to classical Hasidism's influence: a universal message with an appeal that resonates across the centuries. "There is in these texts a celebration of individuality and diversity, a sense of religious buoyancy and confidence," says Polen. "In the early Hasidic Movement there is a fearlessness, a joyful, robust embrace of this world as God's arena. The texts have a contemporary sensibility. Their emphasis on love and joy, the presence of God in all things, speaks to a lot of people today."

This love of the word, the quest for life's meaning through multiple interpretations of sacred texts, is at the core of the Jewish experience and at the heart of the Hebrew College curriculum.

Hasidic masterpieces, Bible, Mishnah, Tosefta, Midreshei Halakhah, Midreshei Aggadah, Babylonian and Palestinian Talmud, Midrash, Zohar, works of medieval and contemporary Jewish thought, poetry, literature—diverse approaches to diverse texts and to the process of teaching text are the bedrock of the College's educational philosophy. "There are ideological tensions that come out in class discussions—is it the word of God or an articulate text?" says Shapiro. "That negotiation between those two poles is a key aspect of text study at Hebrew College—we really respect the whole range."

For example, says Dr. Sol Schimmel, Professor of Jewish Education and Psychology, "When we study the Midrash on the Song of Songs, we see how the rabbis and Rashi in his classic commentary read the text as an allegory for God's love of Israel. At the same time, we discuss modern commentators who see the text as a series of love poems between a man and a woman, to give students multiple lenses for interpretation." Schimmel teaches students to understand and analyze texts by asking fundamental questions: among them, what was the author's original intent and the intended audience's world-view, how was the text interpreted at different points in time and by different movements in Jewish history, and how, in the case of Song of Songs, Jewish commentators have responded to Christological readings of the text.

Other faculty focus on text qua text, assigning a background role to historical context and emphasizing the reader's direct personal encounter with the written word. To do so, says Dr. Steve Copeland, Assistant Professor of Jewish Thought and Education, requires that the teacher first come to an in-depth, existential understanding of his or her own relationship to the text. "I have to study the passage I want to teach," he says. "But study here involves wresting a truth from my learning—from this encounter between me and the text. Only then do I face the question of how to approach my students: What are their truths? Is there a way to converse between these truths—and the truth I have encountered in the text we are to study together? How might I share these meeting points between text and life?"

For Copeland, engaging students in a very personal, close reading of texts often involves the use of visual arts, music, film and various forms of values clarification. "There's an element of performance art in my way of teaching," he says. "Also, there's an element of confession in performance art. Most often implicitly, at times explicitly, I share something of my journey as a Jewish human being and encourage my students to do so as well."

In the study of modern Hebrew fiction and poetry, Dr. Gila Ramras-Rauch, Weinstein Professor of Hebrew Literature, bridges these two approaches to text study, helping students discover the links between literature and earlier, canonic texts. "In one of Agnon's stories, set in Jerusalem of the 1930s, a character has the name of Moses used in an aggadic text," she says. "As the story unfolds, the reader realizes that this character is no longer just a doctor living in that place and time but also is Moshe Rabbeinu. It's like lifting a carpet to see a beautiful parquet floor—when you find the connection, the whole story gains another dimension, a play between connotative and denotative meanings." Even as she helps students master the tools of literary analysis, however, Ramras-Rauch prefers to introduce commentaries and contextual analysis as a second phase in presenting a new text.

With a good text, you think you know everything, then you discover a door. You say "Open sesame!" and it takes you into a new reality.

Gila Ramras-Rauch "The text is the meeting place," she says. "Students have to read it three times, with a pencil, to identify repeating words, key words, tone. They have to write a journal every week." Small class size enhances the give-and-take. "We all have the text in front of us. I choose complex texts that I myself have not fully exhausted. The students are great contributors to the process of interpretation."

Treating students as colleagues in the process of dissecting and interpreting passages is a priority for College faculty. "You can take a biblical text that you've studied 500 times, and when you're sitting with seven or eight students around the table, you gain new insights," says Mesch. "There's this magical process of creating a community reading. One of the great joys of teaching texts is sparking that electricity in class." To create synergy, Mesch says, "you have to encourage students—yes, you do have something to say about the text."

Key to developing confidence in offering original interpretations of classic texts is the mastery of Hebrew. "Language is the means by which a culture structures reality," says President Gordis, who teaches a course in the Babylonian Talmud each spring. "If one wants really to read and understand the texts that shape the Jewish experience, one needs to study them in the original language." Seven levels of Hebrew language are currently offered. Hebrew I–IV or their equivalent are prerequisites for the Master of Arts in Jewish Studies (MAJS) and Master of Jewish Education (MJEd).

Students in the MJEd program are required, beginning this fall, to take intensive, six-hour sections of these core language courses. Central to both the MJEd and MAJS programs is a series of four core-text courses that engage students in the study of Hebrew texts from the four major periods of Jewish history—biblical, rabbinic, medieval and modern. Advanced classes are taught solely in Hebrew.

The text is the sinew that connects the Jewish people. It is sacred, precious and profound, and it conveys something we have in common.

Notwithstanding the College's strong emphasis on Hebrew language, faculty agree that limited knowledge of Hebrew should not be an obstacle to text study. "Ideally, the text should all be taught in Hebrew," says Ramras-Rauch. "But I believe in interspersing one language with another. For those with limited Hebrew, we need to provide a support system. This is not a quiz, this is teaching."

Beyond imparting the tools of text study—learning the language, mastering the ability to analyze and interpret texts from multiple perspectives, knowing the content and context of a wide range of Jewish sources—faculty strive to imbue students with their own passion for the word, so central to the formation of Jewish identity.

"The idea is to make students fall in love with the texts, to make them readers, to make them detectives," says Ramras-Rauch. "With a good text, you think you know everything, then you discover a door. You say, 'Open sesame!' and it takes you into a new reality. Sometimes just a word, like 'hineni,' just grabs you, and you think, 'I really am in the presence of God.'"

Polen stands up and leans against his bookshelf, cradling the Keter Shem Tov. "Creative insecurity, yearning, humility—this passage has all the elements of a great hasidic text," he says. "The Baal Shem Tov emphasizes the belief that the real sin in our relationship with God is the overconfidence born of ignorance: If you think you have God figured out, you certainly have not. At the same time, as soon as you think you're totally stymied and the relationship is severed, that's the beginning of religious awareness."

"Out of four words, just a snippet" he says, closing the book and replacing it on the shelf, "the Baal Shem Tov shows how you can make a whole drama. That's part of the message—when you focus with enough intensity and care on the text, you are provoked in unpredictable and refreshing ways."

"To get there, you have to be fully awake to understand the text even on the simplest level, just to decode the material. Nothing is obvious in reading a Jewish text. It beckons the aware reader to start constructing readings. You must become a participant in the process."

That powerful, personal encounter with the text—the revelation contained within a word, the bridging of time and space to the voices of Jewish ancestors, insights gained from the past for the present—is the essence of this most Jewish mode of study, a melding of the intellectual quest for truth and the spiritual search for meaning. "By locating something in our experience that is similar to an event in the classical text we are trying to face, we are changed—as in any relationship," says Copeland. "But also—and really simultaneously—by honoring what is foreign in the text before us, we learn to be more open to all kinds of difference. We learn that life is not only about agreeing or disagreeing. Life also involves the challenge of working at finding angles of plausibility and appreciation. What could be more intellectual, ethical and spiritual than this kind of encounter with the Other?"

Valuing that encounter, and learning its value within an intellectual environment that respects multiple interpretations of text, deepens not only a sense of Jewish identity but also a commitment to the community of klal Yisrael. "The text is the sinew that connects the Jewish people," says Shapiro. "It is sacred, precious and profound, and it conveys something we have in common. Despite our differences and different interpretations of the text, only by developing an understanding of multiple modes of reading can we develop empathy for one another."