Old School, New School, One School, Two Schools
By the time this volume will have come out, it will mark almost a decade since I began the Redeeming Relevance series. When I started, I bemoaned the decline of traditional Jewish Bible commentary in the twentieth century. I complained that what was being written was either too scholarly or too flighty. There were far too few works that showed the classical combination of sophistication and accessibility, and the proof of the pudding was the lack of twentieth-century works on our bookshelves.
At the same time, I noted that there were encouraging new lights on the horizon and that I was certainly not coming to a deserted enterprise. No doubt, most readers are aware that if there was reason for encouragement at that time, this is all the more true today.
There is no question that the last decade has been a productive one. Primarily thanks to what has become known as the “Gush school,” also referred to simply as the “new school,” novel interpretations from a new generation are becoming better known and more widely diffused. Some of the new stars in the field include Rabbi Elchanan Samet, Rabbi Amnon Bazak, and Rabbi Yonatan Grossman, but there are many others. Though this school is primarily Israeli, its work has become more familiar to the English-speaking world through the efforts of various American-born teachers such as Rabbi Menachem Liebtag, Rabbi Yitzchak Etshalom, and Rabbi Hayyim Angel. Concurrently, there has been a more general flourishing of Tanakh study in English-speaking countries, marked by the publication of several new books and translations, as well as the organization of many well-attended study conferences in major Jewish centers such as New York, Toronto, and London.
Yet, in spite of it all, we can raise the same questions that we raised at the beginning of the journey. Are we really producing works that succeed in combining relevance and rigor? And if we are, do these works bear the depth and creativity of yesteryear that will allow them to find a lasting place in the Jewish library?
In this regard, the new teachings, especially the ones from the Gush school, have not been unilaterally welcome. One reason is this school’s alleged tendency to discount Talmudic and Midrashic interpretations. Of course, disagreement with rabbinic interpretation is as old as the interpretive endeavor itself.1See Ibn Ezra’s famous comments on the rabbinic understanding of Yitzchak’s age at the time of his being brought up as a sacrifice: “If this is a tradition, we accept it, but by way of reason it is incorrect” (Bereshit 22:4). In these few words, Ibn Ezra succinctly identifies the rules of the classical interpretive endeavor – whatever information is passed down as authoritative tradition must be accepted; whatever is the rabbis’ own educated inference from the text, however, is open to question. Moreover, by saying that he doesn’t know whether the age of Yitzchak falls into the former or the latter and then preceding to interpret the verse according to the latter, Ibn Ezra implies that since we almost never know what is actually tradition, we must generally analyze the text as if the words of the rabbis are not based on it. What is new is the place of rabbinic interpretation in the endeavor. When classical commentators differed with rabbinic explanations, they did so only after first examining earlier works of the tradition to which they belonged. They did this believing that they would usually find the correct meaning by poring over these works. Only afterward, when they did not find what they were looking for, did they feel free to disagree and/or proffer new interpretations. But it was not only to save themselves extra work that classical commentators referred back to the past. Familiarity and interaction with rabbinic works provided an interpretive context within which to work.
The importance of the latter should not be underestimated. Stanley Fish is known for most clearly arguing that which is patently true – that a text necessarily comes with a context. This means that if Jews have preconceptions about the Bible, so does any interpretive community to any text.2See Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982). Indeed, Nechama Leibowitz was predictably fascinated by his work; see Yael Unterman’s Nehama Leibowitz: Teacher and Bible Scholar (Jerusalem: Urim Publications, 2009), 470. Such a community creates the context, spelling out the basic assumptions, the ground rules, and the accepted “facts” about the text. It follows that arguing how to interpret a text across traditions is a near absurdity – the rules of the game are simply different. This is the point Alasdair MacIntyre makes so forcefully in his famous book, After Virtue: two people cannot even argue if they don’t first agree on the definition of the terms (e.g., virtue) that they are arguing about.3After Virtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981). Different approaches may share some of the same assumptions or otherwise include insights that can be useful to each other, but this can never be taken for granted.
To cut to the quick, one of the main questions about the new school is to what extent it is true to the classical Jewish interpretive community. Even if we look at this school’s more traditional exponents, this is an issue. For example, no one can seriously doubt the credentials of Rabbi Yoel Bin-Nun, often considered the father of this school. He is an outstanding and creative teacher of impeccable character. The question can only be about his approach. What made his approach “new” is finding his inspiration in many of the raw materials of the text: etymology, archeology, and language structure. Despite Bin-Nun’s comprehensive knowledge of rabbinic interpretations, it is often not clear what their place is in his approach.
Essentially, Bin-Nun tries to synthesize the traditional Jewish interpretive tradition with the tools of modern, academic biblical scholarship. When successful, this synthesis can be very powerful. Nonetheless, it is no simple feat to accomplish, especially if the rabbinic reading was intentionally ahistorical and unconcerned with the types of information that Bin-Nun is trying to integrate. In other words, the two approaches that Bin-Nun seeks to integrate may be working at cross purposes. If that is the case, tapping into academic scholarship in any significant way would undermine one’s rootedness in the traditional Jewish approach. This is essentially what Nechama Leibowitz was arguing when she chose to bypass most of the information that Bin-Nun found so valuable. Not surprisingly then, these two magnificent teachers were actually at loggerheads many years ago regarding how to study the biblical text, and consequently how it should be taught in Israeli schools.4Unterman, Nehama Leibowitz, 556–561.
A great admirer of Meir Weiss, who, like her, was influenced by the “New Criticism,” Leibowitz argued that a text had a life independent of its cultural context. Weiss gives the example of the contemporary readers of Shakespeare and Goethe missing the main point by getting overly caught up in the cultural trends and local realia that served as the background for these great writers.5Meir Weiss, The Bible from Within (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1984), 13–18. Yet Weiss also points out that ignorance in this context is not bliss, and that if studying Near Eastern languages will shed light on the meaning of a word, such study should not be ignored.
At the same time, however, though knowledge of the ancient world can add to our understanding, it is not meant to cast a shadow over the text’s meaning, which within the Jewish community has been primarily didactic. It would be difficult to say that Jewish commentaries have ever tried to reconstruct the historical Avraham or David, and there is a reason for this. It would have been only of secondary interest, since these men have been seen as literary characters, described in ways that would provide different meanings at different times. This is how I understand Ramban’s famous notion of ma’asei avot siman l’banim, that the actions of the [biblical] fathers are a sign for their progeny. Subsequent generations will understand the life of Avraham differently from their biblical ancestors and will accordingly derive new lessons from him. This is not, of course, to say that there are no constants, but rather that the text’s subtle nuances permit different generations to see different things, alongside the Torah’s major and obvious teachings that are accessible and relevant for all time.
The bottom line is that it will be difficult for the new school to follow a more universal medium of discourse without dropping many of the assumptions and methodologies of rabbinic interpretation. In some cases, one can see this quite vividly. For example, while the new school makes much out of words that appear with great frequency in specific sections (the leitwort), it has all but abandoned the rabbinic notion of extraneous language (lashon yitur) as a tool through which to understand the text. Almost universally accepted by classical commentators, the likely reason for the latter’s unpopularity among proponents of the new school is this tool’s assumption of a perfect and uncorrupted text, something unacceptable to the academic circles with which the new school attempts to conduct a dialogue.6“Attempts,” since there has been very little interest in the work of the new school by most academics.
At other times, however, new school writers will ignore the assumptions of academia. Classic ethical assumptions have, appropriately, not disappeared. Most of the new school writers still find Ya’akov’s statement (Bereshit 27:19), “I am Esav your firstborn,” problematic. Yet adhering to these types of assumptions undermines the universality of their work, since academics need not accept Ya’akov’s deception as a problem for Ya’akov or for anyone else living at that time. Hence, the price paid for what is ultimately a hybrid approach is far from negligible. In an attempt to bridge worlds, there comes the risk of pleasing no one.
But there is also room for a different critique. Relevance is not measured only by content but also by form. One of the beautiful features of traditional Jewish commentaries is the easy access it provides for sophisticated topics and methodology. Too many of the new studies get bogged down in long-winded explanations of structure and the like, often losing all but the most dedicated student in the process. This is not to criticize the need for depth and systematic explanation when it is required; if an in-depth, structural examination of a certain section of the Bible is needed to understand it better, it should be pursued. Yet, what scholars who undertake such studies need to realize is that this will often prevent their work from easily finding a place in the tradition, as their complexity places them in its margins.
Ultimately, a book that is not read does not contribute. And from a historical perspective, a book that does not continue being read will not make a historical contribution.
Truly, new knowledge and approaches have always been integrated by Jewish interpreters, but always from within the consciousness of the classical Jewish interpretive tradition. This means that we can greatly benefit from the work of the new school, but in order for it to find its place in the Jewish corpus it must conform to the broader contours of traditional parshanut. Otherwise, the truly valuable contributions it is making will fail to catch the interest of the Jewish people in the long term.
It is not only the new school that presents weaknesses to the contemporary Jewish reader. The old school is not without its own issues. For one, classical methodology is sometimes unable to address questions that can be answered more readily by systematic literary analysis or by knowledge of the ancient Near East. The sophisticated, contemporary reader is often aware that solutions to certain issues lie in these directions and, as such, is frustrated by the limits of the classical approach to the text. The upshot is that both schools have their strengths as well as their weaknesses. Consequently, it behooves us to try to gain from both approaches to the text as comprehensively as possible.
In my own work, I am keen to adopt the teachings and methods of the new school, but only from within a profound rootedness in the classical tradition on the one hand, and a fierce independence to forge new paths on the other. In this regard, I follow what I understand to be the road of the commentaries of yesteryear – to look everywhere for edification, but to search within my personal Jewish consciousness for interpretation.
As in previous volumes, in this book I seek new understandings that are intended to promote greater interest in the biblical text and deeper thought about its ramifications for our lives today. There is no doubt that my understandings are inspired by a diverse array of works, old and new, as well as by a variety of intellectual influences, both Jewish and general. I believe that any commentator’s work is enriched by the influences in his own life. The more diverse the influences, the richer the commentary – so long as it is centered in a coherent integration of these influences into a systematic whole, rooted in the Jewish interpretive tradition.
Relevance and the Written Word
In the previous volume, I wrote that Torah study is a conversation between man and God. This is certainly true, but it is also a conversation among the Jewish people as well. A welcome part of the conversation that my books have initiated has been the publication of several thoughtful reviews of my first two volumes. In one of the most insightful of these reviews, Rabbi Aharon Wexler writes that I sometimes bring “[my] points too far by connecting and comparing the lessons learned to the situation in modern-day Israel, or Jewish existence in the Diaspora.” He continues, “Nataf is so adept in elucidating his points that it makes any further discussion superfluous. It might have been better to let the reader come to his or her own conclusions and not walk us through it. I believe it takes away from his point and turns a great teaching moment into a sermon.”7Jewish Bible Quarterly 39:4 (Fall 2011), 270. This is an important observation and deserves a response.
On some level, it all comes down to the need to accept certain trade-offs. What Wexler observes will no doubt make this series less attractive for some readers. Indeed, it may be surprising to see what can be construed as sermonics in a volume whose readership is presumed to be highly intelligent and certainly capable of drawing their own conclusions. Yet, I believe that had I left out my own conclusions, it would be doing a disservice to the reader – if for no other reason than because it would be contrary to the genre that I am trying to emulate. As mentioned, Jewish reading of the Bible is primarily didactic. Such reading teaches with high standards of intellectual rigor and honesty, but they are the means, not the ends. The ultimate point of Jewish Bible study is, and always will be, inspiration and personal growth in light of its towering content.
Wexler is correct that it is educationally more effective to allow students to come to their own conclusions. This makes a teaching more personal as well as more memorable. Nonetheless, Jewish commentaries have often chosen to connect the dots for the reader and explicitly reveal contemporary applications. Such commentaries were written by great Jewish educators who understood that they were sacrificing great teaching moments by doing so. In those instances, they presumably felt the message was more important than the medium. This is certainly not always the case. In an educational exercise, for example, the message is less important than the process. Similarly, when the context allows the teacher to work with the student face to face, a teacher can afford the luxury of subordinating the message to the medium. In a written commentary, however, this is usually not the case. Here it is critical for the author to make his point known, even at the cost of making it less powerful than it would be in the ideal, oral setting.
But there is something else as well. While my readership is intelligent, it is also diverse. For each reader who would prefer a more academic style there is another who will find the more explicit implications of my interpretations essential. In a review letter, my friend and colleague, Rabbi Nathaniel Helfgot, writes that my work “moves our study . . . from classic Talmud Torah and exegesis to a work of Torat Chaim. Each chapter concludes with a penetrating insight and ‘take-away’ message for us as spiritually striving human beings, as individuals and as community.” I am sure that for many readers, the importance of going from Talmud Torah to Torat Chaim is critical to the endeavor of redeeming relevance.
There is another reason to avoid contemporary applications which Wexler actually does not mention. By seeking current implications, the author risks the eventual obsolescence of his work. What is timely for one generation is dated for another, especially in times that change so quickly. For me this is an even greater concern than the one Wexler raises. When one reads certain older works, he often senses their complete irrelevance to our own times. This is surely a high price to pay for seeking relevance. And yet, as I have argued in previous volumes, relevance is precisely what the Jewish commentator is called upon to pursue.
But relevance need not mean a short shelf life. Truly great works rise above the limitations of writing primarily for one’s own era, even as certain applications become dated. Concerning my own work, it is not for me to decide whether it will ever be considered truly great – I am sometimes embarrassed when my books are found next to authors much greater than I (though sometimes I am embarrassed for the opposite reason). Greatness can only be a dream, but relevance must be an agenda. In these pages, it remains mine.