• Reason and Revelation: A Response
• Kenneth Hanson

Zev Garber’s reflections on “Teaching Torah in the Academy,” as what he defines as a “learning exchange,” have struck a proverbial chord in me. His approach to teaching is fundamentally Jewish, since, while affirming the principle of Torah mi-Sinai, it builds on the same dialectic methodology employed by Jewish Sages over the course of millennia and exemplified in talmudic discourse. I am mindful of the classic Barbra Streisand film, Yentl, in which her character, a girl masquerading as a boy in order to attend a rabbinical yeshiva, is engaging in conversation of a personal nature with a study hall partner (and secret romantic interest). The headmaster immediately notices this and approaches them both, asking pointedly, “Are you agreeing or disagreeing?” to which the two students respond in unison, “Disagreeing!”

That scene has perpetually remained with me, as a teacher of undergraduate college students, given that young people in contemporary Western culture are reared from early childhood to approach school as a series of [End Page 127] obstacles that may be overcome only by providing programmed responses to whatever material they are confronted with. The educational system itself is to blame, training them like sea lions to leap through a series of hoops, never questioning why the hoops are there or what they represent. When texts are assigned for reading, students are instructed merely to reflect on them without recognizing that every author, like every pedagogue, has an angle to elucidate, an argument to make, a point to drive home. In almost every case, in advancing one argument, the author and/or classroom lecturer is disagreeing with someone else. Perhaps the most significant challenge in today’s university classroom is to frame the material presented not as an encyclopedic compendium of “information” to which students give sheep-like assent but to facilitate, in Garber‘s words, “comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.”

Unlike the physical sciences, wherein the goal is to arrive at the “correct” answer, the objective of a liberal arts/humanities education ought to involve the identification of multifarious issues (“revelation”) while learning to form and to address cogent opinions (“reason”) that hold academic water. In Garber’s words, the teacher should be not so much a “knowledge-dispenser” as a “knowledge-facilitator.” Unfortunately, being “passively taught” is the rule rather than the exception in a system whoser major, if not only, goal is to promote acceptable scores on standardized tests. The “seeds of midrashic activity” of which Garber writes are not easily evaluated or measured as “learning outcomes,” and perhaps for this reason little value is placed on them in the academy. Nonetheless, the “way of Midrash” is perhaps the most valuable discipline to be appropriated in an academic setting. Moreover, the “twist” to which Garber refers represents a unique contribution in fusing traditional Jewish learning with the approaches of modern scholarship. Such an approach may, in fact, be seen as an echo of the rabbinic innovations with regard to the Oral Torah, which preserved the tradition of that which was communicated in writing to Moses, while adapting it (by what amounted to a “mutation” of sorts) to succeeding generations.

There is no clearer example of the “way of Midrash” than the one provided by Garber regarding contemporary discussions of the historical Jesus. For many generations, the very idea of constructive, academic dialogue between Jews and “believers” in Jesus, whether identified as Christians, [End Page 128] Judeo-Christians, or Messianic Jews, has been all but unthinkable. As result, it would hardly be an exaggeration to observe that interfaith relations have been and remain hampered by a sea of ignorance. To this, I would add the observation that, when it comes to the academy, ignorance is compounded by an inability to grasp how to engage those of another faith perspective.1

Unfortunately, the tendency among many undergraduate students is again to search for “right” answers, resorting to the traditional creeds and doctrines in which they have been reared. When it comes to religious-oriented discussions, the student must in many cases be “retrained” to ask “academic” questions, while understanding the debatable scholarly issues involved. Such issues of course have...

• 理由与启示：回应
• 肯尼思·汉森

Zev Garber 对“在学院教授托拉”（他将其定义为“学习交流”）的反思引起了我的共鸣。他的教学方法基本上是犹太教的，因为在肯定《托拉米西奈》原则的同时，它建立在犹太圣贤几千年来所使用的相同辩证方法论的基础上，并在塔木德话语中得到了例证。我记得芭芭拉·史翠珊的经典电影《Yentl》，其中她扮演的角色是一个为了参加拉比犹太学院而伪装成男孩的女孩，正在与自习室的伙伴（以及秘密的浪漫兴趣）进行个人性质的对话。 。校长立刻注意到了这一点，走近两人，尖锐地问道：“你们同意还是不同意？”两个学生异口同声：“不同意！”

作为一名本科生老师，这一幕一直萦绕在我的脑海中，因为当代西方文化中的年轻人从小就被抚养长大，进入学校时遇到了一系列[完第127页]障碍，只有通过提供程序化的课程才能克服这些障碍。对他们遇到的任何材料的反应。教育体系本身就是罪魁祸首，教育体系像海狮一样训练他们跳过一系列的铁环，却从不质疑这些铁环为何存在或它们代表什么。当课文被分配阅读时，学生们只是被要求进行反思，而没有意识到每个作者，就像每个教育者一样，都有一个需要阐明的角度，一个需要提出的论点，一个需要传达的观点。几乎在每种情况下，在提出一个论点时，作者和/或课堂讲师都会不同意其他人的观点。也许当今大学课堂上最重大的挑战是，所呈现的材料不是像百科全书般的“信息”纲要，让学生们像绵羊一样同意，而是要促进，用加伯的话说，“理解、应用、分析、综合和理解”。评估。”

与物理科学的目标是得出“正确”答案不同，文科/人文教育的目标应该包括识别各种问题（“启示”），同时学习形成和解决令人信服的观点（ “理性”）具有学术意义。用加伯的话说，教师与其说是“知识传播者”，不如说是“知识促进者”。不幸的是，在一个主要目标（如果不是唯一目标）是提高标准化考试可接受分数的系统中，“被动教学”是一种规则，而不是例外。加伯所写的“米德拉西活动的种子”不容易被评估或衡量为“学习成果”，也许正是因为这个原因，它们在学院中没有受到重视。尽管如此，“米德拉什之道”也许是学术环境中最有价值的学科。此外，加伯所指的“扭曲”代表了将传统犹太学问与现代学术方法融合的独特贡献。事实上，这种方法可以被视为拉比对《口头托拉》创新的回响，它保留了以书面形式传达给摩西的传统，同时对其进行了改编（相当于“突变”）的种类）到后代。

关于“米德拉什之道”，没有比加伯提供的有关历史耶稣的当代讨论更清楚的例子了。对于许多代人来说，犹太人和耶稣的“信徒”之间进行建设性的学术对话的想法，无论是基督徒、[结束第 128 页]犹太基督徒，还是弥赛亚犹太人，几乎是不可想象的。因此，可以毫不夸张地说，不同信仰之间的关系已经并且仍然受到无知之海的阻碍。对此，我想补充一点，即在学术界，无知因无法掌握如何与其他信仰观点的人接触而变得更加复杂。1

不幸的是，许多本科生的倾向再次是寻求“正确”的答案，诉诸于他们成长过程中的传统信条和学说。当涉及以宗教为导向的讨论时，学生在许多情况下必须接受“再培训”以提出“学术”问题，同时理解所涉及的有争议的学术问题。此类问题当然有...