The Second Conversation: Interpretive Authority in the Bible Classroom

By Ziva R. Hassenfeld

A teacher reflects on her teaching practice, bringing literacy scholarship into the arena of Jewish education.
 
In The Second Conversation, university professor Ziva R. Hassenfeld returns to the middle school classroom to study her own seventh grade Bible class. The book explores dilemmas of practice she encountered around interpretive authority in the classroom. She analyzes the questions that came up in her teaching within the context of the most influential religious education scholarship, literacy scholarship, sociocultural theory and literary theory. She highlights the importance of two conversations about interpretive rules within the classroom, the first about the text’s meaning, and the second about competing conventions for determining its meaning. Instructors of any type of literature will benefit from Hassenfeld’s study, which offers rich ideas about when and how teachers enforce a classroom’s way of reading or follow a student’s line of inquiry toward more flexible interpretation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brandeis University Press
• Release date: Mar 1, 2024
• ISBN: 9781684581900

Book preview

THE MANDEL-BRANDEIS SERIES IN JEWISH EDUCATION

Sharon Feiman-Nemser, Jonathan Krasner, and Jon A. Levisohn, Editors

The Mandel-Brandeis Series in Jewish Education, established by the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education, publishes scholarly monographs and edited volumes of compelling research on Jewish educational settings and processes.

The series is made possible through the Mandel Foundation.

For a complete list of books that are available in the series,

visit https://brandeisuniversitypress.com/series/jewish-education/.

Ziva R. Hassenfeld,

The Second Conversation:

Interpretive Authority in the Bible Classroom

Joseph Reimer,

Making Shabbat:

Celebrating and Learning at American Jewish Summer Camps

Alex Pomson and Jack Wertheimer,

Inside Jewish Day Schools: Leadership, Learning, and Community

The Second Conversation

Interpretive Authority in the Bible Classroom

ZIVA R. HASSENFELD

BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY PRESS

Waltham, Massachusetts

Brandeis University Press

© 2024 by Ziva R. Hassenfeld

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

Designed by Richard Hendel

Typeset in Utopia by Passumpsic Publishing

For permission to reproduce any of the material in this book, contact Brandeis University Press, 415 South Street, Waltham MA 02453, or visit brandeisuniversitypress.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-publishing Data

NAMES: Hassenfeld, Ziva R., author.

TITLE: The second conversation : interpretive authority in the Bible classroom / Ziva R. Hassenfeld.

DESCRIPTION: Waltham, Massachusetts : Brandeis University Press, [2024] | Series: The Mandel-Brandeis series in Jewish education | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Contents: My classroom: The school, the students, the subject matter, the teacher, and the research agenda—Creating a classroom of interpreters —Stepping into my students’ scriptural literacy practices—The first conversation—Interpretive rules in the classroom—The second conversation—Discussing interpretive rules in the classroom—Conclusion: The stakes of knowing how to have the second conversation. | Summary: An appreciation of the importance of shared literacy practice in a classroom and responsibility of a teacher to induct students into the particular interpretive rules. The author makes the claim that the ‘first’ and ‘second’ conversations also offer an answer to a pressing question in literacy studies and educational theory—Provided by publisher.

IDENTIFIERS: LCCN 2023036786 (print) | LCCN 2023036787 (ebook) | ISBN 9781684581894 (paperback) | ISBN 9781684581887 (cloth) | ISBN 9781684581900 (ebook)

SUBJECTS: LCSH: Bible. Old Testament—Criticism, interpretation, etc., Jewish. | Bible. Old Testament—Study and teaching.

CLASSIFICATION: LCC BS1186 .H37 2024 (print) | LCC BS1186 (ebook) | DDC 221.6 —dc23/eng/20231017

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023036786

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023036787

5  4  3  2  1

For Jonah—my forever chevruta.

זאת הפעם עצם מעצמי ובשר מבשרי

Genesis 2:23

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. MY CLASSROOM

The School, the Students, the Subject Matter, the Teacher, and the Research Agenda

2. CREATING A CLASSROOM OF INTERPRETERS

3. STEPPING INTO MY STUDENTS’ SCRIPTURAL LITERACY PRACTICES

4. THE FIRST CONVERSATION

Interpretive Rules in the Classroom

5. THE SECOND CONVERSATION

Discussing Interpretive Rules in the Classroom

CONCLUSION

The Stakes of Knowing How to Have the Second Conversation

METHODOLOGICAL APPENDIXES

Appendix 1

Coding the Culminating Whole-Class Discussion Transcripts

Appendix 2

Barry Holtz, Orientations, and JTS Standards and Benchmarks

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgments

All thought and language is a conversation with others. My impossible task here is to thank the others who have been in conversation with my words and thoughts in this book. I want to start by thanking my teacher colleagues for trusting me and embracing me in joining their school communities. Thank you to Dr. Susie Tanchel for mentoring me from my first day as a teacher and for pulling me back into the classroom after I completed my doctorate. Thank you to my mentors and advisors at Stanford University: Ari Y. Kelman, Claude Goldenberg, and Maren Aukerman. Without Ari, I would have never finished my doctorate. His kindness, patience, and deep respect for students inspires me daily. Without Claude, I would never have felt I belonged in literacy. Claude took me in as a student, odd as my research interests were, and made me feel like I was part of the team. Maren’s effort to engage seriously with children’s ways of thinking is countercultural and profoundly right. My whole research agenda began from the questions she helped me ask. Thank you as well to my student research assistant, Liat Fischer, who became a partner in my teaching and research during her years at Brandeis. And most significantly, thank you to my seventh-grade students (now in college!), who taught me so much about interpretation and texts through their openness and persistent inquisitiveness.

Several individuals provided critical feedback on drafts of chapters, helping me find my voice for this book. These include my colleagues in our Brandeis writing group: Sharon Feiman-Nemser, Jonathan Krasner, Jon Levisohn, Danielle Igra, and Leah Gordon. Thank you to my faculty mentors at Brandeis, Ulka Anjaria and Carina Ray, for enabling and encouraging me to run a book-manuscript workshop. The feedback I received from Cynthia Lewis, Lara Handsfield, and Mary Juzwik moved this book from a quirky account of my own teaching journey to a coherent, timely, and organized scholarly book for the field of literacy research. I am forever grateful to them for making the time and agreeing to the workshop. Thank you to my colleagues in NEJS at Brandeis for believing in Jewish education. Thank you to Madadh Richey, Yuval Evri, Eugene Sheppard, and especially Jonathan Sarna, who gave me the best advice I ever received: Start writing your first book today; it takes a while. I am grateful to my home at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University; their support has been critical to this research every step of the way. I truly appreciate Aileen Cahill for the meticulous work she put into helping this book cross the finish line.

Finally, I am beyond grateful to my family: to my parents, Joseph and Gail, and my in-laws, Joni and Danny. To my mother, especially: on top of grandparenting, she has been my most careful and helpful reader at every stage of this book. To my husband, Jonah: I can’t count the number of hours you sat with me reading, writing, reworking, thinking, and encouraging me. It is no wonder that with you came my three greatest gifts in this world, Amal, Tehila, and Moshe. I thank our children for reminding me of the better world this book seeks to help build—starting with classrooms that honor and engage children’s minds at their most formative stage.

Introduction

It was a Tuesday afternoon, and I had sixteen twelve- and thirteen-year-olds on the edge of their seats, holding the printed text of Genesis 2 in their hands. The temperature in the room was already high; to borrow Jonathan Haidt’s metaphor, the emotional elephants were out and stampeding (2012). The fate of our discussion had eclipsed the usual humdrum, and we were fully in our own world, fighting for interpretive clarity. Did the Hebrew Bible teach that men and women were equal or that men were superior to women? Specifically, did Genesis 2 tell a tale of a divine surgery performed on the first man to turn his rib into a woman or the dividing of a single androgynous being? It was as if my students’ entire Jewish educational lives were on trial. Was this sacred text that they had been asked to study and revere for years right or wrong—good or bad?

I asked the seventh-grade students in my Hebrew Bible class to always focus their interpretive analysis on the words in the text in front of them. This was how we made meaning in my classroom; this is how they were being asked to decide what Genesis 2 means and what values it reflects about women and gender equality.

And then Gabe spoke up: I want to address something pretty big. We’ve all been functioning in this class under the idea, for argument’s sake, that the Torah [Hebrew Bible] was created by God. But if we take a different idea that other people have had, that the Torah was created by multiple writers over thousands of years, . . . I think it could have been written with the intent to have women be inferior to men, like that’s the point of the story. It’s a creation story, but we have to think about who this was written by and the time it was written.

Gabe’s remark shifted the entire focus of our classroom conversation (at least for a while). We had been talking about the words on the page, and now he suggested we talk about something different: the imagined authors of the biblical text.

What I have learned in the years since this classroom moment is that Gabe’s comment revealed for me, the teacher, a core dilemma of practice. Gabe challenged the way we were reading the biblical text and offered an alternative way to read it. His comment demonstrated that he understood the way our class was reading and interpreting the biblical text together—We’ve all been functioning in this class under the idea, for argument’s sake, that the Torah was created by God—and that he felt comfortable challenging it. Gabe knew how to interpret the biblical text within the boundaries that I, the teacher, had set for the class. He also knew how to contrast the way we were reading the text in class —that is, within our classroom interpretive community—with the rules that guided other interpretive communities he occupied or knew about. This was significant. My dilemma was not a theological dilemma—it was a pedagogical one. Gabe invoked background knowledge that I had not provided to my other students. And yet, he was genuinely and earnestly expressing a way of reading that was important to him. How was I to respond?

During the 2017–18 school year, I joined the faculty of a Jewish day school as the seventh-grade Hebrew Bible teacher. I was pursuing a teacher research project generously funded by the Sylvia and Moshe Ettenberg Research Grant in Jewish Education and completing my postdoctoral fellowship at Brandeis University. I taught for fifty-five minutes, four days a week, for an entire academic year. Using research memos, teacher journals, transcriptions of recorded classes, and student work, I documented my teaching journey with a focus on the dilemmas of practice that came up for me. While there has been important research in the teaching and learning of the Hebrew Bible in Jewish day schools, this book is the first to examine classroom pedagogy from the teacher perspective.

Communities rely on their education systems to induct students into their literacy practices. One might think that Bible classrooms in religious schools have a clear set of literacy practices they seek to induct students into, but in Jewish education that is not the case. Jewish schools in the US find themselves trying to prepare students for lives both as members of various Jewish communities and as Americans. This tension makes Hebrew Bible classrooms in American Jewish schools a particularly interesting case to study. How do teachers in these classrooms negotiate among the literacy practices they want to teach, the practices they are expected to teach, and the ways in which their students want to read? This book explores these questions through the lens of my own teacher research in one Hebrew Bible classroom over the course of one school year. It sheds light on how a literacy practice and interpretive community can be cultivated in a classroom, the broader Jewish and secular literacy practices that formed the backdrop of my students’ reading, and the purposes and goals of contemporary Jewish education.

In the following pages, I will locate the argument of this book in four separate bodies of research: philosophy of language, Jewish scriptural literacy practices, Hebrew Bible education, and situated learning.

PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE

There is a long tradition in philosophy of language and sociolinguistics that sees all linguistic interactions as unfolding as if according to rules. Erving Goffman (1981) argues that our days are filled with linguistic encounters that unfold as if according to rules that each party knows. When one party doesn’t know the rules, awkwardness ensues. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1998) calls these rituals language games and argues that any use of language can be seen as a game. In the analogy of a board game, one might see the words as pieces and the way a speaker uses them as following implicit, unspoken rules for how to play that game. In Goffman’s famous example, if someone asks, Do you have the time? a listener knows to respond, Sure. It’s five o’clock, rather than saying, Sure, and nothing more. A simple yes, plainly answering the question, reveals that the listener doesn’t know the rules of that particular language game (1981, 16).

Another example is in the ritualized greetings we hear every day. When you see a colleague at work and ask, How was your weekend? you’re not looking for a detailed account of the ups and downs of your colleague’s past few days. Instead, the question plays a role in creating a quick connection and a reorientation to the work week. A simple Fine, thanks. How was yours? generally suffices.

These rituals can become quite complicated. One of the standard language-based rituals that shows up in education is the famous initiation-response-evaluation (IRE) sequence (Mehan 1982). A teacher asks a question to which she knows the answer. In reading a picture book about a duck, the teacher might ask, Where is the duck on this page? The teacher knows the answer, and the students know she knows the answer. A student raises his hand, offers the right answer, and the teacher responds with an evaluation of the answer, such as Great job!

John L. Austin (1975) points out that everyone understands that when actors make a statement on stage, they are making that statement in character, and, therefore, Macduff can announce his intention to kill Macbeth without audience members calling the police. In other words, the audience understands how the language game of theater is played. This is a simple example, but the more one looks, the more language games one finds. In fact, almost every use of language follows the rules of a language game. Think about some of the following uses of language: getting directions, going grocery shopping, pumping gas, dropping kids off at school, seeing an old friend for the first time in years, and so on. Each of these encounters will have its own ritualized uses of language analogous to the ways in which rule-based games unfold.

Though the word rule might seem to suggest a rigid consistency, I believe that it is useful to think about interpretive games as unfolding according to rules because it highlights the degree to which interpretive discourse is highly patterned and structured. Over the course of this book, I hope the reader will come to find the analogy of rules useful in understanding what happens when students interpret texts together and, especially, those moments when rules are broken or challenged.

As we move through the world, we are constantly interpreting the language we find around us. To arrive at the correct interpretation—that is, to respond to language in the expected way—one needs to master a host of language games and the rules by which they are played. These rules can usually be inferred from observation and rely on an interplay between the text (whether visual, auditory, or what have you) and the context (what Goffman [1974, 10] calls the frame in which the text appears). This is true in both oral and written language.

Like any setting, classrooms can accommodate an extraordinary variety of language games. Raising one’s hand and waiting to be called on, responding to a teacher’s question, even saying, I want to add to what Paulette was saying —each of these represent moves in different language games typical of the classroom. To see how these classroom language games are governed by implicit (but no less rigid) rules, one need only imagine a student that raises his foot in order to gain the floor or a student who expresses surprise that her teacher has to ask students to remind her of basic multiplication facts.

In this book, I don’t address most of the spoken and unspoken rules that govern classroom behavior and discourse. I focus instead on a very specific language game governed by its own set of rules, that is, the language game of textual interpretation in the classroom. When students and teachers read a text closely together, especially when it is written in another language, they interpret that text. They transform the words of the text into other words meant to be equivalent.

The language game of textual interpretation in the classroom, like all language games, is governed by rules, in this case interpretive rules (Fish 1980; Haroutunian-Gordon 2009). These rules govern which interpretations are valid and which aren’t. What are readers allowed to say and do with the text, and what are they not allowed to say and do? Other writers have used slightly different phrases for what I see as basically the same idea. For example, some writers talk about frames (Cole 1996, 186), orientations (Holtz 2003, 51), semiotic modes (Kress 2010, 80), or designs (New London Group 1996, 73). Each of these phrases highlights that interpretations of texts follow patterns and that, in different settings, interpretations of the same text may play out according to different patterns.

For example, does an author’s biography shed light on the meaning of a text? It depends on what interpretive game you are playing. Sometimes, we do talk about the author’s childhood experiences or birthplace. At other times, we might require that the text speak for itself. These are two examples of particular interpretive rules one might apply. Although literary theorists have tried to argue that one set of interpretive rules might be superior to another (for example, see Wimsatt and Beardsley 1946), for the sake of this book, I won’t evaluate interpretive rules. Instead, I will treat them as a given in any particular textual interaction and a reflection of the communities and literacy practices we inhabit. As I describe moments when readers interpret texts, I will focus on articulating the interpretive rules being used rather than talking about what the best rules would be.

JEWISH SCRIPTURAL LITERACY PRACTICES

Communities of readers tend to use related sets of interpretive rules. These sets of rules make up the literacy practices characteristic of that community. Literacy practices are rarely articulated