Quality Criteria for Torah Scholarship: Justiciability and Academia

Rabbi’s Opening Post

Quality Criteria for Torah Scholarship: Justiciability and Academia

Posted on 23/1/2006

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Quality Criteria for Torah Scholarship: Justiciability and Academia

In this thread I would like to discuss a troubling anomaly, which seems to me inherent and not really solvable. It arose incidentally in the adjacent thread on “scientific Kabbalah.”

In the field of Jewish studies (as in philosophy as well), the distinction between external research on the field and original work within the field under discussion is very blurred.

For example, the distinction between a scholar of literature and poetry and a novelist or poet is sharp and clear. Of course, there is nothing to prevent someone from being both, but these are two different occupations.

By contrast, in the Torah realm, the distinction between a scholar of Jewish law and someone who studies or develops Jewish law is entirely blurred. Both deal in interpretation of the same sources. Sometimes in different ways, but who is to say that one is justified and not the other?

This lack of distinction underlies many of the contemporary conflicts between academic scholars of Jewish law and practitioners of Jewish law, who generally do not relate to one another the way a poet relates to a scholar of poetry.

In Judaism there is a sense (justified to a certain extent) of confrontation and rivalry, because both sides are “playing” on the same field.

A sharp expression of this problematic situation appears in the title of a Jewish studies conference held at Bar-Ilan University: “There Is No Judaism Without Jewish Studies.” Moreover, it is well known that quite a few academic scholars (for example, Prof. Sha’ama) see themselves as Torah scholars, the continuers of the authentic tradition in our generation, and as an alternative to yeshiva students and even to Jewish legal authorities.

I should add that the same is true of philosophy, although there the distinction is still sharper than in the Torah realm. Many times (indeed, in most cases) scholars of philosophy are not philosophers, even though they themselves are sometimes unaware of this. There is no recognized category of “philosophers,” distinct from professors of philosophy. That is unlike poets and novelists.

One further remark: once a well-known person who serves as editor of a journal in Jewish studies approached me and invited me to contribute an article. He told me that he had read my book (“Shtei Agalot”), and that he was asking that “the article not be like the book.” I asked what he meant. He replied that the article had to be “justiciable.”

I understood what he meant, and told him I would pass, because I am not prepared to submit to academic dictates that impose an intellectual vacuum on articles.

Explanation: the criterion of justiciability is an attempt to make the humanities “scientific.” According to the rules of justiciability, the author of an academic article may not express positions regarding the substantive issues, but only describe the positions of those active in the field (a scholar of poetry should discuss what poets do, not write poetry in a journal of criticism). Therefore academic articles do not make claims within the field under discussion, but claims about the field under discussion. An academic article will not argue in favor of women’s equality in Judaism; rather, it will describe the views of several thinkers (preferably dead, though today that is no longer essential—they have run out of dead ones, in the spirit of “the dead do not praise the Lord” [Psalms 115:17]) on that subject.

Because of this phenomenon, several sophisticated techniques have been developed for conveying ideas through the academic medium. For example, someone who wants to argue for greater pluralism in Jewish law should not write polemical journalism (whose place is in a newspaper, not in a respectable journal—unless you are a well-known dinosaur and no one will dare reject your article). Instead, he can take some issue, even if it is completely irrelevant, and show that all the possible positions regarding it did in fact arise throughout the history of Jewish law. That is how value-laden messages are transmitted through an academic medium, and so on.

By contrast, articles that deal with Jewish law itself, rather than the academic study of Jewish law, are not subject to “justiciability,” at least not in its academic sense. They make claims—or at least they are supposed to make claims (and not merely be compilations and collections, as is common today).

Still, there really is a price to be paid for the absence of quality criteria in traditional Torah scholarship. There is a great deal of trash. Although, in my humble opinion, academia has no less of it, so it is not clear to me that the vacuum is worth the cost.

Clarification: I do not mean to argue that a traditional Torah article cannot be evaluated. Of course it can, and therefore I know that some are good and some are bad. But I am not familiar with criteria parallel to “justiciability.” If we do not want a vacuum, it is impossible to prevent the expression of positions, and it is not desirable to do so either (whereas in research it certainly is).

The difficulty I raised above—that it is hard to distinguish between the two domains, and therefore some scholars lay claim to the mantle of Torah scholarship—is more serious. On the one hand, they are supposed to preserve justiciability, that is, refrain from making substantive claims (they are supposed to study the legal authorities, not issue rulings in their stead). On the other hand, they do make substantive claims and try to serve as an alternative to traditional study and legal decision-making.

There is a common comparison in the legal world, which may shed light on the matter at hand, between “the learned” and legal practitioners (= judges and attorneys). By the way, every time anew I recoil when I hear a group of people calling itself “the learned” (just kidding, I couldn’t resist).

My questions:

1. Do you agree with my claims?

2. Is there a solution that would distinguish between the domains (academic research and traditional learning)?

3. How can one draw a sharp distinction between articles in the two domains?

4. Can an alternative justiciability be created? That is, can one create quality criteria within traditional learning?

Source (forum “Atzor Kan Khoshvim”): http://www.bhol.co.il/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=1776606&forum_id=1364