Prolegomenon to an exegetical-spritual pedagogy for the study of Safta Emet's homilies: The case of 'self-trust': [from the section: traditionalists at the onset of modernity - listening and reading]

Elie Holzer's analysis of the implicit hermeneutics of R. Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter, known as the "Sfat Emet", and its educational implications, is grounded in the hermeneutic perspectives of Paul Ricoeur and Emmanuel Levinas. It also draws on contemporary educational discourse that emphasizes the importance of self-trust on the part of students, and an atmosphere of mutual trust between students and teachers - to facilitate the enactment of what he calls "transformative education", namely the kind of education that expands and deepens perspective rather that merely transmits knowledge. Through close analysis of selected homilies, Holzer claims that the Sfat Emet actually promulgates a new notion of Oral Torah. In this conception, the Oral Torah is not presented as a closed system fully revealed to Moses on Sinai, merely extrapolated and unfolded by the Sages. Neither is seen as restricted to articulation by a select, elite group of the learned. The notion of Oral Torah is expanded to include the new interpretations and new actions of all Jews seeking a life of truth derived from within the text throughout the generations. The Sfat Emet, according to Holzer, seeks to inspire self-confidences, rather that self-effacement, in his hearers and readers - such that they might trust themselves to generate such novel understandings. This potential for the creation of new understandings and new patterns of action, this individual vitality, represents the aspect of divinity hidden within the soul of every person. From an educational point of view, learning conducted under the aegis of this orientation would strive to engender not just a new trust in traditional texts as potential bearers of meanings, but also a renewed self-trust withing the learner. This attitude, which would pervade the learning experience, is to be contrasted both with the "hermeneutics of suspicion" so common in contemporary academic circles and with the attitude of self-effacement so often imposed by traditional teachers on their students.