{"id":2030,"date":"2019-02-20T09:17:06","date_gmt":"2019-02-20T14:17:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/?p=2030"},"modified":"2019-02-20T09:18:11","modified_gmt":"2019-02-20T14:18:11","slug":"diction-and-duty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/2019\/02\/diction-and-duty\/","title":{"rendered":"Diction and Duty"},"content":{"rendered":"

DICTION AND DUTY<\/strong><\/p>\n

When teaching at the Metivta, the UTJ\u2019s Rabbinical Program in Teaneck, NJ, which prepared young men for traditional rabbinic ordination, a student whose BA was from a third-tier, state university, wrote a paper, the diction of which\u00a0was, to be generous, “inadequate”.\u00a0 A more precise description would be “appalling,” but “inadequate\u201d\u00a0got the job done.\u00a0 Trying to explain to this graduate rabbinical student that it is insufficient, i.e. \u201cnot good enough\u201d to “get the material right,\u201d\u00a0but to communicate rightly understood material\u00a0effectively, in a manner that engages the reader, and able to elicit a positive response. At\u00a0JTS, Saul Lieberman taught his Talmud shiur in\u00a0English, not\u00a0Hebrew or Yiddish, French or German, the languages he spoke before arriving in the United States.\u00a0.\u00a0 Given that English was not his first language and Sifre Deuteronomy 46, a canonical, Tanaitic Halakhic Midrash, requires that Torah be taught in Hebrew, the \u201cLanguage of Holiness,\u201d he reasoned that the majority of his students would be commissioned to teach Torah within an English linguistic environment<\/p>\n

After correcting the student’s paper’s diction, I asked the student to submit a clean version for assessment.\u00a0 Offended that his writing was “attacked,” and by implication, his existential\u00a0bona fides\u00a0<\/em>impugned, this sincere, honest fellow,\u00a0protested to Rabbi Ronald Price, the UTJ’s Dean and, among other things, my boss.<\/p>\n

When studying for her BA in Hebrew at Temple University, my sister Linda took a class with Rabbi Gerald Bildstein, now a leading scholar of Jewish Thought at Ben\u00a0Gurion University. Some\u00a0Orthodox coeds asked R. Bildstein, an outstanding academic professional, for\u00a0a \u201cbreak,\u201d i.e. an easy \u201cA,\u201d because they were \u201cFrum” culture insiders.”\u00a0 R. Bildstein replied that as Orthodox students, they [a] should be held to a higher standard, because\u00a0[b] their Torah requires that they, professing religious commitment, ought to\u00a0strive for excellence.<\/p>\n

Religious excellence is not achieved by being extra strict or gratuitously parochial; it is\u00a0manifest by being precise in pursuit of doing “what is right and good.”\u00a0 [Deut. 6:18]\u00a0In order to explain Torah effectively, with kindness and passion, and, the Torah needs to be expressed precisely.\u00a0 Language is that tool whereby one soul talks to another. It is like a violin; its sounds can be beautiful or it can make discord. “Life and death are in the hand, i.e. power, of language\u201d [Proverbs 18:21]. In order to touch the heart, we have to enter the ear.<\/p>\n\n

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Religious excellence is not achieved by being extra strict or gratuitously parochial; it is\u00a0manifest by being precise in pursuit of doing “what is right and good.”\u00a0 [Deut. 6:18]\u00a0In order to explain Torah effectively, with kindness and passion, and, the Torah needs to be expressed precisely.\u00a0 Language is that tool whereby one soul talks to another. It is like a violin; its sounds can be beautiful or it can make discord. “Life and death are in the hand, i.e. power, of language\u201d [Proverbs 18:21]. In order to touch the heart, we have to enter the ear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":2033,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[75,1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[86],"class_list":["post-2030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2030"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2035,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2030\/revisions\/2035"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2030"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}