Jewish Thought as an Educational Project: Implications for Research

The field of Jewish thought seeks recognition as a distinct discipline: What is Jewish about “Jewish thought”—its language, canon, contents, or historical affiliations? A prevalent scholarly paradigm presents Jewish thought as arising from an ongoing “encounter” between Jewish elements—“internal” factors—and philosophies, sciences, and cultures—“external” factors. This article argues that the paradigm of “encounter”—however important—overlooks a constitutive dimension of Jewish thought: its character as an educational project. Its texts are oriented toward a community and audience, and toward “translation” between traditions and beliefs and changing social and cultural conditions. Argument, language, metaphor, genre, and the distinction between what may be said openly and what must remain concealed are therefore inseparable from questions of audience, identity, and communal continuity. The article proposes incorporating tools from the philosophy of education into the study of Jewish thought. It focuses on three concepts: “translation”; the tension between “authenticity” and “relevance”; and the development from “language” into “literature.” It first reexamines the paradigm of “encounter” and its reductive and creative possibilities. It then presents these educational concepts as tools for interpreting texts of Jewish thought. Finally, it reconsiders the customary distinction between objective and distanced “second-order” scholarly discourse and the more immediate “first-order” discourse of teaching and education. The argument advanced here is that the educational dimension is constitutive of Jewish thought and must therefore be taken into account in its scholarly research and teaching, with broader implications for the humanities and social sciences.