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A short interview in which I discuss using different technologies to teach Talmud (in English) to undergraduates.

I refer in the video to C-Map, which can be found here.

 

Yesterday I found some time to drop in on part of a conference on Finance in Religious Law.  While unfortunately I was unable to attend to the entire conference, it seemed that much of it revolved around one particular issue: usury or the charging of interest.  The problem goes back to several biblical verses (e.g., Exodus 22:25; Leviticus 25:37; Deuteronomy 23:19-20; Ezekiel 18:17; Psalms 15:5) that condemn or prohibit the collecting of interest on loans.  Since there is a similar prohibition in the Quran (e.g., 2:275), Jews, Christians, and Muslims have all had to wrestle with this norm as it applies to their commercial activities.   While each religious tradition has extensively debated the precise definition of “interest,” the basic idea behind it – using money to make money – is at the heart of modern finance.

The papers and issues raised at the conference were interesting, if not earth-shattering, and helped me to reflect on the intersection of religion and money.  There were three issues or themes in particular that I saw running through the conference:

1. Actors.  As is well-known, both rabbis and Catholic canon lawyers took the biblical verses (1) to prohibit the charging of any cost for the use of capital if it involves little or no risk on the lender’s part; and (2) to apply only to co-religionists.  This has been seen, quite simplistically but perhaps not without a grain a truth, as leading to the rise of Jewish bankers in northern Europe in the Middle Ages; they supplied the necessary capital to Christian leaders.  At the same time, the Muslim prohibition is a universal one (not just limited to co-religionists), and may thus have played a role in limiting the growth of banking in Islamic lands.  This distinction, though, is hardly as clean as it looks.  Islamic economies were also shot through with credit, and creative ways of raising capital were (as today) used in avoid these strictures.  Religion was not the only potential limiting application, though.  John Calvin was among many other Christians of his day to link the prohibition to its (perceived) social goal, and he thus ended up prohibiting loans with interest only to the poor.  The rich are free to use their capital productively.
2. Religion and Reality.  What is the relationship between religious law and society?  The Jewish case is particularly interesting: whereas northern European rabbis, living among Jews who increasingly made their livings off banking, developed instruments for evading the prohibitions on charging interest, rabbis in Islamic lands did not.  Here would seem to be a case of religious law merely following what the people did anyway.  This, however, was hardly an obvious or necessary step.  Religious leaders are often out of step with their co-religionists, sometimes intentionally and sometimes less so.  The more interesting question is the social place of the individual rabbis, whose economic interests they were most attuned to, and why.  The narrative of religious legal development in this case marginalizes the many rabbis and canon lawyers who continued to oppose the charging of interest.  Were they, as individuals, embedded in different social networks?
3. Morality and Formalism.  Here is what I see as the real nub of the issue:  Why prohibit interest to begin with?  The papers at this conference suggested a real divergence between Christian, on the one hand, and Jewish and Islamic approaches, on the other.  Beginning in the Early Modern period, Christians were increasingly comfortable loosening restrictions on interest and focusing on the underlying goals of social justice and economic equity.  Such moral considerations, though, are largely absent from the formal rules of Jewish and Islamic jurists.  Partly, of course, this is simply due to the genre of religious legal writings.  Nevertheless, the occasional gap between the formal rules and their (supposed?) purpose is striking.  One speaker related that according to some rabbis, the biblical prohibition against interest was meant only for an ancient agrarian society, which, since the prohibition must remain applicable anyway, therefore justifies finding formal legal ways around it.

One final, more personal reflection.  I found the modern Catholic position on the economy – that, to be a bit reductionist and perhaps misrepresent it, the economy should be seen as a means to human flourishing – to be powerfully compelling.  Such a view need not be naive, nor must it deny the right of some people work harder than others in order to achieve greater material comfort.  How that view, which I doubt that many rabbis or muftis would disagree with, can find expression in norms is a matter that should deeply concern us all, religious or not.

What if the Christian Bible emerged not from a long and murky process that involved the bishops, backed by imperial authorities, beating down challenges that they deemed “heretical” but in a kinder, gentler way?  Say, a synod to which those very heresies (and even the Jews!) were invited to attend and participate, even if not on a fully equal footing.  If there were such a synod, a meeting presided over by an emperor who sought at least one small measure that would unify rather than divide the fractured Christian community in late antiquity, would the Christian Bible look the same as it does today?

This was the question that I posed to my students at the end of our course, “Judaism, Christianity, and the Bible” as a concluding exercise.  I set up a role-play exercise modeled somewhat on the Reacting to the Past (RTTP) “games.”  Below is an outline of our game; it is more or less what I gave to the students.  We ran the role-play yesterday.  The results?  That’s for a future post.

Canonizing the (Christian) Bible

Background

We are sometime in the fourth century CE in Constantinople.  The Roman emperor, a devout Christian (and also a practical ruler), spurred by the bishops in his court and concerned about both growing Christian diversity and his own eternal salvation, has recently convened a series of synods to hash out “orthodox” Christian theology.  They have not gone particularly well.  While some bishops were able to develop creeds that they could live with, other participants left angry and alienated.  Chastened by the limited success of these synods, he has decided to address an issue that he hopes will be significantly easier to resolve: the confusing state of “scripture” within the Church.  Does the Church need a cannon, and if so, what should be in it?

You have been summoned to participate in this Synod.  Representatives of the competing parties will attend; the emperor expects you all to arrive at an agreement.  Representatives of the Jewish community have also been invited to participate, although since they are unredeemable heretics they will of course have no direct vote or say.

[N.B.  This Synod is a historical fantasy.  There was no Synod convened at this time to canonize the Christian Bible.  If there was, Jews would not have been invited and some of the other participants would have been long dead.   This is pretend.]

Participants

The Emperor and Royal Authorities.

The Bishops within the Royal Court

Marcionites

Montanists

Gnostics

Rabbis

Procedure and Schedule

 

Prior to first class:  Read background material (distributed) and begin independent research on your role.

First class:  Meet in groups and formulate your victory objectives.  This should be a list of three or four goals that align with your character with points associated with each one.  The total number of points should come to 100.  Each group should submit this list with a brief explanation.  On this document also indicate a bibliography of resources (perhaps 4-6 items) that you have or planning to consult for your role.

N.B.  Some individuals within groups may have been assigned roles that require somewhat different objectives from their groups.  These roles and instructions will be communicated privately and should not be revealed to other group members.

Prior to second class:  Each student must submit an “opening statement” for their group.  This should run 2-3 pages (double-spaced) and is individual work.

Second Class:  Meet in groups to craft the group’s single opening statement.

 Role-Play Day (3 hour block)

1. Each group will denote a representative to deliver its opening statement.  The statement should run 5-7 minutes, no less.  Each statement will be followed by about 5 minutes of questioning.
2. After the opening statements, groups will meet/negotiate for 15-20 minutes.
3. A second round of statements (which can be shorter than the first), each followed by Q&A period.
4. Voting and resolution, in a manner determined by the Emperor.
5. Calculation of victory points.
6. General discussion

 

Follow-up

After the class, submit a document that assesses the simulation: What did you learn from this experience?

The ASOR Blog has published my note on my stay last year at the W. F. Albright Institute for Archaeological Research as the Seymour Gitin Distinguished Professor.  It can be read here.  Please excuse the picture.

 

I have found myself at a delicate nexus this week.  I facilitated a faculty discussion on active learning; prepared a draft of a proposal to teach a MOOC through Brown; helped my oldest son to submit his college application; and, of course, went about my usual job of running my own university classes.  This particular confluence of events prompted me to reflect a bit more deeply about the very nature of teaching and learning and the “value added” (and yes, the monetary cost) of face-to-face college instruction.

I have never felt that MOOCs (massive open online courses, such as found at Coursera) threaten the future of higher education.  They are primarily “information delivery” platforms, with some very limited interactive abilities, that help to disseminate knowledge widely.  This strikes me as largely a good thing, even if it does have costs.  Yes, MOOCs may threaten institutions of higher learning that more or less structure their classes as “information delivery” platforms, but this strikes me largely as a good thing: for the sometimes extraordinary price that families pay, they should be getting more than information delivery.

In the past I have most often articulated the “value added” of the face-to-face classroom as providing the opportunity for dialogue and critique.  It is one thing to think that one has “learned” as a reader or auditor, but it is another to actively engage it.  Classrooms, and the writing assignments associated with them, are labs of self-formation in which students are given the opportunity to develop habits of mind through an ongoing interaction with the professor and their classmates.  They can take advantage of this opportunity to a greater or lesser degree, but the option is there to get something that no MOOC can ever deliver.  (Or, at least not yet.)

This week, though, I have begun to think more about the relationships involved in classroom teaching, both among students and between students and the teacher.  A real relationship, though – the deep transformative kind – involves some degree of vulnerability.  As a student, the more open I become – the more I am able to really hear the critiques and suggestions of my teacher and then to acknowledge and grapple with my weaknesses in conversation with others – the more and faster I am able to learn.  As a professor, the more open I am to students’ needs and concerns – to listening to their own critiques of my teaching – the more effective I will be.  Indeed, some of the most rewarding moments I’ve had as a teacher has been precisely when I open up and make myself vulnerable to my students.

Easier said than done, though.  I do not want to make myself open and vulnerable to all of my students each semester; even the thought of it is frightening and exhausting.  Nor, though, would doing so be professional.  There is a line between student and professor that I believe is important to maintain, even if it is often fuzzy.  The trick is finding it.

We don’t talk much about vulnerability in higher education, in large measure, I suspect, because it can bring with it the kind of overtones that can lead straight to thoughts of sexual harassment and disciplinary action.  But I think that the role that vulnerability plays in education should not be a taboo topic.  It is at the heart of what distinguishes the MOOC from the classroom.