A friend from my grad school, Jill, has a distinguished academic career. She’s now the chair of her university’s religious studies department. She’s co-authored a book on dialogue in education and works with an organization called Essential Partners, which “helps people build relationships across differences to address their communities’ most pressing challenges.” This work shows great promise in helping people listen and learn from one another.
This dialogue-oriented academic approach draws on the Socratic seminar, an ancient learning technique I was taught as a young teacher. It gets students to interact, do analysis and to listen carefully to one another.
I was thrilled that this technique was used in one of my twins’ public school English classes. His regular teacher was on leave and an experienced, retired teacher took over the classes as a long-term sub. As a former English teacher, I watched my Grade 9 student dig into the material. He did prep work to learn how to participate, including writing journal entries and eventually producing a literary analysis essay. The cherry on top was that this whole unit focused on Elie Wiesel’s book Night. The students finally accessed some Holocaust education (mandated by the province but not previously implemented) as part of this rigorous unit.
Then my kid reported that classmates said the sub was “trying to Jewify” them. Later, classmates said he only got high marks because he was Jewish and a teacher’s pet. In a polarized political climate, this teacher did everything right to facilitate safe dialogue and teach important texts. Even so, antisemitism popped up – showing how necessary dialogue like this is for our society at this moment.
Our household likes to discuss and debate. We don’t shy away from difficult topics. I think we succeed at this type of conversation at the dinner table, though we could all benefit from improvement in our listening habits.
When I became a parent, I stepped back from the academic work I used to love. I became a caretaker when we had twins, due to health challenges. I also mostly stopped teaching, due to all the moves necessary for my husband’s work.
To “get back” some of this work, I’ve explored different opportunities in the last year. I spoke on “finding hope,” as part of an ethics, politics and humanity panel at an interfaith conference. I committed to teaching two workshops at Limmud. In another foray, I took advantage of a podcast’s call for entries and applied. This local academic podcast focuses on “peopling the past.” They requested submissions to examine the relevance of the ancient world in understanding contemporary issues.
I wanted to explore how the Babylonian Talmud, in tractates Zevachim and Menachot, examines boundaries, definitions and understandings of “appropriate sacrifice.” I saw fascinating parallels between this ancient discussion and how textbook definitions of words like “apartheid,” “genocide” and “colonization” are being manipulated today. I thought it could make a great case study of how the Talmud recorded hundreds of years of comparison and dialogue between rabbis (scholars) and how that model might be applied to analytic discussion today.
The rabbis disagreed about definitions and details. It was a high stakes conversation for them. Ritual sacrifice in the Temple was a thing of the past, but they felt it essential to understand and record the right way to do this, so the Jewish people would know how to manage if the Temple were rebuilt. Further, if the Temple is never rebuilt, what could we learn from the “right” and holy way to do sacrifice?
Months passed. The deadline for hearing back from the podcast organizers passed. I inquired politely but heard nothing. Then, I did something I should have done in the first place. I researched more about the nearby academic organizing this. I learned this academic was heavily invested in Palestinian activism. Once I read this, I figured I would never even hear back about my proposal. Yet, to my surprise, I got a polite form letter, which (of course) turned down my submission.
My pitch might not have been competitive. I’ve got two master’s degrees but no PhD or university affiliation. The topic maybe was too controversial. Perhaps my write-up was too plainspoken. After sleeping on it, I realized none of that mattered. In fact, I was relieved. After all, considering my family’s challenges in listening more and talking less at the Shabbat table, I wondered if I could have pulled off a podcast conversation with a person so firmly entrenched in an opposing and confrontational viewpoint.
Studying Daf Yomi (a page of Talmud a day) since January 2020 helps me shed light on these career-building experiences. Every day, I read rabbis’ debates, over centuries, that model dialogue and analytic questioning. There are aspects of the Socratic seminar in these texts and the ways in which scholars build relationships and bridge differences to solve their communities’ challenges. Repeatedly, I see this difficult, but meaningful, process play out between rabbis who lived almost 2,000 years ago, in a text compiled a little over 1,500 years ago.
A reflective teacher evaluates what was or wasn’t successful in an assignment or lesson plan. This recent rejection allowed me that reflection. I’d take off points if I assessed myself. First, I failed to do enough research to realize that this podcast, while geographically convenient, wasn’t a good fit for ideological reasons. Second, it helped me examine ways I can grow as a listener and work to create meaningful spaces for respectful, safe dialogue across deep divides. Studying Talmud for a few minutes a day, across six years, gives me even more respect for the role of civilized, rigorous discussion and safe spaces to disagree. Some people aren’t ready to grow this way. They cannot leave space for that intellectual growth. When challenged, they respond with rejection or name calling, as my kid experienced.
Finally, I realized why sometimes academics spend a lot of grant money and time on choosing the “right” professor to travel to their institution. It’s sometimes too uncomfortable to sit in the room with someone who is not an easy match. Still, we might learn more from the dialogue with those more challenging discussion partners. Learning to bridge divides and live together is sometimes the most meaningful work, after all.
Joanne Seiff has written regularly for the Winnipeg Free Press and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.