EDUCATION AS ILLUMINATION, AS VISION, Bava Basra 3bAS BOTH
The Talmud (Bava Basra 3b) recounts how King Herod “massacred all the sages ofIsrael” except for Bava ben Buta, whom he blinded but kept alive as an advisor.
Eventually Herod regretted his horrendous deed and sought counsel from Bava ben Buta as tohow to atone for his sin.
TheTalmud presents two alternative formulations of Bava ben Buta’s statement toHerod in which he describes the effect of Herod’s having murdered the Sages ofIsrael. In the first formulation, he refers to the murdered Sages as the “Lightof the World [Oro shel olam].” In the second, he refers to them as the “Eye ofthe World [Ayno shel olam].” These two formulations, I believe, reflect twodistinct images of the ideal Jewish teacher-leader-visionary.
According to the first image, the defining function of the teacher is to shed light onthe realities of life, to enable his students to see realities that they wouldotherwise overlook. The teacher leaves the subjective experience of seeing,however, to the autonomous orientation(s) of each individual student. Thissubjective experience includes interpretive factors which influence how thepicture is to be cropped, which aspects of the picture’s context are to behighlighted or prioritized and which aspects are to be considered secondary orless significant.
According to the second image, the defining function of the teacher is to become, so tospeak, the student’s surrogate eye, interpreting the empirical realities forthe student.
As teachers, moral leaders, and as parents, we should not allow these two imagesto be mutually exclusive. They must blend in a complementary fashion.
The modern, more liberal approach to education would seem to stress oro over ayno,i.e., the “light” over the “eye” metaphor. The teacher’s task is to makereality see-able for the student, but carefully to avoid revealing his own viewof that reality to the student. “I’ll sensitize you to the empiricals - but youdraw your own conclusions.”
On the other hand, the teacher must also model method, a task which entailsexposing the student to ayno - the ways he views, crops, and prioritizes thevarious elements in the picture. He must share all aspects of this process,including the conclusions. This “eye” element, which is so necessary when oneteaches method, need not result in violating the student’s autonomy. Both theteacher and the student must understand that he is simply exposing the studentto that which works for him. The student’s duty is first to master that methodon its own terms and then to adopt, adapt or even reject it in order to achievehis own values-laden, learning objectives.
Parents must adopt a similar integrated approach to their children’s values education.After protecting the child from harm, the most central and essential aspect ofparenting lies in the realm of modeling life values. The parent must clearlyunderstand, however, the distinction between modeling and replicating. A childis obligated to view his parents as primary role models, but he retains hisautonomy due to his lifelong obligation to assess his parents’ visions andbehaviors critically. Rebbe Meir understood this concept well when hemetaphorically characterized his learning relationship with his hereticalteacher as a process of “ingesting the pomegranate’s fruit and discarding its[bitter] rind.”
These ayno-oro images, especially in context of the specific Talmudic narrative inwhich they appear, require further analysis. Regarding the literary-historical context: R. Bava ben Buta articulatesthe “light-of -the-world” or “eye-of-the-world” metaphor for Rabbinic leadership in dialogue with Herod, the tyrant who, as noted, not only hadmassacred the Rabbis but had also blinded him! The “light” and “eye” metaphorsthus arise from a most central (and traumatic) aspect of Bava ben Buta’sexperiential frame of reference. Perhaps the narrative is implying here thateven the greatest teacher is unable to divorce himself from the subjectiverealm of his personal experiences.
Humans are endowed with the potential to increase or decrease their objectivity - butwe are never able to attain total objectivity. The subjective realm alwaysdelimits us – and even defines us – to some significant extent. Absoluteobjectivity is God’s possession alone. The imagery of human speech oftenreflects our significant experiences; and ultimately, imagery has at least anuanced effect on content.
And often, if not always, truth lies in nuances.