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The Second Conversation: Interpretive Authority in the Bible Classroom
A teacher reflects on her teaching practice, bringing literacy scholarship into the arena of Jewish education.
In The Second Conversation , Ziva R. Hassenfeld examines how students develop interpretations of the Hebrew Bible, applying lessons from qualitative literacy studies to Jewish education. Teachers, she argues, have a responsibility to develop a shared literacy practice within Tanakh classrooms and explain a sacred text’s interpretive rules.
Hassenfeld looks at specific case studies to understand how teachers can encourage dynamic and informed scriptural readings among their students. She highlights the importance of two conversations about interpretive rules within the classroom, the first about the text’s meaning, and the second about competing conventions for determining its meaning. Instructors of any type of literature will benefit from Hassenfeld’s study, which offers rich ideas about when and how teachers enforce a classroom’s way of reading or follow a student’s line of inquiry toward more flexible interpretation.
In The Second Conversation , Ziva R. Hassenfeld examines how students develop interpretations of the Hebrew Bible, applying lessons from qualitative literacy studies to Jewish education. Teachers, she argues, have a responsibility to develop a shared literacy practice within Tanakh classrooms and explain a sacred text’s interpretive rules.
Hassenfeld looks at specific case studies to understand how teachers can encourage dynamic and informed scriptural readings among their students. She highlights the importance of two conversations about interpretive rules within the classroom, the first about the text’s meaning, and the second about competing conventions for determining its meaning. Instructors of any type of literature will benefit from Hassenfeld’s study, which offers rich ideas about when and how teachers enforce a classroom’s way of reading or follow a student’s line of inquiry toward more flexible interpretation.
173 pages, Paperback
Published March 7, 2024
6 people want to read
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June 29, 2025Somehow rating books in fields outside of my own (ish...) gets even worse when it's someone I have heard speak so once again I will refrain.
This was super interesting, especially as I continue to learn pedagogy backwards and try to construct what I am doing by having done it.
The goal of our professional development was to introduce us to the idea of making implicit rules of interpretation explicit.
The thing I keep taking from it is how interesting it is to balance teaching skills and content and what happens when a) you care about the content being right and b) you have multiple goals when it comes to learning by doing.
This was super interesting, especially as I continue to learn pedagogy backwards and try to construct what I am doing by having done it.
The goal of our professional development was to introduce us to the idea of making implicit rules of interpretation explicit.
The thing I keep taking from it is how interesting it is to balance teaching skills and content and what happens when a) you care about the content being right and b) you have multiple goals when it comes to learning by doing.
Displaying 1 of 1 review