A Jewish Pedagogy of Responsiveness

This pedagogy is inspired by Rav Joseph Soloveitchik’s concept of the two covenants that the Jewish people entered in Egypt and at Sinai — the Covenant of Fate and the Covenant of Destiny. The Covenant of Fate is one in which the individual Jew is tied to the Jewish people whether he or she wants to be or not. The Covenant of Destiny represents what the Jewish people seek to achieve together in the future. The pedagogy of responsiveness strives to strengthen the sense of Jewish peoplehood through the practice of writing teshuvot, a practice usually performed by rabbis or posekim. Hence, the pedagogy of responsiveness aims at enabling rabbinical students to write teshuvot. This raises their awareness of the multiple and multifaceted ways that Jews from different places are connected. By learning the art of writing teshuvot, rabbinical students and, therefore, future rabbis learn a skill and hone its practice which empowers them to make that Jewish practice (writing of teshuvot) their own. By doing so, the training of rabbis will contribute to the concept of responsiveness and therefore restore empathy among the Jewish people. By adding their voices to contemporary questions while also relying on legal decisions or recommendations made by others who came before them, they carry on that practice and join this chain of tradition, making it ever larger and more diverse.