Wimpfheimer_ Is it not so.pdf

Toward a Poetics of Legal Narrative in the Talmud ❙ 79
mechanics of Rava's claim. How can students be in a teacher's service but not vice
versa? Rabbenu Barukh (239) suggests that since Rava was not being paid, he is
not in their service. This position protests against Rava's changing of currency by
continuing to de®ne service in ®nancial terms. R. Asher Milunel, in Blau, Shittot
hakodmonim, 387, cites the well-known passage of teachers learning more from
their students (see below). Rashi ad loc. suggests that the de®nition of service is
determined by the intent of the endeavor. If the teacher controls the topic and
picks subject matter for the purpose of furthering his own education, the students
are in the teacher's service in the sense that the primary goal of the enterprise is
the teacher's needs.
30 The variant reading ``Rabbi ¦Akiva'' exists in Oxford Add. Fol. 23 (366), while the
Pezar and subsequent printed editions read ``Rabbi ¼anina.''
31 This word is missing in the print editions and is an explanatory addition.
32 This text is used by Ra¥bad (cited in the commentary attributed to Ritba ad loc.) to
explain how the students can possibly be in Rava's service. In other words, the students
function as teachers, and Rava is complimenting the students on their
teacherliness.
33 This structure is not unlike the one we ®nd in psychoanalysis. A parallel to our text
can be found within Freud's famous case study of Dora. Sigmund Freud, Dora: An
Analysis of a Case of Hysteria, ed. Philip Rie² (New York: Collier, 1963). It turns
out, however, that like Rava's lesson, Freud's Dora is not only a lecture of doctor
(teacher) to patient (student), but a quintessential battle of egos. While Dora is
the analysand and Freud is the analyst/subject, it is Dora's case study that creates
Freud's scholarship. It is her neurosis that spawns the theories to which Freud
attaches his name. Though the subject is Freud, the objectÐthe analysisÐis
impossible without Dora. A surprising feature of DoraÐa parallel to Rava's surprising
rageÐis Freud's unrelinquished ego. Freud does not allow the analysand to
write the story, preferring to interpret her tale in his own voice. Though Dora
makes several attempts to assert control over her narrative, Freud persists in his
interpretation and controls the account. As with Rava's attitude toward his
``teacher,'' Freud views himself as more than a service professional, listening to an
unfolding story, prodding with questions that provoke Dora's own tale. Freud hesitates
to withdraw from an active role, all the while asserting his ``yes'' to Dora's
``no'' and ``changing the topic'' of Dora's story. Control of the topic separates the
practitioner of basic servicesÐthe teacher of children or the primitive
psychologistÐfrom the master lecturer or analyst.
34 The work of David Weiss Halivni and Shamma Friedman on the stam has enabled
scholars to separate amoraic statements from the stamÐthe voice that frames the
amoraic material and participates in the discourse anonymously.