Wimpfheimer_ Is it not so.pdf

Toward a Poetics of Legal Narrative in the Talmud ❙ 57
Rava casts himself, like the wily lender, as the hero of this passage. He
successfully defends himself against being duped by a lesser foe. But the defensiveness
of Rava's reply and the legal weakness of his claim to their service suggest
another image. Unlike the heroic lender, Rava is pitted against capable foesÐhis
own students. The di³culty Rava encounters in the text is that his students have
learned their lessons: they do understand his lectureÐa little too well. They have
reached the point where they, too, can begin lecturingÐlearning from their teacher
to start with a lighthearted application of prior law and to continue with their own
innovative legal expansions. They thus achieve a moment of equal footing with
Rava, eroding the distinction between teacher and student. In this moment of legal
elucidation expressed in humor, the students have become teachers and have
obviated their own need for a teacher. Furthermore, they have begun their lectures
in Rava's presence, making him their student. At this point Rava steps in to assert
not only his control, but also their need for him. ``For I can change you over from one
tractate to another, while you cannot'' is a statement about control with distinct
undertones of knowledge as powerÐa reminder that whoever has the most
knowledge also has the most power.²⁸ The students, empowered through their
knowledge, have begun to assert their control. Rava demands control of his
students, and their continued status as students, by pointing out his knowledge and
their ignorance.
The notion of students becoming teachers and teachers becoming students is
one that Rava does not tolerate. By framing the teacher as student and student as
teacher, the text calls the binary relationship into question. While the teacher/
student relationship is not a standard hendiadys, it is a distinction established by the
same criterion of di²erenceÐteacher not being a studentÐthat deconstruction
critiques. In other words, what the scene of Rava suggests is that in the Derridean
sense, the student is always already supplementing the teacher in the act of teaching:
the teacher is always the student while the student is already the teacher.²⁹
Elsewhere, the Talmud recognizes the potential in this relationship.
Rabbi³⁰ said: I have learned much Torah³¹ from my teachers, and from
my colleagues more than from my teachers, and from my disciples more
than from them all. (Ta¦anit 7a)³²