Day 47: מְכַוֵּן אֶת שְׁמוּעָתוֹ / Citing others with precision
Having described the bidirectional, intergenerational exchange of ideas between teachers and students, today we make sure that the composite voices still retain their unique claim to authenticity. While we are encouraged to contribute our own insight to the chorus of voices that came before us, we do not supplant those voices. We owe it to our progenitors of the past generations to transmit their wisdom accurately and wholly.
A fine line exists between precision and interpretation. We have a right and a responsibility to add to our teachers wisdom. That being said, we don't come from a tradition that submits to an intellectual recency bias, whereby the newest generation always has the final word. In precisely transferring the wisdom from generations prior, we give our students the same access to the full tradition that precedes them, not just our own distillation.
Reflection:
Why is it important to precisely cite others when our right as teachers is to distill and refract information for our students?
Lived practice:
My high school English teacher (who taught me about citations) had us memorize portions of the literature that we encountered. It was a way of showing deference to those texts, and making sure that we embraced them on the author's own terms, so to speak.
Choose some piece of wisdom (a Jewish text, a poem, a speech, etc) and work on memorizing it with precision and affect.
