What is the significance of Rav Gershensons negative attitude to Reuvens method of analyzing Talmud passages?
Reuven has learned from his father a modern method of studying the Talmud, using historical and textual scholarship. In chapter 14, he sets himself the task of explicating a particularly thorny passage in the Talmud, which he expects to be called upon to explain in Rav Gershenson’s class. He notes that one of the simpler commentaries on the passage does not seem to be based on the text it is explaining. Reuven therefore tries to reconstruct the exact wording of the text that the medieval commentator had in front of him. He does this by comparing various versions of the text, from different volumes of the Talmud (he mentions the Babylonian Talmud and the Palestinian Talmud) until he has reconstructed the text that he believes is the correct one. This helps him to understand both text and commentary. But he decides not to use this method in class. The reason is that Rav Gershenson is strictly conservative in his methods. He is a fundamentalist who refuses to meddle with existing texts. I
