Four Levels of Reading

I recently found myself in a class full of English teachers - almost all of whom were non-Jews. On a lark, I decided to share with them a method that I use to frame and teach Talmudic analysis. It was so well-received that I was asked to type it up so that the professor could incorporate it into his lesson plans. This blog post was the result, which is why the tone is slightly different than my other posts.

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Four Levels of Reading

One of my teachers, Rabbi SZ, devised a method of teaching Talmudic analysis skills. This method consists of four sequential levels, or steps. Although his method was designed for Talmudic analysis, it can easily be adapted to any textual analysis. I have described these four steps with this universal application in mind. Here they are:

1. Reading the Lines: surface-level reading; our goal in this step is to understand the meaning conveyed by the words, as intended by the author; this is what people commonly refer to as “reading”

2. Reading Between the Lines: analytical reading; our objective in this step is to identify and articulate the author’s unstated premises, assumptions, and propositions, and to assess the logic, soundness, and rationality of his or her arguments and conclusions

3. Reading Behind the Lines: conceptual reading; in this step we attempt to understand and formulate, in the most concise and precise language possible, the underlying abstract definitions of the key terms and concepts in the text; oftentimes the cogency of the author’s conclusions will hinge on the validity of these conceptual definitions

4. Reading Beyond the Lines: syntopical reading; this is the only step which brings us “outside” of the text; the goal of this step is to compare the treatment of the subject matter in this text to its treatment in other sources, in an attempt to arrive at our own synthesized grasp of the subject matter

I will now illustrate how these four levels of reading apply to two very different examples. The first is a lyric from a song, considered in isolation (i.e. without any knowledge of its context, origin, or author). The second example is a snippet of a dialogue I heard in my dorm when I was a student in rabbinical seminary. The first example is closer to what we might see in an English Language course, whereas the latter is more akin to a Talmudic text and its legalistic analysis.

For the sake of brevity, I have opted to merely describe the application of this method to these examples, instead of fully fleshing out each step. 

Example #1: “All you need is love.”

1. Reading the Lines: This statement fairly straightforward, and the basic meaning of the words and their syntactical relation to each other is unambiguous.

2. Reading Between the Lines: 

- The fully explicated version of this statement is: “All you need for _____ is love.” What word should fill in the blank? Happiness? Health? Security? Morality?  

- The author is also making an assumption in his use of the word “all.” Does the author intend for this to be taken literally (i.e. “you need nothing else for _____ except for love”) or is this hyperbole? If the latter, then what does he mean by “all”? To what extent does love meet or satisfy one’s total need? What would still be lacking if someone had this love?  

- The author’s use of the word “you” is also ambiguous. Either he is referring to a specific audience, or he is referring to all people and is using “you” as synecdoche for “all human beings.” If the former, then to whom is he speaking? in either case, what is the basis of his claim? 

3. Reading Behind the Lines: 

- What does the author mean by “love”? What is the precise, abstract, conceptual definition of “love” which would make his statement true? Or, at the very least, what is the definition he had in mind when he composed these words? 

- What does the author mean by “need”? This will depend on whether the author is referring to a need which is physical, psychological, ethical, spiritual, etc. In any event, the concept of “need” must be defined. After all, a physical need is quite different from an ethical imperative, and an objective need is different than a subjective one. In other words, any use of the term “need” is built upon a number of philosophical assumptions about the nature of human life. 

4. Reading Beyond the Lines: 

- What information is available to us outside of the text that might shed light on the author’s meaning in this statement? Does the rest of the song provide insight into his meaning in this single line? Did the author compose other songs, speeches, or works on the topic of love that might clarify his view?  

- What do other writers and thinkers say about love and the need for it? How does the sentiment expressed here compare with other lyrics of that era? 

- After conducting this analysis, what conclusions do we reach, and how would we support those conclusions? 

Example #2: Upon seeing a student don a hoodie, the dorm counselor said, “You need to change your clothing. Our dress code requires you to wear a shirt with a collar during school hours.” The student responded, “What do you mean? This is a shirt with a collar.”

1. Reading the Lines: Again, the plain meaning of the text is clear: a student wearing a hoodie was reprimanded by the dorm counselor for violating the dress code, and the student responded by denying that he was in violation.

2. Reading Between the Lines: 

- On the surface it would appear that there are only two possibilities here: either the dorm counselor is correct, or the student is correct.  

- However, even if only one of them is correct by the legal standards of the dorm rules, it is possible that each disputant’s claim stems from a logical assumption.  

- If this is the case, then we may infer that the dorm counselor and the student each have a different interpretation of the dorm rule: according to the dorm counselor’s understanding, a hoodie would constitute a violation of the requirement to wear a shirt with a collar, whereas according to the student, a hoodie would qualify as a shirt with a collar.

3. Reading Behind the Lines: 

- From this last point it is evident that the key term at the heart of this dispute is “collar.” If we are correct in our assumption that each of the disputants has a different interpretation of the dorm rule, then it must be that each of them defines collar differently. Our task is to figure out that conceptual definition. 

- The dorm counselor is defining “collar” as a qualitative structural feature of the shirt (i.e. a band of material at the neck of a shirt which is folded over in a specific stylistic manner). According to this definition, a hood is not a collar. 

- The student, however, is defining “collar” as a quantitative extension of the shirt’s fabric. Accordingly, a hood would qualify as a collar just like the collar of a dress shirt, inasmuch as both are extensions of fabric at the neck of the shirt.  

- In descriptive Aristotelian terms, the dorm counselor defines “collar” by its form, whereas the student defines “collar” by its matter. 

4. Reading Beyond the Lines: 

- Now that we have defined how each disputant uses the term “collar,” there only remains one question: What do the dorm rules mean by “collar”?  

- To answer this question, we might turn to several sources which would directly answer our question, such as the author of the dorm rules, an administrator of the Rabbinic seminary. Alternatively, we might research the topic from other texts in order to build an argument – such as sources within Jewish law which deal with collars, or the codes of clothing manufacturers in American law, or experts in fashion and clothing design. 

(In case you are wondering, the dorm counselor won the debate. By authority.)

I hope these two examples have adequately demonstrated the usefulness of this method, in teaching and in learning.