The Pedagogy of Slowing Down: Teaching Talmud in a Summer Kollel (original) (raw)

Doing Talmud: An ethnographic study in a religious school in Israel

This work presents a case study of one twelfth grade Talmud class over the course of a school year. Conducted in a boys’ dormitory-based school in Israel, the research explores the ways in which Talmud study, a locus of curricular and ideological emphasis at the school, is constructed, and the social and disciplinary implications of this construction. I analyze the beit midrash study hall and classroom activity using interpretive ethnographic methods, drawing upon transcribed observation and interview data. I then explore the role that Talmud study plays in the socialization process. Using social theories of learning as a theoretical framework, I have found in the Beit Midrash a vibrant community of practice. Students participate in what they perceive to be the authentic endeavor of Talmud study, a process-oriented independent activity in which student reliance upon teacher-provided scaffolding is limited as students progress along a novice-expert trajectory. The myriad challenges to this form of study for high school students are mitigated by the delimitation of the activity with respect to time and space. The nature of the beit midrash activity is socially-constructed interaction between learner, learner and text. This interaction raises two types of epistemological questions: What, for these learners, is the source of knowledge? And, within the school setting, who has the epistemic authority to interpret this knowledge? The spectrum for the first, theoretical question runs from the text to the learner (whoever that learner may be). The second, normative question asks whether (and to what degree) the students have the right to an interpretive stance, or whether that right rests with the teacher. The picture that emerges from the interview data locates a great deal of interpretive autonomy with the student, but is somewhat equivocal in terms of the source of knowledge. Close analysis of a havruta paired learning session has revealed unique culturally-situated reading practices in which turn-taking and transitions are not discursively marked, and the students voice the Talmudic text and its various interlocutors and interpreters, a practice which in other fields is reserved for experts. The learning is activity-oriented and ritualized, with success not dependent upon innovation, the drawing of conclusions, or even a sophisticated level of understanding. The "ways of doing" Talmud foster "ways of knowing" that I have called epistemic appropriation, to convey the sense that the learner claims interpretive rights – epistemic authority − and almost authorship rights to the text, even as he may not add to or even truly understand it. Through the lens of classroom discourse, the Talmud classroom exhibits traditional IRE structures and complex patterns of silencing alongside enacted and recognized student expertise. The Talmud is constructed as a canonical text bearing a semi-canonical history of interpretation, and simultaneously as a creative activity in which every learner has a voice. The move to the classroom brings with it a shift away from the student-centered, or learner-centered, beit midrash to include the strong voice of the teacher, whom I have called Rav Uzi. His enacted identity in the classroom, and the source of his authority, oscillates between a teacher-identity in which his institutional position confers him with authority over the students, the ordering of the interactions, and the curricular contents, and an expert-identity in which his authority derives from his participation in the discourse as he models its practices for and with his group of novitiates. Two central questions guide the analysis of the classroom: (1) Is/How is the beit midrash community of practice sustained in the classroom setting? (2) Among the voices of text and interpreters, teacher and students, with whom does epistemic authority reside in the classroom? The assertion of many students that the beit midrash community of practice is imported into the classroom setting is supported only to a limited extent. In some ways, the classroom is a typical traditional classroom, while in others, it epitomizes the expansion of the havruta model into a haburah, from a pair to a group of learners. The beit midrash reading practices are reflected in unmarked turn-taking and text recitation. Class discussions are more common than IRE sequences, and these are frequently student-initiated and sometimes student-led. I have identified two mechanisms whereby Rav Uzi fosters a vibrant community of practice of Talmud learners with the classroom, despite the unfavorable expert-novice ratio that is endemic to the setting. One is the IRE recitation sequences, enacted as an ad hoc personal apprenticeship in which the teacher-expert models the skills and drills his novitiate, which provides a means for all of the students to observe, and sometimes experience, one-on-one expert-novice training. The other, which I have called presentizing, is achieved via shifts in pronoun use, especially "we," to evoke the Talmudic authors and the entire history of interpretation in the same spatiotemporal zone as the students, providing a cadre of experts to model the Talmud-learning practices and induct the novices into the community of practice. The participants value the beit midrash activity over that of the classroom, yet differ regarding the degree to which the latter supports or undermines the former. I suggest that the perceived authenticity of the beit midrash, combined with the autonomy of much of the classroom activity, fosters identity formation as Talmud learners, and that this identity is central to the recruitment and induction of new members into the community of Talmud learners. At the same time, the authority-based aspects of the disciplinary construction ensure the social reproduction that is necessary to the conservation and preservation of the community. This research provides an example of the successful implementation of authentic disciplinary practices in the classroom, a challenge with which educational researchers in other disciplinary arenas struggle. Uncovering culturally situated reading practices, including those which in other fields are reserved for experts, it suggests that an activity orientation can be a powerful force in identity formation. At the same time, the tensions and struggles endemic to the endeavor are not to be ignored.

Coverage and Comprehension: Rabbinical Students and the Study of the Babylonian Talmud

Although Talmud study is central to rabbinical school curriculums, rabbinical students' experiences with Talmud study remain understudied. This article draws on interviews with students from five seminaries to argue that students describe Talmud study as a process of acquiring both knowledge and authenticity. These two goals intersect with a particular tension: a desire to cover large amounts of Talmudic material quickly and a desire to study smaller amounts more slowly. Rather than viewing the latter two as a binary, Talmud teachers should recognize the complex ways in which coverage and comprehension interact with one another, cultivating student and teacher metacognition.

Talmud Curriculum Defined and Refined

Talmud is one of the core subjects in an Orthodox Jewish child's education. Every school determines their own Talmud curriculum. Unfortunately however, no data exists on the success rates of the Talmud studies provided by the schools. I conducted a survey in two local yeshiva high schools, to discover how the students feel about the current Talmud curriculum and their attitude toward Talmud learning in general. After presenting the data I then discuss four ideas which could possibly enhance current Talmud studies curriculum globally In the second part of the essay, I use the data collected from previous research to identify reading skills, content comprehension and content association, as the core issues with the current curriculum. I then address those issues and suggest solutions which can possibly solve several of the prevalent learning issues - based on traditional sources as well as the current, cutting edge research, on brain based learning. In the third portion of the essay I identify, through previous research and interviews with leaders in Jewish education, five key limitations within the current Talmud curriculum. Using Jewish traditional sources in addition to current brain research for better methods of learning. In addition, I discuss the presented limitations, and one by one offer practical, easy to implement solutions for a better future in Talmud education.