FOR THE LOVE OF TALMUD: Reflections on the Teaching of Bava Metzia, Perek 2

A Menu of Orientations to the Teaching of Rabbinic Literature

“…For example, Rothstein (2009) imagines an instructional approach that aspires to overcome the gap between the cultural norms and assumptions of the students and the cultural norms and assumptions of the rabbis, in an effort to make the strange familiar. Lehman (2002) echoes this in her study of her own teaching in rabbinical school: "my goal each semester is to find a means of connecting the world in which my students live with that of the rabbis" (p. 89). On the other hand, it may be more common to find instructors leaning in the opposite direction, committed to helping students understand the ways in which the rabbis, constructing Judaism in their time and place, are very different than we are-in other words, making the familiar strange.…”

“…Even the Torah orientation, which is often pursued in adult education settings that we do not normally associate with the acquisition of skills, can be pursued toward an increasingly expanded capacity (on the part of students) to appreciate the instructional potential of the texts or to discern that instruction for themselves. These are all skills or capacities or subject-specific habits of mind, and we should hope that most thoughtful teachers who have the opportunity to construct an extended learning 59 See Lehman (2002) for an example of a conscious combination (what I call, in my conclusion to this paper, a "principled eclecticism") of the cultural orientation, the contextual orientation, and the interpretive orientation. 60 See Kaunfer (1992) on teaching midrash as a creative activity.…”

“…We can imagine a yeshiva adopting principled eclecticism because of a commitment to teaching Talmud in a sequential fashion, and letting the text itself dictate which orientation is appropriate. 71 Alternatively-following the example of Lehman (2002), who analyzes the multiple orientations that inform her own teaching, or the example of Walfish (2003), who argues for a combination of the Torah orientation, the literary orientation, and the interpretive orientation 72 -we can imagine an individual instructor or a particular institution adopting a more limited principled eclecticism, consciously selecting a small set of orientations to guide the pedagogic practice of its instructors. We can also imagine a school intentionally hiring teachers for orientational diversity-not to be confused with ideological diversity, with which it is not necessarily co-extensive-or constructing a curricular scope and sequence so that students encounter orientational diversity over the course of their years in the school, even if any one course is orientationally specific.…”

6. The Pedagogy of Slowing Down: Teaching Talmud in a Summer Kollel

“…In addition to describing the techniques of slowing down, the article presents some potential effects of this pedagogy. This article thus introduces another example of a mode of Talmud pedagogy and so belongs to the growing literature on this topic (Friedman, Hayman 1997, Kress and Lehman 2003, Lehman 2002, Lehman 2006).…”

The Pedagogy of Slowing Down: Teaching Talmud in a Summer Kollel

“…In addition to describing the techniques of slowing down, the article presents some potential effects of this pedagogy. This article thus introduces another example of a mode of Talmud pedagogy and so belongs to the growing literature on this topic (Friedman, Hayman 1997, Kress and Lehman 2003, Lehman 2002, Lehman 2006).…”