ON THE TEACHING OF TALMUD: TOWARD A
METHODOLOGICAL BASIS FOR A CURRICULUM IN ORAL-TRADITION STUDIES
Pinchas Hayman
From Religious Education 92:1
(1997), pp. 61-76.
Table of Contents
Study
of Manuscripts, Printings and Commentaries
Amoraic
and Post-Amoraic Material
Abstract
The teaching of Talmud, widely recognized as the most complex and challenging element in Jewish studies curricula, has become the object of manifold attempts at didactic intervention. In this article I argue, however, that didactic attempts can have only limited success since the crux of the problem is methodology, not didactics. Talmudic methodology is reviewed and summarized, and an innovative reshaping of Talmudic curricula is proposed based on four curricular stations ranging from simple study of Mishnah to study of the full Talmudic superstructure.
*A glossary of terms is appended at the end of the article.
For the last 1300 years, the
Talmud has been the centerpiece of Jewish learning. It blends the study of
Bible, law, ethics, philosophy, and history in a network of interpretive
traditions, legal source texts, and popular legends. This variety of content is
presented in a textual apparatus which records oral traditions composed over
more than a millennium by hundreds of rabbinic scholars; in tens of academies
in two countries; and in a range of dialects of Hebrew and Aramaic, according
to a wide range of logical criteria and methodologies. Until the modern period,
Jewish children and adults grew in and through this formidable literary
colossus and were thus raised and nurtured with an appreciation for
intellectual toil, literary analysis, and an uncompromising search for
knowledge which, until most recently, were synonymous with Jewish identity
itself. Formalized pedagogics and didactics were minimal in the learning of
Talmud, but their absence was compensated for by an overarching investment of
time and by the sheer quantity of source material being learned.
Paradoxically, the opening of world society and institutions
of endangered-species status among large segments of the Jewish people. Jewish
parents and educators hasten to prepare their charges for an open society in
which knowledge is measured by its perceived material relevance and
professional financial value. How can traditional Talmudic learning survive in
this utilitarian educational environment?
Pedagogically, the challenge is daunting. On one hand, the
majority of Jews, products of several generations of assimilation, are
linguistically and textually unprepared for the study of Talmud in the original
and are so culturally and spiritually detached from the Talmudic environment
that questions of relevance overwhelm questions of substance and didactics.
These students, who are not the target of this article, must be eased into
Jewish learning through carefully constructed, value-oriented presentations
which stress identity over all. On the other hand, those pupils whose families
and social networks still support Talmud as a pivotal element in Jewish
learning and who are somewhat prepared educationally for general textual study
often find themselves in logical and methodological dissonance with the
Talmudic text. The natural inclination of the student to apply to Talmud those
learning skills acquired in other disciplines becomes a stumbling block before
the blind, since the complexity and unique nature of Talmud set it apart from
all other literature or subject matter taught today.
In
his two seminal articles on the teaching of Talmud, Y. Katz details the
curricular, professional, and pedagogic complexities involved. D. Zisenwine
(1989) reported on one positive attempt to reconceptualize the place of
talmudics in the social studies curriculum of selected high schools in the
United States. Many academics, educators, and rabbis endeavor to find ever-more
creative didactic solutions to the presentation of Talmud. Especially worthy of
note are Y. Eisenberg's manifold study texts on topics in Talmud, H. Efrati's
handbooks of specific talmudic chapters (1991), Y. A. Efrati's Talmud
L'Talmid (1957-67), and the Melton Jewish values curriculum Teaching Jewish
Values by M. Rosenak et al. (1986). However, the
required re-evaluation of talmudic pedagogics must be more far-reaching than
any of those who have dealt with the problem have suggested. Eisenberg's texts
and Efrati's workbooks present topics and talmudic selections methodically but
ignore the methodological components of talmudic study discussed herein. The
Melton curriculum, though competently presenting issues in Jewish values, is in
English and is designed for an audience unable to learn original texts. Thus,
it also does not deal with the issues treated here. Even Y. A. Efrati's Talmud
L'Talmid, widely utilized as it has been, approaches the problem as if it
were merely an issue of how much one learns rather than how one learns at all.
Flowcharts, sophisticated technologies, computer simulations and hypertext
applications, even more-effective teachers, cannot solve today's crisis in
Talmud study because the crisis is not fundamentally didactic-it is
methodological, and didactic creativity cannot adequately compensate for
fundamental methodological misconceptions. One cannot make spontaneous
generation more scientific with charts or computer applications, and one cannot
make a misconception of Talmud more logical with sophisticated pyrotechnics.
The problem in teaching Talmud today is in the very conception of what Talmud
is, how it evolved, how it operates, and how it should be studied. No less a
concern is a larger intellectual and spiritual issue which lurks behind any
curriculum in Talmud: Why learn Talmud at all today, and why is it a learning
skill by which Jews, from a traditional perspective, insist on measuring all
other learning? In this article, the methodological basis for a curriculum in
Talmud will be discussed. An actual curriculum framework and theoretical and
value-orientational questions arising from the curriculum will be treated
elsewhere.
Today, no serious discipline can detach itself from the
basic and applied research of higher learning. An astronomy teacher who teaches
his pupils that the sun orbits the earth would hardly be licensed to teach
science. Yet we continue to teach Talmud as if little has changed in centuries
despite the fact that academic talmudic research over the past hundred years
has demonstrated that talmudic study as is customary today is counter not only
to the text history of the Talmud but also to the methodology of many early
rabbinic scholars as well. (In particular, see S. Friedman, "Perek Ha'isha
Raba, etc." in H.Z. Dimitrovsky, Mekhkarim Um'sorot [1978, pages
275-321]). Progress in
talmudic instruction is further complicated by the fact that there is no
organized academic field of talmudic didactics, and there are no societies or
periodicals specifically designed to deal with the issue or any regular academic
or professional gatherings devoted to the problem. Let us first survey the
findings of academic talmudic research in order to clarify their relevance to
the study and teaching of Talmud.
Modern talmudic research has focused, inter alia, on
the following areas:
1.
study of manuscripts, printings and commentaries of the Talmud; texts in the
Tosefta, beraitot and midreshei halakhah;
2.
clarification of the sources and layers of the Mishnah, and of the relationship
between the Mishnah and parallel tannaitic texts in the Tosefta, beraitot
and midreshei halakhah;
3.
identification of the organization and extent of amoraic literature, and
sorting of amoraic remarks by their lands, schools, and generations of origin;
and
4.
identification and separation of the post-amoraic literature, and clarification
of the impact of saboraic and gaonic process on the amoraic material.
1.1 The standard printed Talmud text
utilized today is ultimately based on the first printing of the full Babylonian
Talmud by Daniel Bomberg, a Venetian Christian of the early sixteenth century.
This first printing was apparently based on eclectic use of the various
manuscripts available at the time and has a very considerable number of
corrupted readings which can be improved in light of manuscript variants,
including orthography, word, sentence, or even paragraph variants. Clearly,
accuracy of the text is a sine qua non for accurate study of the
material itself. However, the chief benefit of manuscript awareness is"
the realization that the textual fluidity is due to the fact that Talmud was
not meant to be a written text at all, but an "oral tradition" transcribed,
thus demanding modes of analysis specific to oral traditions.
1.2 The
presence of the commentator Rashi (France,1040-1105) and tosafot on the
talmudic page, with all due reverence for their special quality and status, is a
result of the European origins of the printing of the Talmud and not of any
inherent scholarly superiority over other schools. It is convincingly argued,
for instance, that the methodological assumptions of Rashi's school regarding
the unitary composition and redaction of the Talmud by Rabina (Babylonia, c.
400-475) and Rav Ashi (Babylonia, c.335-427) were hardly universal. From the 1geret
D'Rabeinu Shrira Gaon (see
B.M. Levine, 1972) it is evident that the text of the Talmud continued to
accumulate long after Rav Ashi, in whose academy only hora'ah, or universal
halakhic authority, comes to a close. Or, as argued by M.S. Feldblum (1968) and
others, Maimondes (Spain and Egypt, 1135-1204) did not view post-amoraic
material as binding, and he often bypasses conclusions of the anonymous
narrative frame of the Talmud to decide in accordance with the named amoraic
sources. It can be suggested that he is operating with a methodology very
distinct from that of Rashi and his school. This variety of methodologies should
enable us to consider options in our approach to the text as well. However,
since Rashi and tosafot operate in accordance with a given methodology, the
average student using the standard printing is predisposed to that approach and
practically precluded from a view of the methodological options. As we shall
see, this predisposition to Rashi's approach has implications for the
value-orientation of the student as well.
In light of the above, the standard (i.e., Vilna) printed
text of the Talmud, though the basis of traditional Talmud learning in the
modern period, cannot be accepted as the sole basis of our learning or teaching
today. Even the generally correctly pointed and punctuated Steinsaltz edition,
while explaining the Talmud in relatively elementary Hebrew, does virtually
nothing to alleviate the logical and structural problems of the text as
outlined below. The first step to more responsible talmudic didactics is the
realization that alternative textual presentations of the Talmud may provide worthwhile
options.
Western literary tradition is primarily a written tradition,
and quality written texts are expected to be orderly, sequential, lacking in
redundancy, and generally of unitary authorship and style unless otherwise
stated. Students trained in western textual traditions, when presented with
Mishnah, encounter what appears to them to be an anachronistic and disorderly
text because the Mishnah, as an eastern, oral literary tradition, conforms to
spoken, not written, conventions. What are the characteristics of the Mishnah
as an "oral text"?
1. A woman is acquired in three
ways and acquires herself in two ways, etc.
2. A Hebrew servant is acquired
by money or document, etc.
3. A Canaanite servant is
acquired by money or document, etc.
4. Large cattle are acquired by physical transmissions, etc.
5. Secured property
is acquired by money etc.
6. Any item
acquired by money, etc.
7. Any commandment
of the parent toward the child is incumbent on males, etc.
8. Laying of hands
on sacrifices, weaving, etc. ...is incumbent on
males etc.
9. Any commandment
connected to the Land of Israel is only observed in Israel.
10. Anyone who
observes one commandment, etc.
Of the
ten mishnayot in the chapter, only the first deals with the topic of the tractate.
The first six mishnayot are a code of transactional regulations for various
types of acquisitions. The sixth mishnah of this code begins with the word
"any," thus commencing another series of mishnayot that are connected
only by this characteristic (the eighth mishnah being a subset of the seventh).
The two series are connected by the sixth mishnah, which belongs simultaneously
to both. A western reader who attempts to apply his normative literary analysis
to the text will encounter difficulty ill explaining this structure. Talmudic
scholars, aware of the Mishnah's oral nature, attribute this phenomenon to the
fact that the editor(s)compiled the text from codices of various tannaitic
schools, each redacted according to its own style and format which, in turn,
may have been based on disparate pedagogical methods. The Mishnah, compiled
from these earlier codices, is less a halakhic code than it is a reader, or
anthology, of tannaitic teachings, in which literary context may be as telling
as content. The student must learn how to recognize the source texts of the
Mishnah, organizing his learning in consonance with them, while noting the
context of their combination into the "supertext" of the final
Mishnah.
2.2 The Mishnah is a layered text. It often
juxtaposes an anonymous tanna kama, or first ruling, with those tannaim
mentioned by name who argue with, interpret, or supplement the first speaker.
Often it is possible to discern a number of historical periods in a mishnah
structure simply by identification of the scholars mentioned by name. Sometimes
the material in one layer is dependent on the material in another. Typically
the various layers represent the period(s) before the destruction of the
Temple, two Yavneh generations, the Usha generation, and that of Rabbi Yehudah
Hanasi (Galilee, died c. 220), respectively. These layers can be seen in the
following example from the Mishnah, tractate Rosh Hashana 4:1 (line
division, punctuation, and translation is mine):
- When the holy
day of Rosh Hashanah fell on the Shabbat, they would sound the Shofar in the
temple but not in the rest of the country
- When the Temple
was destroyed Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai decreed that they should sound the
Shofar wherever there is a court
- R. Elazar said Rabban
Yochanan ben Zakkai only decreed so in Yavneh. They said to him: [the decree is
relevant] in Yavneh and in any other site of the court.
In
other sources, other layering combinations are displayed, in which the
anonymous layer is later than the named layer (for instance, see tractate Yebamot
15:1-2).
What
is the significance of historical layers? Why is some material taught
anonymously and some by name? What motivated the inclusion of later layers?
This layered accumulation of material teaches us about the gradual development
of tannaitic halakhah, as generation after generation seeks to apply the
teachings of its masters as best it can. Awareness of these layers and their
significance helps the student uncover the dynamic logic of the tannaim as they
apply a system of priorized values to new circumstances.
2.3 As
neglected as the composite or layered nature of the Mishnah text is its
relationship to parallel tannaitic materials in the Tosefta, beraitot,
and midreshei halakhah. Topics, discussions, and specific tannaitic remarks
found in the Mishnah also appear in different form in a number of other extant
tannaitic materials, and these "parallel" sources may shed light on
the original and complete meaning of the Mishnah itself. In addition, several
parallel tannaitic texts may each present material and/or opinions entirely
unrepresented in the others, such that the combination of texts presents a more
complete picture of a given topic than would be apparent in anyone source.
Another phenomenon of parallel tannaitic texts is the dichotomy between the
variant literary styles of halakhot and midrash. In the former, law (whether in
statutory or case law format) is generally presented in a topical arrangement,
independent of any reference to sources in the written tradition of the Torah.
In the latter, the tannaitic remarks are in reference to the verses as the
source, or support, of legislation, and are thus presented as linear
commentaries on the written tradition. Within the midrashic literature itself,
the approaches of Rabbis Akiva and Ishmael (Yavneh, c.135) demand separate
treatment: the exclusive logic of Rabbi Ishmael and the inclusive logic of
Rabbi Akiva led to variant halakhic methodologies and conclusions. Comparison
of their two approaches with the Mishnah clarifies according to which school
our Mishnah has been composed in.
It
stands to reason that understanding of the Mishnah would be deepened
considerably by regular comparison to the relevant parallel selections of the Tosefta,
beraitot, and midreshei halakha. Nevertheless, not only do students of the
Mishnah today lack a textbook that systematically brings all parallel materials
together synoptically, but they are seldom taught to consider parallel
materials at all. It is evident from amoraic literature, for instance, that
study of these parallel sources was fundamental to their method. Mishnayot are
regularly analyzed through comparison to beraitot to such an extent that the
Talmud may ask why a given beraita is not quoted, and it will respond that the
amora in question did not know it! Study of the parallel tannaitic materials by
students will not only provide them with familiarity with the raw materials of
the amoraic discussions, it will provide critical preparation for understanding
of the logical process and text-comparative methodology of the amoraim.
2.4 Lastly, but of no mean significance, is
the proper understanding of the relationship between the written and oral
traditions in halakhic and aggadic contexts. With regard to halakhic tannaitic
material, careful separation of the simple meaning of the verse from the
legislation of the oral tradition based on the verse trains the pupil to define
the exact boundary between text and interpretation. In addition, it is
important to define which oral-tradition segments are deemed Sinaitic and which
are the products of the homiletic and/or legislative method utilized by the
tannaim and amoraim. This distinction was critical to Maimonides, for instance,
who codified it as the second introductory principle to his Sefer HaMitzvot.
Aggadic material, on the other hand, presupposes a strict distinction between p'shat,
(simple meaning), and drash (homiletic meaning), each operating
according to its own criteria and for its own purpose. As explained by
Maimonides in his introduction to the last chapter of tractate Sanhedrin,
mixing of the two genres creates confusion which can undermine the veracity of
the written tradition itself.
Sadly,
the composite codes, layers, parallel sources, and verse references of the Mishnah
are rarely presented today. Pedagogically, asking a student to proceed from
such a cursory study of Mishnah directly into the talmudic text is similar to
asking a student who barely adds and subtracts to proceed directly to calculus.
When this methodologically primitive situation is combined with the
sociological factors mitigating against Talmud study, it is no wonder that
students commence Talmud study with disorientation, boredom, and general
helplessness, requiring ongoing spoon-feeding by their teachers in the form of
marathon frontal lectures. M. Bar Lev has found in Israeli yeshiva (talmudic)
high schools, in which Talmud alone is studied for twenty-five weekly hours for
six years (!), that well over half of these students are unable to learn Talmud
on their own after graduation.
When
learned in light of its composite codices, layers, parallel tannaitic and
original verse references, Mishnah texts can become multidimensional
experiences, as time period, people, and circumstances become relevant elements
in their development and transmission. Students trained in this manner are
challenged to see mishnaic texts as dynamic, logical expressions of
value-applications under the changing circumstances of life, thus engendering
virtually automatic relevance to the texts. Learning Mishnah becomes an
intellectually enabling, not disabling, experience. Didactically, learning may
then be extrapolated to the immediate life situations of the students.
3.1 Amoraic
Literature Babylonian Talmud is replete with the names and apodictic remarks of
hundreds of amoraim. These scholars represent seven generations of well over a
dozen major academies in Israel and Babylonia in the years 220-475 CE. In each
academy, the teaching of Torah developed in much the same layered way as the
Mishnah. Sugyot, units of analysis and discussion, developed ill each
academy by the stringing together of the remarks of teachers in their
chronological sequence. These local sugyot are textual units unto themselves,
operating according to the style and method of the academies which produced
them. Significantly, amoraic remarks are regularly presented in Hebrew like the
tannaitic sources, despite the Aramaic-language environment of the academies
which produced them. From a literary point of view, then, amoraic material
bears a number of similarities to Mishnah.
A
survey of the Babylonian Talmud demonstrates how carefully these
multigenerational units were preserved. The generational sequence of a sugya
from Sura or Pumbedita is virtually always preserved, even when it has been
integrated as a whole into a larger sugya context. The Talmud as it appears
today is substantially a composite of these multigenerational sequences set in
a wide-ranging, anonymous, and Aramaic narrative frame.
Proper
study of amoraic teachings is predicated on their initial isolation from the
anonymous narrative frame and on proper sorting of the teachings into their
original contexts before attempting to relate to them as a superstructural
whole. Amoraic remarks in any given sugya are sorted-first by country of
origin, then by academy of origin, then by generation. After understanding each
academy's unit, its topic, and its content, the various units can be compared,
contrasted, and integrated by the student independently. Often, when studying
the talmudic sugya, one can discern the history of the Talmud's own integrative
process: A sugya may begin in Nehardea or Sura in the first amoraic generation,
then be treated in Pumbedita in the second and third generations, only to find
its way through Mehoza in the fourth generation back to the academy of Rav Ashi
in Mata Mehasia by the sixth generation. In our printed texts, these many units
appear as one, integrated by the anonymous narration.
The
complexity of amoraic sources poses serious educational questions. Suffice it
to say that a student, initially confused by premature passage from Mishnah to
Talmud, may well be entirely confounded by the talmudic sugya if he is
unprepared to recognize and treat its various amoraic building blocks in this
manner. However, sensitivity to the units of the various amoraic academies as
separate pieces enables coherent reading of the sugya by displaying the
separate source materials from which the editor(s) of the sugya created the
final text we see today. What's more, proper study of the layered nature of the
amoraic sugya reveals the ongoing, dynamic halakhic development we witnessed in
study of the Mishnah.
3.2 As discussed above regarding the value
of the study of parallel tannaitic texts, so may be said with reference to
parallel amoraic texts. When comparing the "amoraic inventory" of the
Babylonian and Israeli Talmudim, it becomes apparent that both contain remarks
from Babylonian and Israeli amoraim. It is clear that each talmudic corpus
presents the amoraic material developed in its own country. However, it is
astonishing just how much Israeli amoraic material is found in the Babylonian
Talmud without parallel in the Talmud of the land of Israel, while Babylonian
amoraic material is found in the Talmud of the west without parallel in the
Babylonian. Thus, the two Talmudim are parallel but independent sources,
complementing while not completing each other. Comparative study of the amoraic
material in the two Talmudim is of obvious curricular value.
What's
more, the two Talmudim, even when taken together, still present only a partial
record of amoraic teaching. Dozens of amoraic opinions are referred to in the
text, though never actually presented. Since even the study of all extant amoraic
remarks in the two Talmudim is, perforce, an incomplete survey of the relevant
material, how impoverished is the study of Talmud which even neglects elements
which are extant!
4. Amoraic and Post-Amoraic Material
4.1 As
described above, the Talmud is characterized by a wide-ranging, anonymous
narrative framework which presents, interprets, analyzes, and compares the
amoraic units of the Talmud. This narrative frame is variously referred to by
scholars through the ages as stama ("anonymous"), stama
d'sugya, talmuda, or stama d'talmuda, and possibly more than
any other component, it is responsible for the unique logical quality most
students identify with the Talmud as a whole.
Traditional
rabbinic scholars related extensively to the origin of this anonymous frame
(see S. Friedman 1977, above). Modern researchers are in disagreement whether
all the stama is of post-amoraic origin (saboraic or gaonic), as argued by
Halivni (1969), Atlas (1943), and others, or only generally so, as argued by Albeck
(1969), Weiss (1954), Feldblum (1969), and others. Postmodern trends in textual
analysis raise other issues. A. Cohen (1995) contends that separation of
historical layers is of little significance" when viewing the Talmud from
a totally literary perspective. D. Hartman, in his A Living Covenant (1985),
takes a similar, though philosophically thematic track, openly disclaiming any
historical textual approach. It is this author's contention, however, that any
study, be it literary, philosophical, or otherwise, is of limited import if it
has not taken into account the implications of a methodologically sound
historical analysis. However, academic arguments aside, it is evident that
since a very substantial percentage of the Talmud is stama, there is great
didactic importance to the special treatment of stama as distinct from amoraic
material.
4.2 Stama material in the sugya can serve
either as a narrative frame for amoraic sugyot or as totally independent stama
sugyot. Amoraic sugyot, as described above, are always based on amoraic units, either
in the form of a single academy sequence or in the composite of several
sequences connected one to the other. In any event, an amoraic sugya presents
amoraic remarks in generational, chronological sequence, while the stama
material contained within it operates within this amoraic sugya structure. In
an amoraic sugya, the stama does one or more of three defined tasks: First, it
can introduce elements of the sugya by clarifying the interpretive or
conceptual problem in the source(s) on which the sugya is based. Second, it can
explain amoraic remarks. Third, in its most expansive function, the stama can
expand upon, analyze, or even critique the assumptions, elements, or halakhic
thrust of the amoraic sugya. However, in stama sugyot-that is, in sugyot whose
composition is dated to the post-amoraic period, the amoraic remarks are not in
academy groupings or generational sequences because they are operating within a
stama structure which utilizes them as needed in the course of its analysis.
Thus, amoraic and stama sugyot have very different characters and methodologies
and therefore demand different treatment by the student and teacher.
Because
tannaitic and amoraic material share language and identifiable layered
structures, and because they both concentrate on direct, actual legislation,
the transition from tannaitic to amoraic material is relatively smooth for the
learner. However, amoraic and stama systems, because they are so disparate in
form and method, create a combined text which is significantly more complex
than either of the tannaitic or amoraic systems alone or the two earlier
systems together. Various approaches to talmudic didactics, because they are
either unaware of or purposefully silent about these complexities, are
generally helpless in bridging the gap between the amoraic and stama components
of the talmudic system. Talmudic discourse often appears illogical to students
because amoraic and stama materials are, in effect, working at cross purposes,
and the student is caught in the "seam" between the two. Even more
troubling is that by a teacher's attempt to make this complex and composite
text appear unitary in authorship and method, the student is dulled to his own
sense of what is logical and what is not and further encouraged to jettison his
mind in favor of his master's.
Awareness
of the four categories of modern talmudic research outlined above, when taken
together, raises fundamental doubts about the way Talmud is taught today. At
each of the critical curricular stations-Mishnah learning, parallel tannaitic
sources, amoraic sources, and the talmudic superstructural sugya, students are
not taught the methodological skills necessary for meaningful interaction with
the text. Didactic techniques such as better charts and/or computer aids cannot
compensate on their own. First, the fundamental methodologies must be
corrected, and only afterwards can creative didactics make their valuable
contribution.
In
summary, that the methodological goals of my approach are threefold:
1. to train the pupil
to study the texts in a manner consistent with their actual text history;
2. to train the
pupil to trace and understand the creative process of halakhah as portrayed in
the texts;
3. to encourage and
train the pupil to independent study and creative thought as a part and parcel
of his interaction with the texts.
Implementation
of the proposed approach should be done by means of teacher retraining toward
methodologically sound study and by a new, fully graded and detailed curriculum
for the teaching of oral tradition, accompanied by learning materials for the
third through twelfth grades in Israel and around the world. Such a curriculum
and such materials are now under development by this author and will be the
subject of our next study.
The
theoretical and value-orientational considerations of the methodology discussed
herein will also be treated thoroughly elsewhere. At this point, suffice it to
say that the present and proposed methods of instruction have very disparate
implications with reference to the child's development of Jewish identity and
Jewish values in general and the child's understanding of halakhah in specific.
The customary method of teaching Talmud represents the Mishnah and Talmud as
western literary units composed and sealed by specific individuals at specific
times, while the pedagogical approach to Talmud proposed here clears the way to
appreciation of the development of Jewish legal thought and thus enables the
student to be an active participant in the process. The Talmud shiur ("lesson")
becomes not only an intellectual challenge but a practical training ground for
Jewish life skills and thought.
Pinchas Hayman
is a lecturer in Talmudics and Education at Bar-Ilan University in Israel.
amoraim
(amoraic) Scholars of the
Babylonian talmudic academies 220-475
CE.
beraita, beraitot Tannaitic sources not included in the Mishnah, quoted in talmudic discussions.
gaonim
(gaonic)
Heads of
the Babylonian academies 640-1000 CE.
Kiddushin
Talmud
tractate dealing with holiness code.
midrash
rabbinic biblical exegesis.
midreshei
halakhah Talmudic
commentaries on the books of Exodus-Deuteronomy, which center on the halakhic
implications of the verses.
Mishnah
Collections
of tannaitic sources edited by RabbiYehudah Hanasi (died c. 220 CE), which
became the basis of talmudic discussions and form the authoritative code of
Jewish law.
mishnayot Individual paragraphs of the Mishnah.
saboraim
(saboraic) Scholars of the Babylonian talmudic academies 475-640 CE.
tanna
kama Lit.
"first teacher," referring to the anonymous opinion brought first in
mishnayot.
tannaim
(tannaitic) Scholars of the
rabbinic academies in Israel during the period of the Mishnah, c. 0-220 CE.
tosafot
Talmudic
commentaries of Rashi's pupils and other Franco-German scholars.
Tosefta
Collection
of tannaitic sources compiled by Rabbis Hiyya and Hoshaya (c. 230 CE, Israel)
as a supplement to the Mishnah.
Usha (generation) First seat of the Sanhedrin in the Galilee
after the destruction of Judea, 135 CE. The Usha generation is the first
generation of scholars in this location.
Yavneh (generation) Seat of the Sanhedrin
70-135 CE. The Yavneh generation is the first generation of rabbis after the
destruction of the Jerusalem temple in
70
CE.
Yebamot
Talmud tractate
dealing with family law.
Albeck, Ch. 1969. Introduction to the Talmud, Babli and
Yerushalmi. Tel Aviv: Dvir Co, Ltd.
Atlas, S. 1942-3. Lhitpathut hasugya v.halakhah. Hebrew
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Atlas, S. 1952-3. Ltoldot hasugya. Hebrew Union College
Annual 24:1-21.
Cohen, A. 1995. Framing woman/Constructing exile Shma
25(488): 2££.
Efrati, H.
1991. Yagata u'rnazata Raanana: Yeshivat B'nei Akiva.
Efrati, Y.
E. 1957-1967. Talmud
l'talmid.
Jerusalem: Department for Torah Education and Culture in the Diaspora, World
Zionist Organization.
Eisenberg, Y. 1981. Tokhniyot limudiln b'toshba: Hamishim
shnot lebatim. Jerusalem: Ministry of Education.
Feldblum, M. S. 1969. Decisions of Maimonides in light of
his attitude to the anonymous material in the Babylonian Talmud. Proceedings
of the American Academy for Jewish Research Jubilee: 1978-79.
Feldblum, M. S. 1968. Peroshim u'mehkarim b'masekhet Gitin. New York: Yeshiva University.
Friedman, S. 1977. Perek ha'ishah raba b'babli b'zeruf mavo
klali al derekh hekerhasugya. In Mehkarim u'm'korot, ed. C.
Z. Dimitrovsky. New
York: Jewish Theological-Seminary.
Halivni, I. 1969. M'korot u'mesorot seder nashim. Tel
Aviv: Devir Co. Ltd.
Hartman, D. 1985. A living covenant. New York: Free
Press.
Katz, J. 1941-1942. Al ba'ayot limud hatalmud b'veit
hasefer. Sinai 9: 35-73 and 10: 36-50.
Levine, B. M. 1971. Igeret Rav Sherira Gaon.
Jerusalem: Makor.
Rosenak, M. 1986. Teaching Jewish Values. Jerusalem:
Melton Centre for Jewish Education in the Diaspora.
Weiss, A. 1954. L'heker hatalmud. New York: Feldheim.
Zisenwine, D. 1989. Reconceptualizing the teaching of
rabbinic literature. Religious Education 84 (4): 584-588.