The last page of Shmuel Peerless' book on the methodology of Nechama Leibowitz is perhaps the most telling in terms of pedagogic advice.

It is a picture of Peerless and the majestic Torah teacher with a personal note to him in her handwriting. The background is a wall of books, and in the foreground stands the teacher and her student.

Much of this image - the intellectual, spiritual background she brought to her classes, with the relationship of student to teacher front and center - aptly describes an educational encounter with her. For those who studied with her, it was not only the demanding content or style of her teaching that appealed, it was also her personality, which spilled over into every class. For the thousands who corresponded with her about her gilyonot (detailed question sheets on the biblical text and its interpretations), this personal connection was a gift. In her absence, several books and articles have tried to step into the breech to give us a better picture of her as a person and a teacher.

Peerless, director of the Center for Jewish School Leadership at Bar-Ilan University's Lookstein Center for Jewish Education in the Diaspora, himself authored a book on her insights into the Haggada which has also been translated into Hebrew. His new book on her methodology is most suited to teachers, but is accessible to the layman.

In his foreword, Peerless claims that Leibowitz's "unique approach to Torah instruction has never been comprehensively and systematically presented in one work." His volume intends to be a corrective. He begins by setting out her four teaching goals: 1) the accumulation of factual knowledge, 2) the development of independent learning skills, 3) love of study, 4) observance of the commandments.

Independent mastery of the material is captured in her first two goals. The last two are the product of that study: an enhanced devotion to the subject matter and the strengthening of religious commitment.

Toward these ends, Peerless includes five common practices teachers should avoid, the first - and most evident one experienced in her classroom - is "do not lecture;" Leibowitz believed that the frontal style adopted by most teachers does not engage students in active learning. As a correlate, she did not want students to take notes while she was speaking. This, too, prevented students from being engaged in the educational moment. Indeed, virtually all her pedagogic advice as passed on by Peerless is student-centered. Although the subject of the book is the teaching of the Hebrew Bible, it is clear that her teaching style speaks to any subject.

Peerless also includes a brief section on how to select biblical texts according to Leibowitz's approach, and tackles the breadth-versus-depth question that most teachers face when teaching a subject as expansive as Tanach. Leibowitz preferred depth and focus to scattered texts dealt with superficially. On the other hand, she believed that students are more engaged when moving at a rapid pace than when they spend days or months lingering over a few verses or a specific chapter. She advised a choice of biblical texts and commentaries which allow easy comparison with other texts, and ones which exhibit obvious textual difficulties or a unique literary style. Midrashim and commentaries should be studied when they are relevant to a deeper understanding of the verses themselves and contain "significant educational messages."

AFTER SETTING up some general guidelines, Peerless walks us through a class as if we were shadowing Leibowitz herself. He shows us how she would introduce a unit, replete with exercises and questions.

Then he devotes specific chapters to her treatment of midrash, use of commentators, and the teaching of textual difficulties (kushiyot). Each chapter provides several examples of her method which may be used in a classroom or paired-study (havruta) setting.

Chapter seven, on literary style, may be particularly helpful to students and teachers who have not been exposed to the academic tracts of contemporary literary scholars of the Bible. Developing a feel for repetition, alliteration and parallelism creates a fruitful close reading and helps students develop a relationship with the biblical text. This is particularly true when traditional interpreters are silent on stylistic issues.

The last chapters are illustrations of how these methods are employed in setting up actual classes - typically called "model lessons." One doesn't read through them; one studies them. This is true for all of Peerless' examples. Reading them, like sitting in on Leibowitz's classes, requires complete engagement, preferably with a reference library near at hand. The reader may actually have benefited from a few more model lessons.

It is hard to say how a teacher who never saw "Nechama" in action would absorb the methodology without more exposure to it in writing. Many of her students hear her voice on the written page when we read her questions. How others who didn't personally hear that voice will respond to her style is hard to say.

When the book first arrived on my desk I wondered about its length. How could a book of so few pages get to the heart of a teaching method decades in the making? The book is, however, much like the teacher who inspired it: short, powerful and to the point.

The writer is scholar-in-residence for the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington.

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