Using Context and Subtext to Unpack the Text
Yehoshua Lindenbaum teaches Jewish Studies and works in Israel Guidance at SAR High School. He graduated from Yeshiva University with a degree in History and received his semikha from Rav Zalman Nechemiah Goldberg of Jerusalem. Rabbi Lindenbaum earned certification from the Jewish New Teacher Project and co-edited SAR High School’s edition of Selichot.
Teachers of Torah texts in the day school setting are bound to encounter a text that contains content that is difficult to teach. It can be especially difficult when the text seems to be working from a framework of values or interests that are distant from the current moment. Or, it may just be too heavy a lift to explain to students what a particular text or story was trying to accomplish when the students only notice a bothersome turn of phrase. With attention paid to context and subtext, a text that initially seems troubling may show depth that makes teaching it not only possible, but essential.
The Challenge
An example of this can be found on Kiddushin 49a-b. The Gemara begins a discussion about how to make sure a man has fulfilled a condition he set regarding his own character traits in order to accomplish the transaction of kiddushin with his soon-to-be wife. The first condition discussed is if a man says to a woman, “Marry me on condition that I am literate with regard to the Torah.” The Gemara declares that as long as the man can read and properly translate the verses of the Torah, he can be seen as having fulfilled his condition. As the discussion continues, the Gemara explores how a man could show that he was a hakham—a wise scholar, a gibor—a strong person, an ashir—a wealthy person, a tzaddik—a righteous person, and finally (surprisingly) a rasha—a wicked person.
In the above cases, the Gemara insists that each one of these traits is achievable. That is, it is possible to become a literate and talented reader of Torah, or to become a hakham or a tzaddik, or even a rasha. At this stage the Gemara’s discussion concludes and a new discussion begins in which a formulaic expression is introduced to describe how certain parts of the world feature a greater density of the propensity for their inhabitants to exhibit particular traits: Ten measures of X (character trait) descended to the world; Y took nine of them and all the rest of the world took one. For example, ten measures of wisdom descended to the world; Eretz Yisrael took nine of them and all the rest of the world took one.
Using this formula, the Gemara continues, declaring that Jerusalem took nine tenths of the world’s beauty, that Rome took nine tenths of the world’s wealth, and that Babylon took nine tenths of the world’s poverty. After a quick digression from the formula about whether or not arrogance is present in Babylon, the Gemara concludes as follows:
Ten measures of strength descended to the world; the Persians took nine and the rest of the world took one. Ten measures of lice descended to the world; Media took nine and the rest of the world took one. Ten measures of witchcraft descended to the world; Egypt took nine and the rest of the world took one. Ten measures of plagues descended to the world; pigs, which carry disease, took nine and the rest of the world took one. Ten measures of licentiousness descended to the world; Arabia took nine and the rest of the world took one.
Ten measures of brazenness descended to the world; Meishan, near Babylonia, took nine and the rest of the world took one. Ten measures of conversation descended to the world; women took nine and the rest of the world took one. Ten measures of drunkenness descended to the world; the Kushites took nine and the rest of the world took one. Ten measures of sleep descended to the world; slaves took nine and all the rest of the world in its entirety took one.
These concluding statements lead some teachers to simply skip this section or read through it quickly. It is troubling to read the Talmud using prejudicial phrasing, prototypes of the kinds of negative stereotypes we educate our children to avoid. Moreover, the misogyny that is engendered by statements that paint women as being constantly and overly talkative and the racism that is implied by statements that paint Kushites as bumbling and drunken are abhorrent and should be unwelcome in a classroom or beit midrash that claims to be a place of derekh eretz, kavod haberiyot, and kedushah. Additionally, at a time of intensified antisemitism, we know how some of these stereotypes have been used historically against us as Jews.
I insist on teaching this passage to my students. The possibility of engaging honestly with what the Sages were trying to accomplish here struck me personally as an exciting and important challenge. In addition, the passages before and after this section are so celebrated (the passage about how easy it is to become a legally recognized tzaddik or rasha are oft-quoted motivationally around the Yamim Noraim, and the mishnah right after this Talmudic passage sets the stage for a discussion of the legal status of what is thought but not spoken aloud) that it might be jarring to students to simply skip this one. Most importantly, I believe that the humanity of the Sages is on display in this passage, messy though it may be.
One Approach: Context Matters
It is easy to be offended by any statement when taken out of context. That is no less true for the Talmud than for anything else. Often, it is precisely the context which transforms our understanding, and that is certainly the case for the text in discussion.
The sugya preceding the “ten measures” insists that a variety of character descriptions are achievable by everyone. Everyone can acquire the label of a literate reader of Torah, or become a hakham or a tzaddik. Through the “ten measures” discussion, the Gemara gives voice to an important, if sobering, counterpoint—despite the proclamation that everyone can achieve everything, there are factors beyond our control which limit what we can achieve. On the one hand, we can achieve great things, but on the other hand, we are all limited in different ways by our circumstances.
This is true on a personal level, but may also be true on a national level, and that may also be reflected in these statements. For rabbinical leadership based in Babylon, recognizing that the scholars of Eretz Yisrael have an upper hand is an important, if not difficult, pill to swallow. For the Babylonian Jewish community, the powerlessness of exile is expressed by highlighting the great powers of the west (Rome) and the east (Persia) which greatly eclipse that of the disempowered post-exilic Jewish community.
It is possible that the sugya which follows this one—in which the Mishnah sets the stage for the legal status of what is thought but not spoken aloud—provides a sense of closure for this idea. The “ten measures” discussion gives voice to thoughts that are natural to have, that yet most often go unspoken. It is unmistakably human to want to know the background of the person with whom one engages, and it is tempting to want to draw conclusions from that background that explain why a certain person will have acted in a particular way.
A Second Approach: Subtext Matters
If the previous points used context to suggest directions for what to focus on when teaching this difficult passage, another important tool is the subtext of the passage. As mentioned above, the sugya is completely formulaic save for one digression. While digressions or tangents are common in the Gemara, a digression from a discussion that is so formulaic that then concludes and returns to the same formula is of particular note—sometimes the tangents tell us more than the main discussion itself. In this case, the tangent reads as follows:
But did arrogance not descend to Babylonia? Isn’t it written: “Then I lifted my eyes and saw, and behold there came forth two women, and the wind was in their wings, for they had wings like the wings of a stork. And they lifted up the measure between the earth and the heaven. Then I said to the angel that spoke with me: ‘To where do they take the measure?’ And he said to me: ‘To build her a house in the land of Shinar’” (Zekhariah 5:9-11). And Rabbi Yohanan says: This refers to flattery and arrogance that descended to Babylonia, i.e., Shinar. This indicates that arrogance reached Babylonia as well.
Yes, it descended to here, to Babylonia, and it made its way to there, to Eilam. The language of the verse is also precise, as it teaches: “To build her a house,” which indicates that the original intention was to build a house in Babylonia, but it was not built there. We conclude from this that arrogance did not remain in Babylonia.
But is that really so? Didn’t the Master say: A sign of arrogance is poverty, and there is poverty in Babylonia, and not in Eilam? To what kind of poverty is this referring? It is poverty with regard to Torah, which was characteristic of Eilam. As it is written: “We have a little sister, and she has no breasts” (Song of Songs 8:8), and Rabbi Yohanan said: This refers to Eilam, whose inhabitants merited to learn but did not merit to teach. They did not produce Torah scholars capable of imparting their wisdom to others.
The subtext of this discussion is an attempt to highlight the success of Babylonian Jewry as succeeding in Torah against all odds, seemingly as part of an ongoing conversation about Babylonia and Eretz Yisrael as well as other lands. This was of serious concern to the editors of the sugya (who, themselves, were Babylonian). Being proud of the success of your people in your land is natural and often does lead to putting down people from other lands—we certainly see this in international athletic competitions and trade conflicts and the like. Perhaps the discussion after the tangent reveals a difficult but sobering truth—that the Rabbis were not immune to this pitfall and found themselves talking negatively and prejudicially about groups they saw as “other” after building up their own self-image.
Conclusion
When bringing these ideas to my students through these texts, I encourage them to do their own contextual reading—to note the context in the sugyot before and after this one and to try to explain the flow of the discussion as they might when faced with passages in Tanakh in which the commentaries attempt to explain why one passage is before or after another. I also present my students with writing exercises that engage directly with the difficulty of the passages, asking them if they have ever been unfairly stereotyped and how they have or might have dealt with that.
There is no exact formula for teaching a troubling Gemara text. Paying close attention to context and subtext, noting the proverbial breadcrumbs left by digressions from formula, and allowing students to encounter the difficulty personally are nonetheless all methods that can be helpful in doing so.
Yehoshua Lindenbaum teaches Jewish Studies and works in Israel Guidance at SAR High School. He graduated from Yeshiva University with a degree in History and received his semikha from Rav Zalman Nechemiah Goldberg of Jerusalem. Rabbi Lindenbaum earned certification from the Jewish New Teacher Project and co-edited SAR High School’s edition of Selichot.
From The Editor: Fall 2025
The year was 1982. I was studying in Jerusalem for the year and my roommate invited me to join him on one of his visits to an elderly recent immigrant from the Soviet Union now living in an absorption center. When we arrived, I was introduced to the elderly gentleman, who told me that his name was Mr. Morehdin (although I suspected that the name was not his original one). While he had a difficult life in the Soviet Union, having spent time in Siberia, he chose to share with us that day how he survived a Nazi concentration camp. One day a Nazi guard summoned him, having heard that he was Talmud scholar. The guard had been told that there were disparaging statements in the Talmud about gentiles, and even laws discriminating between gentiles and Jews in civil matters.
Deuteronomy and the Buddhas of Bamiyan
The Buddhas of Bamiyan were two giant Buddha statues, each well over 100 feet tall, that survived nearly 1500 years until they were obliterated by the Taliban in 2001. The explicit motive of the destruction was extreme Islamic iconoclasm. Almost as soon as the explosions were broadcast worldwide, I raised the obvious connections to Deuteronomy 12:You are to demolish, yes, demolish, all the [sacred] places where the nations that you are dispossessing served their gods, on the high hills and on the mountains and beneath every luxuriant tree; you are to wreck their altars, you are to smash their standing-pillars, their Asherot you are to burn with fire, and the carved-images of their gods, you are to cut-to-shreds—so that you cause their name to perish from that place!
Troubling Texts or Troubling Troubles with Texts?
In the instruction of Biblical or Rabbinic texts, it is quite common for teachers to experience apparent conflicts between the values arising from the texts and the prevailing values of their students. Teachers may feel torn between their loyalty to Jewish tradition that they are expected to impart and their personal and/or cultural identification with the students entrusted to their care. It is my contention and experience that the sharper or more painful the apparent conflict between the values of a text and the values of students, the greater the educational potential. However, teachers need to carefully consider how their own value-orientational ambivalence is playing a role in the educational dissonance—are we really dealing with “troubling texts,” or are we dealing with troubling troubles with texts?
Rebranding God
I’ve been teaching for forty years, mostly to day school graduates. And I’ve noticed something surprising: very few of them have had real educational experiences exploring who God is—or what kind of relationship we’re meant to have with Him. They’re taught about Judaism, Torah, Halakha—but not God.
I won’t explore why that’s the case here, but I do want to talk about the consequences.
We live in a world shaped by beliefs. Beliefs build our reality. They can uplift and energize us—or drain and depress us.
Tanakh’s Challenging Issues: Traditional and Modern Torah Perspectives in Dialogue
Many people view traditional religious and modern critical orientations to Tanakh study as mutually exclusive… Yet, presenting these two approaches as oppositional, with only one holding a claim to the “real” truth, forces students to choose between the curiosity of their minds and the yearnings of their souls, rather than cultivating and nourishing both aspects of their personhood as fully committed Jews living in the modern world. In its best form, Jewish education should involve teaching critical academic and traditional religious perspectives alongside one another, so that students can see the value of both approaches in uncovering the Tanakh’s multivalent meaningfulness and come to embrace the texts of their heritage “with all their hearts, minds, and souls.”
Engaging the Gemara Gap
In my mid to late teens, I became very attached to the study of Gemara. That passion continued for me until, as a twenty-something, I began teaching it to high school students. I soon came to the realization that I did not understand the Gemara in a way that allowed me to successfully transmit its meaning to others. My cultural and religious connection to Gemara had been strong, but not because its contents were fully clear to me. In fact, coming to this realization, I stopped teaching Gemara for a while.Years later, I fell in love with Gemara again. Now, I love learning difficult segments in the Gemara. These are not necessarily morally or ethically disturbing texts. For me, difficult texts are those where meaning-making is not simple; where, as a learner, I will ask: ”What is this Gemara trying to say and why is it here at all?”
A Conversation Across Contexts: A Case for Intertextual Jewish Education
Some Jewish texts are difficult to teach because they demand so much from us and, even more challengingly, our students. They present moral tensions, portray uncomfortable ideas, or raise questions about our faith that sit uneasily with younger thinkers trying to reconcile earlier voices with contemporary values when they feel most comfortable in a space of clear definition. Avoiding these texts can feel easier, but doing so undermines an opportunity for meaningful engagement. When we engage them honestly—balancing yirat shamayim and intellectual integrity—we offer them opportunities for deep learning, not just of content, but of character. I teach both English and Limudei Kodesh at a Modern Orthodox high school.
The King David Hotel Bombing: Eyewitness Accounts as Educational Tools
On 22 July 1946, a massive explosion ripped through the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, leaving 91 people dead, dozens injured, and significant damage to the building itself. Although all three paramilitary organizations operating in the Yishuv had known about this event beforehand, the Irgun was solely involved in planning and executing the attack. This bombing is a critical moment in the history of modern Israel, exemplifying the desperate lengths to which Jews in Palestine were willing to go to confront the British through increasingly military means. At the time, the bombing of the King David Hotel was condemned by many, including the international press and even prominent figures such as Chaim Weizmann.
Love, Gender, and Leviticus
For the final unit assessment of our 12th grade Jewish Studies elective called “Love, Gender, and Relationships,” students had to address the prohibition of same-sex intimacy found in Leviticus 18:22. They could either explore the inclusion of this text in the Yom Kippur Minha Torah reading or respond to a (fictional) friend’s request for advice regarding Jewish practice and same-sex relations. Gabby—a dedicated student who had never missed a deadline—requested an extension because she cried every time she sat down to write.
The Ephemeral Nature of Difficult Texts
This article is neither a record of success nor of unmitigated failure. It is a reflective description and evaluation of my experience, which I see as part of my own professional growth and which I share in the hope that it will be of help to other teachers. I should add the caveat that this reflection is happening much too soon for reliability. My standard line to students is that I judge my teaching by the condition of their souls ten years afterward (and I love it when they call to let me do that).Nearly three decades ago, I taught the book of Jeremiah in a Modern Orthodox high school. I identified ways that the text might challenge my students and planned my teaching around them.
Three Hashkafot, One Torah: Teaching Challenging Jewish Texts about Women
It is impossible to learn and teach Torah without encountering texts that relate to women in challenging ways. Contemporary conceptions of women’s roles and rights chafe against stories and laws in the Tanakh and Talmud, the historical development of halakha, normative prayer practices, and underlying assumptions in philosophical works. In this brief article, I do not attempt to soothe these tensions—that is far too great a task! Rather, I seek to offer the reader three conceptual frameworks—hashkafot, if you will—through which we tend to approach this tension in Orthodox day schools. Each hashkafa is described in the full-throated voice of a proponent of that lens. Then, I discuss some potential tradeoffs of using each conceptual framework in a Judaic studies classroom.
Shelo Asani… Navigating Prayer Practices in a Modern Orthodox School
Oakland Hebrew Day School is a Modern Orthodox school that draws from a wide range of religiously diverse families. With our enrollment coming from (and relying on) a diversity of affiliations, our commitment to maintaining our Modern Orthodox identity sometimes creates complications, particularly in the realm of our tefillah practices. Many parents don’t have personal prayer practices, and for parents who do, some use liturgy or have traditions from different denominations. Like many schools, we have a siddur ceremony in the 1st grade in which students receive their own siddurim. As an Orthodox school, we distribute Orthodox siddurim (we have been using the Koren Youth Siddur).
Utilizing Communities of Inquiry to Navigate Challenging Tanakh Texts
When addressing morally complex Tanakh texts, middle school educators face the dual challenge of maintaining textual integrity while fostering meaningful student engagement. To meet this challenge, we have introduced “Communities of Inquiry” (CoI), a pedagogical approach rooted in the Philosophy for Children (P4C) movement. These collaborative learning environments allow students and teachers to explore ideas, questions, and ethical dilemmas that arise from complex Tanakh passages. In this framework, students engage in “doing philosophy”—not as an academic discipline, but as a way of thinking that deepens their connection to Tanakh and to the broader human experience.This approach emphasizes philosophy as an active, practice-based discipline.
Struggling with Form and Feeling
Over a delectable meal during Hanukkah in 2012, Professor Gerald Bubis told me about a sermon he had heard at Valley Beth Shalom in Los Angeles. In it, Rabbi Harold Shulweis passionately insisted that kashrut practices must be rooted in ethical consciousness. “The Jewish theology of kashrut is not pots and pantheism,” Shulweis poetically preached from the bimah in 2009. Jerry spoke to me not only as a budding Jewish educator, but also as a future family member, encouraging me to balance halakhic rigor with spiritual depth. He railed against mechanical or performative acts, in all arenas. This was one of our earliest and most memorable conversations. Thirteen years later, while teaching a capstone course in modern Jewish thought to high school seniors at Rochelle Zell Jewish High School, I found myself reflecting on that encounter.
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