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?” That experience happens quite often when I learn. Now, rather than sidestep the challenge, I take it on. And the results are quite rewarding.

Over the years, I have developed some dispositions and orientations from a variety of sources which have coalesced into a fairly consistent practice. In this essay, I will articulate those steps and bring them together through examples from the sugya of yihud (the prohibition for a man and a woman to be alone together) towards the end of Masekhet Kiddushin.

1. Read with Charity

Often when studying Gemara, we encounter an idea or a formulation that does not make sense to us. Our instinctive reaction at that moment informs much of what happens next. One reaction might be to dismiss the statement as unreasonable or, more respectfully, we can attribute the seemingly odd reasoning to the cultural gap created by millennia of time and thousands of miles in space.

Alternatively, we can teach our children and ourselves to be charitable in our reading. Moshe Halbertal described Willard Quine’s principle of charitable reading in this way: “[A]lthough a person’s words might be read as self-contradictory and thus meaningless, they should not be interpreted in that way. If someone tells us he feels good and bad, we should not take his statement as meaningless but rather understand by this that sometimes he feels good and sometimes bad, or that his feelings are mixed.” Or, as Quine himself put it, “Your interlocutor’s silliness is less likely than your bad interpretation.”

Here’s what that looks like. A text seems odd to me. Is that because the text is problematic or because of the way I’m approaching it? How do I find a way to let the text speak to me? The first step is to pause and give the text a chance.

Incorporating this principle into my reading practice has been impactful. A text that feels foreign now becomes more of a puzzle to be deciphered, a challenge rather than an obstacle. I assume that the sentences contain meaning, and I task myself with finding it.

I teach the sugya of yihud in my 10th grade class. A man and woman may not be alone together in order to protect against sexual impropriety, consensual or not. The opening mishnah distinguishes between two men and one woman (not prohibited as yihud) and one man and two women (prohibited by the law of yihud according to the first opinion in the mishnah). The Gemara opens by asking for the rationale for that distinction, and answers that it is because נשים דעתן קלות עליהן, that something about women’s intelligence/thought processes/willpower is “light” upon them. This is a challenging pronouncement for both our teachers and students.

Students’ initial assumption is that the statement refers to women’s intelligence, that it is somehow lesser than that of men, and they—as do I—recoil from that sentiment. How do I—and they—respond to that statement? Enter charity.

As a teacher preparing the sugya, I stop. How will my students understand this line? How do I understand it? Can I make sense of what the Gemara is trying to say? In my view, a teacher may not teach this text without an approach that the teacher deeply believes in. I believe that it is reckless to teach that sentence without developing an approach to which the teacher is committed and understands how to present to students.

To my students, I present it as a challenge. “Let’s say you are right, that it means that women are less intelligent. How is intelligence relevant to the yihud prohibition?” Some students will then shift the focus from intelligence to morality; the Gemara is not saying that women are less smart, rather, it is saying that women are less moral. Therefore, one woman will not stop the other from engaging sexually while one man will stop the other man from doing so. The idea that women are less moral than men does not usually resonate with my students, and we are again treading on dangerous territory. As of this moment, the class thinks that the Gemara believed that women are either less intelligent or less moral than men.

I can imagine a teacher who believes that either of the above two options is correct, and I would not contest the teacher’s right to teach that interpretation even though I think those approaches are mistaken.

So what is the alternative?

2. Patiently Iterate

In the information age, we are more empowered than ever to search for ways to make sense of challenging sentences in the sugya. We do not want to distort the meaning of a sentence in order to make it more palatable for the reader, nor do we want to project our own meaning onto the text, as we learn nothing from that. Rather, if we assume that there is understandable sense to be made, we become motivated to search for meaning. That search requires iterative reading of the statement in the context of the sugya as well as the patience to search for insight through continuous re-reading and through the readings of others who have written on the matter. There is no guarantee of success; discovery might take a long time.

In this instance, help came for me from Judith Hauptman. Through contextual and intertextual reading, Hauptman proposes an interpretation that, while still foreign to our culture in certain respects, brings notably relevant meaning to this sentence. First, Hauptman re-read the surrounding mishnayot and noticed that they all were concerned with the sexual drive of the man (focused on sleeping practices and employment opportunities in the presence of women) and not of the sexual drive of the woman. Second, Hauptman noticed that the challenging statement about women appears only one other time in the Talmud, in the story of R. Shimon b. Yohai and his son teaching Torah while hiding from the Romans in a cave. Prior to the cave, they had taken shelter in the beit midrash, where his wife visited each day to bring them food to sustain them. R. Shimon expressed concern that since women’s “X” is light, his wife might not be able to withstand Roman pressure. In that context, notes Hauptman, the term seems related neither to intellect nor morals. The concern is pressure—physical, emotional, or both.

Understanding the expression in this way, we can apply its meaning similarly in this sugya, where it then becomes of contemporary relevance, albeit in a very different context. Our Rabbis were concerned about the pressure that men place on women as a result of strong desire and an unequal power dynamic. The mishnah teaches that because of this uneven dynamic, a man and woman should never be alone in an isolated manner. Two men is not of concern because, as Rashi explains, the man is embarrassed by his behavior in front of the other man. The opinions in the mishnah disagree as to whether the shame of one woman before another is enough to resist the advance of the man or if the power of the man will win out even in front of more than one woman.

Students debate whether two women are indeed so fragile as to not be able to stand up to a man. They can certainly understand that women must concern themselves about being alone with a man in an isolated manner. If some students balk at that concern, I note (and they readily identify with this) that, sadly, student orientation at every college campus in America spends a meaningful amount of time teaching about consent and inappropriate boundary crossing.

Through charitable, iterative, and patient reading, teachers can develop the commitment and determination necessary to make sense of texts that seem morally or culturally distant from their own.

3. Fuse the Horizons (Cross-Cultural Scaffolding)

In drawing on college campus consent training in the previous section, we exemplify another capacity that is necessary for teaching difficult texts. The German philosopher Hans Georg-Gadamer noted that: “Understanding is not a reproductive but a productive activity. It is not merely a matter of recovering what the author meant, but rather of engaging in a dialogue with the text.” A productive dialogue results in a “fusion of horizons,” in which the dialogue with the text produces new meaning. While gender norms in late antiquity and in the 21st century United States are clearly different, proper scaffolding can help readers bridge the gap between worlds. This fusion, for Gadamer, changes the meaning of each in some measure which allows understanding to occur across a great millennial divide.

Yihud and Vulnerability

With these practices in mind (charity, iterative reading, patience, and cross-cultural scaffolding), I find myself better equipped to take on the rest of this extended sugya. I will share two additional examples.

1. The Gemara compares the mahloket in the mishnah with a similar sounding but quite sad case brought in Masekhet Semahot. When a couple loses a baby within thirty days of birth, we dispense with levaya, the procession to escort the body, as well as the eulogies. Tannaim disagree as to whether the laws of yihud apply in this circumstance where, in the absence of the crowd that the processional provides, those who are walking to the isolated edge of town might violate the laws of yihud.

Students are often very disturbed by this case. First, this is so sad; why do we need to learn about dying babies? Second, they feel that it is insensitive to even discuss sexual transgression at a time like this. Do the Rabbis really think that this is what consumes people during these circumstances?

After some give and take, the Gemara suggests that the dispute revolves around the question of whether a person’s yetzer hara is active during times of sadness. Students instinctively feel that one does not think about sex in such painful circumstances.

After the initial breakthrough achieved with the help of Judith Hauptman, the fusion of horizons or cultural scaffolding feels much more accessible in this instance. I ask students whether they have seen something like this in movies that they have seen. The image of a woman who has suffered a loss submitting to a relative or close friend of the deceased is familiar to students. When I ask students why that happens, they explain that the woman is vulnerable after suffering loss. Making that connection, they are able to bridge the gap and relate to and articulate the issue that the tosefta raises: should halakhah be concerned about the vulnerability of the woman under such circumstances? When we get to this point, the class becomes much more evenly split on the question. They see that the original concern of the Gemara related to the vulnerability of women caused by the power imbalance in society. Here, loss creates a different type of vulnerability, which students relate to and deeply understand. This strange and distant case is speaking to an issue to which they can deeply relate.

In fact, in all of these cases, a person is saved from transgression by the embarrassment or shame that comes from being in the presence of another person. It is not one’s will or morals or values that protects, but shame. At play in these cases are very basic, very human instincts: power, vulnerability, shame, drive. This constellation speaks quite directly to every person and certainly to the social lives of teens.

2. By this point, we have successfully entered the world of the sugya. We are speaking the same language across our vastly distinct worlds. We are primed for the innovation of Rav, cited by Rav Yehuda, that the prohibition of yihud refers to men of fit morals; but with men who are promiscuous, even ten men are prohibited to be alone with a woman. Rav Yosef adds the observation that gangs of thieves steal lumber with no shame.

By now, the cultural scaffolding is easy. Popular culture is filled with images of groups of people bound by desire to commit illegal or immoral acts, whether we are speaking about films like Ocean’s Eleven or any film about crime families. When shame is not present, morality cannot defend against temptation. So, Rav teaches, is the case with the sexual drive. If the inhibition is gone, the yihud concern can exist even among groups of people.

When I ask students about party culture among teens, they acknowledge that sometimes groups gather and inhibitions disappear. Can yihud exist even in a group setting? Of course, they now say.

Conclusion

To make meaning when learning Gemara, we need to cross large textual and cultural divides. When we are successful, we find that along with the different power and gender dynamics, the unique settings—cemeteries, babies, thieves, lumber, promiscuity, and immorality—the sugya is speaking directly to our own inhibitions and drives, protective factors and risk factors. With charity, hard work, patience and some cultural translation, these difficult texts become sources of inspiration, honest accounting, and guidance towards a deeply values-driven life.