Pressman Academy is an early childhood through 8^th grade school in Los Angeles serving a religiously diverse group of students. The school’s Judaics program, which includes Hebrew language, Jewish history, Tanakh, and daily prayer, affords a maximum of two weekly periods to teaching Rabbinics (in grades 5-8), presenting a significant challenge of what to include and how to approach it.

As we began exploring this, we looked back at the school’s mission statement, which identifies the three educational pillars upon which it stands: Developing minds; Nurturing hearts; and Instilling Jewish values. In designing our four-year program in Torah SheBe’al Peh, it became clear that the different grade level teachers personally identified with different parts of that mission statement. This helped us to consciously design a scope and sequence that would align with teachers’ strengths and dispositions and allow the teachers to teach to their strengths. What emerged was a four-year program in which students would experience three different perspectives on Rabbinics, offering them a rich and diverse learning program with teachers who were passionate about what they were doing.

To begin the process of clearly articulating the content of our formal Rabbinics curriculum, we established a core of 71 mishnayot to teach over the course of the four years, connecting with the Talmudic statement (Sanhedrin 3b) that, “The Great Sanhedrin was composed of 71 judges.” We felt it was an appropriate and achievable goal to provide students with exposure to a breadth of Rabbinic material through which they could begin to establish an understanding of the nature of Oral Law as expanding upon familiar Biblical commandments and as guiding the development of Jewish life throughout the ages. This core content of the Rabbinics curriculum provided a framework upon which we could build a clearly defined scope and sequence to give our teachers the tools necessary to focus on developing student learning toward greater depth and complexity.

5^th Grade – An Introduction to the Oral Law

The focus in the 5^th grade is on understanding the role of Oral Law in Jewish life, understanding the structure of the Mishnah, reading short mishnayot on a variety of familiar topics, and developing basic Mishnaic vocabulary. This introductory year into the Oral Law does not explicitly draw from the teacher’s affinity with the school’s mission statement, rather, it provides a general orientation into the world of the Oral Law and lays the foundations for student learning in Middle School.

The course opens with a discussion of Avot 1:1, exploring the description of the transmission of the law from God to Moses and from Moses ultimately down to the rabbis who recorded the laws they received orally into a written format called the Mishnah. It continues with one or two mishnayot from Seder Moed for each of the holidays to enhance and deepen the holiday curriculum. Following that, the students study several laws related to keeping kosher, observing Shabbat, and reciting blessings—all focused on the role of the Oral Law in Jewish life. At the close of the year, the curriculum cycles back to mishnayot from Avot so that the students see that the Oral Law focuses not only on ritual laws, but also includes the timeless guidance of the rabbis about how we should treat our fellow humans. All in all, in 5^th grade the students are exposed to approximately 20 mishnayot, providing them with a basic introduction to the concept of Oral Law and preparing them for more rigorous studies in Middle School.

6^th Grade – Developing Minds

This first year of Middle School is where students begin their journeys into the three perspectives on the Oral Law. The teacher for this year is Yonatan Rosner (the Judaic Studies Principal), who understands the kinds of academic skills needed for students to succeed in secondary education from his earlier work at a local Jewish high school. He focuses on helping students transition from elementary to middle school, developing executive functioning skills including self-regulation, task initiation, note-taking, organization, time management, collaboration, and persistence. The learning of approximately 20 new mishnayot over the course of the year serves the development of these skills and builds self-awareness in the student as a learner. Together, the class becomes a learning community, in dialogue with the text and our Jewish traditions. Students build learning routines recognized as best practices in programs such as Conscious Discipline, Responsive Classroom, Pedagogy of Partnership, Gemara Berura, and parsing based on the COMD”T method.

Rosner’s approach aligns most directly with the “Developing minds” pillar of the Pressman mission. Basic classroom activities include: working in collaboration with a partner (hevruta); recognizing the connection between Mikra (Tanakh, Written Torah) and Mishnah in a selection of mishnayot primarily from Seder Moed (focusing on holidays) and Masekhet Berakhot (focusing on prayers and blessings); building skills in independent close reading of the text in Hebrew (and English as needed); breaking down the mishnah into basic elements (including the speaker/s, the case/s, the ruling/s, and the reasoning); respecting and learning from the characteristic Mishnaic discourse of disagreement (tarbut ha’mahloket); and deepening learning in the history of the Tannaitic period, including recognition of the rabbinic personalities. As students strengthen their academic skills in relation to this content, they also grow in their motivation, interest, curiosity, and confidence in learning our Rabbinic texts.

7^th Grade – Nurturing Hearts

Entering 7^th grade with stronger tools to investigate Rabbinic literature, students begin the year with a review of religious law in Seder Moed and then progress to a discussion of civil law with mishnayot from Seder Nezikin and Masekhet Pe’ah (focusing on issues of Social Justice in providing for the poor). Understanding that Jewish law governs both religious and civil life helps students appreciate the development of the law and the process of its application to contemporary issues. This application takes place in the latter part of the year, as students participate in the Southern California Regional Middle School Moot Beit Din competition and present arguments for the resolution of a contemporary issue using Jewish legal texts.

The year concludes with a unit on the Jewish lifecycle (birth, conversion, marriage/divorce, and death), where both Jewish law (halakhah) and Jewish custom (minhag) are explored in presentations from panels of diverse parent speakers. Volunteers are encouraged to share how Jewish lifecycle traditions can help us come together in community and take on new responsibilities during times of transition and how maintaining these traditions may sometimes create additional tensions and difficulties. Speakers have shared deeply personal reflections about experiences such as confronting the birth of a child with a genetic disease, negotiating conflicting religious expectations of family members at a wedding, and dealing with the wishes of a parent who wanted to be cremated contrary to traditional practice.

Over the course of the year, as students study approximately 30 new mishnayot, they begin to understand that the Mishnah is not just a “commentary” on the Torah, but follows different patterns and rules in its development and serves a different role in the lived Jewish experience. Students begin to connect to the material in a personal way, as they see how Jewish tradition engages with competing values and explore the challenges faced by the rabbis (and by us) living a Jewish life in an ever-changing world.

The 7^th grade Rabbinics course is taught by Nili Isenberg (who also serves as Judaic Studies Curriculum Coordinator), whose extensive experience as a museum educator working with historical material and artifacts to promote a personal connection to the past informs her approach to her current work with Rabbinic texts. Her focus is to cultivate personal meanings of and attachment to the texts, connecting to the “Nurturing hearts” pillar of the Pressman mission. To facilitate this, she incorporates journaling and art into her classroom projects, having trained in Ayeka methodology and Kol Haot. Additionally, recognizing the place of the school within the setting of a Conservative synagogue, Isenberg also introduces a discussion of the Conservative movement’s approach to halakhah (Jewish law) within the larger historical context.

8^th Grade – Instilling Jewish Values

As students rise to their final year, the Rabbinics curriculum focuses on knowledge of the structure and flow of a section of Talmud. Students acquire basic Talmud navigation skills and recognize the layout and functions of the parts of the classic Vilna page of Talmud. They then dive into a deep exploration of specific topics in Talmudic sugyot (passages), studying the ever-relevant laws of honoring parents (Kidushin 30b-31a) and proper speech (Arakhin 15a-16b).

This final year is taught by Rabbi Dr. Chaim Tureff (who currently serves as Rav Beit Sefer), whose approach to education is deeply informed by his spirituality and conviction that a commitment to Jewish values can have life-changing consequences. Outside of his work at Pressman, Tureff is the founder and director of STARS, supporting individuals struggling with addiction. This work helps him to prepare students for being their best selves in their personal lives and beyond and aligns with the “Instilling Jewish values” pillar of the Pressman mission.

To understand his approach to instilling Jewish values, we can examine an example from the unit on honoring parents. Lessons begin with breaking down the Talmudic sugya to its respective sources and then following the argument through codification in Rambam’s Mishneh Torah. Questions that arise about why, when, and how to fulfill this mitzvah help students understand the practical applications of honoring their parents and expressing gratitude under different circumstances. Students engage in reflections on their own relationships with parents in a 10-day journal, culminating in a project of their own choice (story, video, poem, letter, slideshow, diorama, poster board, collage, etc.) to demonstrate their mastery of the Rabbinic texts and their practical application in their own lives. Both students and parents are deeply touched by the project, especially at this exact moment when children are becoming young adults and the nature of their relationship with parents is changing.

Conclusion

Students at Pressman Academy come from a wide range of Jewish backgrounds, including children of Judaic Studies professors and rabbis; families who are Persian, Mizrahi, Sephardi, and/or Israeli; Conservative families who live within walking distance of the school and synagogue campus for proximity on Shabbat and holidays; children of families who are more active in Modern Orthodox settings. These students, and even those from families with the most minimal Jewish backgrounds, are exposed to three lenses through which they examine the Oral Torah—lenses which are designed to address their minds, hearts, and souls—which are aligned with the school’s mission, and whose impact is magnified by capitalizing on the unique talents and interests of their teachers.