A relationship to Talmud study is highly valuable to those who possess it. Few other activities manage to combine elements of intellectual inquiry, spiritual questing, and moral development in the almost alchemical way that the study of Talmud does. And yet, there are a number of hurdles students must overcome in order to develop an independent relationship with the Talmud. First and foremost, studying Talmud in the original Hebrew and Aramaic can feel scary to the uninitiated. Second, the logic of the Talmud is foreign to students at first. Finally, students may wonder what a text from 1500 years ago might have to say to them. If we want our students to develop their own independent relationships with the Talmud, we have to help them overcome their fears, provide them with tools for understanding the language, syntax, and logic of a Talmudic sugya, and help them engage in a fruitful dialogue with the text. This dialogue will help students view themselves as part of the interpretive tradition and will help them experience the dimensions of Talmud study that make it such a profound activity.

In order for students to develop this kind of dialogue with Talmud, they have to have the experience of encountering Talmud on their own, without the direct mediation of a teacher.

Talmud Hevruta Flow

In our introduction, we noted that in order for them to engage in fruitful Talmud study, we need to teach students to overcome their fears, provide them with tools for understanding, and help them engage in a fruitful dialogue with the text. The rest of this article will outline a recommended hevruta flow that students can practice that addresses each of these three areas. If students master the steps of this hevruta flow, they can approach any sugya with facility, knowing exactly what to do every step of the way.

Steps 1-3: Introductions

The first three steps in the hevruta flow (in pink) help students greet one another and invite the text to the table as a partner of engagement. This framing moves the Talmud study encounter away from a common default setting of the subject/learner studying an object/Talmudic text to one of dialogue between live partners, all with voices and experiences that require a foundational level of honoring.

Hevruta check-in—meet your human partner

At times, students in hevruta get into competitive relationships. Who is better at Talmud? What will each partner contribute? Providing students with a check-in ritual at the beginning of a hevruta session shows students that the hevruta relationship itself is important and is not just a means to the end of understanding what the sugya means.

Some possible prompts for this check-in include:

• How are you doing today?
• What skill would you like help with today?

This kind of step reinforces the relational dynamic of Talmudic study. It reminds students of the opportunity they have of learning not just on their own, but with another person, who by their mere presence activates elements of the encounter that would be absent otherwise.

Read the sugya aloud, layer, and label—meet your sugya partner

These steps invite the text of the Talmud to the table as a partner in the hevruta. Students take turns reading the whole sugya aloud in the original. Practicing reading a sugya aloud will build students’ fluency such that eventually this stage will occur with greater comprehension. Teachers can explain to students that the goal at this point is not to understand the sugya, but to start to notice patterns and structures.

Some teachers may choose to have students then identify a second kind of term, which is technical Talmudic vocabulary, and use this vocabulary to label the logical steps of the sugya. In order to scaffold the labeling of the sugya, teachers will need to provide students with a list of terms to look up in the Frank dictionary—these are not apparent for the novice Talmud student. Students circle these words and phrases, look them up in the dictionary, and use the definitions to label the steps of the argument as follows: Statement, Question, Answer, Challenge, Resolution, and Evidence.

Note: Some students may not have the patience for this dictionary work at this stage of minimal comprehension. If that is the case, the teacher can defer the labeling of the logical steps of the sugya to the stage at which they are translating and outlining it.

All of these preliminary steps help students open up their hevruta encounter with the text of the Talmud. Framed in relational terms, this stage is akin to being introduced to a new acquaintance. You now know what this person looks like and what their name is, but if you want to really get to know them, you have to engage in deeper conversation. It is this frame that brings the Talmudic sugya to life and lends these steps deeper purpose.

Steps 4-6: Translate “inside,” translate “outside,” and outline

Whereas the first three steps of the hevruta are designed to get students acquainted with the sugya as a whole on a surface level, steps 4-6 are where the students unpack the flow of the sugya, getting inside its details. In order to do this, students translate and outline each logical unit, repeating steps 4-6 for each.

“Inside” translation

In order to translate a line of text effectively, students need to account for each word and grammatical element. If students jump too quickly to try to generate a polished translation, they often overlook key elements, leading to an incorrect translation. In addition, being faced with a line of Hebrew/Aramaic text and being asked to generate a translation can be overwhelming for some students. To address both of these concerns, we first ask students to translate each word on its own, and not change the line’s original syntax. We tell them that at this stage they are cracking a code and it need not make sense. We sometimes call this inside translation activity “Yoda translation” since it may sound to students like the syntactically absurd speech of Yoda in Star Wars. Asking students to do this can also be an equalizer—any student, no matter their Hebrew level, can learn to look up some words in a dictionary and create a Yoda translation. Even students with minimal Hebrew can see Talmud study as a code to crack, a code that they have the tools to access independently.

Note: Inside translation can also help with differentiation—a teacher can provide students with some inside translations filled in or with a detailed glossary that they can use to fill in an inside translation. This enables students to still be full participants in Talmud study and experience the act of translation even if they lack the vocabulary to do this step fully independently.

“Outside” translation

Once students have recorded an inside translation, they can look at all the pieces they have collected and begin to make sense of these pieces. At this point, their task is to create a translation that includes all of the textual elements but makes sense in English. This is an interpretive task because there are often multiple possible ways to make sense of an inside translation, some of which will be more compelling than others. Because of this, partners should take turns sharing their ideas. By providing structures for both peer partners to listen and articulate with one another around a polished translation, possibilities for meaning making emerge that would not have been possible by one’s self.

Outline

In classes newer to Talmud study, this would be a good place to check in with students, either individually or as a group, to make sure that each student has a working understanding of the words and phrases of the sugya. Having spent time translating, students will be inside the text and better equipped to unpack the underlying logic of the Talmudic sugya. With this foundation, they are equipped to articulate to one another how the steps of the sugya fit together. If students labeled the steps of the argument in step 3, they now return to these labels. Their task at this point is to explain how this step in the argument flow works—if they have identified it as a question, what is it asking? If it is an answer, how does it answer the question? If it is a challenge, how does the challenge work? What precisely is the premise of the challenge?  Students may use tools to assist them in outlining the sugya, such as the Frank dictionary, Rashi, and Rabenu Hananel.

The hevruta partnership is essential at this stage as students help one another articulate how the sugya works. This is also an interpretive exercise, as there can be multiple ways of understanding how each step functions (as we can see from multiple interpretations of sugyot present in the mefarshim). It is very often the partnership between the peer hevruta partners that brings more of these possibilities to the fore, with each hevruta partner making unique connections about the text they are working through together. Peer hevruta partners co-construct a meaningful map of the sugya’s flow and its implications for the topic it is discussing. Additionally, mastering this stage helps students immerse themselves in the logic of the rabbis and feel like they can engage in dialogue with the rabbis because they are immersed in their language and style.

Steps 4-6 are cyclical and need not happen in a rigid order; a student’s polished translation might cause them to refine their inside translation. Their attempt at labeling might cause them to question their polished translation—all of this is okay and is simply part of the process of unpacking a sugya for the first time.

It is important to note here the pervasive value of the peer partners engaging in a process of “wondering” (see below), taking what they notice about the text and allowing it to generate curiosities and questions that serve as a driver for polished translations, meaningful outlines, and possible implications.

Steps 7-8: Interpret / mefarshim

The Talmud is full of big human questions that high school students love thinking about: For instance: What does a just society look like? (Sanhedrin) How should we structure our days to make space for the divine? (Berakhot) In the “interpret” step, students can take a step back and zoom out, exploring and evaluating how the rabbis’ discussion addresses these questions through the sugya under discussion.  This stage can be done individually or as a full group and serves to connect students with the rabbis in a dialogue about timeless questions that students will find relevant. The key at this stage is to continually invite students to engage with the perspectives in the text and equally, to connect students to one another, and to bring to the table each student’s encounter with the text. We want students to embody the following identity statements: “The Talmud can help me think about my life in a more nuanced way” and “I can bring my life experiences and perspectives to bear on the discussions in the Talmud.” When they are inside the language and logic of a sugya and can begin to ask questions of the rabbis and fine-tune their own perspectives in dialogue with a sugya, these identity statements come to life.

Once students have developed their own interpretations, mefarshim can be a force for deepening those interpretations. Mefarshim can also help expose some of the big human questions that the sugya is dealing with. Because working with mefarshim requires its own skillset, the teacher may initially need to introduce mefarshim in the full group rather than as part of the hevruta assignment.

The Role of Wonder

A dynamic that informs all of the steps above and to which we alluded earlier, is that of “wonder.” When a learner hears the text’s voice in a partnership dynamic, it creates the opportunity to notice things that stand out in the text’s statements. This then gives rise to wonder, “which definition fits here best?” “what did the text mean when it said x?” “Is what the text saying here connected to…?” “Is it possible that the text is telling us…?” This kind of wondering emerges from the text and sends learners back into the text to discover more. Additionally, what students notice and wonder will often be unique, thereby helping one another appreciate new things about the text. Other times, what they notice and wonder about will overlap, which creates its own kind of invigoration to explore more deeply.

Conclusion

A good relationship is one that nourishes those in it and pushes them to grow. Both the content and process of Talmud study can foster that dynamic. However, such a relationship isn’t formed by simply putting students and text together. The hevruta structure we’ve outlined here intentionally nurtures the kind of relationship in which learners and text can all equally be described by the words: “One who dwells in the gardens; friends attend to your voice; let me hear it” (Shir HaShirim 8:13).