Teaching the Whole Child (Winter 2016)

TRANSLATION AS EXPLANATION: HAVRUTA, SKILL DEVELOPMENT AND SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING

JOSHUA LADON

Joshua Ladon how using different modes of havruta learning can help to develop students’ social-emotional skills.

In the past several years, scholars and practitioners of Jewish education have begun to articulate the goals and values of havruta learning (Kent, 2013). A common theme in this literature is that it is a tool that should be used purposefully. In addition to articulating the goals and values, this literature helps dissect the process of havruta itself. Orit Kent identifies 6 practices (in pairs) of havruta: listening and articulating, wondering and focusing, supporting and challenging. What emerges is a picture of a practice that is as much about uncovering meaning in a text as it is about learning about one’s self and how to relate to others. Some of the benefits of havruta learning, according to Kent, include, “expanding one’s perspective…learning new ideas and strategies… [and] clarifying one’s perspective.” Elie Holzer (Holzer & Kent, 2013, 314) offers an expanded version of this list suggesting that participants experience and learn sensitivity to the other, listening (to one’s partner and the text), wholeheartedness, open-mindedness, vulnerability, responsibility and ethical commitment. Havruta is a learning practice, intimately connected to content learning, that allows students to learn and practice the five competencies of social- emotional learning (SEL): self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills and responsible decision making. In developing their theories, Kent and Holzer have looked primarily at students learning text in English. As my courses aim to build students’ skills for learning rabbinic literature in the original, I wanted to explore how students could bring these various practices into what they often perceive as the mundane and technical work of translation. In service of building a better understanding of the text while continuing to cultivate the skill set of being a strong havruta, students need to see translation as a part of the havruta process. It was not uncommon for me to see students’ ability to work together, think creatively together and rely on one another break down while trying to figure out what the text means at a very basic level. Often, I see a dramatic difference between the behavior of students while translating and when discussing the meaning of the text. When discussing the meaning, they may employ Kent’s six practices, but during the “technical” translation, they could be quite frustrated – even mean towards one another. It is with this in mind, that I began to use different language for translation.

Translation as Explanation

The class I refer to in this paper is a mixture of ninth and tenth grade students in a West Coast community school. This particular class has strong Hebrew, although varied experience with rabbinic text is varied (some of the students studied mishnah previously). There is a tendency amongst students to try to master translation as a technical skill, and teachers in our language and our lessons propagate this sense. Firstly, we often call the work we are doing translation. Moreover, students are either taught to use dictionaries or given vocabulary word banks with an aim of getting them to produce some English analog to their work. Ultimately, I am not interested in the students learning how to create a clean English translation because I want them to become sensitive to the complex nuances and inferences of the text. I want to move the students away from their conception that they are doing similar work to Google Translate. Rather, I want them to learn how to figure out what the text is saying. In this respect, I have changed my own teaching, asking them to develop an English explanation. The language of Explanation comes from Paul Ricoeur, who posed two iterative and symbiotic steps to reading: Explana- tion and Interpretation. Ricoeur speaks of explanation through the language of structural analysis. It is when a reader, “[treats] it as a worldless and authorless text, in which case we explain it by means of its internal relations, its structure” (1971, p. 139). For the sake of the work that my students are engaged in, as second language learners, they are trying to do the basic work of getting to a complete text. Before they figure out what the text means, they must understand simply what it says.

Figuring out what the text is saying, it a process that is ripe for social-emotional growth. The ability for students to see possible understandings, to negotiate what makes a “good” read and what seems far fetched straddles both the cognitive and the social-emotional. While a “Bloom’s Taxonomy” read may focus on the modes of comprehension, application and analysis, an SEL framework allows us to focus on developing students’ capacity for flexibility, resiliency and creativity when dealing with the challenge of not knowing something. What follows is a description of several activities and exercises I developed to transform the “skills” focus in my classroom from a technical activity to one that embodies the values and practices of havruta.

Flexibility and partnership

As my students began to work with texts in the original, I noticed rigidity towards the possible meanings of words. Often, they would look up words in a dictionary, insert one of the meanings into the margin of their mishnah or gemara and then, upon completing some number of words, they would try to turn that mishmash of English, Hebrew, and Aramaic into some formed statement. For many of the students, the process of identifying which words to look up, how to look up the word, and actually looking it up in the dictionary, played into the sense that this was all simply technical busy work. But the process of figuring out the text, which often feels laborious for beginning text students, in part because most of the time is spent doing technical processes (figuring out prefixes and suffixes, identifying shorashim (=word roots), looking up words in a dictionary). The language of havruta is often about developing interpretations and building meaning through paired work. What happens when we begin to see these technical moments through the social-emotional lens? It is in these moments that we can begin to see the ways havruta offers a meeting space for figuring out the text (Explaining) and developing meaning (Interpretation) while learning about one’s self and the other.

I wanted to make visible for the students the way language is fluid so that my students could move beyond their rigid attempts at translation and because I saw the way their rigidity in reading translated into inflexible thinking and difficult interactions between havruta. I wanted them to see the ways working with others can increase their flexibility and their accuracy. My hope was for students to not only develop multiple possible explanations, but, through working with others, they were forced to offer backing for their claims. This offers practice in a confluence of self-management skills, such as perseverance, asking for help, managing frustration, while also encountering the other.

Practicing Explanation on one’s own and in havruta

Developing fluidity with the polysemous nature of language (the ability for words to have multiple meanings, ZG) is a central skill for identifying the meaning and logic of rabbinic texts. It is not uncommon for me to encounter students who have looked up a word in the dictionary, chosen one of the many meanings of the word (or assimilated the various meanings into one super-meaning) and then struggle to fit their understanding of the word into the context of the text. They become stuck because, in trying to translate, they look for a word in the dictionary and fixate on the singular meaning of that term. While this is part and parcel of every rabbinic text, using an example from mishnayot where the text seems deliberately polysemous so as to enable interpretation, provides a context for getting students to think more creatively and flexibly while determining peshat (=plain) readings. In this respect, the fourth chapter of Mishnah Berakhot, with its multiple uses of tefillah provide an opportunity to practice a) identifying possible reads, b) developing reasons for why which read is the best, and c) having to explain one’s thinking to a havruta. Woven into this experience were reflections on the process of the students’ learning.

To introduce students to these activities, I put the first line of Berakhot 4 on the board and asked the students to come up with three different possible explanations of the text on a piece of paper. Afterwards, students had to compare their different possible explanations with their havruta and then come up together with which read was the best. Finally, upon doing this work, students reflected on three questions:

  • In what way did working alone enable you to think flexibly or fluidly about interpretation-translation?
  • How did comparing your ideas with your havruta enable/affect your learning?
  • How did you identify and get to the best interpretation-translation?

A number of students expressed appreciation for working alone, in that it allowed them to think creatively without fear of embarrassment for making a mistake or saying something silly. One student wrote, “It allowed me to move at my own pace, and not have to stop and justify what I am doing to another person.” Another wrote, “The leaps I made by myself would take a while to explain to my havruta. So, the things that I do myself make things much easier and faster for me.” While many students expressed delight in not being responsible for explaining their thoughts, an- other student described the tension of working alone. “It was nice to be able to be in my head and not have to express my train of thought to anyone, there is something also annoying that there isn’t someone to approve it and say I’m not crazy.” Only one student expressed frustration with working alone, however her explanation spoke to the underlying anxieties of adolescents:

It was definitely hard for me to work alone, but it also enabled me to think harder about the text and think about it for myself. I usually am the kind of person that likes to bounce ideas off of someone else so it was hard for me to be confident in my answers. Once I realized that the point of the exercise was to have more than one answer and realize they might not all be correct, it allowed me to try out different words and see how that changes the meaning, which really helped me to understand the text in a new way.

While other students appreciated first developing their ideas alone, this student expressed a desire for partnership, in order to buoy her confidence.

After introducing them to this type of thinking, we moved to learning this chapter with an eye towards the variety of meanings of the word tefillah. Orienting the students to its possible meanings – the Amidah, some form or set liturgy, calling out to God – enables them to see this chapter as a deep philosophical and theological discussion. Further, it makes them more attentive and careful readers as they encounter halakhic, aggadic and philosophical statements in the chapter. Finally, and most importantly for this study, it brings to the fore, the need to be flexible about possible meanings as one reads.

In order to build these goals into the pedagogy of their havruta, I asked them to chart possible interpretations of the text by writing two to four possible translation-interpretations for each rabbi that speaks or unnamed halakhic statement made in the chapter. The students amassed a log, for each mishnah, of the various opinions made and the possible ways to read these opinions (I did not include Berakhot 4:2, the story of R. Nehunya, in this exercise – but we returned to it afterwards). After charting these different possible explanations of the text in havruta, I broke the students up (like a jigsaw) based on each mishnah. Now, students from different havrutot met together in small groups in service of identifying the best explanation for each mishnah. For example, sitting together with a large sheet of butcher paper, sat three students from three different havrutot who had amassed six to ten different explanations of Berakhot 4:1. Together, they had to collectively decide what the best explanation was or build a new explanation based on their work. As well, they had to document the questions they asked and the rubric they built for assessing a quality explanation.

Developing as a class the modes of Explanation

As my class moved towards a model of reflective havruta it became apparent that students needed to further develop their language for what havruta should look like. I posed the question to the students: What are the steps to coming up with an explanation of the text? Again, the primary goal was to move students beyond thinking that the translation portion of havruta was simply about technical achievement. Collectively, the students developed, with my guidance, a series of techniques to construct a working explanation of the text. While these techniques are expressed in a particular order, it is clear that creating Explanation is an iterative process, which requires a havruta to move back and forth between these processes. The list includes:

  • Read the text out loud in the original
  • Identifying what I already understand, what I need to know, and this sharing with my havruta
  • Together, identify the words we already know in English
  • Look for and identify reoccurring words/patterns
  • Identify which words each member of the havruta will look up
  • Share findings
  • Remind one another the topic of the text

While these techniques appear to be a list of ways to translate the text, by developing the list together, unpacking the exercise collectively, and identifying the ways different members of a havruta may contribute, the task becomes one that can help strengthen the students’ abilities to figure things out. It is a process that enables students to practice self-awareness, self-management, and relationship skills. Additionally, these techniques often bring students to the “raw materials” stage of explanation. Though they have English words associated with most of the original text, it is nothing that makes sense contextually nor is it something, from which meaning may be brought. This begs a second question for the exercise: How do I turn my raw materials into a sentence that makes sense?

Certainly, all teachers make pedagogical decisions regarding havruta study. I often give students guiding questions that point out problems of understanding in the text. By answering the questions, I hope the students will come to greater understanding of the material. I often find myself navigating between “discovery,” by which I mean the student must figure out the text for herself, and “frontloading,” in which I provide students structure, context and even important vocabulary. All of this is to say, that while I actively guide their learning, I also want them to develop the tools to figure out the text. I cannot know what they will intuit and what they need to be given. In order to turn their raw materials into an explanation, the students gave these guidelines:

  • Go back to what is being asked/discussed – What is the context of the text?
  • Identify the different ways one can understand a word – Am I tied too tightly to a particular definition?
  • What assumptions about the text am I/ are we making?
  • Does this make sense? Is this logical?
  • Can I explain this text to my havruta?

The final question is particularly difficult because students often find this material to be foreign. Through their capacity for meaning making, students can justify the ridiculous appearance of random words and ideas (and rabbinic literature is known for these appearances as well). However, the more one can get students to explain the text to their partners and can take responsibility for their partner’s understanding, the more the ideas of Social Emotional Learning can take hold.

Setting havruta goals before learning

As students become more adept havrutot, as their relationship develops and they feel more comfortable sharing with one another and pushing one another, they become capable of establishing norms for their havruta. Before sitting down to learn, students can articulate havruta goals. This should be an explicitly designed moment of the havruta. Ask students to identify five goals for their learning together. This helps them build their self-awareness by identifying their own strengths and challenges. Further, their commitment and responsibility towards another is reinforced as they build their goals together. I asked students to sit for five minutes and write down five different goals for their learning. After completing these five minutes, they were allowed to get their Talmuds, dictionaries and other materials for learning. Student goals varied and included statements about sharing responsibilities (mostly around dictionary work), checking behavior, and content understanding related statements. Several pairs of students expressed the need to distribute vocabulary searches equally. A number of havrutot also expressed behavioral goals, including:

  • staying on track
  • staying focused
  • being respectful about one another’s ideas
  • listen to one another
  • keeping havruta on task

These behavioral goals are often intimately related to content understanding. The students expressed desires to ask challenging questions of the text and each other, question each other’s translations, explain ideas to one another, and not simply accept one’s havruta’s ideas. The ability to participate actively, to stay focused, and to listen, enables the type of learning the students want. One student goal expressed this connection poignantly, “We should not be passive and seemingly accept what our havruta says without developing our own opinion and stance on the text.”

In reflecting on the way goal setting effects havruta study, students offered statements of success and challenge. One student, who expressed the goals of “perseverance through challenges” and to challenge one another, told the following story:

I think one way we really fulfilled this, was we stayed on track and questioned each other’s understanding. When I would get off track [my havruta] would gently remind me to be more on track. Furthermore, we came to a disagreement about what the text meant and instead of immediately going to [our teacher], we talked about it and asked questions, until we had a better understanding that we both agreed on.

Another student expressed the difficulty with staying focused:

The main goal that was harder to fulfill was staying focused. Today, I thought we did a lot better in this, and I saw how it was beneficial to our understanding of the text and the interaction between us. However, today there was still a struggle. In the beginning of class, [my havruta] went and got a crossword puzzle from the table. Personally, it made me not so happy, because I thought he wouldn’t put as much of an effort in our work. I think the goals really helped, and even though we haven’t accomplished this one yet I think we are doing better.

Finally, another student described the connection between getting at an explanation and the way the struggle can affect morale:

I think we did really well at challenging each others’ logic and attempting to develop the strongest understanding possible. I think what we struggled with was at time we became lazy and didn’t have the energy to look up words in the dictionary, as we instead were so focused on understanding the text as a whole. In hindsight, part of understanding a text as a whole includes understanding every word. The words in a text are what constitute its meaning, (its, meaning the texts).

The goals behind the use of havruta in my classroom include providing students a mode for furthering their understanding of the material, to encounter the “other” in a profound way thus learn about themselves through the process, and to develop meaning, both shared and individual. The various exercises that I describe above aim to draw the student into an experience that is both about developing an understanding of the text, developing meaning and having a profound experience with another person. While one may see these as separate goals, the framework of SEL for havruta draws together in an iterative process cognitive, emotional and spiritual learning. These are not separate goals, but deeply intertwined experiences.

References

Holzer, E., & Kent, O. (2013). A Philosophy of havruta: Understanding and teaching the art of text study in pairs. Boston: Academic Studies Press.

Kent, O. (2013). A theory of havruta learning. In J. A. Levisohn & S. P. Fendrick (Eds.), Turn it and turn it again: Studies in the teaching and learning of classical Jewish texts (pp. 323-286). Boston: Academic Studies Press.

Ricoeur, P. (1971). What is a Text? Explanation and Interpretation. In D. M. Rasmussen, Mythic-symbolic language and philosophical anthropology; a constructive interpretation of the thought of Paul Ricoeur. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Joshua Ladon is the Bay Area Manager of the Shalom Hartman Institute – North America, and was previously Dean of Student Life and Jewish Life at the Jewish Community High School of the Bay. Rabbi Ladon received rabbinic ordination from the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem and is currently a doctoral student in education at the Davidson School of JTS.