At one the BJE High School Placement Exam contained a Talmud section. We tried several approaches. One required students to make a "Layning" on a simple piece of Gemara and answer some multiple choice questions. This proved too great a challenge for most 8th grade students. We shifted to a series of questions on Gemara terminology that students should have been acquainted with. This to was problematic, in that the exam is in Ivrit and we could not know how these Gemara terms were presented to students, such that they would be able to recognize our Ivrit definitions. In the end be dropped it from the exam in favor of schools conducting their own oral exams as part of the interview process.
Rabbi Ellis Bloch
Consultant
Yeshiva/Day School Department
The Jewish Education Project of Greater New York
