<HTML>Dear Shalom and Lookjed Readers:
I have never taught high school Gemara, but the products of Diaspora
Gemara education find their way to my classes in Israel. To put it
bluntly, most of students I have come across complete high school with
very limited Gemara skills. (The "year in Israel" helps, but we hardly do
as good a job as we could.) To generalize, the large majority:
Do not know how to read and translate Gemara.=20
Do not know how to break down a given Gemara into its component parts,
identifying the key phrases, which the Gemara uses as signposts.
Do not know how to identify the problems and questions that are inherent
in the Gemara, those very problems, which the Rishonim set out to solve.
(Many of them don't even know that you have to do so in order to learn.
They think that you can move straight from the translation stage into the
sevara or chakira stage.)
Do not know how to read Rishonim with an eye to answering the problems,
which should be identified as inherent in the Gemara. (Kal Vechomer Rashi,
who many see as a terse and less helpful version of Shteinzaltz).
Many of them can think in a straight line, and, if the Gemara is laid out
in front of them, can come up with a good sevara. However, they often do
not realize that sevara must be applicable, meaning that it must help us
translate the specific case(s) that the Gemara discusses to halakhic
principles that will help us more precisely identify what other similar
cases will fall under the halakhic category under discussion.
I applaud Jeffery Spitzer's attempt to put together a junior high school
Gemara curriculum to address these deficiencies. I strongly recommend that
it, and like curriculum, be implemented in other schools at all age
levels. I do not envy the task of yeshiva high school Gemara teachers.
Teaching one-year programs in Israel, I have it easy. Anybody who doesn't
want to learn the skills I try to teach, can easily go to another shiur. I
get a self-selected group of students who are motivated to learn the way I
like to teach - focusing on text and analytical skills - with the students
doing almost all the work on their own. High school teachers have to teach
whoever walks into their classroom, regardless of their interest in
Gemara, their intellectual capabilities, or their motivation. Students and
their parents are often lethargic to Gemara, and limudei kodesh in
general. I do not mean to make light of the enormous challenges involved
in teaching Gemara at a high school level.
But, let me recommend that high-school Gemara education focus strongly on
text skills, both the reading and the analysis that must occur before a
"sevara" can be offered. (i.e. - What do we know and what don't we know
about the case(s), which the Gemara discusses? Identify the comparisons
that the Gemara makes between different cases. What are the similarities
and differences between these cases? Why does the Gemara chose to compare
them, despite the differences? Etc. Etc.) Rishonim should help answer
questions that students have already asked. If they don't know what the
problems are, they will not appreciate why any commentary says what it
says. Let me also suggest that students be urged to the do the close
reading, unpacking, and thinking on their own. The overall goal, I
believe, must be to train students who can learn on a high level
independently, outside of a formal shiur. They can not do so unless the
develop the intellectual self-confidence to know what method to employ
when reading and breaking down a Gemara.
Yoel Finkelman</HTML>
