Section archive - Formal Education

What do Jewish day school students believe constitutes good understanding and worthwhile learning in the context of their encounter with rabbinic texts in the classroom? This article shares findings from an interview study of Jewish day school students in grades 9 through 12 regarding their attitudes toward the study of Talmud. I argue that high school students’ estimations of the value of Talmud study are shaped, not only by individually held tastes, talents, and commitments, but also by a set of shared intellectual values. These values, related to their beliefs about the purposes of learning and what good learning should accomplish for the learner, develop in the context of their schools and communities and frame how students set goals for and assess their own understanding of Talmud.

More than 6,600 students were learning Hebrew in a public-school or charter-school setting in 2018 in the US, according to a report issued by CASJE, the Consortium for Applied Studies in Jewish Education, and George Washington University’s Graduate School of Education and Human Development.

On a recent Monday morning on the Upper West Side, a group of about 20 men and women sat in pairs, hunched over enormous Jewish legal tomes and dissecting their contents in animated conversation. It was a typical scene at Hadar, an egalitarian yeshiva that has run full-time study programs for young adults in New York City since 2007. Less typical was the mundane topic of their study: whether it is permissible to use a dishwasher for both meat and milk dishes in successive cycles. It’s the kind of question typically asked of synagogue rabbis.

NETA/Bishvil Ha-Ivrit was initiated in 1999 at the urging of AVI CHAI Foundation Trustee Dr. Ruth Wisse, with early implementation by Senior Program Officer Rachel Mohl Abrahams. It created a comprehensive Hebrew language curriculum and offered ongoing professional development for Jewish day school teachers in grades 7-12. Founding Director Hilla Kobliner came with a stellar reputation as a consummate Hebrew language expert and master pedagogue. An expert and dedicated staff was stationed at NETA/Bishvil Ha-Ivrit’s North American home at Hebrew College in Boston. The staff has planted and nurtured the seeds that have made the program flourish and bloom in the years since.