Search results for: Hevruta

This intensive week (June 23-27, 2019) of inspiring personal and professional learning includes Jewish text learning, led by Hadar faculty, in a lively beit midrash setting and offers two tracks to choose from for enhancing Jewish learning in the Day School classroom. The first is an in-depth exploration of the Pedagogy of Partnership with Dr. Orit Kent and Allison Cook. The second is an opportunity for schools to send cohorts of faculty who are committed to bringing Hadar's Fluency Standards into their school environments.

The paired study of the Jewish Talmud in havruta is a traditional, well-established and prestigious form of study. Havruta conversation is a confrontational speech event in which disagreements are not only expected but also appreciated. The aim of this study is to explore for the first time disagreement patterns carried out by women studying in havruta pairs. Twenty one havruta conversations were observed and recorded, and semi-structured in-depth interviews were held individually with the participants.

When we talk about education in our congregations and synagogues, we often look at what is cutting edge, new, and different. Our institutions emphasize that the future of education must involve smart boards, WiFi, and swiping screens. I agree that we must offer innovative entry points for learning. Still, we cannot forget the most important aspect of learning: our peers. Paired study, or chavrutah learning, has been a part of traditional rabbinic text study for centuries. This form of paired learning acknowledges that there is not distinct roles of student and teacher. Rather, each partner in the pair teaches one another, and learns from one another. Together, they may analyze texts, question interpretations or arguments, and suggest different conclusions. Learning with – and from – someone else allows us to open up our minds to see something in a way that we previously were not able. We are taught In Pirkei Avot 1:6: Find for yourself a teacher, acquire for yourself a friend. Through chavrutah study, we come to understand and appreciate that our closest friends are our greatest teachers.

Michel de Montaigne’s L’art de Conférer offers a moral groundwork for students’ learning of havruta, a traditional Jewish form of studying in pairs, based on collaborative critical text-based learning, that can be applied to students everywhere. The article attends to the nature of havruta learning and to cultural norms that make it difficult for students to become open to their partners’ opposing ideas. Students’ critical discussion of Montaigne’s essay is then conceptualized as a pedagogical tool for cultivating the welcoming of opposing viewpoints and opening their own ideas to critical scrutiny in text- and discussion-based learning.