This paper highlights two aspects of the culture of empowerment that held sway in the yeshiva, the modern Talmudic academy that developed in Eastern Europe in the nineteenth century. The first aspect is the adversarial atmosphere that reigned in the classroom, and the second aspect is the joint endeavor of peer-teaching. The author's choice of these two features is guided by the sense that to varying extents they are not employed in our day school systems, but could foreseeably be included in the teacher’s toolbox.