Aramaic, Technical, but Deeply Relevant
A rebbe of mine once commented, Olam Haba and Gehinom are the same place; you get a gemara and are told to learn. Those that apply themselves to learning are in Olam Haba, those that dont are forced to go through the same torturous process. The statement deeply troubles me, but one point is true; for the student that does not acquire languages easily or is not committed enough to Talmud study to plough through, learning gemara seems irrelevant and torturous.
The reasons are simple- students are required to learn Aramaic as a third foreign language, the gemara is highly technical, the gemara does not fully spell out its own thoughts, and while jumping from topic to topic in haphazard fashion. Some teachers have basically opted out; gemara shiur is story and hashkafa schmooze time. But that really reinforces the problem.
For most teachers, the goal is to teach our students the requisite skills to learn gemara independently. Since the most basic and first barrier is the language, we focus on language acquisition. Students that acquire the basic language move on to analysis, while those that dont remain focused on language acquisition. However, this really compounds the problem; continued word memorization and wrote leining make the process more painful. Students of most skill levels can, in fact, really enjoy learning gemara, they just need more foundational explanations and a different set of emphases and priorities.
First, gemara is not written in a style that any of us is accustomed to. Essentially gemara is the written record of legal conversations, which were originally memorized and then put to paper. This helps explain the structure and flow of the gemara. To record five consecutive statements of Rabbi Yeshoshua ben Levi, whose range of topics span the gamut of Shas, would not make for tight writing, but that structure makes sense to the Amoraim that were try to memorize those five statements.
The style of the gemara is that of a conversation. We are studying the debates of court justices, in our case Rava and Abaye, before they issue a ruling. By asking students to be more reflective of their own conversations with friends, and to track the language and flow of a conversation, they too realize that their conversations are not fully articulate, because everyone understands, and conversations can also have a tangential flow.
Third, since gemara is law it needs to be explained with terms of law. Starting with theories for requiring law, the relationship between values/ethics and law, and then moving to the American equivalent makes discussions more relevant. Hezek reiyah is a discussion about privacy rights, shomrim talks about an individuals responsibilities to others property, and tefillah and berachot describe the spiritual experiences of an individual and the community. Masechet Kiddushin discusses creating a personal status and the importance of that status, similar to the contemporary debates about immigration and citizenship. This provides fertile ground for legal and ethical discussions. The interplay between law and ethics should be discussed, as should a comparison between Jewish and American law. Students will begin to see the unfolding of halacha and realize that the technical halacha really debates profound issues.
In essence, it is critical to distinguish between language acquisition and logic. Many students will learn the language of the gemara through continued study, similar to immersion language acquisition, and do not need to use their intellectual and spiritual energy memorizing words.
At the same time, we can also give them some tools. Breaking the mass of gemara text down into the basic components of an argument- Statement/thesis, Question, Answer, Proof, means that the text is no longer a big blob of words. Using function words- Mesivai, ta shma, etc. provide indicators for labeling a line in the gemara. Before a student starts looking up words in a Frank or Jastrow dictionary, they at least know the end game of that line.
Lastly, students need to be validated that gemara is hard, and they need to be inspired that they can succeed. Many students have found out that they can learn gemara in their Year in Israel, and they enjoy it to boot! Shouldnt students continually hear inspiring stories when they are in 10th grade, before they throw in the towel for the next two years?
