High Tech Gemara Learning at Darchai Menachem

CROWN HEIGHTS [CHI] — Eleven boys sit poised in a brightly-painted third floor classroom at Yeshiva Darchai Menachem, in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York. The atmosphere in the room has the feeling of a quiz show. Their teacher, Rabbi Shua Samuels, barely has a chance to get his questions out, before hands wave eagerly in the air, 11 preteen boys desperate to demonstrate their knowledge.

By all accounts, this is not your typical Talmud class. There is no clichéd stodginess, no backs bent over ancient texts. But most unique, according to teachers, parents, and students: no one is left behind.

This is Gemara Berura, Talmud study for the 21st century. A methodological approach to Gemara study, it seeks to teach students the skills inherent in Talmud, so that students can ultimately proceed to independent study. Darchai Menachem is one of 32 schools that currently employ this textual and technical approach made available through partial funding from the Avichai Foundation: a page of Gemara is studied both inside its original text and then reviewed through high-tech PowerPoint presentations. Using a color and shape-coded system, Gemara Berura maps out the analytical thought-processes of Talmudic compilers.

“Most Gemara classes are comprised of a teacher teaching Gemara subjects, not lessons on how to learn the actual text,” believes Rabbi Meir Fachler, senior consultant, based in Israel. “Many publications today offer content, but they are basically saying: you don’t need to know how to learn, we have done the work for you.” Rabbi Fachler travels across the United States helping to implement and support the program in classrooms. According to this master educator, its creation could not have come at a better time.

“For better or worse, it is an unwritten equation that the benchmark for being a good Jew is to be a successful Gemara student,” Rabbi Fachler says. “It is a documented phenomenon that kids will look in the mirror and think, ‘I am not so good at Gemara, maybe I am not a good Jew.’ We have to change that.”

Rabbi Eyal Bension is principal of the Brooklyn Yeshiva. Since incorporating this program into his elementary and high school classrooms, Rabbi Bension has witnessed a turnaround with many of his students. “The students are alive and engaged. Without this program most of our students would need to rely on natural talent to succeed. Using Gemara Berura, which is a skills based approach, everyone stands a chance to succeed.

“Gemara study is like telling a student to create a puzzle. Without Gemara Berura, you are instructing him to put together a 15,000 piece puzzle with no picture or direction. In a classic classroom, the student who can create this is considered smart, conscientious, good. But with this program, you first show the completed puzzle indicating the corners and points. Now, anyone can complete it. That’s how you should teach. That is how the students will learn.”

Rabbi Sholom Ber Cohen has taught in different schools using both the classic method and this new system. He says that while a page of Talmud is not organized: a Talmudist can ask a question, followed by a seemingly disconnected two-page tangent; Gemara Berura gives students the skills to understand what is being discussed. A whopping “80 percent of a boy’s day is Gemara. If he doesn’t have success there, he will not be happy. And he will start to look for other things to keep him busy.”

One of Rabbi Cohen’s students is fifteen year old Binyamin Feygen, who has studied Gemara both with Gemara Berura and without. “This system is easier for me,” he says. “And for the other boys in my class. When Rabbi Cohen asks a question, nearly everyone knows the answers.” Next year Feygen will attend a prominent yeshiva in Connecticut, and will study Gemara without the aid of this program.

He isn’t worried though. “Darchai Menachem and Gemara Berura have prepared me well. I know what’s going on in the Gemara.”