Why Your Son Must Succeed In Gemara And How His School Can Help

What are the three things your son learns in a yeshiva high school?

Gemara, gemara, and gemara.

It is no secret that in a typical Yeshiva boys high school, the overwhelming emphasis in the Judaic studies curriculum is gemara. As a result, a student will spend a significant amount of time in his high school years poring over pages of the gemara.

A gemara-dominant curriculum makes a lot of sense. Jewish law is derived from gemara and Jewish law guides and governs our lives. Also, if our students can learn how to properly learn a sugya, with all of its intricacies and depth, they have pretty much mastered the tools to learn anything else- Judaic or secular. There is no question that gemara can promote critical thinking skills and high-order thinking. The Talmud, at one point, became a best-seller in South Korea.

However, the single biggest challenge inherent in a gemara -focused yeshiva occurs when the student exhibits chronic difficulty in learning it. This is not uncommon, to say the least. Gemara is an exceedingly difficult endeavor. After being introduced to Hebrew in primary school, students now must become semi-literate in Aramaic. Then there is the intense and rigorous intellectual exercise that gemara study entails.

The student in a gemara-focused school who has significant struggles in gemara is the student who won’t feel like he is successful in school. This feeling becomes even more pronounced in a school with substandard secular studies, where extracurricular activities are minimal to nonexistent, and where there are very limited resources available. In a school like this, with very few areas that the he can potentially excel at, where does a student who struggles in gemara get his sense of accomplishment, his feeling of success? This void can have very negative consequences and at some point in his high school years, feeling overwhelmed and frustrated, the student might begin exploring other venues to find “success.” The stakes are clearly high for our boys to succeed.

How can our boys achieve success in gemara? There is no panacea, as there are many components to effective teaching and a host of factors that contribute to success in gemara. But there are several guidelines that can greatly help our boys toward a path of success.

The initial years, when they are first introduced to gemara, are essential. They typically begin studying gemara anywhere from fifth to seventh grade, depending on the school. These are their formative years in gemara, where the foundation is set. Rabbi Aminov, longtime Rosh Yeshiva of Mesivta Tiferet Torah High School of Kew Gardens, firmly believes that “students who do not learn the depth and beauty inherent in gemara in their middle school years will likely arrive in high school with significant challenges in their gemara learning.” Middle school success in gemara is a crucial bridge to high school success in gemara.

It is important not to panic if your middle school child appears to be first struggling in gemara; this is their initial exposure to something relatively new, with a new language and a new system of learning. But their progress should be closely tracked and parents should maintain regular contact with their son’s rebbe.

When a middle school student begins to show a pattern of consistent challenges in gemara, there needs to be a system set in place for early intervention. This can take the form of a school intervention team, made up of the student’s rebbe and other educators and professionals whose objective will be to determine the precise challenges the child is experiencing and offer different strategies to address them. One-to-one tutoring might be one of several recourses that should be considered. The team will have to meet regularly to assess the child’s progress.

One significant factor that can impede a student’s progress in gemara is lack of motivation. Determining why students are not motivated can be a tricky thing but one thing that rebbeim can do and have control over is to choose a sugya that appeals to the children’s interests. Kids like learning things that are practical and relatable. In Daf Yomi, one can observe grown men perk up and become quickly engaged when the topic turns into something they can relate to, a topic they find interesting. Children are no different. If the goal is to have our boys acquire the tools necessary for them to be able to learn a piece of gemara on their own, why not choose topics that will make it easier for them acquire those tools? Once they grow in confidence, students can pursue the more abstract and technical sugyas.

We also know that children learn differently. They learn in multiple ways - visual, auditory, and tactile - but one way might be their predominant style. Simple learning style surveys, available online for free, can be given to the students to fill out at the beginning of the year to determine their learning style. A rebbe, for example, can provide a visual learner extra support and reinforcement by incorporating some visuals in the lesson. Visuals, like charts, pictures, and short video clips, can help break down a complex topic into more simple, clear, and understandable parts.

Another major obstacle for students learning gemara is the duration of the lecture: It is just too long. People, in general, are experiencing shorter attention spans and are distracted very easily. This is all the more true with children. Gemara requires intense concentration and focus, and for many of our students, a lecture of a mere half-hour is too much for them to handle, especially if it is mostly chalk-and-talk, with little student interaction. Furthermore, the primary purpose of a gemara lecture for high school boys, as opposed to a lecture for men, is not so much the content but how to learn the content. Therefore, long lectures focused on mere quantity becomes a significant stumbling block for those students who are still struggling to learn how to learn.

Instead of one long uninterrupted gemara lecture, the rebbe can give it in chunks of fifteen-minute time frames. After his short lecture, the boys, in pairs, can go over the steps of the gemara and practice their reading. The rebbe can walk around and ask individual students questions to assess their grasp of the material. The more advanced students can be given more challenging work. Chunking is a teaching strategy that can be used in an iyun class, where depth is emphasized, or a b’keyus class, where the goal is to cover more material on the most basic understandable level. In either setting, this strategy will help maximize concentration and promote understanding and clarity.

Our children want to succeed in school. For our boys in yeshivas, that most definitely includes success in gemara. The stakes are too high for them not to do well. The good news is that we can do a lot to help and support our boys. That is incredibly reassuring because the three things we want to see our child do in school is succeed, succeed, and succeed.