The Talmud Skills Research Fellow will assist Rabbi Daniel Reifman in developing his Intermediate/Advanced Talmud Skills course into a curriculum and/or online resource. This will be distributed to schools and educators through the Pardes Center for Jewish Educators.
Daniel has been teaching intermediate and advanced Talmud classes with a distinctive approach to skill-building for over 15 years. His Talmud Skills class at Pardes has become popular among students looking to develop independence in Talmud study. Students have frequently requested a way to continue using his methodology beyond the framework of the course, both for continued study and for teaching their own students.
The Talmud Skills curriculum will incorporate elements relevant to a range of skill levels.
What distinguishes this approach from that of other Talmud curricula is the focus on systematic structural elements rather than on content. The Talmud Skills Project will lay out discrete sets of techniques for reading Gemara and Rishonim that can be used regardless of the specific material being studied. Similarly, the advantage of the charts and visual tools is that their underlying structure allows the teacher to adapt them to a very wide range of content.
Over the past year and a half, the Talmud Skills project has taken the form of individual pamphlets, each outlining a particular technique or skill set. These are geared for use by students, and are designed to demonstrate how specific techniques and skills can be used productively at different skill levels (e.g., using the same chart for mapping out Mishnayot, sugiyot and Rishonim). Already a number of these pamphlets are ‘in beta’ and have been distributed to students and teachers for their feedback.
The next phase of the project will involve editing the completed pamphlets for both content and design. Hopefully, we will also begin combining individual pamphlets into a larger and more comprehensive guide.
Admissions are rolling, with financial aid priority given to earlier applicants.