The Color-Coded Talmud

by Rabbi Meir Fachler

From my experience working with dozens of Jewish schools, I can safely conclude that Talmud is a difficult subject to learn, let alone teach, and that the job of a Gemara teacher is one of the hardest in the world. Furthermore, I have found that there is no consensus on how to teach Gemara successfully, even though Talmud represents the backbone of the Judaic studies curriculum in the majority of Jewish schools from sixth grade on.

In most settings, the focus is on teaching the contents of the Talmud; structure and method are hardly emphasized. Since most students’ abilities to learn a passage of Talmud directly from the source are severely limited, if not totally nonexistent, this content-focused approach simply doesn’t work for most of them. The overall results are generally poor, with many disaffected students feeling detached from one of Judaism’s major texts.

A creative response to this crisis comes from a most unlikely origin. In the late 1990s, Israel-based business consultant Matty Monheit was feeling increasingly frustrated both with his own poor level of Talmud learning and that of his Israeli yeshiva high school-educated children. Born in the United States and educated at Yeshiva University, Monheit began to wonder whether his approach for analyzing complex management structures and business processes — utilizing flowcharting modeling techniques — might be successfully adapted to deciphering complex Talmudic passages. To test his hypothesis, he engaged a group of scholars, educators and programmers to research the topic and develop a software tool that would enable students to apply high-tech modeling tools to the study of Talmud.

Monheit and his team ultimately developed Gemara Berura, a skills-based, computer-assisted Talmud teaching methodology. Their approach parallels the Talmud’s built-in learning systems, using formatting and color coding that helps the student visualize the process. Importantly, it aims to provide insight into what the Talmud is doing in terms of the shaqla vetarya, Talmudic argumentation (question, answer, support, etc.) even if the learner does not yet understand what the Talmud is saying. To achieve this, the software provides reference tools like a keyword dictionary, Talmudic sages’ biographies, Aramaic–Hebrew dictionary and the entire Babylonian Talmud.

Equipped with the information gained from the reference tools, students can begin the three-step learning process that divides the passage into units of shaqla vetarya (Talmudic argumentation process), then classifies and color-codes the units into one of the 10 classification categories (statement, inquiry, reinforcement etc.) and then connects the different paragraphs of the passage to reveal its unique structure. This is then graphically displayed in the form of a flowchart that maps out the structure and flow of the passage, with the learner’s input. This three-step process provides the basic skills that a student needs in order to be able to access and understand any passage from the Talmud.

My personal involvement in the implementation process in schools around the world quickly brought me to the realization that it was necessary to develop a full, age-appropriate standardized curriculum, including materials, teacher guides, lesson plans, worksheets, assessment instruments, etc. to complement the software tool. To date (with the assistance of a seed grant from the Avi Chai Foundation), we have produced a curriculum prototype that covers the first half-year of teaching Gemara at the “Introduction to Talmud” stage.

The goals of Gemara Berura are to allow students to acquire the critical Gemara-learning skills necessary to learn independently and to provide teachers with a clear methodology and the tools to facilitate this process effectively. Now, there are more than 30 schools and yeshivas in the United States using Gemara Berura, with more than 4,500 students using computers to join the ongoing, worldwide community of learners.

Rabbi Meir Fachler has been spearheading the Gemara Berura project (www.gemaraberura.com) since 2004, and is responsible for its implementation in North America. He lives in Jerusalem.

Westchester Jewish Conference

Westchester’s Jewish Community Relations Organization