Abstract:
This paper explores the ways in which pedagogy that asks students to confront editorial choices in manipulating and recontextualizing source materials, and helps students appreciate the complexity and
multivocality of the talmudic text, is especially well suited to the needs of a pluralistic day school. Through
analysis of student work on the sugyot (passages) on excommunication and on human dignity in Bavli
Berakhot, chapter 3, the author examines the ways in which ninth-grade students learn to make judgments about editorial intention and the meaning of the Talmud. In a postscript, the author explores the
ways that his own teaching and research into student learning is in dialogue with that of his colleague
Susie Tanchel, who teaches Bible at the same pluralistic Jewish high school.
