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Active Learning in the Halakha Class

Mark Smilowitz

Mark Smilowitz taught Jewish Studies in high school and middle school, both in the United States
and in Israel. He currently works in teacher training, teaches in Midrasha, and produces a
weekly podcast on teaching for the Lookstein Center www.lookstein.org/podcasts. In this article,
he describes an approach to teaching halakha which enables the students as researchers. The
approach opens new vistas for student exploration and can be easily adapted for almost any
discipline.

The approach outlined here was developed in order to solve a problem facing the teacher
of halakha. It is likely to be a good pedagogical approach to any discipline that involves
study of primary texts, but it can be particularly useful in the halakha class, as I
discovered when I used it while teaching in the Northwest Yeshiva High School in
Seattle. The halakha program there is designed to teach, among other things, proficiency
in reading and understanding the classic halakhic codes, primarily those of the Rambam
and Shulhan Arukh. Those codes and the classic glosses on the latter, such as the
Mishnah Berurah for Askenazim and the Kaf Hahayyim for Sephardim, are the books
most commonly used in synagogues, homes, and yeshivas for the steady, ongoing study
of halakha, or when looking up a particular halakha.
The problem is that the terseness of these codes tends to leave students and teachers
under-stimulated by the material. The Shulchan Arukh, for example, makes practically no
reference to issues that Twersky describes as, "exegesis, interpretation, derivation,
awareness of controversy," and its curt style reflects in part "the virtually complete
elimination of ideology, theology, and teleology." The halakhic code of the Rambam is a
little better in this area, but not much. As result, the teaching of halakha is "reduced to an
attempt to simply make students learn rules and regulations in such a way that students
perceive that the same kinds of intellectual demands are not being made of them that
other texts do."
Students who aren't immersed in the world of halakha study, and even some who are,
remain unaware of the rich, conceptual framework that surrounds any given law. For
example, when I was in yeshiva, we were taught that every law can be studied and
understood by exploring three things: its source, its nature, and its scope. But our students
tend not to know that or another conceptual map; and if they know it, they may not to be
motivated to do that exploration; and if they are motivated, they likely don't know how to
do it.
The technique discussed here is designed to draw students into that halakhic world as
active participants, not merely spectators who passively watch the teacher explain it. By
active, I mean cognitively active, so that they are thinking creatively and critically. Using
this technique, it is the very problem of the terseness of the text that becomes the
motivator for students to do further research; a seemingly un-engaging passage becomes

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a cause of interest. Before outlining this method, it is worthwhile to re-orient ourselves to
the nature of student questions in the classroom.
Two Kinds of Questions
Classically, teachers and students alike tend to view questions as stemming from
problems; if nothing bothers you, you don't ask. Even progressive methods devised to
make students active learners through questioning seem to view questions as stemming
from problems. For example, the "inquiry training" model relies on presenting students
with puzzling events that will naturally arouse their curiosity and stimulate their
questions. This approach "deliberately selects episodes that have sufficiently surprising
outcomes to make it difficult for students to remain indifferent to the encounter."
Perhaps you've seen a science exhibition where they put a blown up balloon into liquid
nitrogen, and it comes out shrunk. The kids are naturally stimulated to ask why it does
that, because the outcome is surprising. This is precisely the kind of curiosity-generating
activity that would kick off a unit in the inquiry training approach.
But let's consider another way to stimulate curiosity. Take a regular balloon, a normal
object that doesn't automatically generate questions, and hold it up in front of a classroom
as is, and tell students they have two minutes to write down as many questions as they
can think of that will help them understand the balloon better. Tell them not to hold back,
but to let their imaginations go. When I do this experiment on myself, I find that I
suddenly become interested in things I wasn't interested in before – science questions
such as why balloons lose their air after a while, manufacturing questions like how
balloons are made, or maybe economic questions like how do they decide how much
balloons cost. When one is prompted in this manner, instead of curiosity generating
questions, it is the discipline of questioning that generates the curiosity. We might refer to
this latter kind of question as a research-oriented question, as opposed to a problem-based
question, because asking this kind of question is often the key to researching a topic.
My guess is that most students only know about problem-based questions and are never
taught to ask research-oriented questions. Neil Postman expressed his “astonishment at
the neglect shown in school toward” the art of formulating questions. “All our knowledge
results from questions, which is another way of saying that question asking is our most
important intellectual tool. I would go so far as to say that the answers we carry about in
our heads are largely meaningless unless we know the questions which produced them.”
Using this method in Halakha Class
Because there exists a world of questions that experts in halakhic research habitually ask,
not because they're having difficulties but because they know that these questions will
lead them to the richness, complexity and beauty of the halakha, our goal is to engage
students with a passage in one of the codes by inviting them to discover these questions,
and then giving them the tools to discover answers.
The technique I used involves six stages:
Stage One: The teacher presents the initial text.
We begin a new unit of study by reading a new halakha from one of the codes. I would
seek a relatively simple passage so that students could focus their questions more on

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issues about the halakha itself and less on technical, textual issues. On the other hand, it
helps if the text has some elements of nuance or ambiguity in order to encourage student
curiosity. I found Rambam's Mishna Torah served these needs well. It is also desirable
for the halakha to involve normative practices the students are likely to encounter (e.g.,
the requirement to pray three times a day, the prohibition of deception in business and
social interaction (geneivat daat), the requirement to wait between meat and milk, how
many shofar blasts we have to hear). Consideration also should be given to the
subsequent halakhic works that the students will see at the research stage, so that these
later, more explanatory halakhic works, such as the Mishnah Berurah, Arukh Hashulhan,
or Kaf Hahayyim, will reveal elements of controversy or surprise about the law, or use it
to illustrate some broader halakhic principle that is worthy of attention.
Stage Two: Students write their questions.
After reading this new text the students have two minutes of quiet time during which
they are to write down the questions about the halakha that, if explored, will lead them to
a better understanding of it. Instructing the students to write their questions is much
different from asking, “Are there any questions?” It teaches students to understand that
they must have questions, and if they don’t have any, then they just have to think of
some. That is how to create a researcher.
It is at this stage that the terse style of the halakhic codes are transformed from being a
problem to being a stimulus to active student involvement. The missing ideas and
references we mentioned above, the things we wish were included in the text, are the very
things students should be asking about. At this stage students should be exploring
questions such as: What is the source? What is its origin? Is it from the Torah? The
Rabbis? How is it related to a similar concept we learned? Are there any exceptions?
What are its parameters? Who's obligated in it and when? Is it under dispute? What is its
purpose? Do we practice this way today? These missing pieces are the stuff their
questions should seek to discover.
Students should be encouraged to let their imaginations go so that their questions can
include ideological issues or historical issues about the work and its author, including the
question of why the book was written in such a terse style. For those challenged by this
exercise, the teacher can gently prod. "Imagine you were observing this halakha and
someone who doesn't know anything about halakha saw you doing it and they wanted
you to explain it to them. Would you feel comfortable doing that with your current
knowledge level? What more do you need to know?"
It should be clear that while the questions we focus on in this discussion are endemic to
all or most halakhot, they are not meant to be asked mindlessly without giving attention
to the unique aspects of the halakha at hand. On the contrary, while there is certainly a
common "question bank" for all halakhot, when students are given time to think about
any given law and its particular formulation, it inspires its own special emphases and
unique formulations, as well as completely unique questions.
Stage Three: Students share their questions.

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 Each student shares with the class their one most important question, and the teacher
records on the board a list of research questions. If there are additional after one circuit of
the class, students will now have a chance to add them.
Stage Four: Consolidating the list.
Listening to the student-generated questions, the teacher assesses where the students are
in relation to this particular text, and the discipline in general Are they getting hung up on
the language? Are they getting the idea? Are they concerned about philosophical or
theological issues? Do they understand the technical nature of halakha as a legal system?
Have the students had any personal experiences that affect the way they learn this
halakha? Are they having emotional issues related to this halakha? If the teacher
identifies issues that may hold up progress, it may be wise to address them before going
further. There may be other questions raised that are important but not appropriate to be
answered in the context of the current unit, and the teacher may choose to save such
questions for a "rainy day" lesson at some future time. But most of the questions will
become the agenda for the student research that comprises the next stage. The teacher can
add some of his or her own questions, and explain to the students why this kind of
question is important. This modeling helps the students move towards asking richer, more
productive questions.
When all the questions are up on the board, they are categorized. Together with the class,
the teacher groups the questions. Which are about the text (e.g., why did the text use
these words in such and such order) and which are about the topic (what is the source of
this law)? While the former may or may not give new insights into the law, the latter
usually leads to broader and deeper ideas. Some questions are more generally about
halakha. Other questions are unique to the case at hand and require students to think
about the special and unique issues raised by this particular halakha. Different texts lend
themselves to different categories of questions, and choosing a variety of texts over the
year exposes students to an array of question types. As the students practice asking their
questions, they become better at asking the ones that will be most effective in producing
deeper and more meaningful knowledge, a skill that is reinforced with the study of
subsequent units.
These four stages would typically take one class period. After the class I would type up
the questions and distribute them the next day – that list would become the student-
generated agenda for the rest of the unit of study.
Stage Five: Students consider possible answers.
Now it's time for students to find answers to their questions, based on their pre-
knowledge and their own analytical skills. It's a good idea to have them do this in small
groups, after which the groups share the answers they generated with the entire class.
This exercise is a good preparation for finding answers through research – when students
subsequently see their own answers (or variations on them) in later commentaries, they
will recognize them and understand them more deeply than if they had never considered
them before.
Stage Six: Students seek answers in additional sources.

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 The final step is the research, where the teacher helps the students find answers to their
questions in subsequent source material. Students may be able to learn some of the
resources on their own, in class or for homework, while other, more challenging
resources need teacher guidance, but teacher guidance should be limited to explaining the
direct meaning of the text. It remains the job of the students, not the teacher, to discover
which of their original questions had been answered, and how.
The particular resources that students should turn to will vary with the teacher, the class,
the skills that the curriculum seeks to impart, the students' current reading abilities, and
on the resources available to students and the teacher. I would start the unit with a law
from the Rambam, and then we would study the parallel presentation of that same law in
the Shulhan Arukh, the Mishnah Berurah, the Arukh Hashulhan, and sometimes the Kaf
Hahayyim, all along prompting the students to decide if their questions were being
satisfactorily answered.
Generally, by the time we were through, most of their questions were addressed. Beyond
having their questions answered, students exploring these additional works often
discovered new ideas and directions of thought inviting further exploration. If there are
questions that the usual line up of books does not sufficiently address, the teacher can
then choose to either present an additional source to the students that does address it, or
to tell the students an answer, or to leave it open as a question, all depending on time,
resource, and curriculum considerations.
Benefits and drawback to this approach
In general, the active learning movement as a whole has been critiqued as creating
students who may enjoy the learning process but don't learn very much (Kirschner,
Sweller & Clark). While this is a legitimate (and not a new) concern it can be alleviated
with good curriculum planning. We used a variety of methods for increasing student
exposure to more knowledge, including extensive (rather than intensive) reading that
students had to do on their own, mini-units (quick paced, frontal presentation of the
process of researching a law through the different books in the course of one period). ,
and studying the introductions to the various halakhic codes in order to understand more
about their history, their composition, and their unique purpose and contribution.
On the other hand, I believe that the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks. First, this
approach helps the teacher to assess the students' readiness for learning the unit by giving
the teacher a window into the students' initial thinking about the Law being studied. The
lessons can thus be modified to maximally satisfy the particular learning needs of the
individual students.
Second, it gives the students a motivation and purpose to want to see more information.
Without this method, students in a halakha class may wonder, if we’ve already learned
the Rambam, why do we need to go to the Shulchan Aruch? The study of the Rambam
sparked their curiosity and left them with questions; they turn to additional sources to
resolve them
Third, this learning helps to shift the students' relationship to the halakhic books
themselves. Mishnah Berurah, Arukh Hashulhan and Kaf Hahayyim now become tools to
solve student-generated problems. There is a very powerful transformation in the

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students’ minds when these works begin to serve as the students’ partners in the shared
endeavor of finding answers. This paradigm shift is even more pronounced if the students
were given the chance to devise their own answers to their questions before seeing how
the classic works do so, because now these classic books are doing the same work the
students did. The students are brought into the intergenerational study of halakha.
Fourth, students acquire research skills. Empowered by the expert's tool chest of
questions, as well as their learning through hands on they are closer to becoming
independent learners.
Fifth, research-oriented questioning helps to defuse emotional tensions and
confrontational attitudes some students might harbor toward halakha and halakhic
authority. This method defuses the power struggle between our students and rabbinic
authority by transforming the students’ job in class from mere acceptance of the halakha
to investigating and understanding it. The mood and tone established by practicing the
discipline of constructive questioning can change the attitude of even the most skeptical
student toward the text by shifting their stance from that of critic to inquisitive explorer.
In one class, a student challenged a perplexing derashat Hazal with the objection, “That’s
a stretch!” The class was then challenged to reformulate that objection as a question.
Initial silence was followed by various attempts, until one student finally asked, “How do
Hazal see that from the pasuk?” That research question drove the ensuing discussion, in
which students tried to provide a plausible explanation.
Consider the words of one student writing in response to the prompt, "How has this
course changed you?"
The most important way this class changed me is it has made me a much more patient
learner. I hesitate to question the entire system of Halakha or Judaism as a whole. Rather,
I attack the problem at hand. I have found that questions are only relevant if one hopes to
find an answer. I am slower to judge an answer because many times my questions or
answers themselves can be answered…I think of a killer question and before I have time
to blurt it out I have come up with a quite simple answer.
It is perhaps ironic that this student seems more willing to accept rabbinic authority
precisely because he was given autonomy. That is to say, he does not claim to “hesitate to
question the system” because the teacher discouraged him from questioning it; rather, it is
because the teacher gave him a language and a framework to question it in a way that
would invite more questions and yield answers. Giving the students the freedom to
explore their questions by helping them to restructure their objections, which stop
thinking, into inquiries, which promote thinking, paradoxically allows them to feel more
comfortable submitting their freedom to the authority of the system.
In sum, by re-orienting students to the nature and purpose of question asking, we allow
them to become active participants in awakening the dormant world of deep and complex
thinking that lies within apparently simple Halakhic texts. By letting the students
transform a law into a doorway to understanding we turn the classroom from a place to
listen into a place to wonder.
Note: My thanks to Rabbi Benjy Owen for his help devising the curriculum, as well as
the guidance of principal Rabbi Bernie Fox in alerting me to the importance of questions.

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References
Goldmintz, Jay, Ten Da’at , 9:1, pp. 55-62. Reprinted on the website of The Lookstein
Center, www.lookstein.org/articles/teaching_halakha.htm
Joyce, Bruce, Weil, Marsha, with Calhoun, Emily, Models of Teaching, Allyn & Bacon,
MA, pp. 175-189
Kirschner, Paul A., Sweller, John, and Clark, Richard E., " Why Minimal Guidance
During Instruction Does Not Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist,
Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based Teaching," Educational
Psychologist, 41(2), 75-86, 2006, also available online at
http://www.cogtech.usc.edu/publications/kirschner_Sweller_Clark.pdf
Postman, Neil, Teaching as a Conserving Activity, Delacorte Press, New York, 1979, p.
154
Twersky, Isadore, "The Shulhan Arukh; Enduring Code of Jewish Law," Judaism 16:2
(1967), pp. 152,153, as cited in Goldmintz, Jay, "On Teaching Halakha," Ten Da’at , 9:1,
pp. 55-62. Reprinted on the website of the Lookstein Center,
www.lookstein.org/articles/teaching_halakha.htm.