I initially set out to describe the process by which I enrolled in the Drisha Scholars Circle program, spending eight hours each day for three years engaged in dialogue with students half my age who were preparing for careers in Jewish scholarship and service, and to shed light on that experience. But I realized that this story would be incomplete without a description of the path that I have taken through Jewish learning and what it has meant for me.
My first exposure to studying Jewish text lishma (for itself) was a series of sessions on Mishnah at the Torah Leadership Seminar, a Yeshiva University initiative that exposed high school students to Jewish learning and practice in an informal camp-like setting. This took place about six months after I had discovered the joys of participating in Shabbat and Jewish life in general, at age 16 at a NCSY shabbaton staffed by students of Yeshiva University. At the summer seminar we studied Berakhot, and I enjoyed its structured simplicity. I found that I enjoyed this type of learning much more than trying to understand the narratives of Tanakh. My mind tends to lead more toward the mathematical than the narrative, toward subjects that have some sense of closure rather than those that remain forever open.
Having attended elementary and high school in the Great Neck public school system, I wanted to increase my Jewish knowledge to more fully participate in the Orthodox community. At Stern College, I enrolled in the introductory program, but after one year, spent a term at Machon Gold in Jerusalem, where a full day of courses was all taught in Hebrew, including some Mishnah, in particular tractates Yoma and Sotah. I was able to move up to a higher intermediate level at Stern, but in terms of text study, I studied only humash for four terms. My other courses were Hebrew language and Jewish history. Jewish studies at Stern were not yet as intensive as they are today.
In 1973, after finishing a master’s degree in social work, I found my evenings free. Lincoln Square Synagogue was offering an introductory course in Talmud for women, taught by Professor Judith Hauptman, and I enrolled, along with a group of friends. It was easier for me to find my place in learning in Oral Torah because most women, even those with a yeshiva background, were on the same beginner’s level as I was. In courses in Tanakh, the other women were already familiar with the stories and were looking for greater depth and more analysis of language. We studied Masekhet Gittin of the Babylonian Talmud. Although none of us had the background to prepare material ourselves, we were required to review each week and learn the vocabulary covered for the next class. I enjoyed the process of deciphering the code, and went on to study with Professor Hauptman at the Jewish Theological Seminary, accruing credits but never enrolling in a degree program there.
Advantages of Hevruta-Style Learning
When Lincoln Square Synagogue offered summer Kollel courses for women, I took the half-day Talmud courses taught there in hevruta style. When Rabbi David Silber opened his own program, Drisha, I continued to study Talmud with him in evening courses, on a part-time basis, for many years; at the same time, I was acquiring a master’s degree in education from the Bank Street College of Education and teaching young children during the day.
One of the principles on which Bank Street’s educational approach is based is that learning must be active to be meaningful and for the material studied to be truly internalized. The traditional hevruta style of learning of the beit midrash is an example of this type of active learning, where students struggle independently to master the text. To me, it is a much more meaningful method of study than attendance at lecture courses, where the teacher has done all the work and conveys the knowledge verbally to the students. The extra effort of looking up every word and piecing them together as if they are parts of a puzzle gives the student more of a sense of ownership of the text. More of the five senses are involved, as study partners argue with each other to figure out the meanings of the text, and create for themselves a clear understanding of what is meant. Simply put, when more personal effort is expended, one will understand better and retain more.
When my youngest child entered kindergarten, I started spending my mornings at Drisha, studying Talmud with Rabbi Silber as part of the recently opened full-time program. From studying with Rabbi Silber, I came to internalize the idea that to be an educated Jew, it was important to have a broad familiarity with the texts of our tradition. I saw Gemara as one of the primary texts that encompasses the traditional narratives and methodologies of Jewish learning. I spent mornings in the full-time program for about two years. Subsequently, I took part-time intermediate courses at Drisha and courses in Rishonim at JTS. After this, I began participating in Drisha’s daf yomi course and taking Drisha courses in halakha. I found that daf yomi enabled me to develop a sense of the flow of talmudic argument. By covering a lot of ground, one gets a feel for the structure of the give-and-take of the arguments. It also helped a lot with my ability to parse the sentence structure of the Aramaic.
Over the years, I participated in full-time study during the summer, spending time at Michlelet Beruria in Jerusalem, Drisha, and the Yeshivat Har Etzion summer program for women in Alon Shvut. In 1999–2000, I had a hevruta at Lincoln Square Synagogue with one of the Torah MiTzion fellows. My hevruta encouraged me to think about studying Talmud and halakha on a deeper level, suggesting that he could get me the materials for the Israeli Rabbanut semikha course, and if I studied the materials, maybe they would let me take their test. In his dreams…
How I Came to the Drisha Scholars Program
In the fall of 2001, when I heard that Devorah Zlochower would be teaching Hilkhot Nidah and that Rabbi Moshe Kahn would be teaching the fourth chapter of Bava Metzia, I decided to take both courses at Drisha. One was five mornings a week for three-and-a-half hours, and the other was four afternoons a week for three-and-a-half hours. It didn’t occur to me at the time that I would be getting myself into a full-time three-year professionally oriented program. I just intended to take those two courses.
We started out on the first day, and I immediately had two hevrutas. One was the age of my second daughter, a year or two out of college, the average age for most in the group. The second was even younger, an Israeli student, after National Service but before university. Age was really not a problem. What I may have lacked in quick thinking, I made up for in vocabulary and experience. I was thankful to my hevruta partners that as their skills increased, they had the patience to continue studying with me. I became part of the group, and we stuck together throughout the three-year program.
A long day of learning can be quite draining, but one quickly gets into a groove. Some days there is a real sense of flow, while on other days it is harder. As in any yeshivastyle program, there are the occasional hevruta problems, extra people needing to be fit in, or other students lacking focus. Although the program is three years long, everyone participates in the same classes together. Therefore, many different levels of ability participate together in classes that involve active give and take. Sometimes it was difficult for each student to feel that she was getting what she needed, with third-year students complaining about the more concrete textual questions of first-year students, and first-year students having to fight to make sure that their questions were answered in class. Sometimes a new student would join, and she would have to become a third participant in a group of two, until someone else would come along. Any group that spends so much time working closely together develops its own culture, and it can be difficult to assimilate new people into the group. These are all issues that, I am sure, come up in any yeshiva setting, but in a group of women, there were sometimes conflicting feelings of how competitive or aggressive we were supposed to be. In the end, most of the difficulties seemed to work themselves out.
Why We Did It
Most of us had ambitions to take on roles in the Jewish community often filled by (male) rabbis. One student did an internship at an Orthodox synagogue and discovered that she did not like being on call for congregants’ needs all the time, although she did enjoy giving divrei Torah. Another was hired after graduation as a Hillel director. One taught in a Jewish high school. Another has enrolled in medical school after some years teaching Jewish high school Talmud courses. Some teach at Drisha. Although the word was out that some Drisha Scholars Circle graduates were paid an equivalent salary to recently ordained rabbis, all in all the Drisha certificate did not easily open doors for employment in the Jewish community. If the certificate had been a master’s or doctoral degree, perhaps it would have been more useful in a practical way.
For myself, the years I spent at Drisha have been very worthwhile. I have a fluency in Jewish textual materials that is useful to me in my everyday life. Although I am still struggling to complete the study of Tanakh with another hevruta, I feel that my experiences with Talmud have enabled me to feel comfortable in classes on every level and have given me some respect in the synagogue community—as evidenced by the fact that a couple of years ago, I was appointed as the first female member of the Ritual Committee in our synagogue. The fact that I have the certificate from Drisha, as well as the familiarity with halakhic issues, the vocabulary, and the points of reference, gives me a sense that I can speak out on issues in the synagogue, and can expect the other members of the committee to take my comments seriously.
Learning must be active to be meaningful and for the material studied to be truly internalized.
As a woman, sometimes I see areas of halakha in which there may appear to others to be a lack of fairness. However, knowing the process and discussions that led to the formulation of the halakhot enables me to have an understanding of the social forces in effect at the times they were formulated; as a result, I sometimes find these things less upsetting. In general, I am not the kind of person who finds her main source of spirituality in talking to God through prayer or saying Tehillim. Rather, I find it in study, in working on understanding God’s will through the texts which have been passed down through the generations.
Although I haven’t gone on to fame and fortune in Jewish communal service, I feel competent to study Jewish texts independently with my current hevruta, a Drisha graduate older than myself, who completed the program two years after I did. In the five years we have been studying together daily, we have completed the study of two masekhtot, and are about forty pages into our third. I often meet people who have been observant for about the same forty years that I have, but who still consider themselves beginners in Jewish study and feel that they will never catch up to the learning of even their own children. I am glad to state that I feel I have overcome that barrier. I feel capable of participating in the discussion, knowing that I possess the requisite body of knowledge.