Learning to Read Talmud: What It Looks Like and How It Happens

Learning to Read Talmud is the first book-length study of how teachers teach and how students learn to read Talmud. 

Through a series of studies conducted by scholars of Talmud in classrooms that range from seminaries to secular universities and with students from novice to advanced, this book elucidates a broad range of ideas about what it means to learn to read Talmud and tools for how to achieve that goal. Bridging the study of Talmud and the study of pedagogy, this book is an essential resource for scholars, curriculum writers, and classroom teachers of Talmud.

Jane L. Kanarek is Associate Professor of Rabbinics and Associate Dean of Academic Development and Advising at Hebrew College. She is the author of Biblical Narrative and the Formation of Rabbinic Law (Cambridge University Press 2014).

Marjorie Lehman is Associate Professor of Talmud and Rabbinics at the Jewish Theological Seminary. She is the author of The En Yaaqov: Jacob ibn Habib’s Search for Faith in the Talmudic Corpus (Wayne State University Press), a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award–Nahum M. Sarna Memorial Award in the category of Scholarship.