Torah Im Derech Eretz at Maimonides?

Yesterday I talked about the educational curriculum at the SAR Academy in the Bronx, NY, about how they have an actual methodology that approaches subjects rather than just grinding through texts with minimal explanation as is done in so many schools.

So it seems that the Maimonides School in Brookline, Boston works the same way.

Here's fifth grade Hebrew:

In fifth grade we continue the Chaverim Bivrit curriculum that we began in fourth grade. Depending on the level, students learn between 2-3 books in Chaverim Bivrit curriculum. In fifth grade, Ivrit is taught for four periods weekly. Students are asked to write paragraphs of greater complexity and length than in previous years, compose songs and poems, read and write newspaper “advertisements” and, of course, speak only in Hebrew. As in previous years, students read at home on a daily basis in order to practice their reading skills. Students have discussions about food and nutrition, hear stories about food and restaurants, and prepare menus for their class restaurant. In the restaurant, students actually order and serve foods as well as dine in the restaurant (all in Hebrew). This is an enjoyable activity that is remembered by Maimonides students for years. It leaves a joyful and satisfying “taste” of Hebrew language with them.

A living language just like in Horeb.

"We may therefore tabulate the general subjects of instruction for Jewish youth as follows:(I) Hebrew language.
(2)Vernacular.
Concurrently and as living languages at an early age along with general knowledge and development of the mind.
(3) Torah, Nevi'im and Kethuvim....."  Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, Horeb 552


Here's grade 5 Talmud at Maimonides:

...This curriculum includes an introduction to the ”Chain of Tradition” with great emphasis on the historical background of each of the periods leading up to and including the Talmudic period. Teachers explain key foundational concepts in Talmud study. Students learn and memorize selected mishnayot, and analyze them in terms of the historical elements and content. Students use the “Bonayich” website to further enhance their knowledge of the mishnayot and the historical background.

I'm still waiting for my introduction to the "Chain of Tradition." I have done my best to pick it up from books such as those of Rav Hirsch and Rabbi Miller. It was never explained to me in yeshiva. In my mind, such explanation is a necessity to working productively with the Talmud. What is Horeb if not an explanation of the Torah using text but arranged by subject. That is what young people need today. 

So hats off to you too Maimonides. 

Torah Im Derech Eretz at SAR Academy?

You think I'm joking. And in a way I am. But in a way I am not. Look at this educational curriculum.

Highlights:

Hebrew

Building vocabulary

Conjugating verbs in present and past tense

Writing expanded sentences that incorporate adjectives

Speaking with new grammar skills and vocabulary

It's first on the list, just like in Horeb. Imagine Jewish kids being taught the language of the Torah. What a concept. Doesn't happen in so many schools.

Chumash

In Chumash, we help students build their skills for independent Torah study. This year, we learn Sefer Shemot, perakim 1 - 20. By mid-year, students learn daily with a chevruta. With the definitions of the most difficult words, students answer guiding questions as they learn each perek. One particular highlight of our Chumash curriculum is the unit in which the students learn the entire section of the makkot, the ten plagues, independently, with their study partners. This is a wonderful experience and is supplemented by review sessions in which the teachers point out relevant patterns and ideas they may have missed.

Skills:

Answering comprehension questions in Hebrew sentences orally and in writing

Identifying shorashim and the speaker within each pasuk

Differentiating between peshat and drash explanations of textual difficulties

Using Rashi to understand textual difficulties

Compares this to schools where the rebbe grinds through chapter after chapter, no chavrusos, no review sessions with patterns, no identifying speakers or differentiation between  peshot and drash, just trucking on to the next page - daf yomi for children.

Mishna

This is the year when our students are exposed for the first time to the treasures of the oral tradition, the Torah Shebe'al Peh. Since the interplay between the written and oral laws is key to any later study of Torah, our curriculum begins with an introduction to the whole concept of the oral law and to Mishnah in particular. Students then study the first five perakim of Masechet Brachot which focus on the Shema and Shemoneh Esrei.

Skills:

Locating a perek in the Mishna

Identifying different opinions and themes in Mishna

Analyzing repeating structure of individual mishnayot

Supporting analysis of mishnayot with proofs from various opinions in the Mishna

This is my favorite. Imagine preparing children for Mishnah with an introduction to Oral Torah. How radical. What I have seen in school after school is Mishnah with no introduction. Just open up Mesechta Shabbos and start learning that two are really four and that the tailor can't go out without his needle and then find out that one can't light with moss that grows on ceders. As one kid told me, it's just a list of everything I can't do. Without an introduction, the Mishnah sounds like lunacy. One needs to be taught how the Oral Torah works with the Written, that the Mishnah was written in code, and that it was written down after thousands of years of oral transmission. (One also needs to be taught a philosophy of mitzvos and the moral purpose of restrictions, but I'll leave that to other material that also is not taught in many schools.) How much ground do they cover - 5 chapters with particular focus on two everyday practices. I know a school in Israel that has covered in one month 10 chapters of Mesechta Shabbos, most of it with material like "one may not light with pitch, tar, or castor oil." I'm not knocking the Mishnah. I'm must saying children need to be introduced to it in the right way.

It's hard to propose that a Torah Im Derech Eretz family send a child to SAR with its mixed gender classes, knee length skirts, Zionism, and feminism. But looking at this curriculum, one is tempted. There is an actual curriculum here, some teaching methodology, some sense of how a child's mind is stimulated, something other than grinding through texts that were meant to be taught orally with explanation. The "better" schools are big on the warmth of the rebbe. They attempt to replace educational methodology with warmth but this doesn't really work for intellectually inclined children of which they are many in the Jewish world. Hats off to you SAR.

R' Moshe Dovid Flesch

R' Moshe Dovid Flesch (1879-1944)

Born in Rajka, Győr-Moson-Sopron County, Hungary. Died in Weimar, Thuringia, Germany.

Son of Shmuel Flesch and Ester Flesch
Husband of Paula Flesch
Father of Sidy Loewenthal; Shmu (Genie)

A student of R' Shlomo Breuer, R' Flesch introduced Sarah Schneirer to the works of R' Samson Raphael Hirsch. D. Sofer's Yated Neeman bio on Rav Hirsch describes the momentous events as follows:

"On Shabbos Chanuka of 1915, a young Polish woman who was residing in Vienna attended a drasha delivered by Rav Moshe Dovid Flesch, a student of Rav Shamshon Raphael’s son-in-law and successor, Rav Shlomo Breuer. In that drasha, Rav Flesch quoted extensively from Rav Shamshon Raphael. After Shabbos, the young woman, who was profoundly impressed by Rav Shamshon Raphael’s ideas, secured copies of The Nineteen Letters and Chorev, and read them with relish. That young woman was Sara Schneirer, who later said on a number of occasions that these two works had inspired her to found the Bais Yaakov Movement."

Rabbi Dr. Leo (Shmuel) Deutschlander

Rabbi Dr. Leo (Shmuel) Deutschlander (1888-1935)
Father of the Bais Yaakov Movement

Jewish Observer Article

Bais Ya'akov Schools

Almost Heaven, West of Broadway

I once attended a motzei Shabbos gathering at Breuer's, can't recall if it was a kollel dinner or something else, where I marveled at what I saw, and this is what I saw:

A very mentchlick buffet table with serving forks and just very clean looking neat food. Not lavish, but not cheap. Tables were likewise set up with napkins forks. Higher grade metallic looking plastic stuff. So tasteful but not lavish.

All about the room were men in suits and hats, and modest women in short sheitls. There was a table of rabbanim.

It was like a yeshivish gathering with better table manners and more friendly people. And then I saw out of the corner of my eye, a man playing music on a piano. Classical music.

I thought to myself - am I in heaven? Why did I have to search for 25 years to find this.

Here's an invitation to an upcoming senior outing at Lincoln Center.