Excerpt:
Simple changes, such as taking a topical approach rather than plowing straight through the text, could go far in making Talmud study more appealing to such youth.
For example, instead of opening up the seventh chapter of tractate Baba Kamma to teach students about various laws relating to theft, they could instead learn how the Talmud might view the purchase of pirated DVDs or the download of music from the internet.
By making the text more relevant to their everyday lives, teens are far less likely to be turned off to its study.
Instructing youths in some of the basics of Aramaic might also make the Talmud more accessible and less intimidating.
But it may just also be time to consider some more radical alternatives as well.
Two months ago, Rabbi Yosef Avraham Heller, a prominent Chabad-Lubavitch rabbi who is a member of the Crown Heights Rabbinical Court, did just that, causing a stir when he suggested that perhaps not everyone needs to study Talmud intensively.
“Before the War, it was unheard of that every child learned in yeshiva the entire day; it was only a selection of students,” Rabbi Heller said, adding that, “Today, however, there is a new ideal that has no source in Torah: everyone has to learn Gemara, and someone who learns Mishna is considered a ‘loser.’” “Never in history,” he noted, “was there such a phenomenon.
Throughout the generations, each person learned according to his level.”
