Portal:Judaism

Chavrusa is a traditional rabbinic approach to Talmudic study in which a pair of students analyze, discuss, and debate a shared text. It is a primary learning method in yeshivas and kollels, where students often engage regular study partners of similar knowledge and ability, and is also practiced by men and boys outside the yeshiva setting, in work, home and vacation settings. The traditional phrase is to learn b'chavrusa (i.e., in partnership); the word has come by metonymy to refer to the study partner as an individual, though it would more logically describe the pair.

Unlike a teacher-student relationship, in which the student memorizes and repeats the material back in tests, chavrusa-style learning puts each student in the position of analyzing the text, organizing his thoughts into logical arguments, explaining his reasoning to his partner, hearing out his partner's reasoning, and questioning and sharpening each other's ideas, often arriving at entirely new insights into the meaning of the text. While chavrusa-style learning is traditionally practiced by men and boys, it has become popular in women's yeshivas that study Talmudic texts. In recent times, it has een extended to telephone and internet hookups in which partners study Talmud as well as other traditional Jewish texts. (Read more...)

Did you know...

• ... that in the Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations (pictured), names of the Holocaust rescuers are engraved on Walls of Honor according to country?
• ... that Rabbi Akiva Ehrenfeld, founder of Kiryat Mattersdorf, Jerusalem, was the guest of honor at an official reception hosted by the President of Austria in Vienna's Hofburg Palace in 1995?
• ... that Steve Pestka resigned his judgeship to run the real estate business his father developed after surviving the Holocaust?
• ... that the daughter of Candice Cohen-Ahnine is a Jewish-Saudi princess whom French President Nicolas Sarkozy attempted to bring to France, but failed?
• ... that 1930 Wimbledon Championships mixed doubles runner-up Daniel Prenn was of Jewish origin and thus got expelled from the Germany Davis Cup team and subsequently moved from Nazi Germany to England?

Beth Hamedrash Hagadol is an Orthodox congregation that was, for over 120 years, located in a historic synagogue building at 60–64 Norfolk Street in Manhattan, New York, on the Lower East Side. It was the first Eastern European congregation founded in New York City and the oldest Orthodox Russian Jewish congregation in the United States. Founded in 1852 by Rabbi Abraham Ash as Beth Hamedrash, it split in 1859, with the rabbi and the bulk of the members renaming their congregation Beth Hamedrash Hagadol. Rabbi Jacob Joseph, the first and only Chief Rabbi of New York City, led the congregation from 1888 to 1902 . The congregation's building, a Gothic Revival structure built in 1850 and purchased in 1885, was one of the largest synagogues on the Lower East Side, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1999. In the late twentieth century the congregation dwindled and was unable to maintain the building, which had been damaged by storms. Despite funding and grants, the structure was critically endangered. As of 2008^[update] the Lower East Side Conservancy was trying to raise an estimated $4.5 million for repairs, with the intent of converting it to an educational center. (Read more...)

• Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, former Chief Rabbi of the Commonwealth and member of the House of Lords, dies (7 November 2020)
• The Pittsburgher Rebbe, Mordechai Yissachar Ber Leifer dies of COVID-19
• A peace agreement is reached between Israel and the UAE (13 August 2020)
• Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz dies, editor of the Steinsaltz Talmud (7 August 2020)

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