Freshman Avigayil Geyer explained that Rabbanit Taragin’s class has complemented what the students are learning in their Masechet Brachot shiur with �鶹���� Associate Principal Rabbi Joshua Wald. “Rabbanit Taragin’s class offered a different perspective, and centered on practical halacha—what you can do during tefillah to make it more meaningful.”

Multiple students related how they found Rabbanit Taragin’s brilliance and leadership inspiring, and noted how she encouraged the whole class in their learning and discussion. “It was nice learning about the unique experience of women and tefillah,” said freshman Ariella Geliebter about one of Rabbanit Taragin’s classes this week. “Rabbanit Taragin is very engaging and so personable.”

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Rabbanit Taragin says she hopes that the partnership will ultimately open the door to help students develop relationships with female Torah personalities from Eretz Yisrael during their high school years. “Students wait and anticipate for ‘the year in Israel’ to develop relationships with Torah teachers from their yeshivot/midrashot,” she said. “This program provides for weekly Zoom shiurim and bi-monthly in-person visits to jump-start their enthusiasm for in-depth Torah learning and familiarization with Torat Eretz Yisrael.”

Bringing Torat Eretz Yisrael to America will mean that students stand to develop the methodological skills that permeate Torah study throughout Israel. “Torat Eretz Yisrael is unique in encompassing all aspects of Torah learning in our lives,” Rabbanit Taragin explained. “Our history, geography, culture, politics come to life in our learning of Tanach and Torah Shebe’al-Peh. Anatot is not just the hometown of Yiirmiyahu HaNavi in a pasuk—it is a suburb of Yerushalayim that may be visited to appreciate the timeless words of the prophet. Shevi’it is not just a masechet to be learned, it is lived and observed (particularly this year!). All too often students in America see their Torah learning as independent and separate from their everyday ‘modern living.’ Torat Eretz Yisrael is about learning our texts of the past as reflective and relevant in the present and for the future as we build and rebuild ourselves in Eretz Yisrael, infusing our everyday lives with Torah values.”

“Torah curricula in Eretz Yisrael have been developed with the infusion of religious values and incorporation of textual, philosophical and thought-provoking methodologies,” she continued. “The history, geography and topography of the Land of Israel are incorporated in Tanach study and because there isn’t a Hebrew-language barrier, more time is placed on studying the ‘big ideas’ of Tanach. What a shame if students in chul [the Diaspora] didn’t benefit from the Torah that emanates from Tzion! Why wait till their year in Israel?!”

Students at �鶹���� have already felt the impact of Rabbanit Taragin’s presence, during her first week on campus earlier in November. “Rabbanit Shani Taragin gave a shiur to my class about Shemot, perakim aleph and bet,” recounted Eliora Gissinger ‘24. “She taught us about the chiasmus in these perakim, and also illustrated how the different stages of affliction that were imposed by Pharoah occurred simultaneously. My friends and I were so impressed by her shiur that we sat in on other shiurim of hers throughout the day. We learned about Eliyahu at Har HaCarmel and Har Chorev, and why these locations were specifically chosen for those stories. We also attended a class where she spoke about the halachic perspective on tolerance and acceptance of ideological opposition.”

Eliora also said she admired how Rabbanit Taragin managed to develop relationships with students while teaching the class as a whole. “At the end of the day, she offered to have a smaller chavrusa with us where she addressed our personal questions,” said Eliora. “I admire her vast knowledge and appreciate the Torah that she embodies.”

Rabbanit Taragin’s expertise spans numerous realms of Torah learning and she will be lecturing on a variety of topics. “Rabbanit Taragin is an incredible role model for Torah scholarship, women’s Torah leadership, education, as well as yirat Shamayim, and we are so lucky to have her here with us,” said Associate Principal Rabbi Joshua Wald in his introductory remarks at one of the shiurim.

Likewise, Rabbanit Taragin is looking forward to working with the faculty members of Yeshivat �鶹����. “The gains are mutual in that I gain a greater exposure and appreciation of the phenomenal curricula and student programming at �鶹����,” she said. “�鶹���� is not only one of the leading Modern Orthodox high schools in North America—it is a Torah institution always seeking to further motivate its students to learn more by providing as many opportunities for Torah growth as possible. Shiurim are taught by talmidei and talmidot chachamim and the school invests in relationships beyond the classroom. As the first high school in North America to open a women’s Beit Midrash Program for aspiring Torah teachers parallel to a men’s kollel, �鶹���� is the yeshiva most suited for a partnership, particularly with female Torah scholars to further high-level Torah learning from Eretz Yisrael and provide role models of Yirat Shamayim.”

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For Romm, the experience of studying Tanach has been an immersive one, suffused with religious meaning. “The study of any literature allows one to appreciate the mind of its author,” explained Romm. “When one immerses himself in a particular canon of literature, he finds his thoughts shaped by and expressed in terms of the literature he is studying. This takes on religious significance when that literature is Tanach, and one realizes that his own mind is being brought into greater alignment with the Perfect Mind, the ultimate Author of the Tanach.”

Romm’s favorite part of Tanach? “Kohelet, by virtue of the fact that it’s in Tanach at all,” he said. “It raises many of the sentiments extolled as the pinnacle of wisdom by today’s ‘New Atheists’ (an apt demonstration of its own aphorism, ‘Ein chadash tachat hashemesh,’ There is nothing new under the sun). By canonizing it, the (proto-)rabbis acknowledged that such musings, while poignant, are not the end of wisdom and man’s search for spiritual fulfillment, but only its beginning. ‘Sof davar hakol nishma, et ha-Elokim yera ve’et mitzvotav shemor’” “The end of the matter, all having been heard: fear God, and keep his commandments; for this is the whole man.”

Romm also learned about what it takes to advance in the Chidon, striving for the seemingly impossible. “In general, long term, your brain is capable of so much more than you think it is,” said Romm. “Your memory and your mind is a muscle, just like anything else. And if you work it with discipline, you can learn far more than you thought capable.” Romm also thanked his Chidon coach, �鶹���� Hebrew Department Chair and 2016 International Adult Chidon HaTanach Champion Rabbi Yair Shahak, “for his dedication to helping me prepare for the International Chidon. His coaching and advice have been invaluable.”

One of Shahak’s goals was to give Romm strategies to remember the tiniest details, and know as much as possible. “He studied day and night,” said Shahak, noting that Romm has a natural affinity for spotting connections in the text. “One of the things that struck me about Beni is how much he relies on and utilizes simple logic based on linguistic and historical sources to be able to identify answers. For example, he correctly identified that metziltayim (cymbals) only appears during Bayit Sheini, so any quote with that word will only appear in Ezra, Nehemiah or Divrei Hayamim. Or, for example, knowing the history and geography of empires—that also played into his success. To say that it’s been a joy learning with him is an understatement.”

Over the course of high school, Romm said that his Jewish education “has really come from both sides of the faculty: Judaic and secular studies. This is a really unique aspect of �鶹����.” Outside the classroom, he founded a Chidon Club at �鶹���� and recruited a large membership. Earlier this year, 17 �鶹���� students advanced past the preliminary exam to the national round of the Chidon this May. When asked what advice he would give to new participants, Romm cited Mishlei 23:1: כי תצא ללחום את מושל בין תבין את אשר לפניך, “When you go out to fight against the ruler, you have to understand very well what’s in front of you,” said Romm.

“This holds true for every goal in life,” he explained. “You really have to understand what target you’re trying to achieve. With that in mind you can work towards that goal and be successful. My goal was really to master the material and win, and in that way I was able to gain a greater mastery of the material than if I were learning ‘lishma.’”

Yet, Romm is certainly no stranger to learning for its own sake. Now that the Chidon is over, he has set new goals: learn the remaining parts of Nevi’im Achronim to the same level which he prepared for the Chidon (“functionally equivalent to memorization”), sharpen his existing leining knowledge and complete shnayim mikra with the Septuagint with Koine Greek—with the aspiration of learning Greek so that he can study Second Temple and Mishnaic Judaism in college.

His work for the Chidon helped with it all. “As you’re learning you’re immediately, automatically connecting in your head all the places where similar words appear in Tanach,” he said, “as if you have a concordance in the back of your mind, and that’s a very useful tool to have.”

Romm believes that his ability to lein was indispensable in helping him learn and memorize as much as he did. He noted that boys are usually taught this skill in preparation for their bar mitzvah, while girls are not. This, to his mind, perpetuates a systemic inequality, to use contemporary terminology, when it comes to memorizing the text of the Torah and Nevi’im. “I think that this is not an ideal situation, because the Torah should be open equally to everyone,” said Romm. “We should not be putting pedagogical barriers in front of women when it comes to gaining mastery of Tanach.

“If I were to approach this problem, I would recommend that the community reconceptualize what the role of leining is—the learning of how to read and chant the Torah trop—and how it’s taught,” he explained. “Currently in the community, leining is associated with the public reading of Torah and Haftarah in the synagogue, but historically this was never the purpose of the leining. Cantillation exists not just in the parts that are read aloud in the synagogue but in all of Tanach, because it’s there to serve as both punctuation and an aid to memorization. Therefore, the skill of leining is not a skill in kriat Torah, but talmud Torah. Such that in order for there to be equality in the acquisition of skills in this area, Jewish schools should allocate class time to teaching the ta’amei mikra and how to lein.”

Romm is graduating from �鶹���� this year, and plans to major in mechanical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania following study at Yeshivat Har Etzion. He described the experience of briefly meeting people from Israel and around the world through the virtual Chidon programming as one of the highlights of the Chidon experience. “I hope to meet as many as I can next year in Israel,” he said.

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While at �鶹����, the YU participants will have the opportunity to hone their pedagogical skills in and outside of the classroom, and gain invaluable insight into the everyday workings of teaching in a yeshiva high school. In addition, the RIETS students will have their own seder and shiur under the guidance of the rosh kollel, �鶹���� Talmud faculty member Rabbi Noah Gardenswartz. The Legacy Heritage Fellows will have shiur with �鶹���� Tanach faculty member and freshman grade dean Shoshana Chanales, and the program will be under the guidance of Shani Taragin, who will be coming in monthly from Israel.

“The goals of the program are to enhance �鶹���� as a yeshiva and makom Torah, with young men and women learning here seriously and modeling to the students what it means to choose to learn lishma as a young person,” said �鶹���� Associate Principal Rabbi Joshua Wald. “The YU participants will be connected to the classrooms, which will enhance the learning of the students. It will provide students with more individualized attention in both Gemara and Chumash. In addition, �鶹���� will serve as a training ground for these future educators.”

The YU participants will also take part in weekly discussions (coordinated by Chanales and �鶹����’ Rabbi Shalom Richter) with seasoned �鶹���� educators. The discussions will center around a variety of pedagogical issues, such as lesson planning, discipline and maintaining positive teacher-student relationships.

“The faculty at �鶹���� are very warm. They seem excited and passionate about what they’re doing and it’s great to be here,” said recent musmach Rabbi Chaim Gerson, who is also completing his master’s in Jewish Education at YU’s Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education and Administration. He hopes that having the kollel at �鶹���� will allow the high schoolers “to see that learning is cool, and it is fun.”

YU participant Penina Torczyner, who is completing a joint bachelor’s and master’s in Jewish education from Stern and Azrieli, agreed. “I hope the students will see that college students can take time out of their day and sit in the beit midrash and learn,” she said. “A Torah life is a Torat chayim and we want to show that it’s enjoyable as well.”

�鶹���� students are looking forward to having the program participants on campus. “Having a large beis presence makes learning in the beit midrash easier and more meaningful,” said �鶹���� junior Uriel Simpson.

Among the robust cohort of YU participants, multiple approaches to Torah learning are represented. “We come from different backgrounds and were exposed to different elements of talmud Torah,” explained Legacy Heritage Fellow Rivka Lichtenstein Anapolle. “Seeing us come together for the sake of learning lishma will show the students that we can all come together and learn Torah.”

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“The goal of the project was to give the students an overall appreciation for art and how artists have turned to the Tanach for their inspiration,” said Weinberg. Senior Lauren Borenstein ’18 said the assignment gave her the opportunity, after having learned all of the traditional Jewish approaches in great detail, to see this story through the lens of an artist.

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Some student groups felt that these two anti-Semites were extremely similar, while other groups argued that they share some similarities but also significant differences. Other groups, still, argued that these two rulers were radically different from one another in their treatment of the Jews.

One group noticed that these ruthless tyrants both had reasons to feel gratitude to a specific Jew—for Pharaoh, it was Yosef, and for Hitler, it was Eduard Bloch, a Jewish family doctor who took care of his mother. Yet these feelings of appreciation were instead replaced with feelings of fear and hatred of the Jewish nation.

Excerpts from students’ writings are below:

“Both Pharoah and Hitler convinced people who weren’t initially against Jews to hate them. Hitler convinced a lot of the Germans and non-Jewish neighbors to kill Jews. Similarly, Pharaoh started off by only convincing the higher government officials but eventually convinced any Egyptian that they can take advantage of the Jews.”

“Pharoah only wanted to slow down Jewish growth, his ‘final solution’ was only created once his earlier attempts were unsuccessful and even then his main objective was to kill the baby boys and not total extermination.”

“Both Pharpah and Hitler had a personal connection to a Jew that they knew was Jewish and protected while targeting the rest of the nation.”

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Dr. Berkman – English

My  9H2 and 9H3 read Brave New World and immediately after saw and discussed the film, Gattaca.  Gattaca is set in the not-too-distant future.  A less-than-perfect man, Vincent Freeman,  wants to travel to the stars; however, society  has categorized him as less than suitable given his imperfect genetic make-up.  He has become one of the underclass of humans that is useful only for menial jobs. To move ahead, Vincent assumes the identity of Jerome Morrow, a perfect genetic specimen who is a paraplegic as a result of a car accident. With professional advice, Vincent learns to deceive DNA and urine sample testing.  Because a stolen birthright is a major motif in Gattaca, a comparison and contrast paper comparing and contrasting the film to the story of Yaakov and Esav from Chumash was assigned.  (Not only is the ability to construct a tightly structured comparison and contrast a valuable skill,  but the ability to apply knowledge of  Chumash to secular studies in high school and on into college can be an advantageous one.)  So when my students asked me if I knew that they were currently studying the story of Yaakov and ��������in their Chumash class: Serendipity

Mrs. Goldfisher – Chumash

Esav cries out to his father immediately after discovering that his brother Yaakov received the blessing that was intended for him and says: ‘Is not he rightly named Yaakov (root עקב) ? for he has supplanted (ויעקבני) me these two times: he took away my birthright; and, behold, now he hath taken away my blessing.’ (Genesis 37:36)

Is Esav correct? Did �۲�����DZ���trick him twice?

Esav is correct in that there were two separate stories where �۲�����DZ���comes out a winner: the sale of the birthright and the blessing narrative.  Students in �鶹���� studied both these narratives.  Here is a peek at what we learned about the first story, namely the sale of the birthright:

Students first analyzed the text carefully to develop ��������’s character and study the various methods of characterization at play in Genesis chapter 25.  After the textual analysis we asked essential questions to discover whether or not �۲�����DZ���acted unjust.  First and foremost can a birthright be bought and sold?  Did Esav desire to be the firstborn with all the responsibility it entailed? Was he willing to wait to reap the benefits of the birthright or did he only appreciate immediate physical gratification? We studied medieval commentators such as Rashi, Rashbam and Chizkuni and evaluated their approaches.  In addition, we placed the biblical story in its historical context, within the Ancient Near East, and looked to the Nuzi Tablets for historical and legal support.  If one can argue that �۲�����DZ���purchased the birthright from someone who did not value the birthright and that he paid a fair amount for this honor than certainly �۲�����DZ���cannot be called a trickster.

The narrator has the last word “and Esav despised his birthright (35:34).”  Esav might claim he was deceived with the sale of the birthright but we cannot take all his words at face value.

Ben Moskowitz – �鶹���� ninth grader

…The stealing of the birthright also gives the viewer a new perspective of Anton’s character. In the beginning, Esav didn’t care about his birthright and gave it up for lentil soup. However, Anton always cared about his birthright, and he always tried to prove to Vincent that he was the superior brother and deserved the birthright. This gives the viewer the initial reaction that Anton is good. Although Anton  tries putting Vincent down, he cares and appreciates his birthright. However, later when �۲�����DZ���gets the blessing instead of Esav and when �۲�����DZ���used ��������’s birthright, only then does Esav get angry. In fact, he gets so angry he attempts to kill his brother, which is why people who know the story view Esav as such an evil person. When Anton knew that his brother obtained his birthright, he got very angry, and he threatened to make Vincent’s  deception public and ruin his dreams, which is almost like killing Vincent. By seeing that Anton’s and ��������’s reacted in very similar ways when learning that the other person took their birthright shows the viewer how evil Anton was. Anton acts in a very similar way to Esav, while even though Anton probably didn’t go through with his threat, just making it allowed us to compare him to Esav letting the viewer view him as an evil person. By comparing Anton and Esav, the viewer gains a clearer perspective on Anton’s character.

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