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Beit Midrash Research Project

“A Philosophy of Havruta: Understanding and Teaching the Art of Text Study in Pairs”

by Elie Holzer with Orit Kent

Winner of the 2014 National Jewish Book Award in Education and Jewish Identity

No longer confined to traditional institutions devoted to Talmudic studies, havruta work, or the practice of students studying materials in pairs, has become more widespread. However, until now there has been little discussion of what havruta text study entails and how it might be conceptualized and taught. This book presented two new perspectives: by offering a model of havruta text study situated in broader theories of interpretation and learning, and by treating havruta text study as composed of textual, interpersonal and intra-personal practices which can be taught and learned.

Title screen with the words Learning Torah Through Partnership

Video: Learning Torah Through Partnership

How do learners in different settings and with varying skill levels become empowered to engage in meaningful Torah study with their peers? How can we turn seemingly incidental moments of discovery and connection — those magical moments of learning — into intentional design and instruction?

These questions animated the work of the Beit Midrash Research Project, which studied the pedagogy and practice of partnership learning, or havruta study, of Jewish texts. People generally think of havruta as two people studying Jewish text, but for us, havruta is much more than that, involving three partners: two people and the text over which they come together.

Havruta can be viewed as a microcosm for some of the ideals of engagement and learning with texts and peers. Our framework for havruta text study provided one effective way of explaining how this occurs and for helping people learn how to do it better. Our research contributed to the literature on collaborative learning, interpretive discussion, text study, classroom discourse, and teacher development and practice.

We represented the pedagogy of havruta as the overlapping of a teaching and learning stance, structures and practices (Kent and Cook, 2012 ). When approached in this way, it offers an ambitious and powerful pedagogy for teachers and learners in different educational contexts, in line with 21st-century learning goals.

Three Design Experiments

We worked with selected practitioners and educational institutions to teach our approach to havruta learning, and we studied what occurs in different settings. We conducted three design experiments:

In the DeLeT teacher education program at Brandeis University with adult learners
In the Kesher supplementary school for teachers of K-8 students
In a Hebrew school program for middle school students

We also worked intensively with a third-grade teacher in a Jewish day school to develop and document a havruta-based curriculum and developed a webcase based on this work.

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Why study havruta pedagogy and practice?

This form of teaching and learning has hitherto gone largely unexplored by researchers. We studied havruta learning because of its wide use in many segments of the Jewish world. In addition, we believe that well-framed havruta text study can provide a holding environment for learners to develop capacities that are crucial to text study and collaborative learning, as well as to the practice of teaching. We hope that our research has begun to provide a language and navigation system for teachers and students interested in this exciting terrain, and provided a framework for other researchers to systematically investigate this kind of learning.

What did we find?

In our work, we identified three dimensions of havruta learning (Kent and Cook, 2012 ):

the structure of two people studying a text;
the stance one takes toward other people (students and teachers) and texts;
the set of six havruta practices, or skill clusters (listening and articulating, wondering and focusing, and supporting and challenging.)

As students and teachers learn to intentionally engage in all three dimensions, they can cultivate not only intellectual skills but also relational skills (and in the case of teachers, pedagogic skills), shifting how they understand the study of texts and their own role in the classroom context.

Other findings from the Beit Midrash Research Project

People can get better at studying in havruta and teachers can get better at helping their students do this.
When thought of as an ambitious and comprehensive pedagogy, havruta study can provide multiple entry points, making it accessible and generative to different people in different educational settings.
The use of havruta pedagogy can help make Jewish texts more accessible and alive in educational settings.
Havruta pedagogy can serve as a lever for deepening teaching practice more broadly.
Havruta pedagogy can serve as a lever for creating responsive spaces in which participants can be more present and aware of themselves in relationship to others. Because of this, havruta pedagogy can help groups in different settings create and strengthen their learning community.