Goldberger ’30: Brown classes could learn from traditional Jewish study partners

It’s 8 a.m. and, armed with coffee and an Aramaic-English dictionary, my friend and I enter the Beit Midrash, the Jewish house of study. We open a page of Talmud — the central text of Rabbinic Judaism — and begin decoding its dense, punctuationless arguments: One rabbi makes a claim, another challenges it and a third tries to reconcile the two. We spend the rest of the day reading aloud, translating, arguing and trying to figure out what the heck these ancient disagreements actually mean. We are engaging in chavruta study, a traditional Jewish learning method of textual analysis conducted in pairs.

After spending my gap year learning in the Beit Midrash, I was excited to dive headfirst into the Open Curriculum in the same way: challenging professors’ ideas, connecting with my peers and questioning my own thinking. But I soon realized that Brown is structured for solo study, from the large, silent John Hay Library to the pre-planning required to book a group study room. A scroll through Courses@Brown shows that many syllabi, in departments from history to biology, are structured around individual papers, problem sets, reading responses and exams. Without being forced to collaborate, we miss out on the opportunity to question our learning as it happens, instead of just receiving critiques in feedback given after submission. But if our professors integrate paired learning into their syllabi, we could avoid this internal echo chamber.

The temptation to study alone is understandable: we’re all busy college students who may not have time to coordinate with a friend. But studying solo doesn’t force us to question our assumptions, so we miss a degree of engagement with what we’re learning. Without another perspective present, there’s no one to challenge our reading of text or deconstruct our logic, and no one to push us to think deeper than face-value. The advent of artificial intelligence adds to this problem — we have access to conversational reasoning tools at our fingertips, which some fall victim to believing is equal to a human collaborator. But AI fails to be truly critical: current models are trained to validate users’ opinions and reflect their biases. 

This is exactly the problem that a chavruta solves. The partnership is built on a foundation of constructive disagreement. Learning with someone else forces you to explain your reasoning, question your preconceptions and see issues from a different point of view. Your discussion demands that you find a reason for your thinking, explain it, defend it and articulate it. The intimacy and intensity of the partnership means neither member can slack off, and the benefits of consistent chavruta only grow over the course of a semester as you get more comfortable challenging each other.

These advantages don’t just stay between the partners, either. Students’ enriched understanding of material prepares them to come to class ready to dive into dynamic discussion of the text without losing time recapping material or checking their understanding. Coupled with the human connections formed by chavrutas, this would shape a class environment where students engage more deeply with both the material  and each other. 

Incorporating these partnerships into our learning doesn’t require any radical restructuring. Professors can survey students — via something as simple as a Google Form — and match them with partners who complement their learning styles at the end of shopping period. They can then assign readings with discussion prompts for pairs, joint research projects or peer review tasks. These modified chavrutas can meet outside of class or during the traditional “section” block. Group or paired assignments are not unheard of — Professor of Chemistry Matthew Zimmt, for instance, assigns some CHEM 0360: "Organic Chemistry II" homework to be completed in groups of two to four and Associate Professor of Judaic Studies and Religious Studies Paul Nahme allocates time for partner learning during his classes — but we should formalize and methodize these protocols to hold all of our classes accountable. 

You don’t need to be learning esoteric Arameic text to gain a thing or two from traditional Jewish study partnership. While there might be a time and place for the silent “lock-in” sessions in the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library to memorize material, there is something valuable lost in the stacks late at night. And if you hate group projects, you might be pleasantly surprised by the chavruta experience: work is shared equally, you only need to coordinate with one person,and you have fewer people to get distracted by. After a semester learning with your chavruta soulmate, you might realize that you’ve taught each other more than just the course material. You’ve learned how to communicate, disagree, question and push each other’s thinking. It’s when we are together that real learning happens.