Abstract
This paper explores a teaching orientation to Mishnah and Talmud that emphasizes their literary qualities as sophisticated, well-constructed compositions. It illustrates ways in which verbal cues embedded in
the text may be used by a skillful instructor to promote skills development, while also serving as a point of
departure for values-based analysis and discussion. The author also discusses how a literary orientation,
drawing on academic methodologies that do not undermining the cohesiveness of the text, can serve as an
ideologically non-threatening mode of integrating rabbinic and academic scholarship, and how adopting
such an orientation may help foster a classroom dynamic based on joint exploration by teacher and student rather than frontal instruction.