Abstract
One of the greatest challenges for students of Talmud or halakhah is acclimating to a system of logic that seems
utterly foreign to their own. This paper proposes that, and demonstrates how, teachers can help students overcome
this difficulty by approaching Talmud through the lens of legal theory, and outlines a semiotic model of legal
theory, analyzing the way legal texts generate meaning by comparing law to other sign systems such as language.
Through investigating and recounting his own experiences teaching halakhah to advanced students of Jewish text
in two settings, the author illustrates and analyzes how pedagogic use of the central tenet of semiotics—that the
relationship between text and meaning is necessarily contextual—can better help students understand the nature
of Talmudic hermeneutics and of the halakhic process as a whole.