Grow with Gemara: A Hands-On Guide to Building Better Gemara Skills [Hardcover]

Haim Perlmutter (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2005

A hands-on guide to building better Gemarah skills, developed by a seasoned educator and author of Tools for Tosafos. This new guide provides an easy-to-follow method for understanding the rythm and reason of gemarah.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 164 pages
• Publisher: Targum Press (August 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568713606
• ISBN-13: 978-1568713601
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,038,616 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good book for beginning and experienced learners of Gemara!, December 14, 2005

By 

Yoel Finkelman (Israel) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Grow with Gemara: A Hands-On Guide to Building Better Gemara Skills (Hardcover)

Haim Perlmutter's book Grow With Gemara is a good resource both for beginners and more experienced learners. It tries to explain why traditional Jewish education places so much time and energy on Talmud, and tries to articulate the basic assumptions that the Talmud makes and which motivate the Talmudic arguments. Beginners often find that they don't have an intuitive grasp of where the Gemara gets its ideas and its arguments from. More experienced students understand these matters intuitively, but Perlmutter does a good job of articulating them and making them explicit and clear. A very worthwhile read.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Fantastic Resource, July 4, 2009

By 

F. S. Taylor - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Grow with Gemara: A Hands-On Guide to Building Better Gemara Skills (Hardcover)

This book is a "must have" for anyone who wants to understand the Gemara better. Veteran yeshiva Professor Rabbi Perlmutter takes the reader through all of the processes involved in learning a section of Gemara - from how to identify source texts and where arguments and rebuttals begin and end, to the differences between Tannaim and Amoraim, this is a toolkit of the highest caliber. The text was easy to understand, and is amply augmented with both footnotes and endnotes, and has multiple appendices that include a helpful glossary, a guide to common terms and expressions, and much more. This would make a great bar mitzvah gift, or for any of us lacking intensive years in yeshivah.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Learning Gemara like learning to play a musical instrument, January 11, 2009

By 

les - See all my reviews

This review is from: Grow with Gemara: A Hands-On Guide to Building Better Gemara Skills (Hardcover)

Reviewed bv Chaim Revier

Even though, of course, I never developed the skill and the insight of those who went to Talmud Torah and yeshivah, I didn't fail to notice, over the years, that many phrases and formulations in the Gemara had the tendency to recur in various contexts.

You can explain almost anything - or at least give that impression - by drawing an analogy with music:

Apart from my father showing me how to hold a guitar, I never received any formal music training. Still I learned to play, and what's more, I always enjoyed playing, an experience that is sometimes absent from children who are taught. The drawback of this approach to music education is that, while you do pick up a great deal when playing by ear, you never become an accomplished musician. It's not so much a lack of dexterity - well, that too, actually. But what you miss most is a clear comprehension of what, technically, music is all about. Fortunately, over the years, I found some accessible books on music theory to at least partly fill that.

I also enjoy learning Gemara. As with playing a musical instrument, I've had hardly any formal training in learning Gemara, but sort of picked it up along the way, going to classes and learning with far more knowledgeable study partners. But I benefited most by following the daf hayomi, and by preparing the daf, as much as possible, before the class, using as my tool of choice the wonderfully helpful sheets issued by Rav Mordecai Kornfeld's Kollel Iyun HaDaf.

Even though, of course, I never developed the skills and the insight of those who went to Talmud Torah and yeshivah, I didn't fail to notice, over the years, that many phrases and formulations in the Gemara had the tendency to recur in various contexts. Probably there were rules that held the Gemara together; maybe there was even an underlying system, a sort of harmonics of the Talmud Bavli.

So I for one was very pleased with Rabbi Haim Perlmutter's new book, Grow with Gemara. Rabbi Perlmutter shows that there is indeed a particular structure to the discussions in the Gemara, and that, if you're able to recognize elements of that structure and the formal role they play (which he proceeds to explain), you will have a better grasp of any topic and be able to delve more deeply into it.

It sounds simple, but the truth is, that there wasn't a book like this in English, at least not one as clear and accessible as Rabbi Perlmutter's. Its value exceeds its small size. The short footnotes and endnotes provide numerous references to places in the Gemara that are clear examples of the rules and structural elements under examination. I'm convinced that going through all of them will take anyone far and wide in the Gemara.

Most interestingly, Rabbi Perlmutter states that the structure of the Gemara expresses itself quite literally in song, i.e. in melodies you can actually hear. If learning Gemara is done correctly, queries, difficulties, and solutions, as well as quotes from different sources, are sung in different, traditional tunes, passed from rebbe to talmid for generations. Rabbi Perlmutter highly recommends that one learn these melodies. I haven't so far, but I hope that one day, with Hashem's help, I'll pick them up.