Rabbi Dovid Schoonmaker can help you retain the Torah you’ve worked so hard to learn

Photos: Elchanan Kotler

Rabbi Dovid Schoonmaker spends his days guiding students through the complexities of the Talmud, but how much of what they learn will they remember once they close their tomes? He’s seen the frustration and despondency, when, after years of learning, people feel they have nothing to show for it – and that’s why he’s harnessed decades of teaching experience to bear on a vexing issue: How to prevent the knowledge gained through Torah study from slipping through your fingers?

It’s the beginning of a new zeman at Yeshivas Darchei Noam/the David Shapell College in Jerusalem, and this afternoon the beis medrash is full: Some young men are learning in pairs, others engrossed in their seforim in solitude. Rabbi Dovid Schoonmaker, the rosh yeshivah, spends a few minutes circling the room, conversing briefly with a group of students and introducing himself to a teenage boy and a man seated at one of the tables, neighborhood residents availing themselves of the open beis medrash. Whether they are newcomers or long-time learners, talmidim or local balabatim, he feels personal joy in their progress, but is also well-aware of one of their most frustrating struggles: how to retain and keep alive all that Torah learning once the sefer is closed?

After years helping newcomers find their footing in the beis medrash, first as a maggid shiur at Aish HaTorah and later in his current position at Darchei Noam, Rabbi Schoonmaker realized that there’s room for innovation even within the traditional framework of the beis medrash — methods, approaches, and skills that can help teachers relay the building blocks of Gemara learning, and not only for beginners. Now he’s moved on to the next step: a multi-pronged system to help everyone who loves learning retain their hard-won achievements.

His recently-published book, Yedias HaTorah: Step by Step, is a compact guidebook for anyone — student, rebbi, working man, even accomplished scholar — seeking a better method for retaining his learning. It might be an unconventional topic for a book, but it’s also a somewhat neglected and vexing issue in the world of Torah learning, which makes it practically tailor-made for Rabbi Dovid Schoonmaker to address.

Whatever it Takes

If Rabbi Dovid Schoonmaker’s name is familiar to you, you’re in good company. His decades of experience teaching in various yeshivos have given him significant exposure, and he is a well-known figure in the world of Torah education, whose reach extends to the broader public through the wonders of modern media; his offerings include shiurim on the masechtos of Seder Moed and a ten-minute podcast, “Shemoneh Esreh Explained.” After many years of firsthand exposure to the successes and frustrations of students from all walks of life, Reb Dovid has a fascinating and nuanced perspective on contemporary education, as well as some creative ideas for the yeshivah world as a whole.

And, he says, basic skills enhancement can make all the difference.

“There are some talmidim who will pick up on the tools for learning Gemara as if through osmosis — it just comes naturally to them,” Reb Dovid explains. “But there are many others who need to be taught, including those who weren’t exposed to Gemara learning early in their lives, but also many modern-day yeshivah students.”

One reason that teaching Gemara skills has become much more critical in contemporary times, is that the entire fabric of the yeshivah world has changed. “In earlier generations in Europe, and even during the first few decades after the Holocaust, yeshivah students were a small cadre of mostly very bright people who showed great dedication merely by coming to yeshivah,” Rabbi Schoonmaker says. “They lived under rudimentary conditions while pursuing their learning without flagging in their devotion. They often didn’t have proper living quarters and they had to subsist on the bare minimum of food, eating ‘teg’ at the homes of local residents and sometimes having no choice but to go without meals. You can assume that these bochurim were extremely motivated and often naturally gifted. It would be a mistake to think that the same methods can be applied to the much larger and more diverse population of yeshivah students today, when yeshivah learning has become standard in our society.”

Reb Dovid stresses both the value of independent learning and the importance of providing diverse means of instruction. “I give a daily iyun shiur,” he says, “but I’ve found that while my students benefit from the shiur, they sometimes benefit even more from talking in learning with me, delivering their own chaburos, or completing worksheets that I prepare to help them analyze a sugya. There is no ‘one size fits all’ answer to teaching Gemara today. It’s a mistake to believe that a rebbi can always follow the traditional model, simply delivering a daily shiur and relying on the bolder students to come forward to discuss the topic with him later, while disregarding those who do not ask questions. This fails to take into account the expanded population of today’s students, whose needs are simply not being met.”

And it’s not just about the gifted students who will succeed no matter what, and the remedial students who will always need extra help. “There’s an entire range of students somewhere in the middle,” he says, “who would benefit from more diverse means of instruction.”