Connell Fanning and Marija Laugalyte
The Keynes Centre has pioneered Reading for Transformation Book Circles as a key aspect of its method for continuing development throughout adulthood. Reading with others is a powerful mode of reading as it provides the basis for developmental dialogues which are at the heart of our approach.
This has long been understood in the Jewish tradition under the rubric of the Chavruta, meaning ‘friendship’, ‘partnership’, or “a learning partner” (1).
The following set of extracts convey the merits of this approach to reading and bear reflection as we contemplate our attitude to reading.
(2) “Chavruta comes from the Hebrew word meaning, simply, ‘friend’. Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers) states the fundamental importance of companionship in Jewish learning (and in general): ‘Make for yourself a teacher, find yourself a friend, and judge every person favourably’.
Commentators explain the final, apparently unrelated, clause as being an essential requirement for achieving the first two. Being endlessly judgmental and critical makes it very hard to commit to, and keep, either friends or teachers.
There are numerous statements in the sources that stress the essential sociability of study. The unbearability of life without scholarly companionship is poignantly expressed about Honi the Circle-maker, ‘Either chavruta or mituta,’ ‘either friendship or death’.”
(3) “Learning in partnership acknowledges that one cannot derive a text’s meaning on one’s own, and this logic is echoed throughout rabbinic literature.”
(4) “Each checks and corrects the misconceptions of the other, questioning and sharpening the other’s ideas, while the necessity of articulating one‘s thoughts to another person brings greater clarity than learning alone. Indeed, the Talmud goes so far as to say that one who learns Torah alone becomes stupid!”
(5) “Chavruta means ‘friendship’ or ‘partnership’ and is a deeply traditional form of Jewish learning where two people explore Jewish texts together. Still used by every Talmud student to this day, this method is a dialogue between the participants, which encourages friendly debate and crafts meaning and ownership of the texts. Chavruta is not only an opportunity to increase one’s knowledge but should be a transformative experience. It is truly the quintessential Jewish learning technique.”
Reading with others is one of the three dialogues, the others being dialogue with an author (text) and dialogue with self (reflection) through which we can observe how we think as the basis for intentionally and deliberately undertaking personal transformation.
Sources
(1) www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1144871/jewish/Chavruta-Learning-Torah-in-Pairs.htm.
(2) www.thejc.com/judaism/jewish-words/chavruta-1.5940
(3) https://www.ancientjewreview.com/read/2019/8/7/chavruta-and-the-culture-of-partnered-learning
(4) https://www.thejc.com/judaism/jewish-words/chavruta-1.5940
(5) https://limmud.org/learn-with-us/chavruta/
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