Middle School Moot Beit Din Team Prepares to Make Debut
Picture this: A student running for class president makes an inappropriate comment on a Snapchat picture of his opponent and sends it to his friends. One of those friends takes a screenshot of it and shows it to the principal resulting in the candidate’s suspension. Does Snapchat count as mail and fall under the Jewish law of Takana d'rabbeinu gershom, which says you can’t open someone else’s mail? Was sharing the Snap a violation of Lashon Ha'Rah — gossip or evil speech? How should the school have responded according to Jewish Law?
Those are some of the questions that Middle School students on Milken’s Moot Beit Din team will decide as they prepare their cases for their upcoming competition. Similar to a moot court competition but with one notable difference, the Moot Beit Din competition uses halakhah—Jewish law— as the basis for the decisions.Students prepare written arguments and defend their opinions before a panel of judges. The team travels to Tarbut V’Torah Community Day School in Irvine for the first ever middle school competition, on Friday, May 18. They will face off against five other schools, including one who will compete remotely from New York.
The Founding of Middle School Moot Beit Din
Middle School Rabbi Aaron Finkelstein was integral in forming the team after he and Jewish Studies Department Chair Sean Herstein found out that some Southern California middle schools were starting a competition. The Upper School already has a Moot Beit Din team, which has done well in past competitions— coming in first in 2014 and 2015 and placing second in 2016, but no such program existed for the Middle School.
Rabbi Finkelstein thought it would be a good fit for the eighth graders. “We wanted something rigorous intellectually and challenging and highly relevant that would combine Jewish studies with some real world question or application,” he said. “It felt like a good culmination of the skills that we teach in Jewish Studies.” Rabbi Finkelstein worked closely with a consortium of schools carefully planning the competition and the program and videoconferencing every six weeks to problem solve, troubleshoot, and share material.
Preparing for the first competition
Students in the Eighth Grade Beit Midrash classes were provided with a source packet of material for the competition. They studied and discussed the first few sources together as a class, learning the texts and how to apply them to the case. The classes were then divided into smaller groups where they prepared 2-3 texts independently for their classmates.
Honing their critical thinking skills and digging deep into Jewish texts, students applied the texts to a contemporary situation and connected the past to the present. “I have learned how to interpret Jewish texts in different ways to understand all the arguments included in them,” said Talia Emrani. “Additionally, my knowledge about Jewish values has expanded greatly.”
“I had the privilege of being on a team with my friends, and we were learning about something that we can connect to our everyday lives,” said Rachel Pournazarian.
Rabbi Finkelstein hopes students will learn how to think about a complex question from a variety of perspectives and to see how Jewish law evolves and functions. He also wants them to see the relevancy of Judaism and Jewish texts when thinking about modern questions and issues that relate to their lives. “It has been a highlight of the year for my students as far as really stretching and learning and acquiring new skills,” remarked Rabbi Finkelstein. “I'm very proud that we’re creating this inaugural competition, and I hope it will become an annual tradition at Milken.”
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