It wasn’t actually called the dumb shiur, it was called Rucks shiur, but it might as well have been. Not that I wasn’t proud of my status as an “am haaretz” which I never really knew until my friend Yoel called me one about 2 months ago. I always lumped ameratzim into the same group as apikorsim and kofrim, probably because they all sounded evil and I really didn’t think of myself as evil, I was just not cut out to argue about oxen goring each other, I would have just fine reading the Hebrew Braveheart otherwise known as Prophets.
But as my other classmates realized, we were stuck in Rucks Shiur, which really wasn’t a bad place to be stuck. It was like we were put in cherem, separated from the regular classes by a long hallway of Rabbis offices that were always busy with kids on the verge of being thrown out, or asked to leave as any yeshiva reject loves to call it. Going to the bathroom was like wandering the desert and whenever you had to go it was a brief escape from the confines of the dumb shiur.
I may be being a little harsh on myself for calling it the dumb shiur, as none of us were actually dumb. Ameratzim for sure, but dumb, that may be taking it a little far. In that vein I recently found out that in real yeshivas they call it the Gimmel Shiur and this Gimmel Shiur can be put into many different sub categories depending on how your rebbe liked to classify the kids in his class.
Ruck, as our rebbe was so eloquently known, mostly because he was the token older single guy in yeshiva (who when finally got married was used as one of those – “if he can get married…” for other older singles) was a really funny, lanky dude who was over addicted to professional sports, it showed in his charts. Ruck was all about using charts with erasable markers to show us how the gemara played out. He was like a football coach when it came to gemara and while at the time I claim to have understood what he was talking about – I don’t think I learned anything in his class. The only gemara I retained from my 8 years learning are the sexual stories of which I have no idea where they are located. I am so lacking in my gemara knowledge that I cannot be cool and rattle off random phrases from the gemara to describe random events – those people are always so cool.
Ruck probably would have made a great rebbe if he could be tried out on the regular guys, but having a bunch of ADD kids who couldn’t tell you the difference between Bava Kama and Baba Basra was really not conducive to him trying out his teaching skills. He also hated it when we acknowledged the fact that we were in a less than normal shiur. A friend of mine recently informed me that this is quite normal for Rebbes of Gimmel Shiurim, in fact many rebbeim refuse to acknowledge the inferiority of their students merely saying that their shiur is for overflow because there are too many bochrim that year. Some Gimmel shiur rebbes will even go as far as to say that their shiur is normal but everyone elses shiur is honors.
I do have the distinction, unlike other people in my shiur, to have been in the regular classes for secular studies – which probably explains why I never graduated high school, hmm…
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The guy second to left in the picture looks like he might be good looking…
I was in the “slow” class in ninth grade.
It was technically the slow class. They divided us into two classes.
The class in which the teachers spoke in Hebrew and then an English speaking class for us slow people.
We sure had a blast
you should do a follow up, you can talk about how he would bribe us with candy to make us come to class or when instead of learning we would lock the door and watch videos of memorable sports moments, or our night seders at the Amerks game… If only all my gemarra shuirs were as much fun…
I was in the dumb class also, or gimmel because there were three, but the Rebbi had a different take on it. He liked to say there is an aleph class, but the other two were BOTH beis!
Gmorrah knowledge isn’t everything! You have a great personality and sense of humor, which many of the guys in the advanced shiur probably lack!
Anon – you are bringing back such memories – I loved those videos and the food.
I was in the gimel shiur last year, and this year theres two alephs and beis-and Im in beis
I was put into one of those types of classes in 10th grade. They split the clas between those interested in learning and those that weren’t. We only had half the class time. When the teacher said I was ready to back to the other class, I refused, forcing him to keep the class alive for 3 guys.
The plural of ‘Am HaAretz is ‘Amei HaAretz.
In modern orthodox schools they call it remedial or special ed
In my school we call it “ha-tard” shiur.
I dunno about that Yochanan, I’ve heard the term ‘Am-aratzim’ all the time in Yeshiva.
It’s funny my friend and I were recently talking about how is it that all these yeshivah kids all do so well… ah, they split them up and teach to ahem, their level.
I was in Spanish 2A, which was like an advanced class. They gave us a teacher who didn’t teach and the next year we were all on par with the kids who came from the good teachers.
I taught an EFL class “like that.” Most of my students just hadn’t learned English on a decent level previously and were phobic about the language.
It was fun, and I had less prep, since I just kept going over the same stuff, and they didn’t do homework or write compositions, so there was little to grade.
Well in Lakewood they say there are no second best guys – because you will always hear girls talking about the best guy in Lakewood.
Me being in my school made the rest of the school such a class by definition.
Yes, amaratztus and appikorsus are the same thing. When the first thing is on purpose, it’s a result of the second thing. Or vice versa, when the second thing happens, it’s a result of the first thing. I am yet to meet an educated apikoires. For instance, I would make a better atheist than most atheists, but I know too much to be one.
in my school, we called it the “c” shiur
our class motto to everyone who asked what the c shiur was “that the ‘c’ stands for stupid”
Dude, it’s R’ Shmuel Brazil in that pic!
They had a gimel shiur in my elementary school as well. It was really unfair to those guys becuase most of them were really pretty smart, they were just judged on their learning in the 4rth grade with a rebbe who was so chilled that many of them did not learn a word. Any other year though, most of them learned perfectly fine. Unfortunately looking back,most of those guys ended up either going completely off the derech or close to it.
I think they should eradicate such a class. The guys who need extra help should either not be accepted to that yeshiva to begin with or be placed in a normal shiur where they will be motivated to learn on parr with the rest of the class.
we called it the special ed
“in fact many rebbeim refuse to acknowledge the inferiority of their students merely saying that their shiur is for overflow because there are too many bochrim that year”
Latest studies: When teachers aren’t told that their kids come from poor backgrounds (ones that would often doom them to bad educations), the teachers raise their expectations, and the kids improve!!
When my Dad was in BTA (which used to be MTA’s branch in Brooklyn, shut down in 1978, and was legendarily full of ‘vilda chayas’). they simply called it “The Garbage Class”. My father purposely got himself thrown in there his Senior year because he couldn’t stand the Rebbaim of the other shiurim. He feels he learned a lot more in that class anyway, considering that by the second half of that year, he was probably one of the few people who even used to show up to begin with.
In my HS, it was the “W” class (even the Limudai Kodesh classes in mine had letters). Senior year, they were given a Rabbi who is normally given Matmidim level shiurim and is notoriously bad at explaining himself to people who don’t understand him the first time. A friend of mine who was in the “W” class actually overheard this Rabbi saying to another teacher “My ‘W’ class is so stupid, there’s no way any of these morons will be able to pass my class without cheating!”
1. the plural of am ha’aretz is ameratzim
2. here is a gmoro for you (pesachim 20)
l’olam yimkor odom es kol n’chosov veyisa….
…but he should not marry the daughter of an am ha’aretz for they are filth, their spouses are rodents and refering to their daughters it says “cursed is the one who lies with any beast”…
…one may even stab an amhaaretz on yom kippur that falls out on shabbos, his talmidim said “rabbi! why stab? say slaughter”, he replied “this requires a brocho and this one doesnt require a brocho”
I think they should eradicate such a class. A friend of mine who was in the “W” class actually overheard this Rabbi saying to another teacher “My ‘W’ class is so stupid, there’s no way any of these morons will be able to pass my class without cheating!”
I think they should eradicate Talmud study.