QUESTIONS TO ASK WHEN CHOOSING A YESHIVAH

The twentieth yahrtzeit of Rav Yisroel Zev Gustman ztz”l and Yisroel Besser’s beautiful article on his legacy in last week’s issue sent me back to a long piece I wrote shortly after his passing for the Jewish Observer. There I found the following gem long forgotten.

Rav Gustman and Rav Shmuel Rozovsky two of the most influential roshei yeshivah of the last generation were once reminiscing about their days in the Grodno yeshivah under the great Rabbi Shimon Shkop. They concluded that those who had achieved the most in subsequent decades were those who had been the biggest masmidim and had bound themselves to Reb Shimon completely — never missing a shiur no matter how sick and following the rosh yeshivah wherever he spoke whether in the yeshivah or to the local balabatim.

Once Yisroel Zev hired a driver to take him to shiur when he was burning with a 104-degree fever. Before the shiur Reb Shimon — who had heard from others how sick his talmid was — came over and jokingly remarked that he had seen better-looking faces in the zoo. Yisroel Zev was afraid that he would be sent home but to his relief Reb Shimon simply said “Try and concentrate. Maybe you’ll feel better.” As soon as Reb Shimon began Yisroel Zev felt his fever break.

Decades ago a major talmid chacham told me that those who achieve the most in learning are usually those who thoroughly absorb the derech of one rosh yeshivah for many years.

With few exceptions Torah must be learned from a rav. The necessity of the rav-talmid relationship Rabbi Aharon Lopiansky explains derives not just from the rav’s greater knowledge but from the need for the talmid to experience Torah as coming from a higher place as Torah min haShamayim. (Shamayim the Heavens finds its root in the word sham — there not here.) Torah does not intrinsically belong to any man. Only when he recognizes it as Toras Hashem as infinite does the student of Torah feel humbled. And as he feels humbled by the vastness of Hashem’s Torah he reduces himself and in the process creates within himself a larger vessel for receiving Hashem's Torah. Thus Korach who saw no need for Moshe Rabbeinu as a teacher of Torah is described by Chazal as denying Torah min haShamayim and rendering himself unfit to receive Torah.

The relationship of rav and talmid is the highest expression of love. Teaching Hashem’s Torah writes Rav Yitzchok Hutner (Pachad Yitzchak Shavuos 18:9 based on the Sifri) is the purest expression of ahavas Hashem. Ideally the relationship of rav and talmid is as close as that of father and son. “V’shinantam l’vanecha — You shall teach them to your son ” say Chazal refers to one’s students no less than one’s son. And a talmid is required to honor his rav even more than his father for while the latter gave him life in this world the former gave him life in the World to Come.

A proper appreciation of the centrality of the rav-talmid relationship to the transmission of Torah and of the importance for talmidim of binding themselves to a rav who is aflame with love of Hashem and love of his talmidim has important implications for fathers eager to maximize their sons’ growth in Torah learning. When seeking a yeshivah for his son a father must ask where his son is most likely to form an intense and loving relationship with a rav not just which yeshivah is the most prestigious or attracts the “best boys.” (That was part of Rabbi Henoch Plotnik’s point last week in describing the modern-day Molech worship.)

Among the questions to ask are: How many bochurim are in the shiurim? Do the rebbeim spend time in the beis medrash? Are they available for speaking to bochurim outside of shiur? Are there many other potential mashpi’im (positive influences) in the beis medrash like the older bochurim who took groups of younger bochurim under their wings in Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetsky’s days in Slabodka? The nature of the bochur will also make a big difference: Is he a self-confident type who will not be ignored no matter how large the shiur? Or is he lacking in confidence and in need of a maggid shiur who will seek him out and take an interest in him?

****

Holding the Torah World to Its Own Standard

Baalei teshuvah are the great underminers of Torah society. And I mean that in a positive sense.

William (Zev) Kolbrener is a chareidi resident of Jerusalem’s Bayit Vegan neighborhood; a professor at Bar-Ilan University and a world-renowned scholar of the British poet John Milton; a baal teshuvah; and for purposes of full disclosure a morning chavrusa of mine for a brief period of time a few years back. He is also the father of Shmuel a nine-year-old boy with Down syndrome. Shmuel and his impact on his father a graduate of Oxford and Columbia is a subject of a number of Kolbrener’s essays in his new collection Open Minded Torah.

In one essay he relates his efforts to have Shmuel accepted into a mainstream cheder with a helper that the Kolbreners would supply. At first the principal seems inclined to accept Shmuel but later he develops cold feet. To the arguments based on Torah that Kolbrener adduces for his son’s acceptance the principal responds “Rabbi Kolbrener what you say is emes l’amito the undeniable truth kodesh kedoshim holy of holies — but we live in an alma d’shikra a world of falsehood.”

Kolbrener is stunned by the response. Of course he has heard the phrase alma d’shikra used many times as a withering critique of the world around us devoid of Torah values. But never before has he heard it used as defense for the refusal to act in a manner consonant with Torah values. “Making the alma d’shikra ... a justification for doing the wrong thing makes the Torah something theoretical — ‘We can’t actually live by the words of Torah.’ Torah ceases to be a handbook for tikun olam the redemption of the world but an ideal to which we aspire when not in conflict with our prejudices and fears ” he writes.

And this Kolbrener cannot accept. For it was Judaism’s promise “of a learning which is not only theoretical” of “study [that] transforms the real into the ideal elevating the world” that first drew him from the large oak seminar tables at Oxford and Columbia into the beis medrash. He has invested too much to be told that he transformed his entire life at the sacrifice of career and familial relations for an illusion.

Virtually every baal teshuvah was first attracted by the contrast between the ideals of the Torah world and the world from which he came between the perfection of character of the rabbis to whom he is first introduced and everyone he has previously known — himself chief among them. Because they have bet the bank on the vision to which they are first exposed they tend to insist (at least if they do not become jaded) that the Torah world live up to its own highest ideals and strive for the perfection of its greatest figures.

That is why the Torah world is never fully comfortable with the baalei teshuvah. And why they are so desperately needed.

****

The Limits of Hypocrisy

The peerless Walter Russell Mead posted two powerful essays last week on the dramatic failures of Al Gore as leader of the climate change crusade: the first on Gore’s personal failures and the second on his failure to comprehend the near impossibility of achieving the goal of massive reduction in carbon emissions. I will return to the latter at some future date.

The global green movement is in retreat on all fronts. The Kyoto Protocol withers on the vine with no replacement in place. And despite a Nobel Prize an Oscar and a fawning press Gore can do nothing to reverse that trend. The reason Mead suggests is that one cannot lead a world of moral reformation without wearing the hair shirt one would impose on others. The head of Mothers Against Drunk Driving cannot be caught driving under the influence.

Similarly one cannot hector the world that the end is nigh while flying a private jet which will “incur more carbon debt in one trip ... than most of the earth’s toiling billions will pile up in a lifetime”; and maintaining multiple private mansions that “consume more electricity than most African schools.” One cannot convince others that the danger is so overwhelming that the “entire political and social system of the world must change” if one does not live accordingly.

In a charitable vein Mead refuses to label Gore a hypocrite. Rather he subscribes to “an illusion common amongst the narcissistic glitterati of our time that politically fashionable virtue cancels private vice.” That false dichotomy between public and private realms is one against which those who live with the awareness that they are always in the presence of Hashem are protected.