Here are four “by the way” lessons from my school years that remain with me still

T

he summer sun was still blazing this week when I pulled the book and supplies lists out of the drawer where I’d stowed them before vacation. I took a deep breath. School was about to start, and there was work to do — books to cover, supplies to assemble, pencil cases to pack.

I took the knapsacks out of the closet and examined their contents. There was the detritus of a year of learning: pencil shavings, crumpled papers, half a crayon, some Post-it notes and stickers, and a very grimy eraser. Quickly, efficiently, I shook it all out over the garbage. And I wondered: In the close to 30 years since my own school days, what’s left of it all?

I attended Bnos Leah of Prospect Park Yeshivah from kindergarten straight through 12th grade, and I still feel grateful for the chinuch I received. As a student, I didn’t fully appreciate the passion, stamina, and dedication of my teachers. I didn’t realize how much I was learning and gaining until much, much later, when big chunks of the knowledge turned foggy and I found myself grasping for the mastery I once had.

But in hindsight, a lot of the most impactful lessons or teaching moments weren’t in the syllabus. They’re more like those pencil shavings and stickers and Post-it notes – acquired along the way, imparted off the cuff, without formal preparation or lesson plans. Here are four “by the way” lessons from my school years that remain with me still.

Principles and People

In 12th grade, during Mrs. Zlata Press’s Pirkei Avos class, we reached a mishnah (1:5) that seemed, to us at least, not quite politically correct: “Do not speak excessively much with women. This regards a man’s own wife….”

Mrs. Press, a very wise woman, didn’t launch into a defensive speech about how greatly Judaism values women. Instead, she reminded us that there are only so many hours in a day. “If you want your husband to set aside time to learn Torah, but you constantly want to have these long, deep conversations with him, you have to realize that you’re sabotaging yourself. One of those goals is not going to happen.”

Consternation appeared on many faces. The year before, our Chumash teacher Mrs. Nechama Schreibman had kept hammering home the importance of a strong relationship between husband and wife. Now our Pirkei Avos teacher seemed to be downplaying its importance. Finally, one girl dared to voice our confusion. “Mrs. Schreibman is always telling us how important it is to have conversations with your husband!” she protested.

Mrs. Press stopped for a minute to contemplate the mixed message. Then she smiled and explained. “Mrs. Schreibman’s husband learns in kollel. My husband is a psychiatrist. She keeps telling you how important it is to spend time with your husband, because hers spends his day learning, so those conversations are a priority. I’m telling you how important it is to allow your husband to learn undisturbed, because knowing my husband spends his day in conversation, his nightly shiurim are my personal priority.”

I know that wasn’t the lesson in the syllabus, but I still remember what I learned that day. While everyone aspires to build a solid Torah home, each couple has to balance their individual realities in a way all their own. Principles are where it starts, but implementation must take the people — and their realities — into account.

Nothing to Fear

Once, when I was in tenth grade, Rabbi Avraham Kelman, the dean, made one of his regular visits to the classroom. It was during a scheduled earth science lesson, and as was his habit, he asked, “What are you girls learning now?”

“Well, we’re supposed to be learning some apikorsus, something about the age of the earth,” I said boldly, “because it’s in the Regents curriculum. But of course we’re going to skip it.”

“Why would you skip it?” he asked, measured as always. “The Regents curriculum is nothing to be scared of. Why not learn what they think and why they think it — and then learn why Chazal are really right?”

I know that there are diverse and diverging approaches toward elements of the general studies curriculum that don’t align with our beliefs. Many educators prefer not exposing students to these elements at all — and it’s their right and duty to set policy in accordance with their preferences. I also know that I learned something valuable from Rabbi Kelman’s approach: not to be scared to ask. With the right teachers, the right tools, and an unshakable foundation, questions aren’t something to be feared, because there’s nothing out there that can hold a candle to the primacy of Torah.

More than Colleagues

As students, we knew there was some mystical quality to the teachers’ room. It was the place where our teachers grabbed coffee, exchanged recipes and tips, and probably gave one another chizuk for the more spirited classes among us. And we also knew, in a vague sort of way, that our teachers were friends and got along and enjoyed being part of a team. But I don’t think we realized just how close they felt until one winter morning when we were all called to the shul.

For months we’d known that one teacher’s husband was in and out of the hospital, fighting a very serious illness. We didn’t know how bad things were, because we were just high-school girls absorbed in our typical dramas, and as far as we could see, this teacher was functioning normally. We were too young to fully appreciate her composure and professionalism — giving classes, marking tests, answering questions — while her husband kept losing ground in his fateful battle.

Then one morning, we were all called together in the shul, and one of the most irrepressibly positive and dynamic teachers walked to the front. Voice uncharacteristically low, she led the entire room, including the teachers, in a recital of Tehillim that shook high-school me.

I don’t know if I’ve ever heard Tehillim recited like that before or after: The intensity. The emotion. The raw sincerity invested in each word. As we repeated phrase after phrase, knowing we couldn’t capture a fraction of her desperation, we looked wonderingly from teacher to teacher and saw how much this mattered to them. How much they cared for each other. How this was so much more than a club of women who spent their days in the same halls teaching the same faces.

It was one of my first experiences feeling what tefillah is: that inescapable sense that you hold no power and He holds it all. At the same time, it also stood out as an experience of shared tzaar and shared responsibility almost tangible in its immediacy.

Substance of the Self

I went to a school that demanded a lot of memorizations. We had teachers who even included a section on each test where we’d record the pesukim or maamarei Chazal we’d memorized. For some students, the forced memorization was very painful. Others managed it more proficiently. But many wondered why we were doing it at all.

In high school, a teacher of ours addressed the question head-on. “You’re wondering why we make you memorize all those pesukim and maamarei Chazal,” she said. “Chances are, five or ten years down the line, you’re going to forget them. And even if you do remember some, how exactly will they help you for life?

“I’ll tell you how they’ll help you,” she went on. “One day something hard is going to happen to you. Something that will make you grasp for answers, for clarity, for strength. And deep inside you all those pesukim, all those words of bitachon and emunah — how Hashem has a plan, how He alone knows the answers, how He never gives up on us — they’ll be there for you.”

While I can’t know how things played out for everyone in the room, I do know that there was deep truth in that prediction. It’s impossible to pinpoint exactly when and how all those memorized words morphed from “material to master” into “substance of the self”… but yes, Mrs. Galinsky, you were right. When the tough times came, the words were there. They had become more than words we studied and repeated. They had become part of our outlook and internal makeup.

Which is, I guess, what chinuch is really about.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1076)