They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel. -- Carl W. Buechner
I’m a traditionalist. You might even call me a bit old school. In nearly every disagreement between teacher and student, I favor of the teacher, and I’m keen on students showing unmitigated respect for their rabbis and teachers.
But there is also a way rabbis and teachers must relate to their students.
Moshe Rabbeinu recognized as much. When Amalek came to fight the Jewish people, he said to Yehoshua, “choose men for us and go out and fight with Amalek” (Shemos 17:9). Discerning Moshe’s curious command to choose men “for us,” Rashi explains that Moshe intended to equate Yehoshua (his student) to himself, demonstrating that “the honor of your student should be as beloved to you as your own” (Avos D’Rebbi Nosson 27:4; Tanchuma, B’shalach 26; Mechilta, B’shalach 17; Avos 4:12; SeMaG, Positive Commandment 13).
Our tradition is festooned with teachings that highlight the close relationship between teacher and student. “A person can be jealous of everyone except his son and his student” (Sanhedrin 105b), and “a student who is exiled, his rebbi is exiled with him” (Makkos 10a). Indeed, the relationship between teacher and student is akin to the relationship between parent and child (see Bereishis Rabba 42:4; Sifri, Devarim 34).
But these feelings ought to be a two-way street (albeit to very different degrees). “Just as the students are obligated to honor the rebbi, so too does the rebbi need to honor his students and bring them close…for they are the sons that give him pleasure in this world and the next” (Rambam, Talmud Torah 5:12).
Before his responsa were printed, R’ Akiva Eiger instructed his son: “You will see that many of those posing the questions had learned in my yeshiva, do not refer to them as ‘students’…I never referred to a person as a ‘student’ for I say, ‘who knows who learned more from whom’” (Responsa of R’ Akiva Eiger, Vol. 1, Introduction; see also Divrei Torah of R’ Chaim Elazar Shapiro [Munkaczer Rebbe] 1:69 and 7:47).
Twice every day, we recite, referring to the Torah, “and you should teach them to your sons” (Devarim 6:7). Oddly, Rashi, quoting the Sifri, explains that “your sons” refers to “the students” (Rashi ad loc.), which begs an obvious question: If the reference really is to one’s students, why refer to the sons? Why not simply say “your students”? R’ Chazkel Sarna explains that if the teacher does not relate to students as sons, they are not really students. That is, to be a true student, the teacher must relate to the student as a parent to a child.
Would that our children had more rabbeim and teachers of this sort!
Like R’ Shlomo Freifeld, the Rosh Yeshiva of Sh’or Yoshuv, whose love and respect for students is the stuff of legend.
When one of R’ Shlomo’s students accepted a teaching position, R’ Shlomo had this to say: “If you are not prepared to do whatever it takes for each individual student, to love every single one, don’t become a rebbi. Become a shochet. It’s better to slaughter chickens than students.”
Indeed, on more than a few occasions, visitors to R’ Shlomo would ask whether the young men surrounding him were his students. “No,” R’ Shlomo answered consistently. “They’re my partners.”
And R’ Shlomo treated all his students with this love and respect—even the more wayward ones. One such student was disappointing R’ Shlomo, and, although R’ Shlomo invested significant time and energy into assisting this student, there was little progress. One day, when R’ Shlomo was feeling especially weak due to illness, this student came to visit. But another student, who was attending to R’ Shlomo, refused to let him in, explaining that R’ Shlomo was just too weak for visitors. “Just watch,” the visiting student explained. “You’ll see from the smile on Rebbi’s face when I walk into the room just how happy I make him, how much strength he derives from me.”
Here was, by all accounts, a student who had fallen far short of R’ Shlomo’s expectations, yet R’ Shlomo accorded him so much respect and love that the student assumed his mere appearance would lift R’ Shlomo’s spirits.
And one more story, because it’s too good to not tell.
Eli came to Sh’or Yoshuv after arduous and unsuccessful stints at several other schools. He had been diagnosed with learning disabilities and, unable to read English or Hebrew, suffice it to say that expectations were low.
But R’ Shlomo would not be deterred. He spent hours listening to Eli try to read. One day, R’ Shlomo said to him, “Eli, you may not realize this, but despite your reading difficulties, you are a tremendous lamdan with a razor-sharp mind.”
And so R’ Shlomo had Eli work on his understanding of the Gemara, without actually reading it. As he began to understand more, Eli would memorize the words so it seemed as though he could read.
After several years, Eli had mastered the first seven folios of Tractate Chullin—verbatim. R’ Shlomo tested him and confirmed that Eli knew the material perfectly.
Shortly thereafter, R’ Shlomo hosted an engagement party for another of his students. R’ Shlomo’s dining room was full of guests: prominent rabbis, relatives, friends, and neighbors. R’ Shlomo started to brag—not about himself, of course—about his students. “We have students here who are true geniuses.” The room grew silent, and as R’ Shlomo set his sights on Eli so did the assembled guests.
“Eli, come here,” R’ Shlomo directed. “Start to say over a Gemara by heart…let’s say…Chullin.”
Eli closed his eyes and began to recite the very words he had struggled so mightily to understand. With each passing line, Eli’s confidence and speed picked up. Two, three, four folios went by, and Eli was still going strong with no sign of any letup. He had been going for 15 minutes without faltering. The guests were astonished.
And just as Eli reached the end of Tractate Chullin’s seventh folio—the last words he knew—R’ Shlomo interjected. “Genug! Enough! You showed them the quality of our students.”
Eli would later remark that those fifteen minutes erased fifteen years of humiliation and suffering.
That’s a master rebbi—one who breathes life into students by overwhelming them with love and respect. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once observed, “the secret of education is respecting the student.”
In a sense, teachers should respect students out of simple gratitude for contributing to the teachers’ achievements (Koheles Rabba 2:20; see Tiferes Yisroel, Avos 4:12). “When the student goes to his rebbi and says, ‘teach me Torah,’ if the rebbi teaches him, Hashem lights up both their eyes” (Temura 16a). Indeed, the rebbi often learns more from his students than from his own teachers (Ta’anis 7a), like a small match that ignites a much larger piece of wood (see Rambam, Talmud Torah 5:13; see also Tur, Yoreh Dei’ah 242).
But there’s more to it than that. The student, in heralding the teacher’s messages and ideals, allows the teacher to live on for eternity. The student becomes the teacher’s legacy—the teacher’s voice. Indeed, “more than the calf wants to be nursed, the cow wants to nurse” (Pesachim 112a).
Perhaps that is why Moshe, whose love and respect for his student Yehoshua knew no bounds, commonly is referred to as Moshe “Rabbeinu”—Moshe “our teacher.” Because he was the consummate teacher.
For the truest measure of a teacher is how he or she makes the student feel.