In response to comments I received on last week’s post. Boruch Hashem last week’s post began a conversation and may it also bring some results. I would like to add a few points:
A. Just as the nessiim procrastinated in bringing their donations out of good intentions, so too here, the lowering of the expectations was done by educators who were interested in their students, to help the weaker ones, who were faltering or falling out of the system. What I was saying is that it should be reassessed.
B. A side consequence of this is that the students who have the ability to learn more, no longer felt a challenge and they lost the need to push themselves to succeed. So they were going on neutral or automatic pilot. Many of them started to feel that class is boring and this often brought its own set of problems.
Additionally, one of the questions that was presented to me was how do we answer the question some students ask of why is it important to learn gemorah, especially those mesechtas that aren’t really directly relevant in our day to day life.
Some aspects of mesechtas Shabbos is pertinent. We have to know from where to where we can carry without an eruv, and where we cannot carry. However, some of the other chapters aren’t so relevant, so why do we learn them, if they are ‘irrevelant’?
I would answer by asking the students to help me answer a friend’s question. He is a salesman and has many customers. He now has a limited amount of a certain item and knows that he won’t be able to supply all of his customers, so he is asking to whom should he make it available.
Some students may answer sell it to your best customers, others may respond limit how many any one customer can purchase. And some say give it to the one you are close to.
So while they all are customers and pay their bills in a timely manner, nevertheless the students understand that there are some who in addition of your business relationship, you also became personally friendly with them. That means besides discussing the quality and purpose of each item, you also have a friendly chat about other things, such as your family and hobbies or interests.
So I say to them, there are two parts to learning: one is to know what the mitzvah is and what we have to do or are not allowed to do. So when we study that, our focus is knowing how to conduct ourselves.
But then there is another aspect to learning, I am learning about Hashem’s Torah. Yes, the gemorah notes an opinion that a rebellious son discussed in last week’s parsha never happened, so what is the need to learn it?
But we learn it because it is part of Hashems Torah, and out of our closeness and love to him, we want to understand his ways.
For example, if you have an assignment to write about a certain individual and the guidelines are that you should note when and where they lived and what are their accomplishments, and so on, and it should be between five and seven pages long. It is an assignment and you want to get a good mark, so you do it. Indeed you receive an A for your work. Are you then going to research more about that person? Probably not.
But let’s say that person is your great grandparent, then, there is a good chance that you would be interested in obtaining more information about their life. Who were their siblings etc. even though it wasn’t part of the original assignment.
The same thing here, there is one part of the Torah we learn in order to know how to conduct ourselves. But then there is another or higher aspect of learning and that is learning for the sake of becoming closer to Hashem.
