I am very sensitive by nature, and I have found myself hurt many times over by people’s reactions. This became a bigger problem when I started teaching in Talmud Torah. Whoever knows this situation personally understands what I’m talking about, and for whoever doesn’t, I’ll try to give you a small taste of it.
I prepare a complex shiur in Gemara, offering many details, and I come to class after a tense night of preparing. I am a new melamed and I want to succeed, and I am afraid of discipline problems and that perhaps my words will not go over the way they should. The shiur begins. Baruch Hashem, discipline is good, the talmidim are with me, attentive. I explain, make it tangible, invest my whole neshamah so that everyone, down to the last talmid, should understand and come out happy and satisfied. Then I thank Hakadosh Baruch Hu for the successful shiur He enabled me to deliver.
Then comes the boom – the fist in the heart, literally. I feel the pain physically. The menahel calls me over, following a phone call he received from one of the parents. Of course they say it as nicely as possible, but the message is: You are not investing enough in the learning and the explanations.
It hurts; it hurts a lot. Because only Hakadosh Baruch Hu knows how much I’ve invested, and how the shiur was given over in the clearest and best way possible. What can I do when there are children with various learning disabilities, who do not grasp the material despite a melamed’s best intentions and purest desire?
There were times when I thought of leaving, that perhaps I’m not suited to be a melamed – until I discovered the Hashgachah Pratis magazine, which changed my whole outlook. Now when I hear negative feedback, the first minute it certainly hurts, but the second minute I say to myself, This too is hashgachah pratis. Hakadosh Baruch Hu wants you to lower your head a little, to work on your gaavah a little.
I hear another unpleasant reaction, and again I take it hard at first, and then immediately remember a story I had read in the magazine and say to myself, It’s min haShamayim. That’s what Hakadosh Baruch Hu wanted. Accept it with love.
In general, my talmidim know that if they behave well, then at the end of the day there will be a story of hashgachah pratis. They wait for this, and they know that I won’t be able to refuse their request, for I have in my arsenal a tremendous collection of stories that I’ve read. They are mischazeik together with me, and they add their own nice anecdotes of hashgachah pratis that they’ve experienced.