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To Teach a Jew
Shmuel Yaakov Klein
To Teach a Jew
Rabbi Shmuel Yaakov Klein has been an educator for 25 years. He's seen it all: girls' classes, boys' classes, high schools, yeshivahs, elementary schools, limudei kodesh, secular studies. So what's it like behind the desk, staring at thirty young faces staring back? What are the challenges today's teachers face? And how can we, as parents, make their task easier and their teaching more effective? As we discover what it's like To Teach a Jew, we will also learn how to be the very best parents we can to our children.
Book Excerpt from To Teach a Jew
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To Teach a Jew
Jewish parents & Jewish teachers! Join a renowned educator & Hamodia columnist in a crucial discussion on effective Jewish parenting for Jewish kids.
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Ethics for the Teacher
Beyond the technical aspects of education, teachers need to be concerned with the underlying spirit of education. Education is distinguishable from other occupations in that a positive spirit is fundamental to the whole operation. The teacher deals with children; he strives to shape them in both knowledge and attitude. He is not handling passive material, which is forever receptive to the whim and fancy of the arbiter. To an extent, there is an element of that, too, as Elisha ben Avuyah declared in the Mishnah: “He who learns as a child may be compared to ink written on new paper” (Avos 4:25). But there is more.
Each child is a unique and wonderful world of dreams and emotions, a complex amalgam of fears and infirmities, and he must be handled accordingly. This is every bit as integral to the teacher’s suitability as the doctor’s ability to diagnose a patient’s symptoms. The teacher must desire to treat his students as human beings with all that this entails; he must, therefore, create a teaching spirit.
There has been for hundreds of years a serious problem the melamed has faced -- one of image. The very term melamed was laced with a strongly stigmatic flavor. A proste melamed, a simple teacher, was the Yiddish accolade bestowed upon those whose fate had them teaching cheder. The negative feeling created by the stigma caused the teacher himself to wonder about his worth among men.
Fortunately for many, a large number of melamdim were able to triumph over this due to sheer commitment and dedication. Others, however, were unable to. As a result, their lack of inner peace was, and is, relayed to their students in a covert but very potent way. To a degree, the reason for the attitude toward teachers was related to the caliber of the teachers themselves.
It was quite common for a person who was incapable or unwilling to take up some other livelihood to become a melamed. There was a lack of a sense of mission that is so important in chinuch. Just as common was the sort of teacher whose only qualification was the fact that he knew the most elementary material and was deemed fit for the job. To a large measure, the aura surrounding chinuch was devoid of professionalism and purpose. It is thus easy to see why the melamed was deprived of social status and why, as a result, a certain loss of self-respect was incurred. The melamed’s acceptance into society and his suitability for the tasks were both lowered. What came first may be interesting but insignificant.
In recent years some of the status teachers ought to possess has been restored; chinuch has become professionalized. Terms like moreh and morah and mechanech have been substituted for melamed in an effort to revitalize the image. (Curiously, though, the Almighty Himself is called a Melamed [Tehillim 94:10], as was Moshe Rabbeinu [Devarim 4:1].) Today chinuch is considered a science in addition to an art; theories and policies abound.
The process, though, has ushered the Jewish teacher into another perspective altogether. In the course of modernizing Jewish education and society’s view of it, many have lost the sense of spirit that is the very lifeblood of chinuch. They have perhaps achieved a partial goal, rendering chinuch as vital as any other occupation. But the means to this goal are not completely justifiable. They have stripped chinuch of many of the characteristics that make it distinct from all other occupations. It goes without saying that the teacher -- be he a mechanech or a melamed -- must be conscious of this distinctiveness constantly.
The Sages of the Gemara spoke most emphatically about teaching the tinokos shel beis rabban, the Jewish schoolchildren.
One passage alone contains three statements about it:
Rabbi Yehudah said in the name of Rav: “What is meant by the verse ‘Do not touch My anointed ones’ (Divrei HaYamim I 16:22)? It refers to tinokos shel beis rabban [tashbar].” Rabbi Hamnuna said: “Yerushalayim was destroyed only because they suspended the schoolchildren.” [This does not mean that children were expelled from school for bad behavior; it means they stopped teaching them.] And even such pronouncements are not to be compared to that of Reish Lakish in the name of Rabbi Yehudah HaNassi: “The world is sustained only because of the breath of the schoolchildren [expelled when they learn Torah].”
(Shabbos 119b)
The Maharal explains (Nesivos Olam, Nesiv HaTorah, ch. 10) that Torah sustains the world, but the Torah of young children particularly sustains it even more, since it is the Torah of innocence. This is what Abayei meant when he explained to Rav Papa that the breath of the schoolchildren is “breath without sin.” The teacher, writes the Maharal, brings unadulterated holiness into the world, a sanctity that is of the highest sort; it is beyond the physical incarnation, for it is of the intellect.
For this reason Reish Lakish proclaimed that we may not suspend Jewish education even for the reconstruction of the Beis HaMikdash. The sanctity of the Beis HaMikdash is lodged, as it were, in wood and stone, while the sanctity of tashbar is entirely incorporeal. Thus, besides the many social, nationalistic, historical, and cultural benefits wrought by Jewish education for the people of Israel, chinuch is the single most important activity in which one can be involved in a purely mystical sense. A person’s self-image as a teacher needs no bolstering, his social status needs no revitalization, when viewed through the words of the Sages. The teacher can be involved in no nobler task because he helps to sustain the world itself. So while a teacher must regard himself as a practitioner of a specific set of technical acts, he must never lose sight of the sanctity of what he does.
SO DISTINCT IS Jewish education from other sorts of livelihood that, according to the halachah, teachers must be viewed differently even with respect to salary. The original Talmudic ordinance (Nedarim 37a) was that the melamed may receive no remuneration whatsoever for his efforts. This does not imply that a teacher’s work is a valueless commodity. On the contrary, it means that the work is priceless, not marketable. No price or wage can be ascribed to work that is priceless. Fixing a value to it would be a denigration of such work.
Later on, Rambam cites the revised Talmudic prescriptive:
The teacher may receive payment for teaching Tanach in a place where this is the custom. This is prohibited for teaching the oral tradition, regardless of custom.
(Hilchos Talmud Torah 1:7)
The basis for this is the verse, spoken by Moshe, “See I have taught you statutes and laws as God commanded me” (Devarim 4:5). The Sages interpret Moshe’s words: “Just as I have taught with no financial reward, so shall you teach with no financial reward throughout the generations.”
To be sure, fixing a monetary value to something limits its significance. The shoemaker earns less than the physician because they are both subject to the conceptions of the society in which they live. And the labors of both are restricted in social importance to the amounts of money they receive for their services. Salary is a measure of social acceptance. To box a teacher into a particular financial bracket is to put a specific value on the service he provides. This is offensive to the spirit of chinuch. Just as it would have appeared ridiculous for Moshe Rabbeinu to demand a salary for his teaching of Torah to Israel, so is it offensive today for teachers to receive a salary for teaching Torah to Israel, since today’s melamed is a partial heir to the vocational heritage of Moshe.
Of course, such a spiritual formulation is very idealistic in the way it portrays the worth of a teacher, but it is not very practical. Sanctity alone will not feed and clothe the teacher’s family; his creditors might prefer something a bit more substantial.
The Shulchan Aruch does make mention of a practice of paying teachers:
The recent custom of paying teachers is permitted, since it is evident that [since he spends his time teaching] he puts aside other employment and business.
(Yoreh Deah 246:5)
Thus salary for teachers has entered the framework of halachah, although it is not referred to as sechar, remuneration, but rather as sechar batalah, remuneration due to suspension from other work. In the halachic scheme, a teacher, rather than being paid for what he does, is being paid for what he does not do. The teacher is thus being paid by society in consideration of his situation and not directly for the service he provides.
Alternatively, since it has been decided that we can speak of remuneration for the melamed, albeit with a specific point of view, without deviating from the halachah, we might want to inspect the guidelines for remuneration.
Despite the fact that we must pay sechar batalah, what a community will pay its teachers is still determined by the amount of significance it ascribes to teaching.
One reason for this is that sechar batalah is inestimable, since it is tied to an undefined variable. Just consider: When the teacher is being paid for being suspended from other work, should we assume that the teacher would otherwise have chosen very lucrative work, such as being the CEO of a very large corporation, or that he would have preferred one with more marginal gain? Sechar batalah is thus indeterminable. Since this matter cannot really be resolved, payment will be geared to the popular view of chinuch in the community. So sechar batalah becomes a fine ideal tucked away somewhere in the far reaches of the minds of those who dictate the rates and who pay the salaries of the melamdim.
A common scenario might be one where an attorney, sitting on the board of a school, might postulate that it is quite reasonable for a teacher to earn in a week what he himself might charge for a couple of hours of legal services. I do not mean to suggest that all people should earn the same amount -- I do not subscribe to a socialist view. I would suggest, though, that respect and consideration must lie at the base of any dealings that involve teachers’ salaries.
While it would be inappropriate to aim at making teachers wealthy, it is even less appropriate to aim at keeping a teacher’s earnings below the accepted norms. The same mundane criteria that are generally applied to other kinds of work should govern a melamed’s salary -- cost of living, average income, local lifestyle. By keeping teachers below a tolerable level of increment we are undermining the entire process of chinuch. The field will lack professional appeal and therefore competitiveness. This will in turn deprive a teacher of the respect -- and then self-esteem -- that are integral to his success.