Hope in our Students

Critics claim adolescents raised on TikTok and Instagram have short attention spans and lack the ability to read long books or engage in analysis requiring sustained attention. Detractors who thought that contemporary Israeli teens lack heroism and idealism were proven wrong over the past year and a half. Perhaps the educationally negative conclusions we mentioned above are likewise premature. Many of my students at both Yeshivat Orayta and Midreshet Lindebaum strongly contradict the “short attention span” theory.

The current Orayta first year students include one who read Joyce’s Ulysses, another who studied several languages and is now reading R. Hirsch’s Nineteen Letters in the original, one who speaks German (his family lived there for three years) and is now reading a book of Yiddish stories about the Vilna Gaon and the Noda biYehuda. New Jersey produced a student who wrote a chess column for the local Jewish newspaper and who did a senior research project comparing Genesis with stories from the Ancient Near East. Another became such an expert on genealogical research that he opened a business in the field. A student from a non-Jewish school in Vermont knows a great deal about Judaism and many other things. The only question is whether he knows more or less than last year’s analogous student from Vancouver.

At Lindenbaum, three of my students have read East of Eden. Granted, they read it for school but they all truly read it, can discuss it intelligently, and wrote interesting papers on it. Another student excels in knowledge of history while yet another knows enough behavioral psychology to get my Daniel Kahneman references. Beyond all the American students I have enumerated, there is an English young adult who has read most of the great nineteenth century English (Eliot, Dickens) and Russian (Tolstoy, Dostoevsky) novels.

Lest the reader think that these students must all be socially awkward people who spend their time in the corner of the lunchroom speaking Elvish, I emphasize that almost all of them are quite socially adept. I sometimes think of them as “cool nerds.”

Impressive high school accomplishments served as a springboard to great aptitude in their Torah learning this year. They ask deep questions and offer perceptive answers which I will illustrate by enumerating a list of good comments they have made in the last week. A collection of the best from the entire year would prove more spectacular but this list culled from a few days of teaching reveals the constant benefit my shiurim receive from their sagacity and tenacity.

I was giving a shiur on a Jewish approach to professions and cited Kiddushin 29a about a father’s obligation to teach his son a trade (an omanut). Micha Lober-Lew pointed out that the word omanut means both profession and art (note the duality of the English words artisan and craftsman as well as Shir Hashirim 7:2) and perhaps the gemara speaks of a profession not only as a means of economic support but also as a vehicle for creative self-expression. I do not think he is linguistically correct here but it a very thoughtful suggestion.

In another shiur, we were analyzing Abram’s behavior when his family descended to Egypt in search of food. Ramban faults him while Radak and Abravanel defend our patriarch. I taught that evaluation of Abram may depend on how we explain Abram asking Sarai to agree to the sister ruse “so that it will go well with me on your count and I shall stay alive because of you” (Genesis 12:13). What does “go well” refer to? Rashi explains that it refers to receiving gifts whereas Radak says it is simply a synonym for staying alive. Rashi’s approach seemingly creates a more mercenary portrayal of Abram. Turning our attention from the moral to the exegetical, Jamie Sinowitz immediately realized that this was an example of both commentators staying true to their exegetical tendencies. Rashi shares the midrashic impulse towards a maximum of meaning whereas Radak endorses “repeating the idea with different words.”  For a parallel, see their respective commentaries on Jacob’s fear and distress in Genesis 32:8.

The subsequent Humash shiur moved on to the squabble between the shepherds of Abram and Lot. We discussed why the verse adds that “the Canaanite and the Perizzite were then in the land” (13:7). Rashi depicts Lot’s shepherds arguing that they could allow their animals to graze in all the local fields since their master Lot was the inheritor of Abraham who was promised this land by God. Scripture notes that Canaanite nations lived there to say that the divine promises were not yet actualized and the land now belonged to others. In contrast, Ramban explains that Abram was concerned about the possible impact the argument could have on the neighbors who might choose to attack quarrelsome new arrivals, hence the mention of other inhabitants. Charlie Koslowe added that Rashi may work better with the word “az” (then) because it emphasizes how Lot’s camp was making a mistake specifically about timing and when they could claim the land of Israel.

Some students have developed a consistent methodology for advancing the discussion. Adin Linden compares various English translations to see what interpretive choices they have made while Noah Marks always looks into a much older translation, Onkelos, for his approach to the verse.

A Lindenbaum class focused on six explanations for why Jacob did not bury Rachel in the Cave of the Patriarchs. Radak suggests it was too far away and Jacob feared the body decaying. Rashi thinks that Rachel had to be buried in a place where she could pray for her descendants being exiled to Babylon (as in Jeremiah 31:14). HIzkuni says that, at the time of Rachel’s death, Esau and Jacob were still contending for the burial spot. According to Bekhor Shor, Jacob wanted to bury his beloved wife in a plot of land that would eventually belong to her children, either Joseph or Benjamin. Seforno says that Jacob was so distraught at the death of his favorite wife that he did not have the wherewithal to plan anything other than a local burial. Finally, Ramban explains that Jacob was embarrassed before his ancestors that he had married both Leah and Rachel, therefore, he could not bury them both in the same cemetery.

We addressed the strengths and weaknesses of each position including Ramban noting a major difficulty with Radak’s idea. Even in the ancient world, it was only a half-day’s journey from Bethlehem to Hebron so decay should have been less of a concern. Aliza Spizzichino reminded us that fears need not be rational. Building off Seforno’s idea that Jacob was particularly distraught, one can easily see our third patriarch excessively nervous about the journey to Hebron.

In teaching a previous chapter, I had mentioned how Jacob only answers Esau’s question about his children but not about his wives (33:5-6) and Abravanel’s explanation that Jacob was ashamed to admit to his brother that he had married so many women. With that idea lurking in my mind, I mistakenly read Ramban as advancing the same claim in our chapter about the burial location. Fortunately, Charlotte Moreen read Ramban carefully and realized that the shame here refers to being married to sisters rather than being married to multiple women. It makes more sense that this was the embarrassing point since Abraham himself married two wives.

There have been sharper comments over the course of the year but this all occurred in the past five days and it highlights what I get to experience daily. Highly intelligent students capable of sustained attention are still out there. Perhaps I am fortunate and my students are not fully representative but it is difficult to imagine that I have a monopoly on the outstanding students in this world. Let us not give up on our youth or stop challenging them to read widely and think deeply. The quality of such students gives me real hope for the Jewish future.