Q:
What should I do if I have the opportunity to help set up a curriculum for a yeshiva?
A:
Now exactly what you should do I’m not going to answer, but I must tell you it should be included in the chinuch of all the yeshivos the teaching of good behavior.
Let’s say there’s a yeshivah where they learn well and even yiras Shamayim too, but the boys walk through halls shouting and singing as if they were on the street. Even on the street they shouldn’t do it. No. That school is deficient in chinuch.
Children should be taught not to throw paper on the floors in the halls, whether they’re little boys or big boys. If they see a piece of paper, they should be taught to pick it up and put it in the wastebasket. Children should be taught to be polite and quiet in the halls of the school. There are so many things that are necessary and could be taught by rebbis, but the rebbis themselves never learned it. The rebbis themselves have to be taught derech eretz. It’s so important.
When children are trained to be mentschen and have derech eretz, they are better ovdei Hashem. They’ll make a kiddush Hashem like we spoke before, venikdashti besoch Bnei Yisrael. Frum Jewish children as they walk in the street are well behaved; a great kiddush Hashem. Certainly they’re better behaved than, lehavdil, goyim are, but it’s not enough. They should behave like a mamleches kohanim and a goy kadosh.
It’s very important. Boys and girls should learn how to behave especially in public. The rebbis must teach good middos in the middle of the Gemara. A rebbi shouldn’t think the piece of Gemara is his whole purpose. No. He should stop the Gemara in the middle and take out time to talk about derech eretz and good character. All these things.
The Rambam took out time in his Yad Hachazakah, and he spends a great many perakim on Hilchos Deos, which means middos tovos and proper behavior, and in the yeshivos they must do that. It’s important for their own lives, for their avodas Hashem, and also for the effect it will have on the general public. Very important that this should be part of the seder halimud in all the yeshivos.
I remember when I was a boy I was in yeshivah learning Mesichta Nedarim. My rebbi was a talmid of Volozhiner Yeshiva. When he came to a mishnah that started like this: דרך תלמידי חכמים… a mishnah about a certain halachah. He stopped and he had a speech to give us. He spoke to us about derech talmidei chachamim. He said “talmidei chachamim have their own derech. They have to have a certain derech in life. A talmid chacham has to behave differently.” A whole speech about that.
His hanhagah has to be different. He has more responsibility. Now there was no need to say that. The mishnah is talking about a certain halachah, but he utilized an opportunity to speak about that.
A man told me he was in Frankfurt in the olden days before the World War in the gymnasium. So the teachers in the secular subjects, mathematics, frum teachers, spoke about yiras Shamayim in mathematics classes. And he said he gained more yiras Shamayim from the mathematics teachers than he gained from his Gemara rebbi. It’s a glorious opportunity. Even English teachers, secular teachers in the yeshivah should utilize the opportunity to speak about emunah and about all other things that will finish to round out the character of the child.
And even big boys need it. Big boys need mussar and yiras Shamayim. And big girls. So when they get married they’re prepared to live together with other people. Otherwise they live selfish lives. They don’t know how to get along with anybody. Don’t you see frum people sometimes, it ends up in tragedies, divorces. It’s because they weren’t prepared to be married.
And Yaakov Avinu before he fulfilled what his parents told him to go and take a wife in Padan Aram, he didn’t run right away to Padan Aram. He stopped over for fourteen years in Shem and Eiver and he was preparing himself for marriage. Now he wasn’t sent to go to Shem and Eiver—he was sent to go get married. But he stopped over for fourteen years to learn more to prepare himself for marriage.
So you need preparation for life, and there’s no place to get it except in the yeshivah. And so it’s very important for the rebbis of the yeshivah to understand that’s part of their responsibility to raise up a dor with derech eretz kadmah laTorah. A very important subject! And it means many things derech eretz; besides yiras shamayim, good middos, how to get along with people, how to be happy with this world to succeed properly, how to look at everything in the right light and say everything is l’tov; optimism. All these things are necessary and very many things like that, in order to be prepared for the career of living.
(March 1992)
