HaGaon HaRav Aron Feldman Shlita, Rosh HaYeshiva of Ner Yisroel, Baltimore crystallizes the main crisis facing Klal Yisroel in Jewish education today.

“……. We live in a microwave generation, short attention span, Internet, iPods, cell phones, etc… Anything that will not pique a normal, yes! mainstream child’s interest immediately, chances are they won’t. How can we expect a child to appreciate the fact that the Torah is מתוקים מדבש ומנפת צופים תהילים ׳ט – sweeter than honey, and drippings from the combs – if he can’t read a רש׳׳י or translate a פסוק חומש? HOW? WHY? Do we expect him to break his teeth? As the Gemara says ( יגעתי ומצאתי תאמין (מגילה ו, so maybe delay teaching him the אלף בית until בר מצוה thereby attaining true עמילות בתורה? How do we expect our children to daven with Geshmak and not be מצות אנשים מלומדה- by rote if they have no inkling of what the words are talking about?

By not giving a child the proper tools from when he is very young, we are in essence making the תורה which is the מים חיים, the elixir of life, into ר׳׳ל , the מים המררים bitter waters, playing out the following Pesukim:והדגה אשר ביאר —the children that were in the sea of gashmiyus ונלאו – were worn out trying לשתות מים – drink the pure waters of the תורה, so ויחפרו סביבת – they dug around, searching instead מים לשתות -the foreign waters כי לא יכלו לשתות —for they were unable to drink – ממימי היאר -from the waters of ממימי היאר , due to lack of tools (שמות ז)…….”

In order to get the true beauty of what the Torah is teaching, it is crucial to translate accurately. Unfortunately from the cases that come to me, I see students are not being given the tools to do so.

I ask my students to translate: אַָמַר אֹמַר אֹמֵר. Usually I am told “said” for all three. In fact they are properly translated as “he said” (past tense), “I will say” (future tense), “is saying/says” (present tense). The usual rejoinder is: “Why do I need to know? Even my rebbi tells me he doesn’t know it either, but he can figure it out from the context.” Why should we settle for “vague and fuzzy” in Torah learning? All the meforshim on Chumash knew grammar extremely well. If we want our young scholars to understand the pesukim and the meforshim we need to teach them those same skills.

Yeshivos, particularly over the summer months, emphasize the importance of חזרה and more חזרה. But learning is much quicker when students possess proper foundation skills. Less חזרה is needed. When I confront menahalim about the problem, they claim the yeshivos are not equipped to teach the skills, or that the boys are taught grammar in grade 2 (evidently not in a way that stays with the child much beyond). When the problems show up a couple of years later, it is always presumed to be the fault of the child and the parents. Never the fault of inadequate teaching.

Yossi* is 18. He attends yeshiva. Whenever students come to me for help in gemara, we go back to the Chumash skills first. They are usually lacking. I asked Yossi to translate the Rashi in parshas Lech Lecha Bereishis (14:1) on מלך גוים:

מקום יש ששמו גוים על שם שנתקבצו שמה מכמה אומות ומקומות והמליכו איש עליהם ושמו תדעל

Yossi translated it as follows: “There are places over there nations on the name ??? many mothers land places. I made Kings a man over them and his name was תדעל.”

I asked him to tell me the root of the word ”שנתקבצו” He had no idea. I countered: “you know it, but you have not been taught how to find it”. I explained to him that Hebrew verbs in Hebrew are generally 3 letters. They are generally to be found in the middle of the word, with the prefixes and suffixes either side. We broke up the parts of the word and went through the different three-letter combinations to identify the root. Eventually he found קבץ. Suddenly Yossi shouted out: “קִיבּוּץ גָּלִיּוֹת” (“the ingathering of the exiles”). Because of the lack of foundation skills, he was unable to see the root he clearly knew. All Yossi’s mistakes in translating this Rashi were due to the lack of foundation skills .

19 year old Chaim* could not translate שחת ה in the same parsha (Bereishis 13:10). Chaim assured me he had never seen the root before. We turned to parshas נח (that he’d learned in elementary school) and we went through verses 12 and 13. I asked him “do you see the same word in root form?” He found the word and saw it meant destruction, corruption. We then turned back to the verse in Lech Lecha. Now he saw right away what שחת ה meant (destruction of Hashem). The root appears in several different forms in parshas Noach: נשחתה השחית משחיתם. I asked Chaim for the translation of these three words. He did not know. He had only ever been taught to figure it out from the context.

This is how I was taught in yeshiva some 40 years ago. My rebbeim told me that the longer I stayed in yeshiva the more I would pick it up. I always believed this was our true Mesorah. Yet my learning remained unclear. Years later with the training and coaching by great teachers, especially my mentor Rabbi Zobin, I came to the realization that the method of “picking it up as you go along” is really just a means of avoiding teaching the grammar explicitly, mainly because the rebbeim themselves were not taught it.

The reform and haskala movements were very into Biblical Hebrew and grammar when they started over 100 years ago. Consequently, the yeshiva world avoided teaching grammar explicitly to keep the students away from heretical ideas. This was also the reason for developing the distinct havarah. However in Pirkei Avos (3:14) we learn:

רַבִּי אֶלְעָזָר אוֹמֵר: הֱוֵי שָׁקוּד לִלְמוֹד תּוֹרָה. וְדַע מַה שֶּׁתָּשִׁיב לְאֶפִּיקוּרוּס

Rabbi Elazar would say: Be diligent in the study of the Torah. Know what to answer a heretic.

The proper approach should be to give students a thorough grounding in the grammar of Lashon haKodesh so that they can understand the true interpretations of Torah.

Once I explained to Chaim that נשחתה means “was corrupted” (the נפעל, passive, past tense form of the verb). השחית means “had corrupted” (the הפעיל, causative action past tense form of the verb) and משחיתם means “destroy them”. It is the הפעיל (present tense) form of the verb, the pesukim became crystal clear. We continued learning in this way, building up his skills. His rebbi was amazed at how quickly Chaim’s learning improved.

Between you and me, I have to thank all these Jewish institutions around the world. They have kept me in business for the past 30 years. But don’t you agree it would have been better, if my thousands of students and many more thousands like them could have succeeded the first time around? If all the Torah institutions would shift their focus back to equipping students with the tools to learn successfully, joyfully and independently, I will happily find something else to do.

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Rabbi Dovid Abenson can be contacted at: Tel. 15147393629 Cell/Whatsapp 15149935300. Email: [email protected]. Rabbi Abenson is the founder and director of ShaarHatalmud, a unique yeshivah-based online program, which incorporates learning all Kodesh subjects, from Kriah up to learning Gemara, Rishonim, and Shulchan Aruch. He also conducts evaluations, remediation, and training, and consults with school principals to improve students’ underdeveloped skills