Maran HaGaon HaRav Ovadia Yosef Shlita released a message to directors of mosdot connected to Shas’ educational network, stating in no uncertain terms that if a student acts in an unacceptable fashion, the school may not expel the child.
The gadol hador’s comments come after a former talmid of a yeshiva who was expelled took his own life R”L.
The rav instructs heads of mosdos to be patient. “Blessed are those who work in torah, which is a burden carried every day. Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev stated that when there is a mischievous child who will not sit still, he is right. Why? He has a great neshama and a small body – and it suffers. Therefore, he is not to blame. You must endure it and deal with him gently”.
“How good it is when one exhibits patience. This child will become a talmid chacham and not a simple person. If thrown out of yeshiva, where will he go? He will go to a secular school. What will become of him? He will become wild. Tolerate him and at the very least he will remain G-d fearing”.
“I would like to tell you about me when I was in Porat Yosef. There was a teacher with students, older students, about 15-years-old. He was ill. The principal called upon me to take his place. They warned me about one child in particular, a most mischievous child. He never remained in one place and never sat still. He would utter a word during the shiur and everyone laughed. And what did I do? I fulfilled my shlichus.
“I got hold of him and asked ‘Do you know what you are going to be? You will be a great rav and teacher in Am Yisrael, a profound torah scholar. Come and sit by my side.’ We began Gemara Moed Katan and learned. I frequently looked at him and asked ‘Nu what do you say? Do you agree?’ He shook his head in agreement. He was embarrassed in front of me. he did not speak and did not interrupt. And he indeed became a rosh yeshiva in Tel Aviv. Why? Because I knew how to get close to him”.
“Don’t throw them out. What do you think this is like throwing a rock? We are dealing with nefoshos! This is dinei nefoshos. Our Rabbonim only addressed dinei nefoshos when there was a Sanhedrin, 23 chachamim. This is dinei nefoshos. You throw him out and what will be with him then? You know what will be? Do you accept responsibility for what he will become?”
“Therefore, you must love him and smother him with love, bnei yisrael whose future is to become gedolei yisrael. To bring them closer with sweet words and this is how we bring them into the torah fold.”
“Think of this child as your son, what would you do? You would tolerate him! this is a son, your son! ‘’ושננתם לבנך, refers to your students.”
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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22 Responses
Is there a hiddush here?
To akuperma: Yes the chidish here is we do NOT have the Gedoylim from before who knew how to handle those kids and todays rebbes are under extreme pressure from parents not to punish kids who misbehave and kids have NO fear of mechanchim so they take the short cut and expell them.
We have many stories from Gedoylim who used Harav Ovadia yosefs approach but unfortunate they are NOT found in todays school anymore..
#1 you don’t need to leave a comment.
reply to #1:
Too many mosdos don’t care about these inyanim , and throw kids out of yeshiva too often. So the Chiddush is that a Gadol is saying the truth out loud.
Wow!! So beautiful the words of chacham ovadia. And so full of truth.
May he live a long healthy life!
Kol hakavod to harav Ovadia Yosef!
Rav ovadia’s Psak can have lots of ramification, specially if the kid has din of rodef!(having bad hashpaa on other kids in the school)
To #1 Holy words from a holy Rav and cynical comments from a person like you
It’s not easy to be a rebbi. The talmidim give him a hard time, and the paycheck is small and doesn’t always come on time. The least we can do for him is to show him kavod so that the children learn from us to also show him kavod.
To repeat, is there a hiddush here?
Is some new and radical idea? Is this not in fact stating something that is well established and should be obvious based on the few milenia of halachic discussion. I submit that the only thing newsworthy is that the rav feels obligated to repeat something that should be as well known as separating milk and meat.
The hiddush is in schools trying to be “elite” and insisting on the “right kind of child” , and excluding all others. The “new thing” is for parents, or students, to feel they are so elite they can’t go to yeshiva with those “other” kind of people.
Rav Yosef’s psak makes sense in most circumstances, but if the parents refuse to cooperate and get help for their child who is disrupting the learning of the other kids, than the administrators would be 100 percent justified in expelling the kid, notwithstanding the Yosef psak.
Today someone asked one of the hanhallah members of a popular yeshiva why are they doing away with the gimmel shiur? He answered that they didn’t have enough “good” boys to fill up the class so they just closed it up. Imagine if one of those “good” boys was one of his children?
Akuperma: yes there is a chiddush here. No not to me and you but to many heads of school who don’t think twice before tossing a child out on the street.
One of my closest friends was in this position. The rebbe and he didn’t get along. The yeshiva pushed the rebbe to make an effort – the kid had energy but was a good kid and he loved learning. This rebbe was a chashuv person in the community who held a very respected position outside of the yeshiva so there were politics involved as well.
This rebbe threw my friend out of the classroom regularly. In the winter my friend was thrown out into the snow. This was a horrible experience, one of many that led him down a very bad path that ended in serious drug addiction that he could not shake after multiple stints in rehab and years of therapy. He ultimately died from this disease.
This is hatsalas nefashos in every sense of the word. Even if the kid is a clown, he deserves a rebbe who believes in him.
groyse chachomim… VERY often, it’s at least as much dinei nefoshos to leave the kid in the school! who’s taking the achrayus for that?!
#11 – that is NOT the Torah approach. Chinuch is NOT about dealing with children administratively, it is about understanding the shlichus, and dealing with each child as the gift, the neshama that he/she is. It’s about yiras shomayim, and recognizing that chinuch is leshem shomayim. it’s about davening for the children who need tefillos. And #1, you are correct in pointing out that this is not a chiddush, as the Chazon Ish zatzal had said the same thing, and I believe that he said that a man must fast 40 tanaasim before throwing out a child from a mosad. However, as your responses testify, it is simply not the reality in today’s world, and ashreinu that we still have rabanim that can clarify daas Torah.
Wow Rav Shach said it over 20 years ago! Nobody listened to him then why do you think all the wonderful principles will start listening now?
Thank you, Rebbe. It is high time that a godol finally spoke up to stop the ruination of our bnei and bnos Yisroel. Our yeshivas have gotten too complacent and too lazy in heir responsibility to ALL our children. Their pat answer for over a decade now has been ” we are not equipped” or “we have to answer to the other parents”. Well my answer has always been ” get equipped and you have to answer to Hashem!”
A friend of mine used to say “G-d don’t make no junk”,. Kids should never be treated like trash to be thrown out like garbage. There is always a way to reach them if you are trained to notice them, care about them, and connect with them. You will then catch them when their issues and problems are first developing and will be able to help them through it rather than ignore it till you can’t deal with it and would rather throw them out than try or keep trying!
I will say it again, kids are not trash to be thrown out onto the streets. Kids are gems and their value, confidence and self esteem will grow if you polish them, respect them, believe in them, value them, appreciate them, guard them, and protect them as you do your most valuable jewelry. Would you throw your dull diamond to the street or would you carefully wipe it, polish it, buff it tiill it shown again?
Our children today have been pushed into adulthood way too soon. Many have skipped their childhood and many had no youth to speak of for various reasons. But the reasons were not addressed neither by their communities nor by the schools. Kids are left to fend for themselves because they are believed to be resilient until such time as one opens their eyes and realizes a big change. Where were all these great mechachem when the subtle and small changes were manifesting themselves? Kids are individuals, they do not pop out of molds nor are the manufactured like robots. They are beautiful and amazing creations from Hashem and they must be treated as such!!!
For every great and caring mechanech there is one that should never enter a classroom. Our mechanchim aren’t trained. Anyone can open a yeshiva and title themselves a Rosh Yeshiva without any qualifications what so ever. School is not about the success of our children. It is about the success of the business and the kovod of the administrations. Our children are falling by the wayside. A school should never be judged by their success alone, one must also consider their failures. A garden that has been weeded looks beautiful, but a garden that is tended appropriately, carefully and caringly doesn’t have the weeds to begin with.
This is the message, tend to your garden appropriately and you won’t be throwing out any weeds, or rather there won’t be weeds to throw out.
#15 – taking achrayus for leaving a child in school? Isn’t that EXACTLY why we send our children to yeshiva, to take achrayus for a job that we can not do ourselves? If they can not take achrayus, then why are they in chinuch?
#19 I was obviously referring to the negative effect the kid is having on another 20, 30, 100 kids. all the talk about fasting etc. needs to be true in that direction, too! it’s just as much an achrayus to leave a problematic kid in a mosad as it is to throw him out. all the rachmonim here reminding everyone to think of their own kids need to do that to the other direction. would you want YOUR kid exposed, spiritually/emotionally destroyed etc. because of the tzaddik in charge who lacks backbone and is indecisive????????
Now here come the naysayers – with stupid remarks like “this pertains only to Sefardim, not Ashkenazim. Even the comment above about the child as a “rodef” is murderously inaccurate most of the time. The השפעה of a rebbe who is concerned about his personal kavod is more degrading to the Torah he purports to teach than anything the child can do. To quote one of today’s gedolei haposkim, “The worst the child has done was to connect with טומאה. This rebbe is connected with גאוה. Our Torah teaches us that Hashem is שוכן אתם בתוך טומאתם, dwells among us even in our state of טומאה. However for the בעל גאוה, we are told that אין אני והוא יכולים לדור במקום אחד, I (HKB”H) and the בעל גאוה cannot exist in the same place. We should choose the person even in a state of impurity over the person with the ego.
Most expulsions are the result of anger from the hanhala, and much is based on the image or ego of the yeshiva and/or its menahel or rebbeim. It is rarely based on a misfit of the boy with the yeshiva. If the latter were true, the yeshivos expelling would be dedicated and invested in placing the expelled bochur elsewhere. Sadly, that is the rare exception.
This subject is one of the sore points about today’s chinuch. The gedolim of the previous generations have spoken about this, and the words of Rav Ovadia shlit”a are an echo of what they all said. The serious issue with all this is that our yeshivos tend to not listen to such piskei dinim. Each yeshiva would predictably consider itself an exception, and believe so as consistent with Torah values. There was a psak din many years ago that no yeshiva should expel a student before bringing the matter to a beis din of three dayanim, all of whom have no connection to the yeshiva. I heard this quoted some years ago, and one of the askanim who works with kids at risk described dealing with about 1000 new bochurim each year, all of whom had been thrown out of yeshivos (some more than once), and there was not single instance of even one Rov being consulted. I know, this is kids at risk. But this is one of the major pathways of how they become at risk.
If we tattoo the letters REJECT on a child’s face, we have murdered him. Our gedolim have already spoken, and Rav Ovadia shlit”a disseminated this psak again. מי לה’ אלי, who is ready to listen?
To #19, you ask whether “you want your kid exposed?” so I ask you this, Hashem does not discriminate, what if it were you kid who has the nisayon next year would you want your kid expelled????!