Dedicated Self-obsolescence
The most important outcome of education is to help students become independent of formal education. -Paul E. Gray
There are multiple professions whose main task, whose overarching goal is to put itself out of business. Doctors want to heal all their patients. Firemen want fires to disappear. Car mechanics want to fix all cars. One can develop their own list of these self-negating roles. Rabbi Hirsch on Exodus 27:20 adds another profession: teachers.
In the very beginning of the parsha, the Torah mentions the lighting of the Menorah. Rabbi Hirsch compares the lighting of the flame to teachers lighting the flame of Torah in their students:
“to make light spring up. This term for kindling lights is used only in connection with the care of the Menorah. It precisely describes the task of the keepers of the flame; i.e., to hold the kindling flame against the wick to be kindled until the wick “continues burning on its own.” The task of the Torah teacher is to render his services unnecessary. His task is not to keep the “laity” forever dependent upon him. This is meant as an admonition to both teachers and students that they should be patient and persevering.”
Teachers of Torah have a sacred role; sacred but well defined. It is not meant to be a lifelong dependency. It is meant to be a limited relationship whereby the student can become independent. Where the student can stand on his or her own feet and think for themselves, ask for themselves, look up sources for themselves and make decisions for themselves. It is always good to have teachers who are available to give guidance, to answer the thorny questions that are beyond us, but we cannot live our lives tied by an umbilical cord to our teachers.
Good teachers give their students the tools, the confidence, the wherewithal to know both how to ask and how to answer their own questions.
I recently heard a student of Rabbi Yosef Ber Soloveitchik state that whenever he approached the Rabbi with a question, 9 times out of 10 Rabbi Soloveitchik would tell him, an advanced Rabbinic student at the time: “do what you think is right.”
May we light the fire of Torah in many students, and just as importantly, may we know how to pull back and let them shine on their own.
Shabbat Shalom,
Ben-Tzion
Dedication
To Josh and Margot Botwinick on the birth of their son Yoshiyahu Reuven. They are lighting many beautiful flames.
