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Is there a Disconnect between Torah Learning and Torah Living? : 31
provides a stronger lesson than learning Torah from him), and the
student always mimics his teachers, and in most cases even the
admonishment itself is lacking, when it is mixed with bad character.
What We React to and How:
We must react to a poor grade in התנהגות (behavior) on a child’s
report card, no less than to a poor grade in Chumash or Gemara. And
when a child comes home with, for example, a 94 on his/her test,
that should be good enough. We should suppress the urge to ask,
“Was this the best grade in the class?” It teaches the child that the
goal is not to do his best, but to do better than others.
As Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch writes, 31 one of the stressors that
hinder the creation of good middos is the encouragement by home and
school of an unhealthy kind of competition—one that emphasizes
not being the best one can be, but rather, being better than others. 32
This raises a set of questions. Thus,
• Is it healthy, is it Jewish, for us to have a “best Yeshiva” list?
How healthy is it when our בחורים rank the Yeshivas (not to
speak of their ישיבות ‏,(ראשי and their talmidim, as “first” and
“second” tier schools and people? Is the emphasis on
attending the “best” schools good and healthy? 33
• Is the emphasis on being the “best bachur (or girl)” in
wherever, a healthy one? Does it breed good middos? Or, does
it breed a sense of superiority, elitism, and arrogance? 34
31 See Hirsch, Rav Samson Raphael, “Ethical Training in the Classroom,”
in Collected Writings of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, Vol. VII, pp. 49-50.
32 BenZion Sorotzkin addresses this issue in a number of papers. There
he refers to this negative competition as the unhealthy “quest for
perfection” rather than the healthier “pursuit of excellence.” (See
Sorotzkin, B., “The Pursuit of Perfection: Vice or Virtue in Judaism?”
Journal of Psychology and Judaism, Vol. 23, No. 4 179–195 as well as his
other excellent articles on the topic.)
33 See Hirsch, Rav Samson Raphael, On the Collaboration between Home
and School, ibid. pg 109, on the damage done by “exclusive” schools to
children’s characters.
בבא בתרא ( us 34 Again I hear the reader’s protestations. Do not Chazal tell
, that “jealousy amongst students
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