Jerusalem – Rav Aaron Leib Steinman has written a letter for teachers and parents, warning them about improper treatment of students and children. He says that the letter was prompted by the many tragedies and illnesses which have hit the frum community. Many Torah scholars suddenly require yeshuos of one kind or another — children who can’t make a shidduch or aren’t blessed with children, or became seriously ill, etc. They inevitably turn to Rav Steinman and other gedolim for advice and blessings.
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“I wondered much,” said Rav Steinman, “What is going on? I tell people who need a yeshua to try and remember if they hurt the people closest to them — I’m referring to melamdim, parents and friends. A father sometimes thinks that he can slap his son, or he can insult his wife. He thinks it’s permitted because after all, they’re his… teachers also think that they have the child’s benefit in mind when they criticize him and tell him off and even humiliate him. Everything is done in the name of well-meaning mussar and rebuke which he is responsible to do. But that’s not the case.”
The text of the letter was shown to the public although it was privately addressed it to the head of a school. The following are sections of the letter, which carry an important message for all educators:
“It’s known in our holy Torah that there are laws bein adom lamokom as well as bein adom lachaveiro. The Ten Commandments also have laws between a person and his Creator, and laws that will prevent him from doing evil to his fellow man.”
Rav Steinman then mentions the prohibition of ona’as devorim, saying it is more serious than harming another financially. “It applies equally between a man and his wife and a woman and her husband. Ona’as devorim is even worse when said to a woman, because she is easily hurt and cries. This includes all kinds of hurtful words, especially hurting a widow and an orphan.”
“The opposite of this is chesed. The merit one can gains from it is immeasurable. The Rosh at the beginning of Peah explains that Hakodesh Baruch Hu especially desires mitzvos that bring good will among mankind more than mitzvos bein adom lakono.
During the conversation which preceded the letter, Rav Steinman explained the difference between earlier and later generations:
“In the past, teachers would teach the student how to learn Torah. They would educate him properly and correct him if they saw he wasn’t behaving as he should. Today, every teacher has to control classes of 40 children, and when they make noise or disturb, he strictly tells him off even to the point of humiliating him. He doesn’t do it to educate the child but to keep order in the class, and to vent his ire on the troublesome student.
“Until today, we thought that the kapeidas against us came from the elderly clerk in the grocery store. The problem is that we’re hurting our children and our students, the people who are the closest to us, even if we do it in all innocence.”
“People are moreh heter to themselves, such as when a teacher or rav say they have to humiliate someone to ensure discipline. But it’s not that way. We can only do whatever is necessary to prove his point, but not to humiliate another! It’s even more serious when the humiliation is done in public.
“A rav or teacher must get his point across, but in a way that doesn’t embarrass the student. Generally, the one who feels he is being humiliated, will pay him back double. What the teacher said is certainly in the category of ona’as devorim. One must be very careful with this. Parents also shouldn’t embarrass their children.”
Rav Steinman then addresses the reason for the overflowing number of tragedies that have hit the community, leaving almost no one untouched….. “When one causes suffering to others, he is punished in Olam Hazeh too. Every person must pay attention to what he does and what he says so as not to hurt his fellow man. The truth is that the punishment is much worse in Olam Habo, but most people are not aroused by what they can’t see directly, so I am speaking about something that everyone understands well.”
Finally, he mentions the words of the Chinuch on the mitzva “no man should afflict his fellow man”: Even though one doesn’t get lashes from a whip made of cow’s hide for a mitzva that doesn’t involve action, a person will get ‘lashes’ from the One who commanded this.”
He signs off his letter, “One who is careful not to hurt other people, all the blessings mentioned in the Torah will befall him and he will enjoy a pleasurable life in This World and the Next.”
Beautiful words. May this be the beginning of tackling the real problems of the klal which are the rampant machlokes and sinas chinam. May we join together in true achdus.
This is a true gadol every one is busy with molestation more kids in my class were affected by the humiliation that the Rebbes doled out every day than by molestation
I feel that all Rabeim and Mechanchim should be required to take a course and then a refresher course each year on how to talk and treat talmidim. Throwing a student out of class because he spoke or called out , yes, maybe he was told to be quiet, but what does that accomplish- standing in the hall and missing the lesson. If the Rabeim and michanchim are taught how to deal with it such as an assignment or go to another class….. things would be different, Children are very sensitive and the loose tongue of an adult could be and is very damaging. Again I will emphasize — Rabeim and Mechanchim should be required to take some sort of course on how to deal with the student!
Especially our attitude towards, the well being, of Eino Yehudim. Including Tinokos Sh’ein B’hem Chette. Please see, Sefer Taamei Haminhagim:: Page 493, 2nd paragraph; it is really amazing and startling.
I wish rov steinman would’ve made this letter public when I was a child…the words that came out from my malomdim to students were horrible and horific…if principals would’ve ansist that malomdim MUST go for training before taking such a big ochroyisdige job of handling a class..there would be MUCH less at risk children,,,,take a boy that’s turning to left..sit down and talk to him for 10 minutes…bottom line..he is hurt in his heart from his malomdim…come on wake up!!!! All gedolim should sign on this letter from rov shtinmen
Rav Shteinman is a true godol.
Here he has inadvertently exposed the bankruptcy of the chareidi hashkafah and school system. The thousands of hours spent studying rishonim and achronim in kollel has not even minimally equipped their products, the mechanchim of our precious tashbar, to behave towards their students with common decency. Nor has it taught husbands how to speak to their wives with any derech eretz.
GEVALDIG!!!!
Oh how happy we would be if we gave our dear children the respect they need to develop self-respect! Oh if we made our wives feel wonderful through the removal of painful criticism, and the giving of true compliments.
Oy Klal Yisroel, please!
i must’ve been born some fifteen years too early! if only my schools authorities would’ve had such a letter sent to them my life would’ve been normal! instead i wasted almost all of my teenage years teaching myself i’m worth much more than they told me i am!!!
I went to Yeshiva of brooklyn where I suffered at the hands of the vicious rebbeim and menahelim. When Rav Shteinman came to the USA why didn’t he meet with the innocent victims of these yeshivas? Instead he met with and was mechabed the leaders of these evil institutions.
I cant forget the days we got beaten and slapped by our rebbes,teachers and parents. I am working in chinich today and i never ever raise my hands on a kid. I have to say that the Derech Eretz today is ZERO..Kids have NO respect for their rebbe and teacher.They are NOT afraid because they know that they cant be punished or there father will come and start shouting and turning the school over. In a class of 24-26 boys there is always 3-5 bad rotten apples which make the others disrespectful. I really dont know the answer anymore but talking nice in my eyes does NOT make those kids willing to learn better…
The facts are the Rabbeim are not trained how to handle a child that doesn’t fit in socially. I know of a child in third grade that wad being bullied by his classmates. His family went to the rebbie and the principal. The matter wasn’t properly handled by the Yeshiva. Thank God his family was a good advocate for this kid and sought outside help. All professionals in this field said this problem should not go out of control in the third grade. A well trained Rebbie would stop it right away.
But They don’t know how to deal with it and its a fact
I know that it was this problem that drove me off the derech in high school and b’h it was rebbiem who followed advice like this which brought me back
reply to #1 : molestation falls under the catagory of bein odom lichavairo!
It also goes under the catagory of stealing, yes your read correctly, stealing a childs innocence!! Do you want it swept under the carpet so that these molesters can be more comfortabe???
children are entrusted by HASHEM to us,and it is our job to take care of them and protect them, These are HASHEMS precious children . Let’s not forget that.
This point about chinuch habonim and chinuch hatalmidim has graced pages of this website and others, though stated by many plainsfolk, lacking the command and prestige of Rav Shteinman shlit”a. What is tragic about our generation is that this will be seen as a “chiddush”, or something that a gadol needs to say to be considered worthwhile. And it is actually something so simple and profound, a message repeated countless times throughout gemora, sifrei mussar, and the growing shelves of seforim on chinuch.
Firstly, today’s chinuch system is quite different from that of generations ago. Classes were informal, led by a melamed, to about 6 boys. The melamed was someone who specialized in his field, and carried out his task with a mission to help each talmid progress to the next level. This was eliminated with the advent of schools with large classrooms. What should a rebbi do when there is misbehavior, especially when it disrupts the class? The choice, obviously, is to resort to discipline. And that is what requires surgical skill, because when it is not done exactly right, the results can be negative.
Secondly, there are too few programs that train mechanchim to perform such a delicate and precious task. The desire to see the outcome of bonim talmidei chachomim may whip the average mechanech into the competitive frenzy of focusing on the top talmidim or creating yeshivos for “metzuyanim”, neither of which is the responsibility of melamdei tinokos. We then witness yungerleit who complete their tenure in kollel, perhaps adept at saying a chabura, moving into the classroom without a shred of training in chinuch. Some of the existing training programs are quite good, though it is not clear who could evaluate and compare them. However, the yeshiva/school that requires such training prior to entering the classroom is the exception, not the rule. Kollel does not prepare anyone for chinuch.
Thirdly, as an extension of the second point above, there are many actions taken by mechanchim and menahalim that are without any cheshbon beyond “What else is there to do?” I have heard this from many who justify taking severe actions as well as other interventions that miss the point completely. They are disappointed when I suggest that they do nothing, since their ideas of how to intervene are either flawed or damaging.
Fourthly, the apparent goal of chinuch today deserves to be re-evaluated. It appears to be a mission on downloading information from rebbi or teacher to student. That is definitely not the mission. The mission is to teach the basic skills, and to create the cheshek so that the talmid will continue in the derech of learning – Torah and mitzvos. The rebbi is to be a role model of Torah and midos. The vehicle through which this is accomplished is the teaching of text. I challenge any adult to recall textual learning from first grade. Whatever is remembered was learned at a later point in life. Most memories from first grade are of behaviors that were modeled.
Lastly, our community gives chinuch unbalanced priority. We fund chinuch poorly, and this leaves many mosdos with limited ability to pay the faculty a living wage. Those who need to feed a family will gravitate away from chinuch, and will certainly be less disposed to engaging in training to prepare for chinuch as a career. The dependency on government funds as well as philanthropists creates dynamics that have serious disadvantages, some of which may outweigh the benefits.
I am grateful that Rav Shteinman’s letter was publicized. Nebech for all of us that it was necessary to spell out.
My melamdim killed my best years from my life they smacked me and punished me every day.
I remember when I was a child I asked god to take me away from this world I had no good day in my life
when I was age 15 I had a good magid shiur that took me in a side spoke to me very nice he showed me that if I want I can learn and be from the good once.
I started to learn I finished because of him almost half shas and I’m learning every day daf hayomie because of him.
I was always thinking that I can’t learn he showed me that I can. He saved my life
I’m successful today because of him also in Rochnius and in Gashmius.
Thank you Magid Shiur you saved my life
Today I’m a father with a family of a few children only because of this great Tzadik
A few good word can change everything
1 bad word Kills our Children.
There was a student that made a lot of problems in class; he fought with classmates, made a lot of noise
The teacher tried a lot of things, but nothing helped.
He decided to tell the father about his son’s behavior.
Father: What do you want me to do?
Teacher: Maybe take him for a check-up.
Father: How is that going to help?
Teacher: Maybe the child should take Ritalin (a calming drug).
Father: How am I going to get this Ritalin?
Teacher: No problem, I’ll get it, and the child should take the pill every morning and everything will be o.k.
Father: Who is going to remember to give it to the child every day in a house full of children?
Teacher: I’ll worry about it. I’ll make sure he takes it every morning.
Father: But I don’t want the whole class to know about it.
Teacher: No, no, I’ll make sure that no one sees. I’ll put the pill in the teacher’s room next to the coffee machine. Every morning I’ll send your son to make my coffee and at the same time he’ll take his pill. Like this no one will know.
The father agreed to the plan. Every morning the teacher prepared the pill next to the coffee machine and went into class. After a few minutes the child would come in with the coffee, and everything went fine.
And now the atmosphere in the class was calm. The child wasn’t sent out of class and there were no fights!
After a few weeks, the mother asked the child: Nu, what’s doing in class?
Child: Great!
Mother: What happened that everything’s so good?
Child: It’s very simple. Every morning the teacher sends me to make his coffee. I go into the teacher’s room and there there’s a special pill! I put the pill into the coffee and after he finishes to drink it, everything in the class is 100%!!!
“Firstly, today’s chinuch system is quite different from that of generations ago.”
Generations ago, the cheder system was not that rosy either. I suppose much depended on individual resources (i.e. money paid for the Rebbe) and the caracter of the Rebbe.
There are enough descriptions of brutal rebbes who would hit the children mercilessly, of children being bored out of their wits by sitting in class from dawn to dusk, etc…
I think there has been a lot of progress as far as pedagogic methods, etc are concerned, also thanks to the development of didactics in the non-jewish world. I think the chedarim that are most problematic today are those which oppose this kind of progress and insist that “we got klepp, so why shouldn’t our children also…”
This article is a big breakthrough for our community. Thank you VIN, and Yasher Koach to Maran Harav Steinman, Shlita.
As one person lamented above, it is a sad commentary on our generation that such simple and basic aspects of our religion and our Torah need to be pointed out to us as “news”. It reminds me that when the Rov was here, Hamodia reported that he said publicly at a meeting of “top mechanchim” that under no circumstances should a child be humiliated. A top “mechanech” actually had the gall to ask “but what about if the child does something really bad?” The Rov, of course, said, still not.
Unfortunately, even in my field of mental health professionals, the line between what is healthy for children’s spiritual and emotional development and what we must do for the sake of “community tradition” becomes blurred all too often. On the Nefesh listserve for frum mental health professionals, there was a recent discussion of what to do with a little boy who was being hit by his rebby and was getting emotionally disturbed by it, and there was a debate about how much sensitivity needs to be placed on the cultural values of the schools that promote corporal punishment. This despite the fact that it is a form of child abuse, is illegal in the State of New York, has been shown to do great damage to children, and has been outlawed by the vast majority of Rabbanim and Gedolim.
My chaver and colleague Dr. Jeffrey Singer, Ph.D. opined that if petch was the way to teach then the Mishna should have said “Moshe received the Torah from Sinai, smacked it into Yehoshuah, who gave a “frask in panim” to the Zkeinim who patched the Neviim, who beat up the Anshei Knesses Hagdolah.”
As for the comparison above between physical, emotional and sexual abuse, my chaver Rabbi Yaakov Horowitz has repeatedly written very astutely, that an environment that allows children to suffer because they are smaller and more vulnerable, is one that is conducive for molesters to seek out their prey. On the other hand, in a place where children are given respect like human beings, and the rule of Hillel “What you don’t like, don’t do to others” is applied, is more likely to scare molesters away.
For more information on this or any topic regarding child abuse, please contact me at lipnera
gmail.com.
Asher
It is certainly time for such commonsense approaches as that fostered by this Gadol.
In the United States, in most jurisdictions it would be child abuse for a teacher to administer corporal punishment to a student, which must be reported by ‘mandated reporters’ such as physicians, psychologists, social workers, etc.
In American society, hitting a student is poch nisht.
The harm caused by emotional and other forms of abuse can be long-lasting. I know of only one person who overcame this–he decided davka not to let the humiliation get to him, and he himself entered the field of education, got a doctorate in education from Columbia University, and today is a leading educational authority. The great majority of students subjected to onaas devarim on a steady basis become estranged over time and are turned off to Torah learning and in many cases to a Torah lifestyle.
Education is a profession. One would not hire someone with no practical skill or knowledge to be a plumber, let alone a doctor–yet, year after year, our yeshivas hire persons who have little or no training in how to educate.
Someone who knows ‘how to learn’ but does not know how to teach will have a tough time in a class of 25. In a class of 40, things will be immeasurably worse.
Pedagogy is not something picked up by osmosis. Learning how to teach takes time and effort. Learning how to motivate students, handle classrooms, dole out appropriate rewards and reinforcements, etc will provide the would-be mechanech (educator) with many tools.
Like any other field, the field of education is a discipline requiring training, with studies that show what works, what doesn’t, etc.
I hope many will heed the holy words of this Gadol.
Shkoach, we’re now only fifty years behind the times. I don’t know about this though, I hope he doesn’t get slack for being too modernish.
how did the topic become about molestation??????the truth is that the rebbeim of today do there jobs and get paid bopkes for it!!!!!some come to work with their money stress among other stresses and who gets it?????our children!!!!the schools have to sart looking a lot better into whom they hire and start treating them and paying them like they have the most important job in the world!!!!being mechanech our preceous children!!!!!
i dont know about all the yeshivos but the ones my children go to and some that ive heard of are built on corruption and politics!!!principals and rebbis are hired not because they know wjhat the heck they’re doing!!!!they are hired for political reasons!!!some hit, insult and harass children and nothing can be done about it!!!if a child gets physically abused in yeshiva and the parents complain the child is hated and targeted even more sometimes!and if g-d forbid one reports abuse to a higher authority the family is black listed in almost every yeshiva and noones gona take theat child in cuz they dont wana get involved with parents like that that cause problems…….so what is onr to do??????
the only problem with giving classes for rabonim and principals every year is that the ones that dont need it are the ones that show up and learn from it!!!and the bastards that are “teaching” our children “know it all already” why would they go or listen to any thing like that?????
It should be compulsory for each and every rebbe, or teacher, male and female, to take and pass a course on how to deal respectfully and kindly with students, while still teaching them what they need to know.
I was involved in trying to get a principal removed from a well known yeshiva for manhandling and verbally abusing kids for over twenty years. The first thing the principal did was get some Rosh Yeshivas from other yeshivas involved and that was the end of the story. Its almost impossible to get rid of these rishoim because of the good ole boys fraternity that runs the yeshivas. They all stick together because they know if one gets fired that will get the ball rolling and many heads will roll. I have heard over twenty hours of testimony from different parents who have had their children abused by this principal and all the Rosh Yeshiva could do was shake his head and roll his eyes. Someone will one day have to give din vecheshbon for all the kids who went off the derech because of this principal and Rosh Yeshiva
Yeshivas have an obligation , that is the hanhalah, to keep their ears pasted to the doors of the classroom and listen to what’s going on and not be afraid of the rabeim. The pricipals are responsible as well.
When i was in third grade and living in Israel, i had a teacher who would beat her students. That was about 1966. She would abuse the weak ones among us. The lonely, unkempt and friendless ones. She would stand us up against the blackboard, and push our chins hard, so that our head would slam against the blackboard. Then she would squeeze our cheeks tightly with her hand and push our little faces from side to side quickly. The class would look on in mute silence, afraid and yet greatful that they were not getting these terrible punishments. My crime was that I was not neat and was very quiet. I was extremely bright but did not do well in her class. I will never forget the orphans who were beaten by her as well. We had girls in our school who came from an orphanage across the way. Once again, she had found some helpless victims.
I have wondered all these years whether I should confront her, as I know where she lives, but I know that I would get no satisfaction by speaking to this monster. I often wonder in what way my personality was shaped by her for eternity.
I am BH living a wonderful life now, as a wife,mother, and grandmother to a beautiful family. Morah M, I will never forget you.
Almost every boy who went to Yeshiva in New York in the 1970’s and 1980’s was subject to beatings, verbal abuse and public humiliation. It took thousands of Jewish kids to use drugs and go off the derech before our Rabbanim started waking up. For this great “work” Yeshiva tuitions have skyrocketted out of control. It seems that Yeshivas are a constant source of misery, whether you are a child or adult.
Never let formal EDUCATION get in the way of your learning – Mark Twain
I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of EDUCATION. They seem to me to be built up on the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think. – Anne Sullivan
The principal will have to hit him, my hand hurts – My Teacher