Jerusalem – A TV crew from South Korean paid a visit to Ponevezh (Ponovitch) yeshiva in Bnei Brak to film a special about Talmud study. Israel’s Channel 10 TV reported on the visit and followed the Korean crew as they filmed young students studying Gemara and other Jewish texts.
Subscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
“The reason why we came was to see the real Talmud. Jewish people are known for [a high percentage of] Nobel prizes. The Korean people are curious about how Jewish people started and why Jewish people are so smart,” the Korean journalist told Channel 10 TV. The TV crew also interviewed the yeshiva’s Rabbi Meir Volk.
Ponevezh is a high level elite school for Talmud study located in Bnei Brak.
The Koreans have it all wrong. Nobel Peace prize winners do NOT study Torah. They should go to Bar Ilan University to look at the academics there. Its no different than any other university. But Ponevezh Yeshiva should be offlimits to the outside world. They will never understand it
In tehilim kapitel 19 posuk 9 “toras hashem temimu meshivas nufesh machkimas pesi” meaning it makes smart the stupid.
Very nice.
It’s funny how the Korean said Jewish people have won a lot of Nobel prizes and they’re smart. But he thinks the secret is in yeshiva route learning of gemoras. They forgot to warn him that Jewish Nobel laureates did not sit in yeshivos all day but were actually edemucated in maths, sciences, literature and then attended universities.
Why is it that non-Jews from a foreign country come to Eretz Yisroel to learn Torah, but yet so many Jews (secular) from Eretz Yisroel don’t want to learn how to learn Torah. To figure this out requires more logic then the logic how to learn.For a Jew learning shaloi lashmo is better then a goy learning Torah. A goy can’t learn lashmo.
Reply to 1 and 4
There might not be a causitive link but there is definitely a correlation.
The umos haolam can’t learn talmud but we can. Even the one who _don’t_ learn can learn. And although our learning is not like their learning, perhaps the potential leaves us better able to learn hochmas haolam?
There are several reasons why secular Jews may not want to learn Torah. They may not even realize what is there to learn. They may have misconceptions about it, and also, in this day and age, many have been “turned off” by the antics of the Charaidi fanatics who make Torah appear foolish or cruel.
I work with allot of Koreans and they are taught that we are special and hold us in high regard
Unfortunately, I don’t think any of those bochurs in the video will ever come close to winning a Nobel Prize.
It’s very moving. To tears.
Anyway, the Jewish people didn’t win more nobel prizes because of more universaties.
Perhaps, because of the Jewish ancestory and tradition, which one can find in Talmud study in yeshivas.
It’s also in the genes, since most of us (jews), our parents or grandparents and acestors were very actively engages in Torah and gemoro, and we come from them, even if we wasted it on nobel prizes instead.
Didn’t a frum man win a Nobel prize recently? I know of one female Nobel winner whose father-in-law was a talmid chacham (Rosalyn Yalow).
I was surprised that the Hanhallah in Ponovezh was willing to be interviewed for this.
It’s complimentary yet sorta creepy to think that those Koreans are documenting Jewish culture like it’s an anthropological phenomenon.
They’re saying that the point is not that Jews are genetically smarter or that the path to Nobel prizes is via yeshiva learning. But rather, to show that the “People of the Book” have developed a long heritage of studying Gemara through analytical discussion and open discourse; parsing out and developing countless interpretations throughout our written and oral literature. He said in the clip that they want to find the roots of the Jewish way of learning and that’s in the yeshiva.
In that respect, they are correct. Jews, both secular and observant are products of this heritage and culture. The current yeshiva learning system is the living, breathing evedence of our traditional source of learning.
There is a theory that the reason the Jews are so smart is because they valued Torah scholars and wealthy Jews looked to marry their daughters to smart Torah scholars. In this way wealth and scholarship were interrelated and these people were most likely to pass on their genes. On the other hand among the Christians the smartest people became priests and did not pass on their genes at all.