Jerusalem – In an impassioned plea to teachers and mechanchim everywhere, HaRav Ovadia Yosef cautioned schools that it is completely unacceptable to expel children from yeshivos, even if they exhibit negative behavior.
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In a video that was originally posted by Israeli news source Kikar Shabat, R’ Yosef extolled the virtue of patience, stressing its importance for those in the field of chinuch.
“I ask the principals in all of our schools to pay extra attention to their students,” said R’ Yosef. “Even if there is a student who behaves inappropriately, it is still forbidden to throw him out of school and instead we must exercise extreme patience. Toiling in the field of chinuch is indeed work and we have to be patient with each and every student. If we are patient with this student, one day he can grow up to be a talmid chochom. And if we send him away from the yeshiva where will he go? To a secular school and then what will become of him?”
R’ Yosef recounted an incident that occurred when he was in Yeshiva Porat Yosef and was called on to substitute for a teacher who had taken ill. The principal cautioned him that one student, a boy of fifteen, was known as a perpetual troublemaker and R’ Yosef described how he took the student aside and told him that one day he would become a great talmid chochom.
“I took him next to me,” remembered Rabbi Yosef, “and every few minutes I would ask him what he thought as we learned the gemara. He was too embarrassed to make any trouble and he grew up to be a rosh yeshiva in Tel Aviv. Why? Because I knew how to speak to him.”
Calling the act of expelling a child a life or death situation, R’ Yosef cautioned listeners that in the days of the Sanhedrin, it took a group of twenty three sages to decide on matters that were classified as “dinei nefashos” and warned mechanchim that as individuals, they lacked the authority to make decisions that have such far reaching ramifications.
“Don’t throw them out!” exhorted R’ Yosef. “What, are you throwing away a rock? These are neshamos! If you throw a child away, do you know what will be? Are you ready to take responsibility for what might happen? We must love these children who will one day become our gedolim. We need to bring them closer with sweet words so that we can bring them closer to the Torah.”
R’ Yosef urged listeners to treat each child with the same measure of patience they would use for their own children, explaining that if we shower each child with love we will, in turn, receive their love as well.
If a child is expelled from or has a terrible experience in a yeshiva, chances are very good they will marry out.
I am not certain that all children who require extra patience will one day grow to be gedolim. However, I am certain that they will all marry and raise yiddishe families and, perhaps, one of their children might grow to be a gadol. I believe most of us have seen this happen with just this type of child. All of our children are precious and are needed in klal yisrael.
But what if the child has a TV or internet in his home? Why would I want the sort of influence around my children? or what if the boy is a trouble maker making wild accusations against Yeshiva faculty?
LISTEN TO THIS TZADIKS WORDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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?
I wish Rabbis in US would listen I was thrown out of Yeshiva like a piece of trash because I wasn’t an A student in Hebrew studies
Why is this not a priority in our community? This is what i call More Important than anything. Yiddishe neshumes going to waste for no good reason other than one person decided that a particular kid does not fit the mold.
I would for once like to hear from our leaders plain simple talk like this. Heart to Heart.
Finally, someone not afraid to speak the truth. I know the internet Asifa is important, and I am mekabail everything the rabbonim say, but aren’t the problems we are having in our with the internet, perhaps a manifestation of the failure of our system of chinuch. mechanchim need to remember, kids come first. That is why they are there. One of the most important mitzvos doyrayso, teaching kids.
I have a neighbor who has his boy in yeshive and there was one BAD apple in the classroom which the Principle had loads of pressure not to throw him out and by the end of the year this innocent boy nebech was shlepped away with that boy.
We dont know where the Stop sign is or the YIELD sign….
Not a single parent will tolerate when their son comes home with bad report cards because of one bad boy…Now the question is what do we call BAD..?
Do we call BAD a kid who dosent listen to his parents and teacher and teaches bad manners to his class mates or is a boy with very weak learning capabilities called bad.?
הרואה את הנולד
This is a character trait one would expect from a חכם, and that is what a Rosh Yeshiva or Menahel purport to be. They have full obligation to be able to predict the outcome of an expulsion. If it will leave the bochur with nowhere to go, then it is spiritual and emotional murder. If the yeshiva is not proactive in finding the next yeshiva for someone that has to leave, it is committing that murder.
What I have watched happen was the attitude of throwing out, letting the child be only his parents’ problem. The parents then go on to crying all the time, meeting up with consistent rejections (no one wants to accept a talmid expelled from anywhere). And no one at the expelling yeshiva feels guilty or tries to help. This is a disgrace, and I feel it is anti-Torah.
Not included here are the totally arbitrary reasons given for not admitting talmidim applying. And I have heard some pretty remarkable ones. Shall I share them?
Rabbi is saying some holy words that we should all take seriously!
All the gedolim should start speaking up. Our children have been kerbonos long enough.
yes this issue needs a majr asifa more then the internet, all i can say is how much more blood do our so called rishe yeshivas need to spill beofre the Olim Golim wakes up, and relizes that this yeshiva situaion to day is the most dangeruas situaion ever in our history as yidden, a buchir who is not a metizon cannot get acceppted in a yeshiva theese days how much tears the buchir and paretnts shed crying begging but to no avail, and all we have is a big internet asifa because that is an easy subject you cry and life goes on for yeshiva you need work who wants it
I respect this tzadik’s words and pose a question: Why when a child is abused, is he /she shown the door of the yeshiva? We keep on reading this in the media and even on VIN ?? Why should this be permitted?
What unbelievable chochma R Ovadia portrays. Our son was thrown out of Yeshiva in 11th grade and was enrolled in Public school. One of the Rebbeim of his HS found him a yeshiva in EY that took him in. It was mamash Hatzolas Nifashos. He is now sitting in Yerushalayim, at the Mir, and is growing into a huge Talmid Chocham and baal Midos. Menahalim: listen to Rav Ovadia!!!
I am in full agreement. With harav Yosef .the question is ???? Why is this not understood by all bnei Torah? Could it be they chas vshalom. Do not belong in chinuch???please find another profession. .for example street cleaning.
Rav Yosef is ordinarily right on most matters but in this case, his psak should only be taken so far. When a student becomes so disruptive that his/her behavior makes learning impossible for the other students AND the parents refuse to get the professional help the student needs, then the administrators MUST expell that student. Its not even a close call. The school can only do so much and the parents must cooperater. If they don’t, its simply unfair to other students whose parents are spending thousands of dollars to get their children a yiddeshe chinuch. Their hard-earned dollars are literally being stolen from them if the school fails to take action to to maintain the learning environment. In these cases, Rav Yosef’s psak should be considered but not considered binding
Who are our principals who is our chinuch is it the ones that hide the the rabbis and teachers that molester our kids and let them continue teaching and what ever else comes with it, or the ones that teach us you don’t have to have respect for fellow driver or neighbor if he is not like you ,or sit in court and fight each other ,or is it the ones that can say all our failure in the past 15 years is you guess it its your fathers phone, but if you have a few dollars for us your phone is good your wife shoes are good your daughters dress is not tight at all its all good , so lets not waist time its all power and business and if you don’t sorry to say you are etc…………
And what about Yeshivos expelling children because the parents cannot afford the outrageous tuition some Yeshivos charge !!! Especially when so many children these days need special education !!! What happens to those kids ??? Who is speaking on their behalf?
There is no evidence that children learning with other children that are “less frum” (ie have internet or TV) negatively influence the other children. There was a recent article by Rabbi Hersh Fried in Hakira magazine that examined this and came to the conclusion that it is in fact beneficial to have heterogeneous classes and the assumption that mixing children from different backgrounds would be detrimental is false and not supported by the evidence.
I must admit I always love to see the stupid parents of equally stupid children blaming other people in the classroom for their kid’s poor performance. Genetics, IQ, and quality of education have FAR more to do with it.
Through a kiruv organization I work with, I was recently at a meeting of educators and parents from both the yeshiva and secular world. There was a Jewish secular mother there who nearly caused a riot by using the “n” word to describe the “bad” kids at school. She blames them for her kids’ failings. She claims that they have to dumb everything down for them and that they are the reason test scores are so low.
B”H, a teacher had the nerve to stand up and tell it like it was. 2 of this woman’s 3 white-trash kids had been left back a grade and were STILL failing. Her other kid had been suspended from high school 6 times in 3 years and spent 2 weeks in prison for selling prescription drugs at school. The idiot, racist parent left in tears.
There are kids learn under the most horrific conditions. Those who have a decent IQ, parents who actually CARE, and who care about themselves go on to great colleges and great careers. Those who make excuses become bums.