Shavous is just behind us. Many of us have stayed up all night, ( albeit with a drop of caffeine and some sumptuous cheese cake to help us along the way), in order to delve into our Torah learning and carry on our beautiful mesorah. As is famously known, the reason we stay up to learn Torah all night is to rectify the mistake that the Yidden slept the night before Matan Torah instead of preparing themselves for it.

If we look closer, we can learn another lesson from Matan Torah.

We are taught that Moshe Rabbeinu disseminated the Torah to Klal Yisroel in 70 languages. Chazal ask why he did not just use the spoken language of the time of Klal Yisroel?

They explain that Moshe Rabbeinu gave over the Torah in such a way that no nation could say that it wasn’t taught in “their” language, and that they would not be able to use the excuse that they couldn’t understand what was being taught.

When Moshe Rabbeinu was asked by Hashem to go to speak to Paroh to ask permission for the Yidden to leave Mitzrayim, Moshe Rabbeinu replied that he could not go, since, he had a speech impediment and therefore the message would not be presented clearly to Paroh. Hashem answered that he should not worry, since he could take his brother Aron with him to act as his interpreter to explain it precisely and clearly. This is an interesting point since really Moshe Rabbeinu only needed to say to Paroh that he was acting as a messenger from Hashem and would he just please kindly let my people go!

These 2 episodes provide us with a profound understanding in the field of Chinuch and we can learn a lot from the above narratives. Firstly, the Torah states that Moshe Rabbenu gave over the Torah in 70 languages according to the mother tongue of that person. Therefore we can deduce from this that Torah teaching must be taught in one’s mother tongue, and different languages or nuances should not be used in one sentence. In chinuch, for example, if a rebbe teaches in their mother tongue of English but sprinkles in “yeshivish” or Yiddish idioms, they must explain to the student what these words mean and not presume the student knows.

I have repeatedly witnessed this over the years, when learning with bochurim, who felt they were not “smart” since they had not grasped the contents of the shiur. Even though the shiur had been in their mother tongue, other languages had been incorporated by the rebbe into the shiur without explanation, which led to the student being unable to follow correctly. With this in mind, institutions should not employ rebbeim who, although they may be talmidei chachomim, but if they are not fluent in the mother tongue of the land, they will not be able to give over information with clarity and precision.

There is a famous story about Rav Shteinman, who used to give over his shiur in Yiddish in the 70’s. He realized that the bochurim were not grasping his shiurim as they did not understand the Yiddish. He therefore changed his teaching to Ivrit, the mother tongue of the bochurim.

There are those schools where the students are themselves English speakers but the school still emphasizes teaching elementary levels of chumash and translation in Yiddish, which is not their mother tongue. The argument is that this is a tradition to be upheld but this mesorah is against Torah, as we have seen from Moshe Rabbenu. Gedolim have explicitly stated that rebbeim should teach in one’s mother tongue, therefore if schools are insistent for students to learn in another language, a special class should be incorporated into the schedule in order to have a full and thorough grasp of that language, together with grammar and translation.

Many of my students who have been through this system of using several languages in the classroom have a watered down version of Yiddish and English without having really focused on one language. Ultimately I have seen that this derech causes much confusion, and students do not get lucidity in learning and in many cases years later will not open up a sefer to learn for this reason. A chosheve mechanech confided to me that he feels this is the one of the reasons why many bochurim do not learn clearly today. Unfortunately I have been able to attest to this seeing this phenomenon from the range of talmidim I have learned with over the years.

Using the above example of Moshe Rabbenu, we can see that the Torah must be given over concisely and clearly. Aside from rebbeim, this should also include any visiting mechanech to a school who does not know the language. Students should be able to understand what the Rabbi is saying, and not be expected to “feel” what the Rebbe is saying and therefore an interpreter should be present.

We can look to the very successful Baalei Teshuva movement who continue to inspire their talmidim using this philosophy. When an irreligious Jew appears at a baal teshuva institution looking for inspiration, all classes are catered towards the mother tongue of the student. If we would implement our system similar to the baalei teshuva movement, there would probably be no baalei teshuva!

Adhering to the above examples of Moshe Rabbenu, who was meticulous to disseminate the Torah by making sure each person understood it in their mother tongue, he was guaranteeing that Torah would be understood clearly and concisely so that the mesorah would continue. May it be so!

Rabbi Dovid Abenson is the founder and director, author and lecturer at Shaar HaTalmud, a unique yeshiva based online program, featuring evaluations and remediations, working with students to upgrade skills in Hebrew reading, chumash/rashi and gemara studies, consulting school principals world – wide, to improve their ability to discover students who possess under-developed skills. He can be reached at [email protected] or 1-877-HATALMUD (428 2568).