Q&A: 3.5 Years in a Hesder Yeshiva
3.5 Years in a Hesder Yeshiva
Question
Hello,
I was in a large, well-known hesder yeshiva. In my class there were about 60 students. I think maybe 20 percent were serious in the sense that they learned a lot, etc., and all the rest, how shall I put it gently, were less serious. Also, from what I saw, the first half-year was pretty much “wasted,” and people did not really learn. And after returning to the yeshiva in the fourth and fifth years as well, at a certain point people generally learned less.
So all this seems ridiculous to me… Why is the track 3.5 years if, from my personal experience—and I assume this is true in many other places too—the vast majority are not really learning and there are a great many wasted months.
Answer
Ask whoever set up this track. I don’t think it is my job to defend it. I will just make a few comments.
Of course there are other yeshivot too, so I do not know on what basis you arrived at your general impression. Even regarding your own yeshiva, I am not sure the picture you described is accurate. There is a wide range of levels of learning, and obviously not everyone is at the top end. But they are not all at the bottom either. “A thousand enter to study Talmud, and one emerges to teach.” The Sages already recommended opening yeshivot for a thousand students even though only one would come out qualified to teach.
What exactly do you mean by “wasted”? Those are very subjective terms; it depends on each person’s goals. By the way, in every institution and every place there is some waste/idleness. The question is also what the goal is for a young man who goes to yeshiva nowadays. A great many guys go to yeshiva not in order to become great Talmud scholars and analytical learners, but more to build a Torah foundation and to feel connected to Torah, etc. (without getting into the discussion of whether that is worth anything or not). So if you soften it, maybe it is wasted time from your perspective—meaning that you are not meeting the goals you set for yourself. But do not decide for other people that they are wasting their time, because each person has his own goals.