Q&A: Its Practical Apprenticeship Is Greater Than Its Study
Its Practical Apprenticeship Is Greater Than Its Study
Question
In Two Calves in the Third Gate, chapter 2, you write in praise of apprenticing oneself to a Torah scholar, saying that this is what imparts synthetic thinking, and you write: “You need a living teacher (to learn the Torah modes of thought), and an encounter with every aspect of that teacher’s personality.”
1. I seem to remember that you once said that nowadays the books are the teachers, and that this apprenticeship is done through reading books. Doesn’t that contradict what you wrote there? Although I also remember that you said you yourself never really had a rabbi/teacher in that sense, only a certain affection for one rabbi who was in the yeshiva where you studied, but no more than that.
2. Is it possible, and if so how, to fulfill what you wrote there (encounter with his personality, a special connection, etc.) with you—that is, with you as the teacher, of course?
Answer
It seems to me that there I was speaking about the principled conception of the Oral Torah. Nowadays, books are the teachers, and perhaps the situation has changed. But in practice, in my opinion it has not really changed all that much. There is still a difference between learning from a book and learning from living people. It may be that for some people this is less critical.
It seems to me that apprenticeship today is not what it was in the days of the Sages. There they were speaking about literally attending on the rabbi. Nowadays, the accepted practice is to learn from him.