Tales from a Yeshiva

Did you read the story about the 100 or so Jewish students on a trip to Atlanta's Six Flags who were booted off their flight because they refused to follow the airline crew's instructions?  What's amazing about the incident to me is that the rabbis are siding with the kids.  I know that kids will be kids, whatever their race, color, creed, sex, or religion.  But rabbis, at least in my experience, have zero tolerance and absolutely no sense of humor.

In my previous life as a public high school teacher, I had occasion to moonlight at a yeshiva for a couple of years.  I was able to do that because yeshiva kids take their required lay courses in the evening.  During the day they are busy with religious and Hebrew language studies.  They confided to me that if the rabbis had their way, there would be no secular study at all.

You would think that after going to school all day the kids would be too tired to sit through history, geography, etc, wouldn't you?  Well, you'd be wrong, kosher dill-breath.  Those kids came to class after their dinner with boundless energy and enthusiam.  And if I wasn't ready to deal with that, to make their presence worthwhile to them, they would let me know it tout de suite.

Give them a test on Monday?  Better have it graded by Tuesday.  Skip a night of homework?  Next day they're complaining to the head rabbi.  And don't even think of coming to class without a lesson plan.  Those kids would eat your lunch.

But, kids being kids, once in a while they'd test the teacher.  While grading the first homework papers I had assigned, I noticed that the paper I was reading looked familiar.  I leafed back through papers I'd already graded and found one identical to it.  I put them aside.

During the next class I called the two students to my desk.

"It's clear to me that one of you copied the other's homework.  Since I don't know which one, I'm failing both of you on this assignment."

"No, no one copied.  They look the same because we did the research and prepared the assignment together.  You can't flunk us for that."

"Okay, maybe I'm wrong.  Tell you what.  I'll give these to the rabbi and tell him my story.  You can tell him yours.  I'll go with whatever he decides.  Fair enough?"

Their looks of utter terror told me what they thought of that idea.  They both pleaded with me not to do that, and indicated that if I did, they'd be castrated.

Another time I administered a test during which one student was absent.  I never liked to give make-up tests, because there was just too much opportunity for mischief.  However, the absent kid made such a case for a make-up that I relented.  By the time he took the test, the others had all been graded and returned.  He aced it, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more.

"I've got good news and bad news.  The good news is, he aced the test," I told the class.  Pause here for cheers, high fives, fist bumps.  "The bad news is, he blew the curve for everyone else, so I'm lowering all of your grades except his one letter."

I thought they were going to pound him into the floor.

A story I was told was of two freshmen who had flown in from LA to attend the yeshiva.  Shortly after settling in, they sneaked off campus and headed downtown.  When the rabbis realized they had a couple of AWOLs they drove into town to find them.  It didn't take long.  They took them straight to the airport, put them on the next flight to California, called their parents with the flight information, and told them they'd send their belongings later. 

That's why I find the rabbis siding with the kids who were thrown off their flight so unbelievable, so disheartening.  I mean, if you can't trust rabbis to hold firm on principles, who can you trust?