Elul 5784: Learning Curve

In honor of Rosh Chodesh Elul… an exploration of the yeshivah — past and present, form and function, haven and home

Step into a yeshivah, and you enter a world of its own.

Some compare it to a teivah – that single safe refuge hermetically sealed from a world flooded with debasement and immorality.

But the yeshivah is also akin to a workshop providing each student with the right environment, tools, and mentors to produce an enduring work of infinite value: the masterpiece that is his very identity.

In honor of Rosh Chodesh Elul and the return of our yeshivah bochurim to these portals of spiritual potential, an exploration of the yeshivah – past and present, form and function, haven and home.

Form and Function

Each yeshivah has its own flavor and emphasis, but virtually all follow what seems to be an intuitive structure: a calendar dictating the beginning and end of the zeman, a curriculum that cycles through the same predictable masechtos, standard dormitory and davening arrangements. But the form and function of our yeshivos today aren’t as intuitive as they seem. It took centuries of slow development for the yeshivah to reach its current configuration.

How did the yeshivah become the institution we know and celebrate today?

The Best of Times

Yeshivah Zeman & Bein Hazmanim

The Mir Yeshivah’s famed maggid shiur Rav Asher Arieli commences each new zeman with a brief shmuess. He usually starts with this double entendre: “Baruch shehecheyanu v’kiyemanu v’higiyanu lazman hazeh. A nayeh zeman, a nayeh hischadshus — A new zeman, a new beginning.”

Historically, universities have used the term “semester” — a term that connotes “six months” — to describe the time spent in the classroom. Yeshivos, in contrast, chose the more philosophical term of “zeman” — literally “time,” to describe the period engaged in the eternal pursuit of Torah study.

When the yeshivah isn’t in session, it’s “bein hazmanim,” literally, “between the times,” as if time has no purpose or reality when the yeshivah isn’t functioning on its normal schedule. The only real time of substance is when the yeshivah fills up with students, the Gemaras open, and the sound of Torah emanates from storied structures throughout the world and throughout Jewish history.