How does a teacher take leave of students?
“May twice as much of your spirit be mine”
(Click here for the Hebrew translation)
How does a teacher take leave of his students as the year draws to a close? The final journey of the prophet Eliahu with his disciple Elisha provides us with insight.
As they kept on walking and talking, a fiery chariot with fiery horses suddenly appeared and separated one from the other; and Eliahu went up to heaven in a whirlwind. (2 Kings 2:11)
In his last hours on this earth Eliahu strolls with Elisha and passes on his mantle to his successor. They walk together engrossed in discussion. What was it that they were discussing? The Rabbis (yerushalmi Berachot 5:1) alight upon the expression “walking and talking” (haloch vedaber) and suggest a variety of answers.
One suggestion in the Yerushalmi is that they were discussing the creation of the world. According to another opinion they were discussing the vision of the throned Chariot of God. (Maaseh merkabah – Ezekiel Chapter 1) These opinions suggest that they were talking about the most exalted secrets of the universe. The Master disclosed these secrets to his protégé before his departure.
Yet another position is that the two were pondering prophecies of consolation post -destruction (churban) of Jerusalem. Eliahu was bestowing upon his disciple a far-reaching vision of the end of days – assurance that ultimately things would be right with the world.
The final midrashic opinion is that they were studying the Shema . Once, while teaching this passage I asked my students: “What possessed the rabbis to offer this suggestion?” A student surmised that this opinion was simply a function of the final hour; the recitation of Shema Yisrael is the final religious act performed before death. Another student pointed out how the Rabbis cleverly interpreted the phrase “Veshinantem Levanecha VeDibarta Bam….Uvlechticha VaDerech“.(You shall teach them diligently to your children, and you shall speak of them when…you go on a journey). Indeed the two, teacher and student, father and son, (note Elisha calls Eliahu “my father my father!” (2Kings 2:12)) were deep in discussion as they traveled on their journey – Eliahu’s last mile.
Yet another woman looked for a deeper meaning, unpacking the fundamentals of religious dogma contained in the Shema, which Eliahu the Master reviewed with his student before his departure. How poignant to start at the very beginning with a new young leader; How profound that at the end of the road one appreciates essential values as being paramount.
But our discussion had not ended. Another voice was heard:
“You know, Bryna, I haven’t thought about it in years… I was only a child…It was the summer of 1944. My mother and I had fled from Poland to Czechoslovakia, from there to Hungary, and then we found ourselves in Rumania. It was in Rumania that we managed to obtain British certificates allowing us to leave for Palestine, by way of Turkey. Three ships were waiting at the port. Although my mother and I were booked on the second ship, my mother bribed an official to let us on the first, to be with our only surviving family, for fear that we would once again be separated. The ships set sail and we felt as if we were finally on our way to some sort of secure destination. Suddenly, we were attacked by a German submarine. Two of the three ships sank, leaving no survivors. Ours was next. The captain jumped ship. We all got together on the deck, held hands, and said: “Shema Yisrael Hashem Elokenu Hashem Echad” (Hear O Israel the Lord our God the Lord is One). We were preparing to die…Miraculously, we sailed along unmolested and reached our destination”.
She glanced at the Bible before her, and then up at me, and continued. “It has been over 50 years…suddenly our study of the final journey of Eliahu and Elisha, of Keriyat Shem’a, of the fiery chariot which separated them, unearthed a memory which time had long since buried…”
What was it about our story which awakened this long-suppressed memory?
Was it a yearning of an orphan of the Holocaust for the immortality of Eliahu which stirred her? Perhaps it was the continuity embodied by Elisha, by his ability to pick up the mantle of his father and start again, without turning back to search for a past he knew he could not retrieve. What is clear is that this biblical episode had leapt twenty-eight hundred years into the future, enabling one woman to experience a catharsis of spirit which had been denied her for most of her life.
I turned away from the class, knowing now that the midrashic account of Eliahu’s parting from Elisha poses another question as well: With what does a teacher leave a pupil?
The Rabbis have enriched me with their insight, and as a teacher I have passed it on to this student. How moving it was that she in turn offered me an additional dimension of this lesson which I had never imagined.
Yet, if we return to the Book of Kings, the text reveals to us another dialogue between the prophet who is taking leave and the prophet who is beginning his mission. Elisha makes an audacious request – “May twice as much of your spirit be mine!” (viyehi na pi shnaim beruchacha eilai (2Kings 2:9))
According to the interpretation of the great Spanish commentator Don Yitzhak Abarbanel, Elisha could not bear losing his master and so he asked that the dialogue between teacher and student, their “twoness”, should continue even after Eliahu’s departure, whether through dreams, visions, or on some metaphysical level.
Abarbanel’s insight sheds light on my feelings as a teacher taking leave of my students as the year draws to a close. Every class has its unique qualities. Every student becomes my teacher; as the above-mentioned anecdote demonstrates. In that regard my students have been endowed with a double portion of wisdom and understanding. They teach me through Torat Chayim – their Torah of life.
The bonds of love between us will allow for the dialogue to continue to flourish as these students become teachers, while we their teachers continue to learn from them. Dear students, pick up the mantle of Eliahu and as “women of valor”, don garments of “strength and splendor”. (Proverbs 31:25)
This article is excerpted from “Sense and Sensibilities:Women and Talmud Torah” and “Halichot Olam” (Hebrew).