Education or Training? Outer Habits vs. Inner Connection | Rabbi Shlomo Azref #008

00:00 Speaker 1 What challenges does a Chabad bochur face after he finishes yeshiva gedolah? During his year at 770, he looks around and realizes no one is testing him anymore. I’m personally very excited about this episode. I sat down for a conversation with Rabbi Shlomo Azraf, the educational director of the Chassidic Technological Institute. In recent years, I’ve had the privilege of working with the young people at the institute as part of my shlichus, and it’s a great privilege to sit down with him for this episode. We talked about many interesting subjects. We started with what success in education means. From there we went on to ask: How do we help young people develop a real, inner connection to Torah and mitzvos? And we ended with how the artificial intelligence revolution will shift our world from testing knowledge to educating the soul. I’m Meir Vishnefski, and you’re listening to On Chabad Education. Rabbi Shlomo Azraf, welcome.

00:44 Speaker 2 Shalom aleichem.

00:47 Speaker 1 Yes. So today we live in a world with a great many external measures, and we bring them straight into education. We check off a lot of boxes, and sometimes we don’t look at how much the teenager, the bochur, the child, is doing it with his own chayus, with something inside him. Is it time to ask ourselves how to educate a child in a way that will stay with him throughout his life?

01:23 Speaker 2 It is time. It absolutely is. If we’re at the moment just before the Geulah, just before the revelation of the inner dimension of Torah and of life, then if we don’t look for a way to educate from within, in a way that lasts and truly penetrates, we may be missing something about what education means. And why do we do that? I think that as human beings, we tend to solve immediate problems. More generally, with the human nature that Hakadosh Boruch Hu put into creation, a person has to be quite exceptional to seek to leave his comfort zone when he’s comfortable. When he’s challenged, that’s another matter. In education, too, we generally follow that human tendency. In my opinion, we simply want to get things settled: to achieve good results. And good results are measured the way we measure other things in life. In general education, what’s called education is very simple: you give grades, someone finishes a degree, and you’ve succeeded. It’s the same in our world. A bochur learns, a bochur does what he’s supposed to do, a bochur follows through. Success. In the outside world, the question is whether he has his bachelor’s degree. Is he an educated person? That doesn’t really concern anyone. It carries over to us, too. As Chabad chassidim who learn Chassidus, perhaps it does concern us, but in practice, when the performance is good, that seems to satisfy us.

03:17 Speaker 1 Why do we, as educators and parents, do that? Why do we look at the external measure? And what should education that isn’t just habit look like?

03:29 Speaker 2 I think the external measure is fairly satisfying. At least on the face of it, without getting into deeper reasons, such as fear that a child might leave the path. Before those deeper reasons, the external measure itself is satisfying. I mean, for an ordinary person, for you or me, looking beyond that external measure takes a certain level of personal growth. When a child is doing well outwardly, that’s no small thing. It looks good, it gives a good impression, and there’s some truth to it, too. I mean, he wouldn’t do it if he didn’t, so to speak, believe in it. That’s what I, as a parent, tend to think. So why should I question it? What is there to improve? Everything is fine. But the inner world of education is harder to see, particularly with Torah and mitzvos, which, for many reasons, can be perceived as something added onto life. If they aren’t conveyed properly and are experienced as a burden, it’s harder to detect the disconnect, which may only show itself years later.

04:46 Speaker 3 You’re saying there can sometimes be a teenager who follows the whole path and everything is fine. A bochur, a child—everything is fine, every box is checked. He lives his life, goes through yeshiva ketanah and yeshiva gedolah. But what happens when that bochur finishes yeshiva? He finishes, flies to 770 for his year there, comes back to Israel, and then the framework of yeshiva is no longer upon him. He goes on shlichus, and even there he no longer has the framework of yeshiva. What might we sometimes see then, if we haven’t truly educated him and have just kept looking at the checked boxes?

05:24 Speaker 2 I don’t want to talk about extreme cases, because I think Chabad chassidim can see those for themselves. Talking about extremes can also be misleading, because people can argue that an extreme case happened because of other events, not because of the education. By an extreme case, I mean someone who leaves the path at a later stage. That’s an extreme. I think the answer is a little complicated. We need to define success in education. Is success that, outwardly, a bochur becomes a Chabad chossid? If that’s what we call success, then after their year at 770 it won’t be easy to find people who aren’t following the path, because the overwhelming majority conduct themselves properly and look like chassidim. But if success means an inner connection to it, a strong desire to keep growing—I’m talking about spiritually—if it means that what we were taught in yeshiva becomes mine once I finish yeshiva, that I’ve made it part of my soul and it’s my life’s dream; that when I establish my own home, I’ll pick up the pace and constantly look for ways to improve—if that’s success, then we often see that it’s much harder to achieve, to put it gently. People do the usual things and focus on performance. If only they’d daven three times a day with a minyan. They conduct themselves outwardly like chassidim. But the inner world, where that connection is expressed—a connection that leads to doing things with chayus and to improving—is hard to measure. And that’s usually what gradually diminishes when education lacks that element.

07:21 Speaker 3 Friends, another episode of On Chabad Education is starting. If you connect with what’s happening here, click Follow on one of the platforms. The more our community grows, the more we’ll be able to bring on special guests and create content of the highest quality. Be part of the journey. Let’s continue. So how can we, as parents—I, as a father—educate toward something that isn’t just habit or something external, but something internal? And whose responsibility is it? The parents’? The staff in the yeshivos’? Whose? Where does it lie?

07:57 Speaker 2 That really is one of the hard questions, because people want to do good. We’re talking about something that might sound as though things aren’t being done properly and we’re proposing a better way. I think everyone wants to do things properly, and parents certainly want very, very much for their children to grow up to be happy chassidim. The challenge of being inwardly connected is a deeply personal challenge, one that demands a great deal of a person even before he begins raising children. It’s often hard even to put your finger on what counts as inner depth, what counts as a connection to the matter. After all, anyone can claim that he’s connected in his own way. It’s difficult. I think the responsibility rests first and foremost with the parents. And what are the parents responsible for? First, understanding that they really do shape the path. We, as institutions, receive the child at a later age, and yeshivos certainly have an extraordinarily important influence on a person’s soul, on the souls of the bochurim. But ultimately, a child acquires his basic traits and habits at home, and he comes back home, too. So before any practical action, a parent needs to know that he has the power, that what he does can have a lifelong influence. That’s important to know. Now, what I’m saying isn’t a major revelation. But I do say that when this awareness is more present in daily life, it heightens the sense of responsibility and may help parents pay closer attention to what they do. What should they do in practice? When a parent knows he has a responsibility and can have an influence, it’s easier for him to pay attention to his own behavior—to do things that align with the message he conveys. If a parent wants to educate his children toward something, it’s very important that he live up to it himself, that his conduct, at least, not contradict it, whatever it may be. Every home sees things differently. Every

10:06 Speaker 2 As an educator, how do you reach what the Rebbe wants by a different route? In the end, a father and mother have to stand behind what they say. The point is that the child should grow up without sensing a gap in the message his parents convey. Say a father declares at the Shabbos table, with great excitement, “Listen, 11 Nissan is coming up. The Rebbe is our whole life. We are truly fortunate to be Chabad chassidim.” And the child knows—not because he’s some great genius, he just knows—that those are nice words. He doesn’t really trust them on this. He knows how the home runs. He knows where the attention goes. So what does he do? Does he shout from the other end of the Shabbos table, “Hey, Dad, are you denying the Torah?” No. He says nothing. Inside, he just gives a little shrug, as if to say, “Well, there’s another thing we’ve heard.” And that inner cynicism, so to speak, that gap, eventually leads the child, as he goes through life, to treat these things as something very lofty: “The Rebbe is very lofty. This generation is terribly difficult, and baruch Hashem, I’m doing what I do, thank Hashem.” It starts with those small gaps, with the child’s experience that it isn’t connected to reality, because the parents believe in something but struggle to put it into practice day to day. So that’s sound advice for parents. People want solutions. We keep coming back to benchmarks: “Give me benchmarks. What do I do tomorrow?” I don’t know what to do tomorrow. I know it’s worth living wholeheartedly, in a way of life permeated by a sense of responsibility, by an atmosphere that says this generation is not weak. It is a strong generation. It is a generation that will soon truly see the Geulah, see the Rebbe with its own eyes. Yes, this generation has challenges, but it has strength, and we have everything we need to succeed. That sense of responsibility will give rise to good actions if a parent will just, uh, adopt

12:22 Speaker 2 it.

12:24 Speaker 4 I’m trying to decide whether that statement is more discouraging or more encouraging. Because if—if we, as parents and educators, need to be at a certain level, and I’m not there, do I not say these things to my child? Where—where is that benchmark?

12:40 Speaker 2 First of all, yes. There’s no getting around it if we’re talking about education, if we’re talking about benchmarks. I mean, if I run a company and need my employees to do something, that’s my prerogative. I have money; I have authority. They have to do what I want. But if we’re talking about education and devotion to something lofty, then yes. If I want my child to take these things to heart, practice them for the rest of his life, and love them—not just want to do them, but love them, want to put his energy into them, want to build his home around them—then I need to convey a genuine message to him now. We all know the well-known parable in education about the two neighbors. It’s famous, but it fits. Two neighbors lived in the same building: one was a rosh yeshivah and the other was an ordinary man. The rosh yeshivah’s son left the path, while the ordinary man’s son, the son of a businessman, became a Torah scholar. One day, when they were about seventy, they sat down and talked about the decades they had lived together in the building. The rosh yeshivah said to his dear neighbor, “Tell me, what did you do right that your son turned out this way? I’m a respected rosh yeshivah, and you’re out working all day.” The businessman said to the rosh yeshivah, “Perhaps you’re sending a message you don’t mean to send. Tell me about your daily routine.” So he told him: he rises early, goes to minyan, gives classes at the yeshivah—a whole day devoted to Torah. He comes home in the evening. “Yes, in the evening I pick up the newspaper, make myself a coffee, sit on the couch, put my recliner back and rest.” The businessman said, “That’s probably much more significant than you think. I made a point of something all my life. I knew I was out working. I hardly saw the children

14:43 Speaker 2 except on Shabbos. But I said, ‘Listen, at home, when they see me in a free moment, I want them to see me doing something good, to see me learning Torah.’ I always made a point of opening a Gemara at night when I got home. I’d fall asleep, I’d get distracted—I didn’t always manage to learn. But at the end of a business day, what did my children see? When Dad is finally free, everything else goes to the side.” That’s a message. You don’t have to be an exalted person. We tend to live in a world that says, okay, if it isn’t black, it’s white. In other words, if I’m a working, educated, average person, I can’t give my children a Chabad education. I think that’s one of the mistakes the yetzer hara simply uses to confuse us. I can be a very ordinary person, working in some field out in the world, among people of the world. But when I convey a message to my children and stand behind it—when I have time, or when I’m tested on what matters to me, it’s G-dliness. In other words, if in the afternoon I’m exhausted, and my children know I work hard to make a living, and instead of sleeping through the afternoon, I get up half an hour before Minchah to learn, even though I’m dead tired, then little by little the children grow up knowing that everyone comes to Shabbos Minchah with pillow marks on their faces, but their father gave up half an hour with his pillow. You don’t need to talk about it. The child sees that this man, who happens to be his father, is a man of truth. He’s an average person; he works; he doesn’t transgress negative commandments. Yes, we all have our struggles. That’s not the right comparison. The point is to convey a message and stand behind it.

16:29 Speaker 4 I’d like us to take this now—it can sound very abstract, like we’re talking about lofty levels of Chassidus. I come home, and my child... Let’s say I tell a child of five, six, seven or eight, one of the younger ages, to do something, and he says, “I don’t want to.” The child talks back. Let’s try to take this idea and make it simple. How do I avoid merely training him into a habit here? We’ve talked about habits in the small details of chassidic conduct and other things, but let’s bring this into everyday life for a moment. A child is there, a child—he talks back. How can I, in that situation, educate him rather than just get him used to behaving a certain way? Instead of making him think, “Listen, get used to it, fall into line,” how do I do what we were talking about on a deeper level?

17:17 Speaker 2 Here too, I have to convey a consistent message. Let’s talk practically so it’s clear. If a child talks back, that’s improper behavior, okay? As his father or mother, I need to show him that it’s improper. Now, if I show him that in a capricious way—one time I yell at him, another time I ignore him, another time I push him away, not physically, but somehow brush him off—then the child doesn’t receive a consistent message, and it’s hard for him to internalize a clear way to behave, simply because he’s a child. But if he talks back to me and I respond consistently, whatever that response may be—“That’s not appropriate, my dear son. Excuse me, but when you speak to me respectfully, I’m available”—and I repeat that consistently, that’s different. And it’s especially important not to lose my composure. There’s the verbal response and the physical response—the way I move—and then there’s my state of mind. My state of mind is critical in education. I must not lose my composure. In other words, I shouldn’t get angry or fly into a rage. Because when I, the parent, lose my composure, the child gets confused. He experiences someone in front of him who isn’t fully in control of the situation, and that can take a child in all sorts of directions. It can make him want to test it again. Why? Because this is an area where he feels in control: “I managed to push my father out of his comfort zone.” Why does he use that approach? Often, it can be a way of getting attention. But most simply, it prevents the child from living in a world that makes sense to him. When a child doesn’t have that clarity, he can’t build a second story. When I have a first story

19:16 Speaker 2 Once it’s built, I can reach the second floor, then the third floor. But when I don’t have a first floor built—when I’m a young child living in a world where I’m testing the limits of chutzpah, fights between siblings, and behavior at school, and I don’t get a consistent response—I can’t get a clear sense of what’s right and what’s wrong. So this is very practical. Even before we talk about spirituality, a young child needs parents who stand behind what they say. That means forming a position: this is how we respond to chutzpah in our home. Mom responds this way, Dad responds this way. We respond pleasantly, we respond consistently, and we convey that with steadiness. Now, that’s the actual response. Something a little deeper—at least worth opening our eyes to—is the inner position. When a child speaks disrespectfully, or generally doesn’t behave well, it’s worth our while as parents to think about why it matters to us that he behave well. Obviously we want him to behave well, but what is this whole home of ours educating toward? Where do we want to lead the child? I mean that it makes a great difference where the response comes from—where in our inner selves it comes from. A parent who hasn’t thought about what he’s educating toward simply acts emotionally. Today he’s tired, so he behaves one way. Tomorrow he’s alert. Today is a big day, so everyone is caught up in the excitement of the day. That isn’t a consistent approach. When a parent knows that this home is following a path, that he wants to raise upright people, people who respect one another, chassidim—then, again, as we said earlier about education, it has to be reflected in all his conduct. When he knows deep down that he has an overarching goal, he derives his response to a small act of chutzpah from that. It’s very different

21:19 Speaker 2 when I’m grounded and when I’m not. If I’m a grounded parent, I’ll respond to the chutzpah now, but I won’t lose my head. I won’t fly into a rage—not just because I’ve heard that flying into a rage is bad. I know I’ll miss the point if I do. I know I’m trying to educate them to become mature people, people who can control themselves, people who work on their character traits. By contrast, a parent who hasn’t clarified the broader goal acts emotionally—one way one time, another way the next—just to solve the immediate problem.

21:55 Speaker 5 When I try to think about it, this sounds like something that takes time. I mean, I don’t get up tomorrow morning and say, “Okay, from tomorrow I’ll get up twenty minutes before Mincha; from tomorrow I understand that everything depends on me.” This is something long-term. Again, it’s not something that... I’m looking at it this way: if I want to change something and my child is already, you know, sixteen or seventeen, is there anything I can still do? Have I missed the boat, or do I still have time to accomplish something? What we’re talking about sounds like a long-term undertaking.

22:33 Speaker 2 It really is long-term, yes. There’s a well-known saying that whoever wants to change the world should educate. Whoever wants to improve the world plants trees. That’s quite long-term compared with material pursuits. But to change the world—that really is education. Education changes the world. The gift Hakadosh Boruch Hu gave us as beings with free choice is the ability to educate. There is no more wonderful thing we can produce in this world than education. People undertake global projects; they’re important, they serve the world—all the developing systems in Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s wonderful world. But ultimately, education means raising a generation. It means building an entire world. People who make the right choices at the crossroads in their lives will change the world they live in. It’s worth everything. It certainly is a long road. As for whether we’ve missed the boat: as long as the clock is still ticking, we know we can make things right. And with children, Hashem helps us by giving us the ability to forget. Just as children can remember bad events in their lives, they can also remember good things. Over time, children can correct themselves, change course, improve. Even if everything wasn’t always rosy in childhood. We see it with teenagers; we meet a great many of them. They know how to distinguish between things. Somehow, Hashem instilled in us a good instinct for distinguishing what matters from what’s secondary. And when a parent makes a change and visibly puts effort into it, the child sees it. “Oh, Dad is making an effort.” That has an effect. Immediately? No, not immediately. We’re human beings; we don’t change immediately. It really is long-term, and it’s so important. What you do when a child is ten, during childhood, can indeed have an effect for eighty or ninety years. It’s...

24:48 Speaker 6 It sounds from what you’re saying as though we, as parents or educators, need to let go a little and trust a little more—

24:56 Speaker 2 Of metrics.

24:57 Speaker 6 Of metrics, yes.

24:58 Speaker 2 Exactly.

24:59 Speaker 6 So is it fair to say that looking for metrics in education is what keeps us from educating?

25:08 Speaker 2 Looking for metrics—definitely. Yes, it’s important to let go, though we should be precise about what we mean: let go of metrics, at least external metrics. We’ve been talking about things that weigh heavily on us, the people responsible for education—the parent, the staff member. When we focus on metrics, we mislead ourselves: if the metrics look good, we think things are good. Now, when we talk about Torah and mitzvos—not only Torah and mitzvos, but they are the core of our lives—ultimately, I don’t want my son merely to be in yeshivah, keep to the sedarim, attend Chassidus, and pass a general exam. I want my son to be a chossid at forty. What is a chossid? What the Rebbe wants. Do I know what the Rebbe wants? I hope he’ll know what the Rebbe wants, make it his own, live accordingly, and be willing to pay a price for it. That’s what I want. The road there probably does pass through a hundred sedarim, Chassidus classes, and other good things—certainly it does—but not only through those things. If the child does all that without feeling connected, we’ll see that lack of connection when he’s forty. So as a parent, if I’m very focused on metrics, I think, “Oh no, my boys don’t want to...” This issue of davening is so common among parents. Davening. Young children don’t feel like davening; they have no problems with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. The thought of having problems with Hakadosh Boruch Hu doesn’t even occur to them. We’re the ones who think about problems with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. We project that onto them, and then they learn that there are problems with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. What I mean is this: an eight-year-old child doesn’t have the energy. He wants a ball. He just doesn’t have it in him—no ADHD, no drama. He doesn’t have the energy to sit. Two and a half hours is enough; he wants to play outside. There are marbles, there’s soccer, there’s sunshine, and he doesn’t go into

27:04 Speaker 2 shul. His father gets angry with him. First of all, that inner reaction—the anger—says, “Why aren’t you coming in? What’s wrong with you? How many times do I have to tell you?” That’s already anger. Now, imagine a child—I’m describing an imaginary situation, trying for a moment to picture his world. The child may ask himself, “Wait, I’m not okay. Why am I not okay? Look, Dad is angry. Wow. I’m doing something wrong. What am I doing wrong? Everyone else is sitting and I’m not, so I’m not okay.” Fine. The next week, he still doesn’t feel like it. He thinks, “I want to be okay, but I don’t have the energy.” He begins to enter a world in which he disappoints his father and isn’t okay. Later, that sticks to him: the feeling that he isn’t okay, that he’s a disappointment. And the father widens the gap. He’s disappointed in him over davening. Why are you disappointed in him over davening? Because he doesn’t feel like it? Let go. He doesn’t yet understand Hakadosh Boruch Hu; he doesn’t understand davening. Let him see you daven; he’ll watch you. Gradually, when he feels at ease, he’ll come in, sit for half an hour, and go out. Don’t hover over him; act as though you haven’t noticed. Look the other way. He sits next to you? Wonderful—smile. He goes out? Let him go out. Will he come back? Yes. Parents ask, parents ask, “What, should I let him leave without paying a price? He won’t sit through davening.” I see parents next to me making their children sit, and their children also turn out to be good children. I’ve personally heard questions like that. First of all, it’s true, boruch Hashem, that the child whose father made him sit turned out well—but who decides what “well” means? And let’s see what happens further down the road. But let’s put that aside. When a child doesn’t want to, when a child

28:47 Speaker 2 does want to, or when it’s easy to get him to sit, life is easier. When the child finds it hard and you let go, you’re actually bringing him closer. Because of metrics, we think that when we let go, we’re failing. In other words, the metric is—

29:04 Speaker 7 I’m not being a parent.

29:05 Speaker 2 I’m not a parent.

29:06 Speaker 7 Yes, a parent.

29:06 Speaker 2 He isn’t present. Everything comes at a cost. The yardstick says he needs to sit there. Sitting there counts as success in davening, in connecting to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, to Yiddishkeit, to davening.

29:14 Speaker 7 Wow.

29:14 Speaker 2 That’s the yardstick. I get anxious about it, I pressure him, and he experiences a lot of negative feelings that do harm. What harm? Hashem knows where that could lead. I let go, and he says, “My father is great. He loves me so much.” Why? Just because his father is relaxed. He doesn’t even connect it to davening. His father is simply happy; it’s nice to be around him. Everything’s okay. Then the children in his class start going in after fourth or fifth or sixth grade—I don’t know—and he notices. Everyone else is inside. “Okay, I’ll go in for a bit too.” Now we’ve already established that he likes his father a little, because his father is nice, so he sits next to him with less drama. Whether he opens the siddur or not, that will happen on its own, according to where each child is. Not every child is at the same level. But when it comes from him, it becomes his too. He also associates it with you. He’s connected to you; he isn’t disconnected. That’s what happens when I let go. It’s important to say that letting go sounds terribly frightening. Let go in education? Education is supposed to be all about guidance. But yes, this is almost the root of the problem. We think guidance means getting someone into a habit, training them, but it doesn’t. What we’re working toward is an inner connection to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, to reflection. An inner connection lasts forever. It lasts for generations. An inner connection cannot emerge from compulsion.

30:47 Speaker 7 So I should focus a little more on educating for—how did you put it?—generations. Not on the immediate question of whether he’s davening right now according to the yardsticks, but... I understand. I want to ask a question that’s a little outside the topic, and then we’ll come back to it. You’ve worked in education for years. We’re now in an age with so much happening—we see artificial intelligence, AI. It’s replacing almost everything. It will replace a great deal of people’s work. Of course, there are things it won’t be able to replace, but it will be able to do most of it. How do you think this will affect education? Because that’s where the world is headed. I think it’ll happen faster than we expect.

31:38 Speaker 2 …

31:39 Speaker 7 Because we’ve been talking a little about habits. Where will this find us in education?

31:45 Speaker 2 I think it’s a tremendous shock to education. I expect it to take a few years, but exactly how it will play out on the ground is a question. Educational institutions—all the educational institutions in our world—are very set in their ways, for whatever reason. There’s this image that the whole world changes. Years ago, a video went around that put the education system on trial: the entire world had changed and advanced, while education had stayed the same, with the same classrooms, the same square rooms. So I don’t know what form it will take in practice, but it’s going to challenge education profoundly. Put simply, it will make the whole area of instruction unnecessary. If education means teaching and imparting knowledge, that’s it. We simply won’t be needed anymore. It’s over. Again, this will happen in one form or another. The university isn’t going to close tomorrow, but the day after tomorrow there will be tutors that can be monitored and improved through AI. Knowledge—all knowledge, including spiritual knowledge—will be imparted through various systems, and that will confront us with a question. If education is imparting knowledge and meeting benchmarks, then we can take early retirement. That’s a privilege too. It’s a privilege. This is an opportunity that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is giving us. If we haven’t arrived at this understanding on our own, we’ll arrive at it because Hakadosh Boruch Hu is bringing us there: to recognize that imparting knowledge is one part of education. Even Torah, if it’s acquired as knowledge, does not necessarily change a person’s essence—apart from the inherent spiritual value of Torah, which is a higher power. Education is about character. Education is about the soul. The soul—that means the price a person pays. AI can outdo us; it’s still a computer. What can’t it do? And

34:00 Speaker 2 no one is looking for it to do this, either: pay the price I pay for the changes in my life. That increases my worth. When a person does something and succeeds at it, he becomes a different person. A computer doesn’t answer another question with AI and become a different computer. A person invests his G-dly soul and his animal soul; he gives up something of himself in order to change. We want to meet young people and educate their souls and character, to see the good in them, including through imparting knowledge. So I think this is an opportunity, but if we don’t see it as one, it will be a major crisis. Soon a teacher will stand in front of a class and the students will chuckle. It’s that simple. “Come on, Rabbi, enough. My little sister can do that on the computer in a minute.”

35:00 Speaker 8 So what place will educators have then? The teacher standing in front of the class?

35:04 Speaker 2 In my view, we have to see the privilege Hakadosh Boruch Hu is giving us. Thank Hakadosh Boruch Hu for bringing us AI. It’s really a preparation for the Geulah, when “the whole world will be occupied only with knowing Hashem,” freeing us to ask what it means to know Him. To return to what we discussed at the beginning of the conversation: not benchmarks, but an inner connection. Think of a student acquiring knowledge. Some students have brilliant minds and finish entire masechtos. Does that make them chassidim and people of action? Not as long as there’s no inner connection, as long as a person hasn’t paid a spiritual price—given something up in order to change from one state to another. This week I saw a video of the Rebbe from Motzaei Shabbos. The Rebbe told the Rebbe Rashab’s story about what a chossid is—the lamplighter. There are many stages to it, and at the end of the story the chossid asks the Rebbe Rashab—there’s a whole dialogue between the chossid and the Rebbe Rashab, and what the Rebbe Rashab answers him—what a chossid is: a lamplighter, even in the wilderness and at sea. So when the chossid understands that a chossid’s job is to illuminate his surroundings, he asks the Rebbe Rashab: What happens if you can’t see the light? The Rebbe says you have to wash the [unclear]. In other words, we need to wash our garments; we need to clean them. When a person is coarse and unrefined, he can’t see light. I’m putting it somewhat in my own words, but the Rebbe uses those words—not in a negative way. To see the light in another person, light has to shine through me, and that takes work. That is our role as educators. Imparting knowledge, even Torah knowledge—though, of course, there’s no comparison whatsoever between Torah and secular knowledge—isn’t enough. Our life’s mission has always been this; AI will only bring it into sharp focus: the way we ourselves live. That

37:14 Speaker 2 means a connection to the matter. How do we wash the [unclear]? It has to be embodied in us. You asked whether that’s a big job? Education is a big job. Truly winning over the heart, bringing the Geulah into the world even on a small scale—that’s very significant, yes.

37:36 Speaker 9 What would you say to a young man who hears this and says, “I was judged by benchmarks. My Yiddishkeit—my connection—I don’t have a connection, and all I have are benchmarks. I’m before kvutza, after kvutza; I’m eighteen, nineteen, twenty, or even older, and I live in a world of benchmarks.”

38:06 Speaker 2 I think there are two things, two points. The first—and to me this is the most important point, if a teenager is listening—is to know that Hashem has given us tremendous strength. A person has enormous power to change a world. Just open your eyes and look around at people who have changed a world—not necessarily the technological world, or the world in the usual sense, but the world around them. There are shluchim who have truly changed a world through painstaking work. A person has tremendous power, and so does a yeshiva student. It’s true that we live in a world where Torah may have been presented to us as an external burden. We’ve been measured, and now we can’t bear to have anyone measure us. We want to live freely. That doesn’t necessarily mean leaving Torah and mitzvos. It can even happen within Torah and mitzvos: I’ll do things however I feel like, because I’m tired of being counted, and I’m not taking anyone else into account. That’s natural. But when I, as a teenager, know that I really can change a world, it’s worth looking at things more deeply. Often it isn’t easy to learn Torah and truly understand its message for life without delving into it. At that age, it isn’t easy to do that. There are simply challenges with attention. Just learning the material properly, and then connecting it to myself—that takes time. Sometimes a yeshiva student barely manages to sit down and learn; going on to do something with what he learned simply doesn’t happen. So my first recommendation is this: yes, it may be that the people who represented religion to you presented Torah and mitzvos in a way that made them seem like a load or a burden. But you really do have the power to change a world, and Hashem has given us such a gift. We need to take it seriously, and with a little effort, there are answers. Another point is a bit tough; I’m not sure every teenager will like hearing it: stop blaming others. I remember there was

40:33 Speaker 2 once an argument I had with someone important when I was a young man myself. I can mention his name, because it will only be to his credit. At that time, when I was about twenty, the person I was arguing with and I both knew Rabbi Chaim Shalom Deutsch of Jerusalem well—may he be healthy. That person said to me, “Listen, I’m fed up with all these people. We really need to be like Rabbi Deutsch, not like all those Chabadniks.” I told him, “I think Rabbi Deutsch embodies what a Chabadnik should be. That’s fine. The people you’re angry with are ordinary people. We all carry things. Look, Rabbi Deutsch hasn’t invented anything new. He shows us what the Rebbe wants, what a chossid looks like.” Teenagers—and all of us as human beings—really like to blame others: the yeshiva, the staff, everything. Some of it may be true, but in the end it’s a way of putting off the hard work we need to do ourselves. If Torah is true, if Hakadosh Boruch Hu is true, then you be the better example. So that person was messed up, or that rabbi was messed up? You know what? He was messed up. You be good. Don’t retreat and give up on yourself because he was messed up.

42:04 Speaker 10 Perhaps you could give us one small tip, in closing, for serving Hashem and for education?

42:14 Speaker 2 Know that anything is possible. Look at my own personal strengths. Don’t define myself by the measures the people around me use. In the language of Chassidus, [unclear][?]. We live in a harsh world of measurements: how I look to the people around me, how I’m measured. My tip is: look the Rebbe in the eye, look into my own heart, and examine whether I’m being honest and decent before the Rebbe. Let that be the compass, the point of stability—not what people think, not what people say, not what looks good.

42:57 Speaker 10 Rabbi Shlomo Azraf, you have strength.

42:59 Speaker 2 In life, you will be.