Starting a Virtual Yeshiva
During the period that yeshivos were physically closed, the overwhelming number of them functioned almost fully and to the significant satisfaction of both administration and students on a product called Turbobridge. https://www.turbobridge.com, the refuah with which HKB”H preceded the makkah. Turbobridge is a nearly-free conference audio/visual system that enables main sessions for shiurim and breakout sub-conferences for chevrusos. Rabbeim and Sho’alim u’Meshivim can “pop-in” on the chevrusos announced or unannounced. The Administration receives reports on attendance in all sessions. Shiurim can be recorded for later chazarah. There is a video option as well.
Turbobridge (there are similar competing systems) is the way to open a yeshiva with little or no overhead, with no need for a physical plant, with maximum flexibility and reach.
Someone should do this for students at secular colleges.
ReplyDeleteOn a related note. We made an online interactive virtual Bais Medrash https://www.mydigitaloffice.io/medrash
ReplyDelete“To the significant satisfaction of both administration and parents”.
ReplyDeleteOh, really? The parents I know weren’t happy at all with the phone system. Nor were the parents of the more “modern” schools (tho still within Torah Umesorah) who uses Zoom. No one was happy, because it simply wasn’t real learning. School adminsitrstors can try all they want to convince the parents and students and even themselves otherwise, but העני האנשים תנקר?
The emes is - and I realize this is a much larger topic than this one blog post - the rabbinate failed. FAILED. They folded and caved much too quickly. Whether you believe about Covid (that it is subject to personal belief shows how silly the whole thing is), it was never a reason to close shuls and yeshivah. It was an epic failure of the entire rabbinic establishment, with the notable exception of the chassidim. Never again will they be able to mouth platitudes about being “moser nefesh” for Torah. Shame.
I think you are out of your mind. Be well.
DeletePretty much the response I expected. How does a Rabbi answer when there is no answer? With name calling.
DeleteBe well.
There is no answer because there is no question. Safek sakkonas nefashos is docheh Talmud Torah, even d'rabbim, if there is no gezeiras ha'malchus to eradicate Torah from Am Yisroel. You want to make Covid the hill to die on. This is absurd.
DeleteIf there were bodies in the street like the Bubonic plague, lechaye. But there aren't. All we have are virtually made up numbers of "positives", many of which were false, many of which were attached to people who never even tested. For the overwhelming number of people, a positive is nothing more than an inconvenience, like the flu. We also know that children - the ones who attend yeshivas - are at an almost statistically non-existent risk of death, far lower than one in 1000. The statistical incidence vis a vis population that defines a megefah as described in Taanis is and at no time was anywhere close to being met in this politically manufactured crisis. By the terms of the CDC, on their own website, nothing about Covid has ever been a genuine pandemic. לא דובים ולא יער. There's no sakanas nefashos and no safek sakana. להד"ם. Nothing that even remotely came near to approaching the level of risk to justify shutting down shuls and yeshivas.
DeleteNo. What happened here was cowardice. The Rabbinate immediately caved, more worried about the left-wing element in our community than its more silent majority. The Chassidim did not. They were strong. They were ready to fight. Our Rabbis were weak, and afraid of being minyan-shamed. They weren't bold enough to challenge publicly what the media was trumpeting, even though many of them questioned it privately. The Chassidim had a רוח אחרת. They wisely rejected blown out of proportion hysteria, while ours were too quick to believe it. And our rabbis, as your comment above this illustrates perfectly, failed to realize that yes, much of this political gamesmanship IS rooted in anti- Torah and anti-religion. That's why it was only the atheist blue states that closed shuls, while nothing like that occurred in the red states where religion is respected. If there was any doubt at all this was all about politics, then the riots and marches, with the hitherto covid-conscious governors marching happily along, made the point clear even to the slowest among us.
In any event, my original post was that neither parents nor students were happy, contra your claim, with telephone learning. Perhaps you dont have children of your own in yeshivah, or perhaps you once did but no longer. (Fathers of grown children cannot daven for the amud because they have forgotten tzaar gidul bonim.) Our children need real chinuch and real rebbeim, not computer screens or phones, which are even worse. That you seem blithely unaware of this gives me some insight into why your feel the rabbinate did nothing wrong.
DeleteI am impressed with your cavalier attitude towards the lives of your fellow Jews and towards the matter of Chillul Hashem. This is not mesirus nefesh but a lack of nosei b'ol. As to my knowledge of how the yeshivos functioned, it is firsthand and broadbased. Sorry.
DeleteThere’s no “chillul hashem” in a divided country where no one agrees on anything. And if you cared more about your fellow Jews you’d be saying the same thing I am, instead of spending time worrying about “Black Lives Matter”.
ReplyDeleteIn any event, if anything I said - all pretty mainstream opinion - is novel to you, then evidently you are either living in some sort of echo chamber, or, as I think more likely, just telling yourself that the millions of people who dont agree with you are “out of their mind”, exactly as you did above. Makes it very easy, doesn’t it? I respect you as an out of the box thinker, but get over yourself. And on this particular issue, you are really not seeing the big picture. Yeshivah is not dial-a-daf. And bochurim are not retirees calling their chavrusah for an hour-a-week learning session. They need live, in person, full time, interaction. ותו לא מידי.
We have strayed very far from the point of the post. Kulei alma lo pligei that a yeshiva is optimally an actual Makom Torah with all the trimmings. This is a suggestion for an alternative in times of need for people in need.
DeleteGot it. The impression I got was that you were suggesting a virtual yeshivah lechatchila. If you are only discussing it as a bidived then I withdraw my objections, although I note that not everyone would. Some would say that the learning in such a setup is so poor that it’s not worth doing, especially given the risk that such an option might have the effect of preventing real yeshivahs from opening. (Like leaving a Ruined shul in disrepair to force people to build a proper one.)
DeleteI don’t go that far, but I understand those who do.