Beshalach 5772

And Moshe said to Yehoshua, “Choose for us men and go out and battle Amalek…” (Shemos 17:9)

“Choose for us”: For me and for you; Moshe equated Yehoshua to himself. From here the Sages concluded that the honor of your student should be as precious as your own honor. (Rashi)

Needless to say, honoring students is extremely important. But why did the Torah choose to transmit this lesson through the story of the war against Amalek?

The Talmud (Sanhedrin 91b) teaches: If one withholds teaching from his student it is considered as if he robbed him of his ancestors’ legacy. In other words, the Torah that a Rebbe teaches to his student is not a gift which he bestows from his own assets. The Rebbe’s Torah may have been given to him specifically for the sake of the student he is destined to teach; he is merely holding it in trust until the appropriate time. Thus, the failure to transmit is tantamount to an act of theft. This is the rationale of the imperative to honor one’s students. If the Rebbe treats his students lightly for their lack of knowledge, he is making a mistake: His Torah is really theirs!

This has some practical consequences. When a Rebbe contemplates accepting a potential student, he must properly conceptualize the issue. The question is not whether the Rebbe should give Torah to the student as a gift. The question is, rather, are their grounds for denying and withholding this person’s entitlement. When put the first way, the answer may be an emphatic “No”; when put the second way, the answer may be an equally emphatic “Yes”.

The Talmud (Sanhedrin 99b) tells an amazing story about the lineage of Amalek: Timna was a royal princess…Desiring to become a proselyte, she went to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but they did not accept her. So she went and became a concubine to Eliphaz the son of Esav, saying, “I would rather be a servant to this people than a mistress of another nation.” From her Amalek who afflicted Israel came. Why so? They should not have rejected her.

This is nothing short of astounding. The hatred of Amalek was a consequence of a mistaken decision on the part of Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov regarding the acceptance of a potential convert!

We certainly should not second-guess their decision, but undoubtedly it was a difficult one and perhaps the verdict to deny admission might have been rooted in a failure to see the Torah as the candidate’s entitlement rather than a gift that she was seeking to acquire.

When Moshe and Yehoshua discussed the plans for the war against Amalek, undoubtedly the discussion turned to the root cause of the conflict – the rejection of Timna. Moshe undoubtedly stressed the importance of not withholding Torah from students,the recognition that Torah knowledge is their entitlement, and, as explained above, that this is the very basis of the obligation to honor students. These ideas which Moshe put into action in his choice of words in instructing Yehoshua to muster the army against Amalek were thus especially relevant to that war.