Beyond Orthodox Conversion to Judaism

The next of the 48 ways to Acquire Torah is making his teacher wiser. The Talmud tells us that a teacher becomes wiser because of the questions that his students ask. The reason is that as great and wise as a person may be, the questions that his students ask him inevitably make his knowledge of that subject much greater.

This questions his students ask sharpen the teacher and make them develop what they are teaching to an even greater level. We may think that this is more advantageous to the students because in reality they are ones that would seem to gain the most from it. This is true because they are learning more in depth and are subjected to different ideas that expands their knowledge as well.

At the same time, though this helps the teacher even more for the reasons previously mentioned. There are stories of many great Torah scholars, before they would give their classes, they would analyze and reanalyze the material that they were teaching.

They would scrutinize every point and look at the topic from every angle to make sure they knew it properly. This in turn develops them and makes the knowledge that they have even greater because of all the effort they put into the preparation of the class at hand.

When a person has to teach something to someone else, they themselves have to have the utmost clarity before they do so. This leads to a thorough internalization of the material which raises them to a different level than they were before.

This is because they want to make sure that the material is clear and they cover their bases of what possibly their students could ask. By anticipating that, they increase their own knowledge while at the same time, imparting important lessons for their students.