Rabbi Hodakov’s School Tips

By COLlive reporter

Previously unknown directives on education from the Chief of Staff of the office of the Lubavitcher Rebbe were shared this week at a convention in Israel.

Speaking to the Kinus Hamechanchim, Rabbi Yechiel Malov, a former supervisor of Chabad schools, recalls advice he received from Rabbi Chaim Mordechai Aizik Hodakov obm.

“The Mitzvah of ‘And you shall teach them to your sons’ (veshinantam levanecha) applies to teachers and their students,” Rabbi Hodakov said, according to Malov.

“The same way a father thinks about his son 24 hours a day, so too should a teacher think about his student – even when he is at home.”

Malov said that Rabbi Hodakov, an educator and pedagogue, told him pupils should be using new siddurim each school year “to create excitement and warmth each year.”

He also asked, possibly in the name of the Rebbe, to hang up in classrooms a sign with the various acronyms of the month of Elul, each pointing out another way to do teshuva.

On the first day of school, Rabbi Hodakov also told him, tables in the classroom should be set up as a “cheis” and be covered with a white table cloth, candles and decorations to create “a festive atmosphere.”

Another speaker at the conference was Rabbi Menachem Dubruskin, a Mashpia in the Chabad Yeshiva in Migdal Haemek.

He told how the famed Montreal Mashpia Rabbi Volf Greenglass OBM once complained to the Rebbe that when speaking with bochurim about davening, “they do not take it to heart.”

The Rebbe answered, “merchandise that you don’t have cannot be marketed. You need to be infused and living with it to pass it on to a student so that it should be absorbed by him.”