Teacher’s Open Letter Urges Students to Use Summer for Growth

As the summer vacation begins, educator Rabbi Yehoshua Oderberg published a heartfelt open letter to his students, accompanied by a poem. He writes about the fatherly bond between teacher and pupil, a connection he says does not depend on time or distance, and frames the long break as a chance to turn what was learned during the year into independent creativity and action.

Oderberg grounds that idea in classical Jewish sources, citing the Talmud’s statement in Sanhedrin that anyone who teaches a friend’s child Torah is considered as if he fathered him, and Maimonides’ ruling that a student must honor his teacher, even more than his father, because a father brings a child into this world while a teacher brings him to the world to come. He says the relationship is not just literary language, but a real spiritual bond formed in class, in conversations, on the corridor, on the playground and in shared singing.

He tells his students that he watches them with pride, hope and prayer as summer approaches, and recalls Rabbi Aryeh Levin, known as the “father of prisoners,” who once met a former student who had changed his appearance and lifestyle and reassured him, “Do you think that because you changed your clothes, my love for you has lessened? In my eyes you remain the same beloved student.” Oderberg says that even when school is empty, he continues to love his students as a spiritual father.

The letter urges students not to treat summer as a time to shut down spiritually, but as an opportunity to flourish on their own, take the values and Torah they learned and turn them into meaningful life. He closes by telling the student to go into the holiday with “full hands,” create, do, grow and spread his wings, while knowing that the teacher’s heart and eyes remain with him until they meet again.