Like, I suspect, many readers of my vintage and even some younger ones, I was exposed at a tender age to the Just So Stories of Rudyard Kipling. They fascinated me: the urgent, repetitive rhythm of the prose, the apparently educational function of the fictional stories—they were magic to my ears. How the Camel Got its Hump, How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin, How the Leopard Got Its Spots, all of these were delightful tales that were liberally spiced with what I now know to be mussar—moral chastisement. From the moment I heard that wonderful line from The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo (“He was grey and he was woolly and his pride was inordinate”) I knew that something bad was going to befall the kangaroo, even though I had not a clue as to the meaning of “inordinate”.
But my real favourite, as a little boy who asked a lot of
questions, was always The Elephant’s Child. This story opens as follows:
There was one Elephant- a new
Elephant – an Elephant’s child- who was full of ‘satiable curtiosity, and that
means he asked ever so many questions. And he filled all Africa with his
‘satiable curtiosities.
He asked his tall aunt, the
Ostrich, why his tail feathers grew so, and his tall aunt spanked him with her
hard, hard claw. He asked his tall uncle, the Giraffe, what made his skin
spotty, and his tall uncle spanked him with his hard, hard hoof. He asked his
broad aunt, the Hippopotamus why her eyes were red and his broad aunt spanked
him with her broad, broad hoof. And he asked his hairy uncle, the Baboon, why
melons tasted just so, and his hair uncle spanked him with his hairy, hairy
paw. He asked questions about everything he saw, or heard, or smelt, or touched
and all his uncles and his aunts spanked him. And still he was full of
‘satiable curtiosity!
One fine morning this Elephant’s
Child asked a new question that he had never asked before: “What does a
Crocodile have for dinner?” Everybody said, “Hush!” in a loud and dretful tone,
and they spanked him for a long time.
Plot spoiler: the Kolokolo Bird directs him to the river
where he unknowingly encounters the Crocodile, having never seen one before.
The Crocodile nearly lures him to his death, seeking to pull him into the river
by his nose. The Elephant’s Child, saved by the intervention of a local snake,
is devastated to discover that his little nose, which is now very sore, has
grown unrecognisably long. He has become the first elephant in possession of a
trunk, which he soon puts to a variety of gratifying uses.
The Elephant’s Child is classic Pirkei Avot
territory. Hillel, at Avot 2:6, teaches (among other things):
לֹא
הַבַּיְּשָׁן לָמֵד, וְלֹא הַקַּפְּדָן מְלַמֵּד
Someone who is timid cannot
learn, and someone who is short-tempered cannot teach.
Our sages practically unanimously explain that the reason
why a timid person cannot learn is that he will be too scared to open his mouth
and ask a question—either because his teacher will tell him off for asking a
stupid one (Rashi) or because he is afraid to be put to shame in front of his
classmates (per the Bartenura).
The importance of asking questions is fortified later in
Avot, at 5:9 (where asking questions that are relevant marks out the chacham,
or wise person, from the golem) and 6:6 (where the process of question-and-answer
is listed among the 48 ways to acquire Torah).
In the context of Torah learning, asking questions is more
than a way of securing an answer. It is part of an ongoing process of strengthening
a relationship between the teacher and the taught. A teacher who is sensitive
to the needs, interests and intellectual resources of a pupil can fine-tune that
process. How often do we hear in a shiur or chavruta words such as “the
question you are really asking is …” or “you could have asked a better question
…”?
First the internet browser and now artificial intelligence
are means by which a curious talmid can access information. If he is diligent,
he can track down and verify its sources and be much the wiser for using these
powerful tools. But they do not add up to the relationship between rabbi and
talmid that has been the basis of the passing of our laws and our traditions across
the continents and through the millennia. For the Elephant’s Child, who only
wanted to find a fact—what the Crocodile ate for dinner—an online search would
have provided the answer swiftly and without danger to his life and limb. But without
a deeper personal and often emotional involvement in the learning process, he
would literally not have grown into the elephant we have today.
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