My teacher Arthur Kurzweil, who used to drive Rabbi Steinsaltz whenever he came to the U.S., recounts a talk the Talmud scholar gave at a religious high school in his book, On the Road with Rabbi Steinsaltz. “He said, ‘Look, I don’t know that much about many things, but I know a little bit about Torah study. Make the lives of your Torah teachers as miserable as you can. Try to trip them up and find contradictions in what they say. Ask them the most difficult questions you can think of.’ When he was leaving the principal got up and told the students, ‘Don’t take him too literally.’ At which point, Steinsaltz goes and takes the microphone back and says, ‘My message to you today is: Make the lives of your teachers as miserable as you possibly can.’ And then he walked off the stage.”

Rumi teaches us to follow a “severe teacher” who will lead us into open spaces, but a student who makes the teacher suffer?  I think what Rabbi Steinsaltz means to teach is that we should squeeze everything we can from our teachers, make them think with us, work hard for us, wrestle with us, so we can move as far along on our path as is humanly possible.

The greatest of teachers, Moses, is a prime example of this. Had the Hebrew people not resisted, questioned, whined, complained and balked at nearly everything like stubborn teenagers, would Moses have risen to the level of leader he did? Would the slave mentality have been bred out of the nation without the struggle, like the struggle that strengthens a muscle?

Or Jacob, who through wrestling with the “man”  in the dark, and refusing to let go until he was blessed by the encounter, transformed into Israel- the Godwrestler. As student wrestles with teacher, perhaps both can wrestle into a larger truth than they would have otherwise discovered.

What “teacher” do you need to wrestle with today, to get the most from the encounter?

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Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz (born 1937) is a teacher, philosopher, social critic, and spiritual mentor, who has been hailed by Time magazine as a “once-in-a-millennium scholar”. He has devoted his life to making the Talmud accessible to all Jews. Originally published in modern Hebrew, with a running commentary to facilitate learning, his Steinsaltz edition of the Talmud has also been translated into English, French, Russian and Spanish.