Billboard of a Different Kind

Originally published on Sivan Rahav-Meir's Facebook page, translated by Hillel Fendel

Billboard outside the Yeshiva High School "Orot HaZor'im" 

The photo accompanying this article shows a billboard in a small moshav in the Galilee, just outside the Yeshiva High School "Orot HaZor'im." It shows students learning Talmud, a page from Tractate Shabbat, and the announcement that the school will soon begin studying the first chapter of that tractate. What are the sponsors trying to sell? Rabbi Gad Hermann of Orot HaZor'im told the story to popular speaker Sivan Rahav-Meir:

"At the end of last year, the billboard in question heralded with great excitement a new crime series on one of the cable television networks. Whoever came to the Yeshiva would see it. I once spoke to the students with sorrow that it seems to assume as a given that everyone is waiting breathlessly for the series to begin – as if, 'it is our life and we will discuss it day and night,' as we say in our prayers about the Torah.

I told them, 'Just imagine if billboards would feature other, more positive things that are about to begin, such as that our class is about to start studying the first chapter of Tractate Shabbat!'

It seems that the students truly took this to heart. During the summer vacation, without my knowledge, they saved up and chipped in to create this new billboard ad! They designed it, had it enlarged, and bought the space – for more than 2,000 shekels. On the first day of the new school year, I drove to the Yeshiva, and I simply couldn't believe my eyes! And like me are thousands of other drivers who pass that way every day in this month of Elul, seeing an ad like they never saw before!"