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The “Ashmores Haboker”
schedule which calls on boys to rise from sleep one hour before davening
each morning, and to begin their day with a spirited study session, is
favored by many yeshivos. Boys rise like lions to greet the day with
vivacity as they file into their batei midrashos to study additional
chapters from the masechtos that their yeshivos are studying.
Each month, ten blatt are “consumed,” and the boys get tested on
hundreds of pages at the end of each season.
The administrations of
the yeshivos in which Ashmores Haboker has been implemented
report a revolutionary change in the entire deportment of the boys enrolled…
The day is something entirely different when it commences with dedicated
study an hour before davening. These boys now appear more promptly at all of
their daily study sessions, as they have acquired a new appreciation for the
value of time. (A related consequence is that bedtime is adhered to, with
the program participants’ cognizance of the importance of getting a good
night’s rest in order to meet the Torah challenges of the next day.)
At one of the gatherings
for Dirshu, the Rosh Yeshiva of Ateres Yisrael, Hagaon Harav
Baruch Mordechai Ezrachi, shlita, noted that the idea for this
program was germinated during one of his visits to Toronto. When he
wittnessed the early morning Kollel of Dirshu, founded by Rav
Dovid Hofstedter of Toronto, when he beheld first hand dozens of men
studying fervently, animated by the sounds of Torah, he thought that he
might suggest to the illustrious founder of the kollel the notion
that the concept be injected within the conventional yeshiva system
elsewhere.
The suggestion was
accepted, and the rest is history. The success of the endeavor has been
sensational, surpassing all expectations. Testimony to this are the masses
of yeshiva bachurim busy at their Gemaros each morning in the
dawn, or pre-dawn, hour prior to Shacharis.
The ideal has proven
attractive to many, even beyond the Dirshu enrollment. In a
number of yeshivos, the administration has offered rewards of various
sorts to other young men who wish to give up a portion of their leisure time
and consecrate it to the early morning study. Noteworthy is the fact that
here too, it is only the exceptional young men who maintain the stamina and
the determination to stick with the program, which requires not only their
diligence and their high grades, but also their commitment to a rigidly
scheduled day.
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