What a teacher has to transmit, if he is really a teacher, is how I can utilize myself.
They are giving a map.
I have my own road to walk on and nobody can walk it for me.
What I really need is for someone to show me the way.
There are very few mystical descriptions in the Talmud—it is traditionally a hidden literature—but in one place Rabbi Akiva, the oldest of a certain group, says, “When you come to a certain place, don’t say so and so.”
That is the work of a teacher.
You come to a certain pathway, you have a right turn or a left turn, one way of doing things and another way.
Someone can tell you the right direction and then you have to walk on.
He can’t walk instead of you.
You walk on.
And then you get to something else.
–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz