Life of Yeshiva Guy

Gedolim tzaddikim b’missasan yoser m’b'chayeihen.
-Chulin, 7B

He is so weak. Will he remember me, close as we once were? The endless schmuessen, shailos, the sharfe shtuchs? I can barely push open the clinic’s heavy glass doors. Upstairs, there is someone, and something, that I’m not sure I want to see. I’d prefer the recollections I retain be unblemished by the mareh that awaits. Visions of him roaring at me, almost terrifying in his klurkeit, then softly, convincingly, joyously explaining pshat. Me, coming around to his point of view, at last. How could I not? The impeccable logic, the sound hashkafa…I much prefer those scenes be unmarred. Then, too, would he remember me at all? They’d warned me. He had his moments.

The pristine white sterility of the hospital room infects my voice as I greet Rebbi. Gingerly sitting down on the uncomfortable vinyl, his rheumy eyes examine, reexamine me, slowly reaching recognition. I knew he wouldn’t have forgotten me.

His head, once resplendent with a magnificent white beard, and like his hands, never ever stopping for a moment, barely nods as he acknowledges my presence. The beard no more now, his hand, a sickly shade of pea, moves little by little toward the side of the bed at which I fidget. I can’t stand the interminable trek, and bring my hand over the rail to meet his. His fingers curl around mine forcelessly, with less strength than the grasp of a newborn babe. So at odds with the powerful clasp of old.

Sitting there, I don’t know what to say. I fumble, finally repeating a vort that Rebbi had once told me on that week’s parsha. I don’t know if he chapped it, if he recognized it at his, or if he even recognized it at all. I don’t think so. I feel ashamed at him, for him, but not really. Really, I’m ashamed at myself, at us. At the human condition. How I had lost touch with him over the years; Beis Midrash, Eretz Yisroel, moving on and moving up, so many excuses. Like telephones don’t exist. Like I couldn’t have popped in on him Bein Hazmanim. Like I couldn’t have written- how he loved the written word. Finally, after sitting there for a miserable half hour, communicating without words, I get up to leave. I don’t want to come back. I don’t think I’ll be able to come back.

A year later, I am shoveling dirt. The stinging, cleansing tears I’d expected, hoped for, even, do not make an appearance. Even as my hands burn from the burnished wood of the handle, there is no easy relief. The levaya was moving, the hespedim inspirational. Memories. But throughout it all, I can’t get banish a single thought from my mind. It stays with me until the Beis Hachaim; it stays with me still.

I realize, I remember, a basic truth of Yiddishkeit. That even as Rebbi was getting weaker, dying, he wasn’t really.

That as I, as we- his talmidim- continue on, he’s only growing stronger.

Chazak V’ematz Rebbi.

In Yeshiva:

• Nautica (without the boat label) shirt. Freshly starched, Davidka only. Mezlan belt. No sweater. Ecco shoes, lightly scuffed by professional shoe shiner.

In Dira:

• Black cardigan, all buttons closed. Scarf, bohemian tied down middle of shirt. Cig in one hand (ML only), coffee/Pepsi Max in other.

On the Street:

• Scarf, gray/black cashmere, casually tossed behind shoulder. Davening jacket, one button closed. Hat. No coat.

On Chanukah Trip to Tzefas for Shabbos:

• Pack regular suit pants, suit jacket, Shabbos hat. Forget everything in dira (alternative: car is full because extra guy stuffed himself in at last minute), end up with just an almost white shirt and pants.

Back Home Bein Hazmanim:

• New wardrobe. People wear clothing in America. Meshugoyim.

A milieu of musty tomes mounted  on mahogany bookshelves surrounds me. Many of them seforim or Jewish literature, calling my name, are juxtaposed with goyish novels-classics mostly, but not all- them too calling. Just above my drooping head and immediately to the right, the window is telling its own tale of the approaching Alos HaShachar. Outside, I can hear the birds begin their chant, beginning their mission of shirah to the baShefer. Turning the last page and exhaling the satisfied sigh issued upon completing a story well told, I begin to get dressed.

In this compact living room that does triple duty as a bedroom and dining room, there are neatly stowed all manner of entertainment, both for children and adults. For the kids; an assortment of American-made toys lovingly ferried over one at a time by adoring grandparents. For adults; books, seforim, CDs, a Nintendo Wii, and more are all in mute evidence. I look around me, tired but not exhausted, and can’t help but feel warmth emanating from each and every article of furniture in view.

My first invitation to this wonderful home had been warm, and totally without reservation, although with qualification. The host, R’ Yisroel, a wonderful yid and close friend, had forewarned me that, in his words, their home was small on space but big on love. Truer words have never been spoken.

And now, as I change clothes, the rising sun streams in through the blinds, lighting up the room. R’ Yisroel pokes his head in. A morning person, he cheerily bids me a good morning, asking me how I slept. I’m not a morning guy myself, but I hadn’t slept, allowing me to return his salutation with corresponding verve.

Coming home from Shacharis, we are greeted with an assortment of breakfast options. Two types of yogurt, cereal, and OJ are all proffered. R’ Yisroel, an ehrnste yerei shamayaim, is not (yet) makpid on mehadrin when it comes to eating, but is super-machmir on mehadrin hachnosas orchim; the cuisine is kulo Eidah and the like, in my honor.

Later that night, after an excellently prepared Shabbos Seudah, including a chicken soup that my Europa’ishe Bubbe herself would have slurped down to the last drop, they retire to the sofa, and I to the comfy armchair. Schmoozing about life, and beyond, I find myself at ease with this family with whom I have nothing in common. He wears a srugie; I a black velvet kippah. He is heart and soul a Zionist; I a confirmed anti-Tzioni. He made the not-inconsequential sacrifices to make Aliyah; I see no difference between Yerushalayim and Lakewood (Lakewood hee Yerushalayim). Like the wine served at the seudah from a local Golan winery, the conversation flows. At one point, the conversation touches on his absorbing background. To my surprise, he considered smichah, for a tekufa. He knowledge of Yoreh Deah, apparently, is what is behind his insistence on  adhering to the kulos of the Rabbanut. Even his kulos shtam from chumros.

One of the children in the mishpacha, a young girl named Rivkah, is as precocious as they come. She is also, as it happens, as touchy feely as they come. I am not used to the exuberant, and numerous, hugs she dispenses randomly, and without warning. Nor the endless requests to read her Princess books, the constant babbling about events at her gan, the Wiggles (a children’s TV show), or even her total lack of inhibition around strangers. Due to reasons I cannot fathom, she becomes a confirmed chossid of mine; the feeling mutual, I find myself talking to this girl of six about her opinions of her next door neighbor and everything else.

She is, in more than one way, symbolic of the family itself; deeply caring, loving of everyone without exception, yet also content to live and let live.

At lunch, we dine in the company of an additional awesome family, another siman of R’ Yisroel and his Eishes Chayil’s open home. Crowded around the groaning table laden with Shabbos delicacies (cholent conspicuously absent- some Tzionim are not into it, something that bewilders me to this day), we schmooze right up until Mincha.

By the time Havdalah rolls around, I’ve discovered that R’ Yisroel harbors musical talent beneath the knit white yarmulke. After he plays for a bit, it’s time to leave. I begin packing up, but with far less space than when I came. I’m leaving with a veritable library, books I can’t wait to read. I’m not worried about the when or the how of the returning of the seforim; I know I’ll be back. Rivkah, too, isn’t content to let me leave without a zecher. She hands me a yellow post-it note, folded over. Running out the door, I don’t have time to examine it too closely. Wishing her well and promising to come back soon, R’ Yisroel and I set out for the bus station.

Arriving back at the dira and dumping my stuff on the floor, weariness overtakes me. Drifting off to dreams of black hatted ploughmen working the fields of the Golan, accompanied to the music of R’ Yisroel’s saxophone, I don’t even the koach to unpack. Sunday evening after night seder, time is finally found for proper stowing of the various accoutrements one requires when going up North (sandalim for shul, l’moshel).

A month or so passes, and I’m going away for Shabbos again. Prepping the suitcase by checking it’s pockets, I rediscover the post-it from Rivkah.

Just glimpsing its corner brings back the memory of the Shabbos, the mishpacha, and the warm little house. Grinning, I open it up slowly. On it, a painstakingly drawn likeness of what cannot be mistaken as anything else than a yeshiva bochur (the hat leaves no doubt) covers the paper from top to bottom. It is the small something on the left, though, that brings me pause, and has me peering closer. The girl, whether in her childish naivete, or perhaps with vision that doesn’t allow for such labels as anti-this, or anti-that, has drawn a sort of siman.

It is a Magen Dovid, symbol of the medinah.

I hang it next to my bed.

“The city of happiness can only be found in the state of mind.”

There once was a cozy little shtetl, nestled amid tens of similar shtetlach, set in the rolling hills and valleys of the Golan Heights. Here, high above the rest of the country, lives a folk of a different type than their urban brethren in the more metropolitan areas of the Merkaz. These folk, altogether more relaxed, live in a special sort of place. It is a place, excuse the cliche, of surpassing enchantment.

For a very long time, I couldn’t put my finger on it. What was it about this quasi-village, quasi-city that captured and held all who came near it? How could an enclave, if you will, of the Chardal movement draw so many Charedim to its heart when summer came? Indeed, why was there never a Shabbos that passed that I was the only black hat there- always, another shachor could be found visiting.

The answer gradually came to me, but not, as you might expect, whilst strolling along the winding rustic paths at the edge of the moshav, looking out at twinkling lights of Syria, at once both soothing and violently frightening in their nearness. Nor in the midst of a learning session in the hesder yeshiva there, surrounded on all sides by seforim detailing what the Halachic options during and before war were.

It came to me only as I returned to Yerushalayim. To the more frenetic but still semi-desultory pace of what can only be described as the closest city to Brooklyn in terms of pace (among Anglos, at least). Only then, as I pondered the shailah once again, could I feel and perhaps understand a little about the mysterious pulse of the charming shtetl in the Etzbah HaGolan. Forgive me in advance for not explaining this more clearly, but if you’ve ever been to a similar moshav or yishuv, you’ll understand at once what I mean. If you haven’t, I don’t know that the best baal masbir in the world could do this idea justice.

I realized that in this little moshav in the Golan, one could be with people and without people.

allegory |ˈaləˌgôrē|noun ( pl. -ries)a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one

Only boring, uncreative people read guidebooks. That said, if you’ve ever spent any amount of time browsing through a Rand McNally, you’ll no doubt notice much prose devoted to the subject of arising in the morn. Whether a poetic bit about the local wildlife and their propensity for waking up themselves and their surroundings for vasikin every day, or an envy inspiring paragraph glorifying the greatness of the Bohemian lifestyle and slumbering on until past midday, tourists seem obsessed with what time arise. Not so yeshiva bochurim; we wake faithfully, each day, with the sun, to serve our Creator. Or we’re supposed to. Listen, you try sleeping four hours a day and putting a full day of learning. It ain’t easy. Particularly when…

Each and every morning for the past few months my alarm clock has been neither the lyrical chirping of Jerusalem’s parakeets, nor the shrill trill of the standard 20 shekel electric Timex designed to tick the flip out of anyone unlucky enough to be in a 200 yard radius. It has not been a gentle, or rough, tap on the shoulder, nor an insistent vekker whose idea of entertainment is to count backwards from 100… in Yiddish, mimicking the Rosh Yeshiva all the while.

No, the aural accompaniment to transition from dead to alive has been graciously arranged by the Jerusalem Municipality. For reasons unknown, our fine iryah has decided to rebuild the streets of Geulah. Formerly dinky, squalid streets shall soon resemble the quaint crescents of eastern Switzerland, down to the faux gas streetlights. In the process, our tiny, crisscrossing alleyways have been gridlocked for months; drivers are advised to stay away from the area unless they wish to leave quickly- in an ambulance, due to coronary failure. Taxi cabs b’shittah will not enter the shchuna, claiming their meters have inexplicably failed, and quoting exorbitant 100 plus shekel prices for a ten minute nesiah.

And so, heavy machinery of all kinds, including jackhammers, diesel shovels, and telemographicbicorborators drill and detonate their way to the center of the earth in a non-fiction nightmare of Wellsian proportions. Why this admittedly admirable expedition had to take place 3 feet from by bedroom window is the only thing that has me scratching my head. I suspect that the chief architect of the wonderfully functional light rail was bored, now that he finished showing the world how similar Jerusalem is to Paris and Milano. [Side note: Do me a favor, should you happen to bump into him, and let him know that you are tremendously proud of our (read:Kol Toshvei D’Yerushalayim) accomplishment; and that he shouldn't feel disappointed that the actual rail cars aren't moving yet, never mind the seven years of construction. After all, we console ourselves by gazing at our beautiful bridge. Eizeh Yofi.]

It is for the above reasons that I have acquired a deep seated hatred of any and all heavy machinery. And although I shall have to live with bumping into my former brethren, the teeming yeshivishe masses, in Lancaster who are oleh regel every Yom Tov like lemmings on their mindless mission, a man’s got to do what  a man’s got to do.

Wish me luck.