Life of Yeshiva Guy

“Are you sure you don’t need a loan? How will you eat for the next week? Let me give you a loan”.

The words are gracious, sweet, almost. They are also belied by a passive aggressive anger I almost can’t bear. I don’t know what set this guy off, but I do know that whatever it is, he must be going through something awful. Allow me to backtrack…

It’s a gorgeous sunny afternoon in Yerushalayim, and I’m looking forward to beginning the new sugya with my chavrusa. A half hour before second seder, he calls me up to tell me that he’ll be delayed. So late, in fact, that he’s going to fell uncomfortable bouncing in so late. I can understand him; I know the bushis it entails only all too well. There is, however, a maaleh to learning in a different Beis Midrash every once in a while, so I tell him of a neat find I made while cruising through Rechavia last year. It’s a very geshmake Beis Midrash, and just far enough out of our regular stomping grounds that it’ll make for a perfect change of pace without disrupting our learning. I arrive a little early, and catch a nice, slowly paced mincha that evokes Elul nostalgia. These baalebatim really don’t have anything to do…

After mincha, I’m sitting down looking at a sefer when a kindly faced fellow with a slow, hobbled gait walks up to me. Looking up, I watch him carefully remove a white pamphlet from a torn plastic shopping bag. I groan inwardly. Kuntressim sellers are alternatively the bane and entertainment of yeshivaleit; sometimes we enjoy the interlude that these mostly colorful characters offer, but today, I’m not in the mood. Careful not to display my annoyance, however, I pay close attention to his three minute pitch. It turns out to be a fairly fascinating sefer- apparently, this guy went through Shas and Poskim several times, hunting for the interesting lishonos scattered all over. After assembling them, he performed years of research, and cross referenced the origins of different words with different languages. An interesting kuntriss- it piques my curiosity enough that it isn’t all that hard to maintain a polite look of interest on my face until he finishes.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any shekels on me at the moment- or rather, I have just enough for dinner. Telling him as much, I watch his face fall. He pushes me again, with a shorter, more targeted version of the pitch:

“I really recommend this sefer. I have no doubt it will be of tremendous advantage to you in your learning… here, take another look…”

By now, I’m losing my patience, and I paste what I hope is a polite smile on my face.

“I have no doubt that it could be useful; I just don’t have enough money for it at the moment”, I say slowly, but in a kind tone of voice.

The kind tone of voice gets misconstrued as patronizing, with my luck, and that brings us to his bitterly facetious response…

“Are you sure you don’t need a loan? How will you eat for the next week? Let me give you a loan”.

I’m at a loss for words. Stunned by the sadness I see slipping across his features, I grope awkwardly for a response. “Err, you know…I mean that I have money, just not on me…”

My excusal doesn’t do anything for him. Polite or not, refusal is difficult to take. My relative age and what he mistook for a patronization of him and his work didn’t help matters much either. Watching his slow, hobbled gait as he walks away, I can’t help but wondering where he finds the koach to continue to peddle his wares. Then too, the yeshiva crowd is a tough market to break; we are conditioned by years of yeshiva training to be initially skeptical of anything, and by years of yeshivish training to be skeptical of anyone. He has experienced the sad truth of this skepticism up close and personal, and I really can’t blame him for it. The mocking tone in his voice when he questioned if I needed a loan was merely mirroring the shtoltz matzav he must have picked in during his years immersed in the yeshiva world milieu.

I don’t have an answer to this problem; like so many others, it is an outcome of a world that has far more than good than bad. I wish I could tell him that we don’t mean to hurt him, that the scorn he feels directed towards himself isn’t targeted- that the shame he feels isn’t intended. But it is, in a way. Also, I don’t know how to say these things to him without embarrassing him further.

So I let him walk away, watching his slow, hobbled gait.

Emerson and Thoreau, Harvard men both, were once chapping a schmooze. Emerson was kvelling away; he was chapping hanaah that Harvard (at the time) featured so many different departments. As he told Thoreau, “Harvard now has all of the branches of higher learning incorporated into its curriculum.”

To which Thoreau replied; “All the branches…and none of the roots”.

He looks up, startled out of his otherworldly focus on the sefer in front of him, pulled back to the small shteeble room by the staccato beat of the teenaged chazzan’s repetition of Shemonah Esrei. Reverently closing the dusty tome, he caresses it with a gentle, feather-like touch, and places it carefully back into the seforim shrank, sandwiched between a standard Sefard siddur and a small sefer on the intricacies of the Birchas HaChamah.

Now swaying back and forth slowly to the niggun of the nusach, he is raptly attentive to the Chazaras HaShat”z. Kedusha comes, and with it I watch this Saraf say the “…sarfei kodesh…Kadosh, Kadosh“. He’s burning all the while.

Forehead beaded in sweat, hands clasped together in front of him, and eyes closed but not squeezed shut, he’s totally…somewhere else. I wish I knew where, exactly. What that place looked like.

After davening, I hang around. I want to observe him in a regular atmosphere. How he “firs zich” when he’s me’urev bein habriyos. Everyone seems to know him. He offers his hand to all, regardless of age. An average, not particularly illuminating or otherwise noteworthy smile crosses his face when he does so. Of middle age, his jet black beard, smooth skin, and standard reckel don’t offer me any clues as to who he might be, or why he seemed so… holy during davening. Gathering my thoughts and disregarding them at the same time, I walk up to him.

I ask him in the softest, most non-confrontational voice I possess:

“Mi atah“?

He stares at me for a moment, confused.

“Ani hashamash“.

Asked and answered.

I neglected to mention the most geshmake thing I saw over my entire Shabbos in RBS.

Walking back from the Shabbos morning seudah, I was literally drenched in sweat. I’m still unclear as to who’s brilliant idea it was to carve out a city on top of a mountain in the face of an ever present sun, but he better hope he never meets me in a dark alley. Although assuming he stays in RBS, there is little danger of that- any alleys there, assuming they exist b’chlall, are no doubt bright as day, 24/7.

Anyway, mentally complaining and mopping sweat off my brow, face, and hands, I spied a colorful sign on a wall running alongside one of the properties. Angling myself to pass closer to it, I could make out the hand written  colorful letters on the sign about 20 feet away.

Underneath the poster was an old rickety stand/table, on which was a cooler. Hmm. Getting closer, I could make out…

“Good Shabbos. Filtered Water”.

Uh huh. Now that’s what I’m talking about.

Good Shabbos!

I went to Ramat Beit Shemesh for Shabbos.

Place was nice, without question. The neighborhoods are setup nicely, and the streets are hilly, but pretty. Unfortunately, the place is “k’shmo kein hu“; i.e, very, very hot. I think it felt hotter than Yerushalayim mostly because there aren’t any tall buildings around to provide shade. So walking in the street is a killer, and definitely not recommended.

But since we’re about the good, not the bad, find below, in no specific order, are some of the more notably enjoyable things about my Shabbos in RBS:

• The minyan I davened at (Aish Kodesh). Neat, varm, BT/Ballabatish/Yeshivish/Heimish cholent mix of a place. Quite enjoyable. The JB/YU books in the back also provided ample reading material for Bein Gavra l’Gavra .
• Friday morning basketball (9AM-11AM). That was some serious olam that played there. Older crowd (I was likely the only >25 yr old there), but quite competitive. I won’t be announcing my stat sheet for the morning, so forget it. Some of the local Twitter chevra also play in the game.
• I chapped a velt of hana’ah from the mix. MO/Yeshivish live close by each other. That isn’t to say that there aren’t politics, but, nu, politics are the spice of life, right?
• The hostess made the most awesome pecan pie. Seriously, I would take the bus there and back just for the pie. Forget about the cookies. I have serious tz’dadim they serve that stuff in Gan Eiden. Hmmm. Would that be pie-in-the-sky?
• I walked away with a free sefer (from my host). #EmeseMaaseh
• They have a real life Yiddle League (that’s Yiddishe Little League, for those of you not from Brooklyn) there. Baseball! Can you imagine?
• Some of the streets there have real houses. Not apartments. And, of course, the corollary; central A/C!
• I met the most amazing 6 year old yingeleh Friday morning. He didn’t stop speaking, and the entire time, I couldn’t stop laughing. I’m shtark choshed I’m gonna have to switch to MO if they consistently produce such kinderlach, although the Abba claims he’s one in a million.
• I heard a great vort from a YU R”Y…my host was a YU talmid, and I pressured him for some YU Torah. He delivered. Sweet.
• Seudah Shlishis at the Goldmeier’s. They have a great English Jewish library, and the chocolate mousse was impressive. Had fun.
• Did I mention that pecan pie?