Life of Yeshiva Guy

“Itzter is a tzeit fun preidah”.

(Now is a time of leave-taking).

-Yeshivishe Goodbye Saying

I write as I fly away from Yerushalayim, my home of two years. As I fly away from the Shechinah HaKedoshah. At approximately five hundred mph, I am likely out of Eretz Yisroel’s airspace already. “Avirah da’arah machkim“, and from here on in, this unique advantage will no longer be part of my life, part of my learning. I miss it already.

I leave now, not knowing when or if I may return. Life is funny that way. Surefire plans tend to burn up and melt away into the ether. Ethereal is man, and the either or of his essentially incapable hands and mind is only the first blockade in the obstacle course that is life. But it is sure that I leave- I have left.

And so it is a time of preidah.

It is an interesting thing, preidah. The Brisker Rov once asked his son R’ Meir  the following question as they strolled down Rechov Dovid Yellen: If Avraham Avinu kept Kol HaTorah Kulah, why not be mal himself and his son(s) before the actual tzivui? Why wait until the commandment was articulated? More than one answer presents itself. But the Rov suggested a moreh’dike derher in Bris. A Bris, a Covenant, by definition, requires two tzdadim, two sides. Until HKB”H’s will for Avraham to perform the act manifested itself as an express chiyuv, there were no two tzdadim, and therefore Bris by its very nature could not be performed.

Preidah, as a rule, is the same.

Typically, preidah takes place when one is transitioning from one point to another. In the purely megusham’dike sense, one takes leave his old stomping grounds, his habitual haunts, and moves on to a new location, be it a new home, workplace, or even shul. In the ruchnius’dike vein, one bids farewell to his former yeshiva and shifts to a new sort of environment. Sometimes this may be to a new yeshiva, sometimes out of the yeshiva world altogether. But usually, whatever the change, one is moving towards something that he perceives as greater or the next stepping stone in life.

The same is true of this situation. Life waits for no man, and it is time to move on. But it is different. In a certain very real way, Yerushalayim does not function as another rung in the ladder of life. Although it is maaleh a person who seeks to ascend, it does not do so like the other steps of the ladder.

It is a ladder unto itself.

Rung by rung, I’ve seen boys grow into men here, advancing slowly but surely. The pirchei hayeshiva arrive here, oftentimes with dreams of becoming talmidei chachomim, but without the tools to realize their vision. It is here, after and during ascension of the ladder, that they discover and create the instruments to achieve their goals.

And because Yerushalayim is not a cheilek of the regular seder haolam, it is a unique. It cannot and does not function as simply another location to move to or away from. It becomes a locus of growth. It is Yerushalayim. And Yerushalayim serves as penultimate to no other locale, even mekomos shel Torah such as Lakewood.  Once a kinyan has been performed on Yerushalayim, it is impossible to be mafkir or makneh it to someone else. Like becoming or being a Yid, dispossesion is now no longer an option.

There are no two tzdadim in preidah here, no two points to transition to or from. There is no bittersweet here, no two sides, no bitter and no sweet. There is just Yerushalayim. And so the preidah is not a preidah. There is the cherished memory of what I love here, what I lost here, and mostly what I gained here, but no preidah. Yerushalayim lives on in the heart of a Yid who has been koneh them, no matter where he is.

And I will miss it.

I will miss the sweet song of Lecha Dodi echoing through Geulah and the dira come Leil Shabbos. Every block, every street, every corner has its own special sound piped to it, a glorious harmony of the local shteibelach’s davening. Watching  Yerushalayimer yidden, families that date back to the altshtudt and old yishuv… grandfathers, fathers, children. Hands linked, walking to shul, a chain of yiddishkeit treading the same path their zeides and zeides before them trod; to shtiebl Friday night to welcome the Shabbos Kallah with song and tefillah. Wherever you go, whatever it is you watch or hear, the kedushah is inescapable.

I will miss the sounds of early morning Yerushalayim. The eerily discomfiting chant of the muezzin, the cats screeching as they fight their endless fight, and the faint footfall of old R’ Velvel, who davens vassikin every day, rain or shine. The sounds of the produce and bakery trucks, roaring through the impossibly cramped streets of Zichron Moshe on their mission to restock the makolets, feeding the populace, keeping yidden going. The fartugs daf yomi shiur, given to a people that has never stopped waking at sunrise to learn, and never will.

I will miss the ancient buildings of the old city, the winding alleys and meandering streets of paved cobblestone, somehow all leading to the same place. To the same source. To the source.

I will miss the pashtus. Nowhere else does a culture exist that is not predicated on abstinence but is yet so content with so little. Nowhere else can I light up a child’s face just by handing him a single shekel on Purim. Where else can I knock on a gadol’s door, and does the door handle fall off in my hand? Nowhere else do such an abundance of people live in such scarcity- by choice. Where else is there a Yerushalayim?

So most of all, I will miss Yerushalayim. The city, a sum total of its people- unzere yidden- its history, and its mekomos hakedoshim, emits a siren call that cannot be ignored. I leave now, ignoring the call, not giving way before the siren. Bound to the mast of boat of life am I, my ship having set its course, its compass due West.

I leave now, knowing not if or when I may return. But hope springs eternal, and as I listen to the beat of my heart, I hear it speaking. It is one with my mind. It is one with the Jewish people. Yerushalayim calls. I hope to return. But until then, ah, until then. If when the time is past the city no longer calls, oh, never call it loving.

I will miss you Yerushalayim.