Yeshiva Guy

Due to time constraints, I couldn’t do a new rant on this subject, so I’m just going to refer y’all to this old one- those of you who have time to be reading blogs Erev Pesach, anyway. Here it is, from last year:

http://yeshivaguy.com/pom-pesachs-or-pomegranate-passovers/2010/04/02/

Chag Kasher V’Sameach!

Isolated. Insular. Intolerant.

The chareidi and yeshivish community is often been described as such. It may very well be that we are those things. After all, the average bochur in a mainstream yeshiva doesn’t know what the most recent behala on the blogosphere is. The average Bais Yaakov girl doesn’t know what the latest in haute couture is. Certainly, the regular yingelech in cheder are blissfully unaware of the madness prevalent on the crisscrossing byways and highways that speed secular youth toward a life of, well, emptiness.

We are insulated.

Beautifully so, I think. Have you ever taken a walk in peaceful Meah Shearim on a Friday night? Watched the boys and girls of eight or nine play in the streets? The poetic innocence on the faces of the Yerushalmi kids twinkles in the twilit alleyways. Freshly scrubbed and bathed, they play with joyful, carefree abandon. Abandoning the yokes of a society gone insane on them, they are, in a word, children. When was the last time you met up with a nine year old who was only nine years old? We say, “oh, what a smart child you are”, chap a knip, and move on, subconsciously silencing the screams of our own childhood… itself so much more innocent. Children are meant to be children, not adults. In frightening irony, however, adults behave childishly and attempt to shortcut their children’s most vital experience- their youth. They nuke their progenies’ time growing up, and nuclear is nothing short of the result.

So as secular society stumbles forward in its mad rush towards moral oblivion, know that the seclusion of our community is good, and true, to our roots. It is Torah. Results, too, are on the side of the system. Just take a look at the thriving Torah communities built by men and women educated in the very same institutions that they now lead. Yes, the system is solid.

There is, sadly, a school of thought that has attracted some misguided students in recent years and attained a disproportionate voice in various online venues. I do not believe that the prattle of these pedagogues characterizes the majority Orthodox Jewry. Only that any voice, maintained in a forum lacking any opposite vocalization, and pedantic enough, will by default earn the following of what few students remain in the room.

These cynical Cassandras and doubting Thomases  attempt to attack our  insularness of the last thousand years or so with a few pithy lines of embarrassed, and embarrassing rhetoric. Always, it has been thus. Always, the naysayers have felt the need to fight organized Yiddishkeit. Dating back to Genesis itself, the scorner’s ban has been hurled by the cynics of every generation and geographic grade. Bans as old and foolish as when they were first sent on their way, to mock a righteous Avraham Avinu, the hurler’s never see fit to update their content or even originality.

And it is wrong. Allow me to demonstrate.

[Side note:

The propagators of said rhetoric are more often than not products of a society that has not worked for them. They are the result of an awesome factory like system designed by great men that may have wronged them- like every factory in the world, defective products are occasionally turned out. I wish, truly, that these men and ladies could find it in their hearts to forgive a system that did not intentionally do them harm.  And to understand that the defects in the systems' machinery are a result not of specific intent, but rather of an attempt to cater to the masses, to the median. Should a system with fewer tolerances for defects be put into place? Perhaps. But that is neither the purpose nor within the purview of this post.]

According to the argument, enveloping oneself in a community like the chareidi or yeshiva world’s current island-like approach leads to one thing- ignorance of the outside world. Nothing could be worse, or more embarrassing, according to them, than the yeshiva students who cannot intelligently discuss the latest developments in whatever reality TV show currently holds sway on America’s upper middle class. For shame, they cry! How dare we educate our children to avoid pop culture like the plague and focus on the most valuable of all pursuits?! Instead, they propose, expose them to the barrage of instantly available, vitally important news served up in real time on the news outlets. Have them assimilate constant reports of the violence and gore of the street.

But why? Why expose our innocent, protected youth to this? I can hear the sane voices questioning. But the voice answering from the darkness have an answer for this too.

Because one day they will be, must be, exposed to it themselves. What will happen when these children must grow up and face the world? They won’t know how to deal with it! They won’t be able to handle the ghastliness and gore of the outside world. So expose them to it early on. That’s the argument in a nutshell. And nuts it is. Here’s why.

Exposing our precious, our most precious, commodity early on to a world gone mad is patently ludicrous. It’s worse than that, actually; it is dangerous. An inaccurate analogy might be the swimming instructor who wishes to teach his charge how to swim. Wishing to do so in a no nonsense fashion and being a pragmatic instructor, he lifts his struggling pupil and bodily throws him into the raging river. In short order, the three year old boy drowns. “Swim, swim”, cries the teacher from the riverbank. To no avail. The child simply can’t deal with the overpowering, swirling waters of the river. Flailing wildly all the while, the child slowly slips under.

Taking our youth and wishing to equip them to deal with the mad milieu swirling round them can have devastating effects. To those who argue we will eventually need to do it anyway… I say this to them. For the same reason you do not choose to equip your ten year old with a .45 to defend himself using the logic of “one day he will need to know how to defend himself anyway”, we do not equip our young with potentially fatal tools.

And finally, we are intolerant.

We are intolerant of any threats on our young. Just as the herd gathers together to ensure the survival of its young by not exposing any of the kids, we too gather in on ourselves to protect our children. And we do not tolerate any charges of the unfaithful on our charges. We are intolerant of insurgents on our isolation.

So we must stay secluded.  In our perfect little worlds. But you’re welcome to join us any time.

“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.

Yerushalayim is host to hundreds of different yeshivos. The “yeshivish” appellation would be an apropos tag for many or most.There are a few diras that belong to MO or non Orthodox institutions that for whatever reason wish to define themselves a yeshiva. Fine. This post does not apply to them.

In any of the yeshivish diras located in Yerushalayim, the Motzei Purim scene is identical. On an incredibly dirty tablecloth of some form (likely the kind that is designed to be easily washable and therefore remain perpetually clean- only the makers never counted on bochurim diras, and the tablecloth is now hopelessly and forever stained) is scattered about tens and tens of wine bottles. Contained within the bottles are varying levels of alcoholic beverages, many of which were not the original inhabitants of their current hosts. And yet, all of these bottles and associated wines share a common characteristic. 
They were all purchased in the exact same fashion, with the exact same question.

The purchaser, in each case, asked the proprietor or wine store attendant for only one thing.

“Give me a dry wine that goes down easy”.

I can’t take my eyes off of them. Their simple movements, so deep, so awkward, so graceful. Their actions, so completely without guile, are not performances, like ours. Their eyes mirror the merry of their shadows, their spirits sunning the room with carefree joy.

It is Friday night, and it is magical.

The fifteen or so bochurim, aged seven to fourteen, were part of a program that brings autistic children to yeshivos and communities in throughout Eretz Yisroel. This Shabbos, they had joined the hesder yeshiva kehilla that my hosts were affilaited with. Having joined the yeshiva meal along with my hosts in the dining room, I’m  and alternately enjoying the food and schmoozing with my host and his whip sharp bochurim, themselves in elite hesder yeshivos. But I’m not really there. I’m watching the children, watching them eat, watching them breathe, watching them watch.

I feel almost as if what I’m doing is wrong, somehow. I can’t take my eyes off of them, and I don’t know why.

The dining room isn’t much anymore. It has the timeworn, slightly shabby look of yeshiva cafeterias everywhere. The plastic chairs, uncomfortable and unaesthetic, clearly weren’t selected by an interior designer. The seudah is served much like Shabbos meals in any other yeshiva. The same nominally paid or volunteer bochurim functioning as waiters, the same disposable white tablecloths, and the same punch, of course, with the same horrid aftertaste. I feel right at home. But I can’t take my eyes off of these children.

Finally, I break my trance and turn back to the host, a Rebbi in the yeshiva and no small talmid chacham. I ask him, why I can’t stop staring; what accounts for this, what is the depth behind the surface here?

His answer was delivered off the cuff and without preparation. I paraphrase:

When us ordinary people interact with others, we use our minds as a filter. Everything we do, everything our neshama wants us to do, is sifted through our minds. They don’t do this. And so, you are watching neshama, and only neshama, at work. Of course it is magical. Of course the impure are entranced by the pure. Of course us ordinary people are hypnotized. Extraordinary.

So that is why I can’t take my eyes off of them.

I’m hypnotized by neshama.

Nowadays, we’ve got many Rabbis without semicha. We even have some semichas without the Rabbis. -Anonymous

The below audio is an excerpt of Shlomo telling over the story of how got semichah from HaRav Hutner ZTZ”L. He did this at the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s insistence. Classic matzav.

Shlomo Gets Smicha from Yeshiva Guy on Vimeo.

Direct download link here.

“As if you could kill time without injuring eternity”.

-Henry David Thoreau

News, in its pure form as a medium of delivering information, has always been a wonderful idea. Indeed, the musag of having a grasp of the events that shape the world around us was, to various degrees, was encouraged by our sages.

Lately, however, the proliferation of the 24 hour news cycle, in conjunction with the dual Israel/USA frum news teams, has people gasping for breath. Bochurim, yungeleit… even baalebatim can hardly keep up. And one wonders, is this the way we are meant to consume information?

But that isn’t what this is about.

Take a look any one of the “big three” “yiddishe” internet news outlets, and find laughably idiotic tidbits, videos, and yes, even audio shiurim that have no business being published on a mainstream media outlet catering to the frum public. I deliberately avoid the term yeshivish public, being that true Bnei Torah avoid the web like the plague. (No, I am not completely oblivious to the irony of that statement.) Scan the headlines of these sites, if you will, and you might find it more of a challenge to spot an item containing real news than not. Arbitrary opinion pieces (not that much unlike this one) written by random people, cutesy poems authored by high school kids, and an odd assortment of what can only be termed eclectic informationals that do more to uniform the informed than the reverse have become the norm over the past few years.

I don’t understand how this came to be. How is it that watching clips of little children laughing, gorillas smoking, and high speed police chases became a legitimate form of spending time? Yiddishe culture, as a result of our religion (and being the same as), has always maximized what available time we had left after parnassa and Torah study. Putting aside the question of if and when that time even exists at all (lo yomush, etc.), it certainly was never spent viewing inane and insane media, without purpose or innate growth involved.

Traditionally, as far as this uneducated yeshiva bochur is aware, our forebears spent little time on what today is labeled “entertainment”. We were a busy folk; occupied primarily with learning Torah, communal work, charitable endeavors, and diverse fashions of enterprise, as permitted by our host countries.

True, one must, as the legendary Rebbi R’ Yerucham Kaplan ZTZ”L used to say, “chill zich”. But we were never meant to substitute the ikkar for the taful, to make it a matarah in of itself, and certainly not to prioritize it above all else. In reference to such lifestyles- the mislocuted “Western Civilization”- did Ghandi say “Western Civilization? I think it would be an excellent idea”. In contrast, our sundry spiritual spices of life were wholesome, constructive activities. Things like going on nature walks, appreciating fine architecture, and even botanically based edification.

At this point, the initiate might be wondering…what makes the above activities any different than watching YouTube, or indeed than the endless hours combing every nook and cranny that canny Zuckerberg himself never knew existed? Why should one’s subjective position on an individual’s preference as to how to spend his or her leisure time be more or less right than someone else’s?

To such questioners, I can respond only with what may come across as rhetoric, but should ring true to all who listen for the truth. To the question of what differentiates the mind numbing hours of cyber trawling- crawling might be more accurate- from soul expanding diversions such as nature walks, I say only this.

“Chaval al d’avdin v’lo mishtakchin“.

For years I couldn’t figure this out. Anytime anyone would happen across me garbed in the traditional costume of yeshiva bochurim (namely: black hat, jacket, white shirt) anywhere from Dan to Beersheva, people with even the most peripheral shaychis with yeshivaleit would assume they know which yeshiva I’m in. The Mir. I know this mistaken tendency isn’t davka related to me or my brand of hat or jacket; bochurim from every major yeshivishe yeshiva report this curious misfingerprinting of chevra.

Personally, I’ve been misidentified this way more times than I can remember, by people from all walks of life. Just as examples; a secular lady from Tel Aviv, a chosid from Ashdod, a Tzioni from up north, all united in this singular form of achdus.

I used to think that perhaps the Mir simply had a better PR machine than the nonexistent one(s) of their Soleveitchik led brethren. But then I discovered the origins of the Chelm legends. And it all made sense.

Everyone is familiar with the fables of Chelm. In heimish circles, Chelm is classically associated with the fool. Stories abound of the wild and wacky things Chelmites have performed in their untiring pursuit of the very pinnacle of imbecility. While the origins of the extreme denseness is apparently a source of much good natured debate among Jewstorians, my personal favorite goes as follows:

The people of Chelm were in fact a brilliant lot. Lovers of the book, and sincere rodfei chochmah, the batei midrashim there didn’t have light switches; the lights were simply kept on all the time. And yet, being a shtetl in Europe, there did exist a proportion of the populace whose intelligence levels were lower than the municipal average. Causing no end of grief to their more enlightened townsmen, eventually a movement formed with one purpose: to evict those townsmen in Chelm that had difficulty keeping up with the Rav’s weekly hashkafa shiur, with the Rosh Yeshiva’s blatt shiur, and conversation in general.

This movement, known as ACHZURIM (Association of Chelmites Having Zeal and Umbrage Relating to Idiocy in Men), finally gained a majority in the local legislative body. Presently, the great day came, and all Chelmites with an IQ of less than 120 were summarily evicted from the shtodt. They were, of course, given double recompense for their homes and possessions they did not wish to take with them. All of the townsmen, fools and wise men alike, mourned the day, but at the same time all accepted it as being the wisest course of action; the former in deference to the latter, and the latter being the wise men knew it as the wisest course. Most of the fools, utilizing the sage advice of their erstwhile brethren, converted the cash into diamonds and other forms of high value, mobile currency. Since, however, these yidden were more or less unskilled, they became doomed to roam the hinterlands of Europe. An endless trek through the yiddishe shtetlach of old, they sold various odds and ends, making a living even as they lived a life patterned after their forefathers in Sinai of old.

This, of course, gave rise to Chelm’s eponymous association with fools. Being that whenever people would meet one of these peddler Chelmites, and would ask where these fools were from, the peddlers would proudly provide the name of their hometown. Before long, Chelm had acquire the unfortunate reputation of being a city of total fools.

And that, my friends, is why I think people so often identify bochurim as belonging to the Mir.