Hakhel Reunion Journal '02

Memories of Yeshiva
Rabbi Yehudah Ferris

Baruch Hashem, I got a fair amount of learning done in Yeshiva in over six fruitful years, if not by personal pedagogical application, then by sheer osmosis. But it seemed that my head had a motion detector device that rotated toward the door the moment a stranger entered the Beis Medrash. Perhaps he needed tefillin wrapped on his arm and head, or maybe a welcoming word to put him at ease?

As Rabbi Goldberg said, "Abi nisht gelerent!" (Anything to get out of learning!)

My role as "student" had self-imposed competing demands of "the one-man welcome committee" playing simultaneously in my mind.

I remember very clearly Rabbi Goldberg sitting me down in his office one day and asking me if I knew the reason a chazir (davar achair) is not Kosher. I replied because it doesn't chew its cud, even though it has a split hoof. And, continued the Rabbi, did I know why a camel wasn't Kosher? I was asked. Sure, I replied, because it chews its cud, but doesn't part the hoof. Now, explained the Rabbi, the Hebrew word for hoof is parsah, but it also can mean "a Persian mile". Chewing the cud in Hebrew is ma'aleh gairah, but gairah can also mean a coin, as in, 20 gairahs equal one shekel.

He elaborated that the davar achair is the richest of all animals, because it can eat anything and be sustained by even waste products. The camel, by contrast, symbolized the most impoverished pauper, always carrying his "packed lunch" on his humped back, in the form of a lump of fat.

The Torah tells us that both animals are symbols of tragic misuse of talent. The "wealthy" davar achair wants to do "parsah" topics, covering many miles doing mivtzoim and being a foot soldier. We ask him, "What do we need your stubby little feet for? You could contribute millions of dollars to our Torah institution and help the spiritual effort so much more effectively!" When he insists on being a Mitzvah activist, and not a philanthropist, as he is so uniquely suited to be, the Torah brands him, and his chosen path of Avodah, "tamay", impure.

Likewise. when the camel, who could conceivably utilize his long legs and considerable storehouse of food to go out and speak to people in the street about Yiddishkeit, prefers to donate a "geirah", to give tzedakah to the worthy cause of Hafatzas HaYahadus, we exclaim, "Why do we need your broken penny for our institution? You could be such a wonderful outreach worker!"

Upon his refusal to go on Mivtzoim, where he could be the most useful, the Torah characterizes his mistaken way of service of Hashem as "tamay".

Rabbi Goldberg smiled at me with piercing yet kindly eyes and summed up his teaching to me with, "Now you are in Yeshiva, it's time to learn Torah. Later on, you'll be a shaliach, you'll go on Mivtzoim." It has been 22 years since that chat, yet I never have forgotten that lesson: to live in the present, and try and do the job Hashem has in mind for you to do--- one that is perfectly suited to your abilities and talents.

I'd like to offer my thanks to the Administration and teachers of the Yeshiva, past and present, for being a living example of purity and clarity of purpose: to raise chasidishe bochurim to greet Moshiach NOW!