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It might have been decades ago how is it that the hallowed months and years in yeshivah, closed off from the mundane pressures of life, are still the engine pushing them forward?
The Game-Changer // Ner Israel, Baltimore
When I arrived at Ner Israel in Baltimore in March of 1995, I had expected to stay for two months, completing my second and final year of yeshivah that had started with a life-changing experience at Yeshivat Hakotel in Jerusalem. In the fall, I would attend a major four-year university in New York.
In Baltimore, I quickly discovered a new level of devotion to limud haTorah and an immense kavod haTorah that was evident in the lives of inspiring peers and an entire city’s residents. More importantly, I was enveloped by the love of the mashgiach Rabbi Beryl Weisbord, my rebbi Rabbi Yissocher Frand, and the inimitable Rabbi Chaim Dovid Lapidus. As the yeshivah’s liaison with the university programs available for bochurim, Rabbi Lapidus played a crucial
The 21 percent of people who don’t like their first names
Arthur Brooks, until recently the head of the American Enterprise Institute, a leading Washington, D.C., conservative think tank, is a very interesting fellow. He spent a decade playing the French horn with a symphony orchestra, but is far better known as a social scientist and a writer on themes like happiness and giving.
He’s also, by his own admission, among the 21 percent of people who don’t like their first names. He writes that ever since he was a child, he has cringed a bit whenever he hears someone say his name. “One of my earliest memories,” he wrote two years ago, “is of a lady in a department store asking me my name and bursting out laughing when I said, ‘Arthur.’ Before you judge that lady, let’s acknowledge that it is actually pretty amusing to meet a little kid with an old man’s name…. One thing I constantly hear from people I meet for the first time is, ‘I imagined you as being mu
Pesach Sheini gives us the inner strength to turn our lives around
My older sister taught me not to use the words “off the derech” when describing kids who aren’t Torah observant at the moment. She prefers “teens on a detour in life,” or perhaps more delicately, “teens taking the scenic route.”
When I was a teen many moons ago, it was common to go through what we called “idiot years,” normally around the years of 16 and 17. Today, I warn parents that “idiot years” can begin after bar or bas mitzvah. (But they needn’t worry. It almost always gets better somewhere in their late twenties!)