rabbijaffe

So, I made it.

I was in Israel.

I owned a pair of tefillin and wore tzitzit. I was fully Shabbat and Kosher observant. I prayed three times a day, observed all the holidays, was becoming more learned, and was even starting to be able to keep to keep up with the lightning-paced Hebrew all around me.

I had crossed the threshold.

I was a Baal Teshuva.

And I was studying at Bar-Ilan Univerity, anxiously awaiting my opportunity to finish college, so I could finally study in yeshiva. 

Well, my opportunity came sooner than I expected.

One time I was in a cab (sort of… it was actually a sheirut… in Israel they have large van-size cabs… um, never mind). I was sitting next to a large Chassidic man.

These shierut experiences are usually squished. Sardine style. And the uncomfortable silence was, at best, good elevator practice.

But a miracle happened that day.

I had a conversation with the Chassid sitting next to me. I speak English. He spoke Yiddish. Our conversation was in Hebrew.

We might as well have been barking at each other…

And yet I understood almost everything he said, and we fully got our points acrossed.

He understood that I was looking to go to yeshiva. And I understood that he had a relative who worked at an English-speaking yeshiva in Bnei Brak, which is a neighborhood basically across the street from Bar-Ilan University.

And he took my phone number.

Now, having been alive for twenty years at this point I understood that a stranger taking a phone number was about as fleeting as a handshake. I never really expected anything to come from it.

But to my extreme surprise the Chassid’s relative called that very night, and  invited me to come visit his yeshiva.

I started going to Yeshivat Ohavei Torah (which unfortunately no longer exists) once a week, until I was finally able to enroll as a full-time student. I spent quite a while there. And I appreciate each and every minute of my time there.

But I am not writing to speak about the process of my becoming relatively learned.

Nor am I writing to speak about my years of meaningful yeshiva study.

Nor am I writing to talk a lot about the string of incredible coincidences that landed me at Ohavei Torah in the first place, although they are fantastic.

I am writing to speak about a discovery I made almost immediately upon arriving at the yeshiva.

The people at this yeshiva had a quality that I lacked. Our practices, philosophies, and ritual observance had started to match up, but I was not like them.

These people spent each and every day of their lives trying to be fantastic people.

Not just ritually observant people, but people who dedicated huge portions of their lives to objectively altruistic behavior, with an unmatched love for their fellow Jew.

I wasn’t there.

I was a jerk… with a lot of neat rituals I had adopted into my lifestyle, and a thirst for learning about Judaism…. but still a jerk.

I was nowhere near where these people were…

But I wanted to be.

I wanted to be a better person. I wanted treat those around me better. I wanted to love those around me and treat them with every possible kindness I could think of.

I still do.

I’m still not as great as those people…

But I really, really want to be.

It was with this discovery that I can honestly say that it was truly official: Now I was a Baal Teshuva.

This was the beginning of everything. 

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