I was thinking of writing about my yeshiva years.
The yeshiva high school experience tends to be different from the Beit Midrash type of experience.
I only went to yeshiva during the Beit Midrash [18-26] years. Not high school. But I went to Reb Simcha Wassermann's yeshiva in the afternoon after school (during my high school years).
The main thing about yeshiva is it is a powerful all encompassing experience. It is when I really got into the Torah in a way that was different than just intellectual.
[The intellectual aspect I must admit must seem dry to people. But there is a deep energy inside the Oral and Written Law that you need to dig into in order to find.]
The basic information is that I was at Shar Yashuv for 3.5 years.
After my first year, I was home during the summer, and that was the time I called my future wife that renewed the friendship we had had during high school. My telling her about the amazing world of yeshiva definitely lit a fuse under her. She really like hearing about how great learning Torah is.
But Far Rockaway was not considered in those days an Ivy League school. So I set my sights on the yeshiva that in those day had the reputation of having the deepest Torah giant in the world and that was the Reb Shmuel Berenabum at the Mir.
Rav Shach [author of the Avi Ezri] was considered the greatest Torah scholar along with Rav Kinevsky [the author of the Kehilat Yaakov] But Reb Shmuel had the reputation of being the deepest thinker. People said about him "If you can understand his classes you can understand anything." I can not say what the difference is but I am just saying over how people thought about Rav Shach as compared to Rav Berenabum.
The was definitely a kind of atmosphere in both yeshiva that was what you would expect to find in the Garden of Eden. Some unearthly beauty. But it had a kind of numinous property which would not be the same kind of thing would feel when listening to Mozart.
The first yeshiva learned only Gemara. It was not a Musar Yeshiva. The Mir however was a Musar yeshiva and learned about 35 minutes of Musar per day.
In any case, there were always cults around trying to get recruits. I myself fell for their tactics. They were using the Trojan horse strategy. They would use some kind of bait to convince people that by joining their cult everything would be so much better. To me today, it seems very Satanic, but in those days there were very few warning signs. Just like in Eastern cults, like Adi Da. They had a very respectable public image that hid the deep dirt inside them.
Only now I know the truth. But if I try to tell people no one listens because cults always work on their public image to seem respectable.
The yeshiva high school experience tends to be different from the Beit Midrash type of experience.
I only went to yeshiva during the Beit Midrash [18-26] years. Not high school. But I went to Reb Simcha Wassermann's yeshiva in the afternoon after school (during my high school years).
The main thing about yeshiva is it is a powerful all encompassing experience. It is when I really got into the Torah in a way that was different than just intellectual.
[The intellectual aspect I must admit must seem dry to people. But there is a deep energy inside the Oral and Written Law that you need to dig into in order to find.]
The basic information is that I was at Shar Yashuv for 3.5 years.
After my first year, I was home during the summer, and that was the time I called my future wife that renewed the friendship we had had during high school. My telling her about the amazing world of yeshiva definitely lit a fuse under her. She really like hearing about how great learning Torah is.
But Far Rockaway was not considered in those days an Ivy League school. So I set my sights on the yeshiva that in those day had the reputation of having the deepest Torah giant in the world and that was the Reb Shmuel Berenabum at the Mir.
Rav Shach [author of the Avi Ezri] was considered the greatest Torah scholar along with Rav Kinevsky [the author of the Kehilat Yaakov] But Reb Shmuel had the reputation of being the deepest thinker. People said about him "If you can understand his classes you can understand anything." I can not say what the difference is but I am just saying over how people thought about Rav Shach as compared to Rav Berenabum.
The was definitely a kind of atmosphere in both yeshiva that was what you would expect to find in the Garden of Eden. Some unearthly beauty. But it had a kind of numinous property which would not be the same kind of thing would feel when listening to Mozart.
The first yeshiva learned only Gemara. It was not a Musar Yeshiva. The Mir however was a Musar yeshiva and learned about 35 minutes of Musar per day.
In any case, there were always cults around trying to get recruits. I myself fell for their tactics. They were using the Trojan horse strategy. They would use some kind of bait to convince people that by joining their cult everything would be so much better. To me today, it seems very Satanic, but in those days there were very few warning signs. Just like in Eastern cults, like Adi Da. They had a very respectable public image that hid the deep dirt inside them.
Only now I know the truth. But if I try to tell people no one listens because cults always work on their public image to seem respectable.
