"We should go to a din Torah," I said, "to learn how the Torah wants us to resolve our conflict"
Shoftim v’shotrim….
True story from some several years ago.
I am sitting in the back seat of a cab in Yerushalayim, as a colleague and I go recruiting for a yeshivah we are involved with. The monit driver is an elderly Israeli Jew, the type of fellow who cannot understand a blatt Gemara but who has never missed a minyan in his life… and in front of whom you would not even dare think about schmoozing in shul.
We arrive at our next hunting grounds — an American yeshivah with a bountiful crop of bochurim on the way back to the US — just the profile we are looking for. I am sitting on the street side of the car, and after paying the driver, I swing the car door open, when suddenly…
Crash! A full-size tour bus slams into the car door and yanks it forward. Serious damage to the car door and Israeli-style havoc ensue, with everyone yelling in rapid-fire Ivrit, of which I cannot understand a word.
It turns out that the tour bus that hit the car door was in fact a tender from the Mir taking the yungeleit home after first seder, and it was driven by a Mirrer yungerman. So after the dust settles, I take stock of the litigants — myself, a kollel bus driver, and an erlicher taxi driver — and declare, “Great. We have a din Torah.”
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