Figuring that daf yomi was for the older generation of serious balabatim, I told myself that maybe I’d start doing the daf in my forties or fifties.
AS TOLD TO C. SAPHIR
IBy the time I graduated yeshivah high school, I knew Torah learning was not for me. I plodded through two years of beis medrash, but by age 19 I had had enough. I quit yeshivah, took a job as an errand boy and driver for a local wholesaler, and moved into an apartment with a few other working guys. I was finally free.
Soon, I moved up in the company and started working in the sales department. I enjoyed the heady feeling of earning a paycheck and commissions, and barely even noticed that my Yiddishkeit was slowly fading. Minyan stopped happening. I hardly davened, and never learned. My shemiras Shabbos was— let’s just say, borderline.
My older brother Shmuel was married and learning in a kollel in Eretz Yisrael at the time, and he told me about a young rosh kollel he knew who was visiting America to fundraise. “Can he meet you for a donation?” my brother asked.
“Sure,” I said. Coming from a family that valued Torah learning, I still had respect for Torah, and I figured that if I wasn’t learning myself, at least I could give a small donation.
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