Encore: Chapter 52

A

t 11 o’clock on Tuesday morning, Shuey Portman parked outside the yeshivah building. The thick blanket of snow made the familiar view — the long, low building, the sloping lawn, the basketball court, and path down to the road — seem different, like it was a new campus.

The tree branches hung low under the snow’s weight, and Shuey walked carefully, leaving footprints in the soft white carpet as he headed to the building, lifting his wheelie off the ground so as not to track snow inside.

He peeked into the beis medrash, enjoying the sound of a heated first seder, the very boys with whom he’d sat in a studio three days earlier completely engaged in learning. See? The song was purely a bein hasedorim recreation, he thought, there was no bittul Torah here. Either it will make it or it’ll flop — either way, these boys will be learning, he told himself as he headed toward his office.

He hung up his jacket on a hook behind the door, promising, as he had so many times before, that he would put up a normal rack with a hanger so that his jacket didn’t have to get creased. The yeshivah executives who got invited to speak in Florida didn’t leave their jackets draped on flimsy hooks like wet bathing suits, he knew.