"Some people, even when they’re meant to talk about someone else, they end up talking about themselves. With Abba, it was the opposite"
“Late one Leil Shabbos, toward the end of his life, my father — my rebbi — rose above his pain to learn, pushing himself to stay awake as he toiled over a teshuvah of the Nodah BeYehuda. Near one o’clock in the morning, he looked at me. ‘Yitzchak, you’re still awake?’
“I nodded. ‘I’m learning.’
“Then Abba did something he rarely did. He spoke about himself. You know, some people, even when they’re meant to talk about someone else, they end up talking about themselves. With Abba, it was the opposite. He rarely talked about his life. Now, late on a Friday night, he told me something I never knew. ‘I made my first siyum on Shas when I was 15, did you know that?’
“No, I hadn’t known. ‘If you finished when you were 15,’ I asked him, ‘when did you begin?’
“Abba smiled. ‘When I was nine. And then, my next siyum, I made when I was 19.’
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