Nobody’s Home

Lazer was a British bochur who was supposedly learning in yeshivah.

At least that’s what his parents thought when they’d sent the money to pay for his share of rent in an apartment with other bochurim. In actuality, he was sleeping most days through lunch and then moping around the Beis Yisrael neighborhood in the late afternoons before returning to his cave in the evening.  He’d order a pizza with the guys and then watch reruns of old sitcoms from the 1990s, mindless junk from before he was even born, until he’d crash around 4 a.m., only to awaken again around three the next afternoon and begin the cycle anew.

“Doctor Freedman, I’m miserable,” he told me. “I feel like a useless piece of garbage. Even worse. At least a piece of garbage has a place in the trash. I have no place to be and nothing to do.”

He wasn’t surrounded by a particularly inspirational cast of characters either — he gravitated to Jerusalem’s Anglo “fringe bochurim.” One guy he was friendly with smoked marijuana all day long and literally never left his dirah unless he was going to pay the pizza delivery guy on the street outside of the building. Then there was his cousin who didn’t even pretend to keep Shabbos between his electric cigarette and the movies he watched — albeit with headphones — seven nights a week. Another friend was the grandson of a well-known dayan who really tried his best to show up for at least one seder in yeshivah, but mostly spent his time bumming cigarettes from various ex-chavrusas.