The Struggle Is the Goal

This is an article I wanted to write for 25 years, way before I heard of Microsoft Word, and my only exposure to Mishpacha was the Hebrew magazine you could read for free if you also bought knishes and ate them on site at the tiny bakery on Rechov Ashtori Haparchi, near the yeshivah of Rav Dovid Soloveitchik.

It’s a story that formed in a span of two hours, when, as a 20-year-old bochur, I got to sit in a large room with light brown tiles that felt like a million flights up in a building on the corner of a Jerusalem street that you would never find if you weren’t looking for it — and even if you were, it would take work.

I know it’s a thing for people to boast about having known popular gedolim before they were famous (“I used to walk right in/drive him/sit there for hours”), but in this case, it wouldn’t be accurate. Because people knew, even if there wasn’t yet a formal gabbai or appointment system.

There was a makeshift waiting room, some plastic Keter chairs in an entranceway, assorted family members — some of them hampered by emotional and physical delays — passing through and occasionally trying to discourage the people from waiting around.