Every Elul zeman begins ambitiously
During my last year in yeshivah, I had already started shidduchim, and during a meeting with a prospective young woman, I walked directly into a spiderweb. I do not like spiders, but I was on a date, so after briefly flailing my arms, doing a few panicked spins to make sure nothing was still on me, and waiting till my heart rate returned to a healthy level, I tried to suavely transition into conversation. “I guess I’m kind of afraid of spiders,” I confessed. “Do you have any phobias?” The girl, recently returned from seminary, looked at me with sincerity: “Yes, I’m afraid of Elul.”
We didn’t go out again. I don’t quite remember if it was my spider-induced anxiety attack or that we were on slightly different ends of the intensity spectrum, but I always remember that response as Elul begins. Certainly in my yeshivah years there was an awe and excitement getting ready for a new zeman in yeshivah (I would not describe it as a phobia), and although much of that feeling is hard to reexperience and recapture, it remains a formative period in my life. Here are my top five ways to get ready:
Behind door number one is an earnest, sweet masmid. You know he’s going to come to seder consistently — maybe even too consistently. He’s there the morning of his wedding and just responds to your stares with his head in the Gemara and a deliberate and somewhat urgent “nu.” You can be sure he’s not going to laugh at any of your jokes — honestly, it’s just easier for him to pretend not to hear most of them. Behind door number two is, mostly by self-acclamation, the yeshivah’s prized lamdan. As you sit alone at your place in the middle of afternoon seder and someone asks where your chavrusa is, you’ll just point to the window outside where your chavrusa is strolling on the grass with a cup of coffee in each hand as he mumbles to himself. “He’s thinking,” you explain.
Finding the right chavrusa can be a harrowing experience. No system has totally addressed the issue, whether it is the chavrusa tumult, sign-up sheets, mashgiach interventions, or reminders for guys to be willing to learn with bochurim older than them. We still have a chavrusa crisis. The heart of the crisis, however, is not about finding a chavrusa at the beginning of zeman, but knowing that if it’s not a match, there is no healthy way to break up. I’ve tried everything. Breaking up through the shadchan/mashgiach (“it’s not you, it’s me”), or just growing a mustache and assuming a new identity. Absent a reliable method to break up with your chavrusa, just make sure you pick the right one and build together a beis medrash ne’eman b’Yisrael.
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