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One of the few things I miss about rabbinical school is 'Chavrusa' style learning. Students are paired up and a section of Talmud for that day is debated and digested together.
For every hour of lecture, we'd have 2-3 in pairs, debating, dialoguing, reviewing & theorizing.
For every hour of lecture, we'd have 2-3 in pairs, debating, dialoguing, reviewing & theorizing.
Granted, we were often studying how to stone gay people or the finer details of slavery but the method itself is something I still value. For many of my favorite topics, I still have 'Chavrusas'. The mix of friendly debate, mature dialectic, & conversation is lovely.
a story from my first year in yeshivah: one day my chavrusa and i were really getting into it. we were shouting and pounding the tables, it got to the point where my partner chucked a pencil at my face. i ducked, and it flew over me and whizzed passed my rabbis ear. we froze
he sat still, expressionless, for what felt like forever. then, a smile slowly spread across his face. he stood, and yelled, "i want that to happen EVERY DAY!"
my father told me once about a time when he and his chavrusa were kicked out of the study hall for leaping from their chairs and wrestling each other to the ground over a Talmudic debate
I carried this tradition on by making a secret illegal ju-jitsu dojo in my yeshiva but that's a story for another time
i sometimes lapse into yeshivah style dialogue with secular friends and it can be received as insulting, disrespectful, etc, but its never intended that way. its an entirely different kind of conversation, where interrupting someone is a sign of respect and collaboration
some more on that here: https://mobile.twitter.com/Aryeh___/status/1154080670592847872
the only drugs we ever knew there was caffeine, tobacco, and alcohol. Some of us who left the religion, but brought chavrusa style dialogue with us, found that to pair chavrusa with cannabis is a shidduch (match) made in heaven
speaking of shidduchim (matchmaking)- the similarity between the two was used constantly. pairing up at the begging of the year was a fascinating exercise in matchmaking and psychology.
in bigger yeshivas, there is the 'chavrusa tumult'- thousands of people standing outside of the school, trying to find the right person to spend the year with, basically inside of each others minds. its a very intense, impactful few days
it really is like marriage. there are sometimes, (rarely) chavrusa divorces. they are intense and heartbreaking. a famous example is of the Jewish rip van winkle (predates the English one) named choni hamagel
he got his name, which means 'choni of the circle' because he protested god's refusal to bring rain by literally just drawing a circle and refusing to leave until it rained, which worked, amazingly
anyways in a sperate incident, he fell asleep under a tree and didn't wake up for 70 years. he immediately went to the study hall to look for his chavrusa.
when he was told his chavrusa had died years ago, he screamed 'Ay chavrusa, ay meesusa' which roughly translates from Aramaic to 'companionship or death' or 'give me a chavrusa or give me death'
this is not an over-exaggeration, not really. for a student in yeshiva, your self-worth and the quality of your afterlife, comes down to your relationship with the talmud. and that often comes down to ur relationship with ur chavrusa
as in romantic relationships, u can start sharing each other's brain, to the point where u do not feel complete without the other. to have that connection severed is deeply painful. it has happened to me once or twice and it felt like a breakup in many ways
it also lead to close friendships with people i would otherwise probably not have put the time in to really get to know. and pairing up with kids in much older more advanced classes was often extremely helpful and meaningful for both partners
one such chavrusa i had was with an older guy from lakewood- the biggest yeshiva in America, which has a legendary chavrusa tumult. here is some drone footage
he had a lot of patience and kindness and it meant the world to me. it became my dream to go to a yeshiva like his one day. i attended a wedding of his friend at the tender age of 8 years old, and stayed at is home (the flight there is when this happened) https://twitter.com/Aryeh___/status/1239591665041457156
after a while, though, we lost touch. one night i had a dream about him. he was consoling me about losing my brother in a mall, telling me how to be a good older brother. ten he said he had to go, despite my begging him not to
i woke up and tried to contact him. learned he had died of a sudden brain aneurysm a few months before
it happened in the beis medrash. to die in the study hall is perceived as a great sign of holiness... funerals are almost never held in there, but they did one for him.
it happened in the beis medrash. to die in the study hall is perceived as a great sign of holiness... funerals are almost never held in there, but they did one for him.
RIP Chaim you were a really nice guy, to a kid who really needed that
a thread on how i briefly took verbally sparring with my chavrusa into real-world wrastlin' https://twitter.com/Aryeh___/status/1271165128013045760
