If the picture itself wasn’t worth a thousand words, the caption beneath it was

Happening in…Atlanta

A social media post by Ambassador Gilad Erdan, an Israeli politician serving as Permanent Representative to the United Nations, showed a picture of the UN diplomat learning in what seemed to be an American yeshivah. And if the picture itself wasn’t worth a thousand words, the caption beneath it was. “Once a yeshivah bochur always a yeshivah bochur,” read the tagline.

The backstory to the post was the ambassador’s two-day trip to visit Atlanta’s Jewish community, organized by Congregation Beth Jacob, the largest Orthodox shul in the region.

Ambassador Erdan first spoke to the broader community and then held a special meeting with the community’s rabbanim. Following his audience with the rabbanim, Erdan stopped in Yeshiva Ohr Yisrael for a quick tour. There he spotted 12th grader Yitzy Levitt, took the open seat beside him, reverently opened an available Maseches Bava Kamma, and the two began to learn b’chavrusa. “Maybe this will give me the cheishek to start doing more learning,” said the ambassador.

There may have been a million differences between the teenage American yeshivah bochur and the middle-aged Israeli politician, but they found shared ground as they worked through the timeless sugyos of Bava Kamma. Because Torah connects us all.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 938)