He was just a man with calloused hands, shaping falafel balls, and making a parnassah

Illustration: Dov-Ber Cohen

The days in Brisk were long. If you had a place in the Rosh Yeshivah’s shiur — and I say “place” because getting in the room by no means allowed you a whole seat for yourself — you needed to use the break after Minchah wisely. The faster you got to the dirah with something to eat in hand, the longer you had to lie down to rest. Shiur was in 90 minutes. The sleep schedules of 22-year-old bochurim in Yerushalayim dictated that to survive on your patch of chair, in a room designed for 50 people and holding 200, a nap was mandatory. If you also wanted to actually understand what was being said, it was a good idea to have food in your stomach.

And that’s where the falafel shop on Rechov David Yellen came in.

It was grimy, dark, and tiny, the proverbial hole in the wall. And it was glorious.

The old man behind the counter, if the rotting plank of wood between us could be called a counter, could barely see and was blind in one eye. Legend had it he had lost his sight on the battlefield, but we were too scared to ask.