When Torah learning turns into a tug-of-war — whose seder comes first?

Akiva: You’re ditching me mid-zeman over something that’s just part of yeshivah life?

Moishy: Your helpfulness to everyone else is coming at the expense of our learning.

Akiva

The noise was deafening. Guys roamed, huddled, debated; partnerships were made; electric energy — excitement, stress, desperation, a mixture of all —

filled the air.

It was never exactly quiet in the beis medrash, but chavrusa-tumult takes it to whole new levels. I watched the hullabaloo for a moment, shrugged a little, and turned back to Moishy.

“So will you learn with me this zeman?” he deadpanned.

“Sorry, I’m all booked up, with the top masmid of the yeshivah,” I shot back.

“Awwww.”

Moishy and I had been learning together for — what was it, three years? In real life, we are super different — polar opposites is maybe more like it — but in learning? He is a deep, analytical thinker, while I’m a fast-paced problem solver. We balanced each other out, we both loved to learn, and we had a really good thing going. There was no reason to make any changes now.

For second seder, I had a longstanding chavrusa with another old friend, Menachem Bruner. So while everyone around us hustled and hassled, Moishy and I cracked open our Gemaras.

“Let’s start.”

Wewere deep in the sugya a few days later, when Asher Weiss and Reuvy Myers came over. Nice guys, Reuvy was my roommate, Weiss was in a nearby room; we often hung out at night.

“Can the geonim over here help us out with pshat?”

I pretended to look over my shoulder. “Not sure who the geonim are, but maybe me and Moish over here can help?”

“Ha ha, very funny. Seriously, you guys probably did this last week, but we’re up to Tosafos over here, the geder of yachloku,” Reuvy said.

“Okay, so there are two parts to it, right? First is the ochazin, which gives the anan sahadi….” I dove into the explanation, checking in that they were following.

“Ahh,” Weiss exhaled when I was done. “Got it.”

“Thanks, Rebbi,” Reuvy said, thumping me on the back.

I rolled my eyes at his drama, but the truth was, a lot of the guys did like coming over with their questions. I don’t know when the two of us had kind of become the ad hoc “shoel u’meishivs” of the chaburah, but it had happened over time, guys coming with questions here and there, liking the way we explained things, whatever.

And I was happy to help.

I turned back to Moishy, who was engrossed in his Gemara, frowning a little.

“So where were we?”

He shook his head. “Ugh, this really bothers me, it totally breaks the flow of where we’re holding.”

Breaks the flow?

“What do you mean, they’re learning the same sugya. They’re just a little behind, that’s all,” I said. “We just did a little chazarah, huh?”

He shrugged.

““Basketball, anyone?” I poked my head into one of the dorm rooms on my way out to a bein hasedorim game.

The room was empty — except for Gefner, who was sprawled on his bed, dozing.

“Shu? You joining us?”

He sat upright so suddenly, it was obvious he hadn’t been sleeping.

“Not in the mood,” he groused.

“Um, who are you and what have you done with Shua Gefner?”

“Ha ha ha.” He leaned back again, staring at the ceiling.

I hesitated at the door. The game was calling, but I wasn’t a heartless idiot type of guy, either.

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah.” His voice said no.

I was about to shrug and move on when I had a sudden thought. Gefner… hadn’t I heard something about him losing his morning chavrusa…? There was some hock about which partnerships dissolved and which lasted into another zeman….

And Shua and I were friends from way back. He was sincere, he was earnest, but he did struggle to keep up when it came to learning. Without the right chavrusa, it was probably really hard for him.

And here he was looking super down after seder… didn’t take a genius to put two and two together.

“It was an intense morning, tough sugya, no?” I said, testing the waters.

“Tell me about it.” He actually sat up, so that was a score. “I didn’t get half of the shiur this morning.” He said it flippantly, but I could tell he cared. A lot.

“Hey, you could always come join Moishy and me sometime, everyone does.” I tried to make the offer casual.

“Yeah, maybe,” Shua said. “Thanks. Whatever, I’m good, just had a bad morning.”

Then he hopped off his bed so suddenly, I was startled. “Basketball, you said?”

“Yup!” I was a little relieved. Deep conversations aren’t so my thing, I’m more of an action guy, but hey, I can help a friend in need, too. And at least Shua seemed happier now.

On my way out, I poked my head into Moishy’s room. “Wanna join us for a game?”

He looked up from a book. “Nah, not in the mood, enjoy.”

I shook my head. He’d never once joined a bein hasedorim game; he preferred reading or listening to music.

I like the guy a lot, but I’m not sure I’ll ever understand him.

Iwasn’t sure if he would take me up on the offer, but sure enough, Gefner came over the next day during seder, his new chavrusa trailing behind.

“I just don’t get it, wouldn’t kol d’alim gavar just go on and on?” he asked without preamble.

I flipped over to daf vav. “Yah, so actually, you’re mechaven to Tosafos over here….”

The other guy inched closer, and Shua was nodding, his brow furrowed.

“So you’re clear so far?”

“Yeah, thanks. You’re good at this.” He gave me a small smile.

Shua’s chavrusa piped up with a question, and Moishy answered.

“But the Rosh says different, he says that the second person would need to bring a ra’ayah,” I concluded.

Twenty minutes later, the pair headed back to their seats. I was just about to go back to where we were up to when the chavrusas in front of us turned around.

“Hey, you guys done the Bircas Shmuel?”

Moishy and I had learned that just yesterday. I explained it, and then turned to Moishy.

“Okay, back to—”

He shook his head. “Do we need to do that?”

“Do what?”

He shrugged. “You know, answering all the questions… I don’t like it, it’s like, half of seder is gone.”

“Gone?” I stared at him. “But this is part of it. We were talking about the Gemara!”

“I know. But it’s really interrupting where we were up to.”

I didn’t get it. “We’re learning,” I said. “So are they. Baruch Hashem, we understand it, we’re moving fast, but why can’t we share what we know with others who aren’t managing as well?”

“So you’re putting their learning over ours.”

“Why isn’t giving it over also learning?”

Moishy sighed. “Because it slows us down. Because it makes it really hard to focus. Because we can barely get a sentence in without someone coming over.”

He was exaggerating.

“Why can’t we tell them to only come over during the last hour of seder or something? So we can have a straight couple of hours to focus?”

Was he for real? “That’s like, a bit weird, no?” I said. “I mean, we’re in yeshivah, this is part of learning with other people.”

Moishy turned red. “Well, I thought we were in yeshivah to grow in our learning, not to teach everyone else.”

I shrugged. I didn’t want to waste more time arguing over this. Besides, teaching was also learning, wasn’t it?

“I have to leave early today,” Moishy said when he came in a few days later. “Family simchah, my parents flew in. It’s like a two-hour drive away and they’re leaving at one….”

“Mazel tov.”

“Yeah, fun, whatever. Basically, let’s make the most of the first half of seder, okay?”

“Yeah, sure,” I said, saluting him.

We dove into the Gemara. We were having a great back-and-forth when a couple guys came over with questions. After I answered, Moishy nudged me. “Hey, maybe we can just learn without interruptions till I go?”

“Um, what do you want me to do, send them away?” I asked. I’d tried answering quickly, keeping focused on where we were up to, but short of actually being rude, or like, telling people to come back in an hour (which would be socially off, sorry), I didn’t know what else I could do.

And then Gefner came over, his face hopeful. “Hey, you explained it really well yesterday, thanks. I want to ask you about the end of Tosafos….”

I looked at him. His face was clearer, he looked much happier than the other day, when he’d confided about his feelings that he was just wasting his time here. I wasn’t about to push him away.

“One minute,” I signaled to Moishy, and turned my attention to Shua.

Moishy pushed his chair back. “I’m leaving now,” he announced.

“Already?” I glanced at the clock; it was only 11:15.

“Yeah. I need to get ready.” He turned abruptly and left.

T

he next day, Moishy didn’t show up — I think his parents took him away overnight. But the day after, I came to morning seder excited to have my chavrusa back.

He wasn’t there yet when I came, which was weird, because Moishy’s never late. But hey, everyone’s entitled to a bad day.

I opened the Gemara and started chazzering on my own.

Chaim Kleinberg came over. “Hey, are you free? Want to learn together?”

“Sorry, I’d love to, but I’m waiting for Moishy…” I said apologetically.

“You are? I thought you guys stopped learning together.”

He pointed, and I suddenly saw Moishy sitting a few rows over, deep in the sugya with Rebbi.

What?

As if sensing my gaze, Moishy looked up. He blushed, stood up, and came over.

“Reb Shmuel was helping me catch up the past few days’ learning….”

“Ah, okay, great,” I said, waiting for him to sit down so we could continue.

But he didn’t.

“Look, Akiva, it’s been amazing, our run for all these years, but….”

But?

My eyes widened.

“I can’t do this,” Moishy blurted, his ears reddening. “Learning together… it just isn’t working, there are too many interruptions. Learning with Reb Shmuel is much better for my learning. So I’m going to do that for morning seder from now on.”

I couldn’t believe it. Now? Mid-zeman, when everyone’s found chavrusas and all that… it was — not nice. Not mentschlich. One day to the next? What was he thinking?

And all because I answered questions when people came over? What else were we supposed to do? Baruch Hashem, we were blessed with good heads for learning, Hashem wanted us to use that to help others! Why didn’t Moishy try to answer some of the questions himself? Why was he always burying himself back in the Gemara and leaving it all for me? Maybe if he’d join in, he’d see that it’s actually a great way to learn, too….

“I’m sorry,” Moishy said, sounding truly apologetic. “I keep telling you I can’t learn like this, with everyone interrupting all the time. But you didn’t want to do anything to change that.”

If I could tell Moishy one thing it would be: Answering questions to help guys who can’t learn as well as us is part of the yeshivah package. Ditching your chavrusa without warning is not.

Moishy

“So if we understood Reb Shimon correctly….”

Akiva frowned. “But then what about your question before?”

I think for a moment. “Well, if—”

“Hey, you guys understand the Tosafos?” Levi Simons, who sat in front of me, asked, turning around.

I almost let out a frustrated sigh, but caught myself. We’d just learned the Tosafos, I could help him out.

“This one? It’s saying—

“No, not there, the one before…”

“Oh, this one, yeah, it’s complicated.” Akiva flipped the page of his Gemara back. “So it’s talking about….”

He launched into an explanation, and I tried not to notice how Levi, and then his chavrusa, seemed to only be interested in hearing from Akiva. I mean, they would listen if I said something, but I didn’t often get to say anything when Akiva was around to do the talking.

I let the tiniest sigh escape my lips. No one noticed.

Here’s the thing: Akiva and I are good friends, and even better chavrusas.

But we are very, very different.

Akiva: life of the party, star of the yeshivah, friend of the whole world.

And me? I’m just Moish, quiet, steady. I know I’m considered good at learning, which is nice, but, well, my only other claim to fame is that I have a penchant for science and know a ton about astronomy and physics. Not exactly the stuff that wins popularity contests in yeshivah.

Still. Learning with Akiva was a good thing, I think for both of us. In the afternoons, I learned with Daniel Breg, a soft-spoken guy from Brazil, but it was different — sort of slow and steady and with me taking the lead a lot of the time. With Akiva, I was always on my toes. He was sharp, insightful, cut through the fluff. It just worked.

Except when it didn’t.

We

were just getting into the sugya one morning when Shua Gefner headed over, a purposeful look on his face.

Oh, no, I knew that look. And Shua Gefner had been appearing at our table more and more often recently.

“I just don’t get this,” he announced. “We’re supposed to be up to here, but honestly, I think I still don’t get the first line. Can you summarize it for me?”

Um, hello?

I looked at Akiva. Didn’t he realize this was a bit much? It wasn’t his job to stand in for the rebbi — there was paid staff in the yeshivah for a reason!

But Akiva just said, “Sure, let’s run through it.”

I cleared my throat, then changed my mind. What on earth was there to say? Um, Akiva, we’re in the middle of something. Uh, guys, can you come back another time?

I bent over my own Gemara. I wasn’t wanted or needed in this conversation; fine, I could learn on my own.

For a little while, at least.

By now, Gefner and his chavrusa had pulled over chairs and were making themselves comfortable while Akiva launched into an impromptu tutoring session. No one asked me anything or seemed to notice I was around.

Whatever, I should just try to focus on my learning. It’s not like there was anything else to do right now.

After they were gone, though, I tried to say something to Akiva.

“Do we need to do that?” I asked him, directly. “Answering all these questions… it’s really taking away from our seder time.”

“Taking away?” Akiva looked surprised. “But this is part of the learning.”

“Well, yes, but it’s not where we were up to. It’s just taking our time away from our own learning….”

Akiva shook his head. “I don’t know, Moish, we’re still learning. And if Hashem blessed us with the ability to understand the Gemara and move fast, shouldn’t we use that to help others? Guys who wouldn’t manage so well without help?”

I spread my palms. “Sounds like you’re prioritizing other people’s learning over ours. Not sure if we should be doing that.”

“I don’t agree. Teaching is more learning, it helps me consolidate everything we’ve done. Everyone gains.”

“Not everyone. I’m telling you, I’m not gaining, I’m losing,” I said. “It slows us down and makes it really hard to focus. We can barely get a sentence in without someone coming over.”

“Oh, come on, it’s not that bad,” Akiva said. “I mean, look at us now, we’ve managed a whole conversation without a single interruption.”

“Ha, ha. I’m serious, it’s really been getting to me. Can we ask guys to only come over during the last hour of seder or something? So we can have a straight couple of hours to focus?”

Akiva’s eyes narrowed. “That’s, like, weird, no one does that,” he said. “We’re in yeshivah, this is part of it…. It’s like, socially off to shut people down when they come over….”

I don’t think he meant to insult me, but the words jabbed at me. We can’t be socially off. Was that what he thought of me?

Probably.

But a sociable guy like Akiva, who lived for parties and games and nights out with the guys — and surrounding himself with half the shiur during seder time — wouldn’t understand what it felt like to be me.

“I just want to use the time to focus on our learning. Not to teach everyone else,” I said, but I could tell he didn’t get it at all.

Later that day, I met Gefner in the dorms.

“Hey, thanks for sharing your chavrusa with me, bro,” he said. “He’s great. Honestly, they should pay him as shoel u’meishiv around here. He’s probably busier than Reb Motti.”

I stared after him. Was I supposed to smile at that? And what if I hadn’t signed up to learn with the unpaid shoel u’meishiv of the beis medrash?

In

hindsight, that was probably the breaking point, but the day of my cousin’s wedding was when I really got annoyed.

I’d never have taken off a full day for a cousin’s wedding if it wasn’t for the fact that this was the only son of my mother’s only sister, and for years, they’d dreamed of us becoming best friends. Well, no, he was a born-and-bred Israeli living in Kiryat Sefer, who spoke a ‘leetle beet’ of cute, accented English, and we saw each other maybe once a year.

But he was getting married, and my parents had come in, and they had a whole plan to combine this wedding with a visit, taking me away with them overnight, family sheva brachos the next day, whatever.

I didn’t love missing learning, but I did love my parents, and so when I came to seder that Monday morning, I told Akiva I’d be leaving early. “Let’s make the most of the first half of seder, okay?”

“Yeah, sure.”

I gave him a quick smile. Akiva is genuinely a nice guy, that’s the thing. But sometimes, he just doesn’t get it. Or maybe it’s his niceness going a little too far — in the wrong direction.

We were deep in the Gemara when Gefner came over. This was becoming a daily thing, and I had to seriously restrain myself from blowing out a sigh of frustration.

“I’ll just be a minute, okay?” Akiva said to me in an undertone. “I told him I’d help him out….”

One minute?

I knew better, but okay, let’s see if he could make this faster. Or tell Gefner to come back a little later.

I drummed my fingers on the table as Akiva patiently explained the shakla v’tarya.

“Wait, sorry, I spaced out. Go again?” Shua asked.

For real?

I found myself hyperaware of the seconds ticking by, then the minutes.

A quarter of an hour later, the pair went off, and Akiva turned back to me.

“Okay, let’s do this,” he said.

I was taken aback. That was it? No apology, no nothing?

Didn’t he realize I was sitting and waiting, wasting my time, while he saved the rest of the world?

So now he wanted to start learning. Mazel tov. For how long? Until the next guy came over?

“Actually, I need to leave already,” I said, curtly.

I could learn in my dorm room for an hour. I’d probably get more done that way than sitting watching Akiva help every other student in the yeshivah.

O

ver the next couple of days, my thoughts crystalized. This wasn’t new; it had been going on for a while. Last year, it had been one or two guys a day, but now it was more than that: Like Gefner had said, Akiva was pretty much the unofficial shoel u’meishiv of the beis medrash.

It worked for him. He enjoyed it, thrived on it even. It didn’t break his flow; it seemed to help him solidify his learning. And you can’t deny that it feels good to have the oilam coming over every few minutes to speak to you and get your input.

But it wasn’t working for me. I loved learning with Akiva, but I wasn’t getting to do much learning with him — I was watching his back as he helped other guys. It would be a shame to lose our partnership, maybe we could do a night seder or something — but if I wanted to progress in my own learning, I needed a change.

W

hen I came back to yeshivah I went over to one of the rebbeim, Reb Shmuel. He was a serious learner and a quieter sort of person, not the type of rebbi who had lines of bochurim asking him questions during seder.

“Of course we can learn together, what a pleasure,” he said when I approached him.

“Thanks so much, I missed a couple of days, it would be good to catch up.”

It was good. Really good.

For the first time since the start of the zeman, I could actually focus on the learning, follow a thread through to the end without being interrupted by out-of-context questions and comments. Everything seemed clearer.

If I would start learning regularly with Reb Shmuel, I realized, my mornings would look completely different.

And then my heart dropped. I had to break the news to Akiva.

I’ve never been particularly good at these things, the conflict, the boundary setting, whatever. And this was Akiva, a really good friend, who also happened to be one of the most popular guys in the whole yeshivah.

I took a deep breath. This would be fine. I was entitled to move on; our chavrusashaft just wasn’t doing it for me anymore. And Akiva? He would be snatched up in seconds. Who wouldn’t want to learn with the top guy in the shiur?

But of course, it didn’t go over that smoothly.

“Learning together… it’s just not working great for me,” I said, stammering a little in the face of Akiva’s stricken look. “There are so many interruptions, I really can’t focus. And this morning, when I tried out learning with Reb Shmuel… it’s so much better for me.”

For a moment, he seemed to be at a loss for words.

“But… middle of zeman? Seriously? This is… sudden,” he said. He was very obviously upset, and I felt terrible. No one wanted to be dropped like that in the middle of zeman, it wasn’t nice. But it also wasn’t nice that he had ignored my requests for fewer interruptions for all these weeks.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I really am. But I kept telling you I couldn’t learn with things the way they were. And you didn’t want to do anything to change it.”

If I could tell Akiva one thing it would be: Our chavrusashaft stopped working for me a long time ago, and you wouldn’t do anything about it. 

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1061)