Now, just in case, Sholom took the umbrella with him even though the sky was clear, and he walked toward the dorm. The beis medrash was empty, and he expected that everyone would be around or near their rooms. The first few rooms had bochurim getting ready for bed, but the next one was completely empty and the one after that only had two bochurim.

“Where are the others?” he asked.

Duddy Tishler, whose glasses were already folded on the night-table, was squinting and speaking too quickly. “Maybe they’re around somewhere? I’m not sure.” He looked to his roommate, Gelber, for direction, but he couldn’t see anything so he started tapping frantically for the glasses.

“Somewhere?” asked Rabbi Wasser drily.

“I don’t know. Maybe they’re doing laundry?” Tishler said and looked miserable.

Rabbi Wasser understood and pretended that he hadn’t heard the answer. It wasn’t fair to put a bochur in that situation. “Okay, if you see any of your roommates, tell them to come knock at my door, until whatever time it is. Thanks.”

He walked out of the room and continued down the hallway, even though he really wanted to head straight to the laundry room. He wasn’t going to let Tishler feel like a snitch, so he kept himself busy in the dormitory for another few minutes. Jacobs had a question on shiur and Dovid Walter wanted reshus to go home for Shabbos for a nephew’s bar mitzvah, and finally, Rabbi Wasser felt comfortable slipping out of the door at the end of the hall and going down to the laundry room.

There was definitely action there. He heard the noise from the other side of the building. He looked at his watch: 12:39. This was unacceptable. It was five weeks into the zeman and they were behaving like it was Erev Purim.

There was music. Ah, it was the album thing from Shuey Portman. Maybe it was a bad idea.

He’d gone along with it, originally, because he thought it was nice that Rabbi Portman had a project that interested him and Sholom Wasser knew better than anyone else that it was Shuey Portman who’d been pulling together funds for the yeshivah over the past few weeks. Just like ratzon, desire, was the strongest force for a talmid, it was true for adults too, he believed, and Shuey Portman clearly wanted this badly.

It had been a mistake, and he wasn’t about to let it get even more out of hand just to save face. Shuey would understand. He hadn’t been hired to make albums or bichlal, to be involved in the chinuch. This was the rosh yeshivah’s decision.

A burst of sound came out of the room, as if to mock him. Sholom Wasser didn’t get angry, but when he did, he dealt with it. He had long ago made a kabbalah to stand in place without reacting when he felt this way, and so he swayed back and forth at the end of a dark corridor, the smell of mildew and old carpet surrounding him, an old, out-of-service change machine sitting next to him like a watchman from the past.

After waiting the full two minutes, he felt somewhat calmer and he tried to walk as softly as he could toward the room. The floorboards creaked, but no one could hear him over the music. Rabbi Wasser raised himself on to his toes to peer in through the small, narrow window.

Inside he saw a large group, about 12 boys in a semi-circle — more than half of his yeshivah — and they were singing beautifully. Rabbi Wasser stood there, frozen. His nephew Ephraim — turning 28, five years in shidduchim, over 60 different girls, over 60 different sorts of disappointment, two younger siblings married and, as he’d recently told Sholom, many of his campers married as well — looked happier and more relaxed than Sholom had seen him in years.

But what was most captivating about the picture was Shlomo Bass, sitting on top of the washing machine, a guitar in his hands. It was an ordinary brown, wooden guitar, but what Bass was doing with it was very not ordinary. His fingers were dancing and his shoulders were jumping and everything in the room — the machines, the pile of towels in the corner, the row of Tide bottles, the empty two-liter Dr. Pepper bottle on the windowsill, and the people — seemed to be quivering along with his music.

Rabbi Wasser watched and, wary of being noticed, he slipped away into the shadows. It was late, very late and the boys were meant to be asleep, but it was also a yeshivah and sometimes, growth had to happen in unusual ways. It was his job to know when and how, and this, in his opinion, was a good thing.

He closed his eyes on the landing and tried to summon up the image of Shlomo Bass’s face.

It was a good thing.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 830)