These men didn’t have the life jackets, the bank transfers and guaranteed income and flights back for Pesach. They were still making it work

“Bye, cutie pie, have a great day with Morah!” Benny sang out the usual words as Yehuda walked into gan, but the melody came out flat. Soon all this could be taken from them: the gentle slope of the streets, the old stone buildings with their big windows, the buses chugging past.

He steered his bike toward the Mir on auto-pilot and parked it alongside the metal barrier across from the Merkazi. Shimmy Borenstein, his chavrusa, would be waiting inside Beis Shalom with the usual coffee and two oatmeal cookies from his wife’s baking business. But for some reason, Benny couldn’t walk into the beis medrash this morning.

Usually his morning seder in the Mir was the oxygen he needed to fuel his afternoon job at Ner Olam. But today the world inside those doors seemed unattainable, as if he had no right to enter it anymore.

Face it, Benny, he thought. You don’t really belong in there.

You’re a modern kid from the Five Towns who’s reaching too far and trying too hard, one of the clueless outsiders who realized too late that you’re missing the secret support cushion that everyone else has.

You got consumed by that roar in the beis medrash, the wave that knocked you off your feet and swept you into its sweet waters. You were so proud that you figured out how to swim, but now the water’s getting deep, and you weren’t around when they were giving out life jackets.

A stream of men was heading up Rechov Beis Yisrael, walking quickly, purposefully to the beis medrash. Their hat brims were bigger and their pants wider than most of the guys in Ramat Eshkol. They were probably from the Kiryat Sefer bus.

These men didn’t have the life jackets, the bank transfers and guaranteed income and flights back for Pesach. They were still making it work.