July 1940
The air is heavy and oppressive. It has been like that all summer. The fear and indecision compound the sense of lack of oxygen.
Seventeen-year-old Yisroel is waiting on a long line. He has been standing here for many hours already, but it doesn’t seem like he’s made much progress. He is surrounded by men and women. Tall and short, old and young, Jew and gentile. Many different shapes and sizes and colors. But all of them have the same desperation in their eyes. The same hollow look of crushing burden and anxiety.
He is a yeshivah bochur. He doesn’t belong here. He should be at his shtender, poring over a Gemara. But this is a matter of pikuach nefesh; there is no choice.
But he doesn’t waste time. As he waits, he mentally reviews the Gemara.
The Gemara is imprinted in his mind. He sees the words as clearly as if the volume lies open before him. Despite it all, he smiles as he remembers the day, not too long ago. The Rosh Yeshivah, Rav Chaim Shmuelevitz, had made him a proposition:
“Learn three masechtos, be’al peh,” he said. “Kiddushin, Gittin, Nedarim. Then you will have a bechinah. If you succeed, you’ll earn 20 litu and a new suit.”
Yisroel accepted the challenge. He spent nights sitting over the large volumes, immersed in the Gemara. He rose before daybreak and sat in the beis medrash, memorizing the timeless words.
The day of the test arrived and Yisroel felt ready. He entered the room and his breath caught in his throat.
Rav Chaim was sitting at the table, and next to him sat Rav Elya Baruch Kamai and Rav Leizer Yudel Finkel. Three giants. His mouth felt dry. He was afraid to meet their gaze, afraid it would burn him.
The first question:
“Kiddushin: What’s the eighth word on daf ches, amud beis, three lines from the bottom?”
Yisroel closed his eyes, and tried to breathe, to concentrate, seeing the page in his mind’s eye, black fire on white fire.
“Hiskadshi.”
“Zog di gemara,” came the order. “With Rashi and Tosafos.”
He started slowly at first, as if testing the waters. Gradually, he waded in up to his knees. He spoke deliberately and succinctly, going from the Gemara to Rashi to Tosafos. Soon he was swimming in the vast ocean of Torah, with strong, powerful strokes, barely coming up for breath.
“Fifth word on daf mem, amud aleph, tenth line....”
Now he was a gazelle, dancing elegantly from one peirush to another, stopping at times to briefly nibble on the foliage before continuing deeper into the forest of Torah. He quoted Rishonim and Acharonim, bringing proofs and resolving contradictions. He breathed in the intoxicating scent of Hashem’s Torah.
And so it went on for close to two hours. This method of testing, the “pin test,” required the ability to know the whole tractate by heart as well as a prodigious grasp of the entire sugya.
And then it was over. Yisroel, saturated with sweat, wrenched himself from the page in his mental vision and looked up at the table. The sages were smiling. He had passed.
“Gut getohn. Well done.”
They each shook his hand. Rav Chaim handed him a 20 litu bill. And a note for the tailor.
Three weeks later he was the owner of a brand-new suit, the first new article of clothing he had ever owned.