During the meeting, he warned them that if I were to attend Kesser, I would end up joining a fringe chassidic movement whose members were known for their lunatic behavior.

This was totally untrue; Kesser had no affiliation whatsoever with that movement. But my parents returned from that meeting with their minds made up: “You are not attending Shragi’s yeshivah, period.”

“Well,” I responded, “it’s that yeshivah or no yeshivah.”

And I stayed home for the next two weeks.

By this time, the issue had become so loaded that any reference to it caused an angry blowup between my parents and me. Even Yeshaya and my sisters jumped on the bandwagon, accusing me of being stubborn and telling me that I should stop making such a big deal about this. “You’re making our house a miserable place,” my sisters complained.

Only Shragi supported me. But that just made things worse, because my parents were determined that I wasn’t going to be like Shragi, who was already on his way to pursuing a career in carpentry, upon Rav Taflinsky’s suggestion. Shragi was also planning to don a shtreimel when he got married, much to my parents’ chagrin.

“Shragi’s different, he needs to be in Kesser,” my mother told me mournfully. “But you? We had such high hopes for you!”

While I was home from yeshivah, I went to speak to Rav Silberfeld, an adam gadol in our community whom my father respects greatly. I told him why I wanted to switch to Kesser, and he assured me that if my father would consult him, he would advise my father to allow to me to learn there.

After speaking to Rav Silberfeld, I suggested several times that my father discuss the matter with him, until finally he went to speak to him. Rav Silberfeld — who is a staunch Litvak — quoted to my father Chazal’s statement that a person should learn Torah “b’makom shelibo chafeitz,” and strongly advised him to let me attend Kesser Beis Dovid.

But instead of being convinced by Rav Silberfeld, my father returned home from their meeting in a fury. “Why did you go to him?” he yelled at me. “Why did you have to talk to him about this?” (I guess he was upset that I had preempted him, so that Rav Silberfeld was already “on my side” by the time my father approached him.)

“What did the Rav say?” I responded. “Did he say I shouldn’t go?”

My father refused to answer.

For the next few weeks, my parents were both very, very angry at me, as was my rosh yeshivah. Even my grandparents — from both sides — got involved, concerned as they were that I was staying home and not attending yeshivah. They prevailed upon me to go back to yeshivah and continue learning in the derech of our family, rather than adopt a chassidish mehalech that was foreign to us.

It took a long time — half a year from when I first asked to switch — until my parents finally gave their begrudging consent for me to join Kesser Beis Dovid, which I did halfway through 11th grade.

The next two years were hardly the best years of my relationship with my parents, to put it mildly. Every single thing they disapproved of in me, they automatically blamed on Kesser Beis Dovid. If I didn’t have a devar Torah to say at the Shabbos table, my mother would say, “Oh, that’s because you’re in Kesser” — even though I hadn’t always said divrei Torah at the table back when I was in my former yeshivah. If my father mentioned a Ketzos Hachoshen on the sugya I was learning, and I was unfamiliar with the Ketzos, he would mutter, “Yeah, what can you expect from a boy in Kesser?”

Once, I said something about the air-conditioning in yeshivah not working well, and both my parents reflexively answered, “So why’d you have to switch?”

Mostly, my father was bothered by the fact that I was learning far fewer meforshim than I had learned in my previous yeshivah. In Kesser, we learned Gemara in the morning and studied halachah and sifrei chassidus in the afternoon, so I wasn’t covering as much ground in the Ritva and the Rashba as before. To him, that was the yardstick of success for a yeshivah bochur.

My former rosh yeshivah went into all the classes of his high school and forbade the boys there from talking to me. When I met these former schoolmates outside, or in shul, they would look the other way. Even my old chavrusa, Ezriel, who was a close friend of mine, would not say anything to me. If I greeted him with a hello, he’d mumble a “hi” back and then quickly turn in the other direction.

Despite this overwhelming disapproval, I thrived in Kesser. I also developed a close kesher with Rav Taflinsky, who spoke to each of the bochurim regularly and showed genuine interest in all aspects of their lives, learning and otherwise.

In the course of one of my conversations with him, I mentioned something about one of the boys in the yeshivah who played the keyboard. From there, we got into a discussion about music, from which he discerned that I had some musical ability. “Why don’t you also learn how to play?” he suggested.

With his encouragement, I started going for keyboard lessons on Motzaei Shabbos and practicing in the yeshivah’s dorm every day bein hasedorim. As could be expected, my parents were hardly thrilled with my new hobby. But Rav Taflinsky was of the opinion that my music was in no way at odds with my learning — on the contrary, he said, it was a vehicle for my avodah. He also encouraged me to volunteer during bein hazmanim at a program for children with special needs.

When I first joined Kesser, I harbored a great deal of resentment toward my parents. Rav Taflinsky, in his talks with me, told me that I had to work on feeling and expressing more gratitude to them, instead of just focusing on the negative in our relationship. “Your father gives shiurim, right?” he said. “Give him a compliment. Tell him you enjoyed his pshat. Your mother cooks food, tell her you enjoy it. This is all part of your avodah, of becoming an adam hashaleim.”

Upon Rav Taflinsky’s suggestion, I began writing letters to my parents before Shabbos in which I thanked them for all the things they did for me and shared with them some reflections about my week. I also started coming home Friday afternoon to help my mother make Shabbos — something rare among teenage bochurim, and something she really appreciated.

Slowly, the atmosphere between my parents and me began to thaw.

On my 19th birthday, my mother wrote me a letter in which she described how much I’ve grown up and worked on my middos. Both she and my father began to comment on how much I’ve changed, a change they couldn’t help but attribute to Kesser and Rav Taflinsky.

I think they’ve come to recognize that there’s more than one pathway to becoming an eved Hashem, and that while some bochurim accomplish that by learning Gemara all day, others need a more variegated approach. Even if they have a good head.

In other news, my old yeshivah recently replaced its fire-and-brimstone mashgiach with a new mashgiach, who is actually the father of Ezriel, my former chavrusa.

During the summer bein hazmanim, I met this new mashgiach in, of all places, the program for children with special needs where I volunteer. He had come to pick up his autistic son, and he saw me singing to the kids and entertaining them. “You’re doing such a chesed,” he kept repeating. “You can’t imagine how much this helps us.”

He didn’t recognize me, but as he was leaving I said to him, “Do you know who I am? I was your son Ezriel’s chavrusa.”

A glimmer of recognition crossed his face. “Ah, I heard about you,” he said. So you’re the bochur who defected to Kesser.

“Please send your son regards,” I said. And tell him I don’t have tzoraas.

The unspoken words were deafening.

The next time I met Ezriel, he actually spoke to me, for the first time in years.

I don’t know what the mashgiach told his son. But I’d like to think it was something along these lines: “You know, Ezriel, your friend Chezky didn’t do so poorly for himself in Kesser. Maybe there’s more than one valid approach to avodas Hashem, after all.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha Issue 682)