Prepared for print by Zivia Reischer

I felt the need to represent the Torah’s standards as best as I could — sometimes even better than I would normally behave

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rowing up, I had attended a chassidish cheder, where all the students were from the same chassidus as my family. I lived in a chassidish neighborhood too, and most of my extended family was very similar to mine. So nothing quite prepared me for the experience of sitting for five hours at a stretch in a classroom with such a diverse group of students.

It was like the beginning of a bad joke: A chassid, a Litvak and a Chabadnik walk into a classroom. There were guys who were more religious, less religious, barely religious, and pretending they weren’t religious. There was Danny from Flatbush and Hillel from Lakewood, and a couple of guys from MTJ. There was me, a chassid; and Mendel, a Lubavitch chassid; and Eli, who came from Florida, had served in the IDF, and had never talked to a chassid before. After a couple days I discovered that Zack was a chassid too, hiding in plain sight with his jeans and cognac-colored shoes. It worked until a professor called on him to read aloud. One line of the Gemara and his cover was blown — for all his cool haircut and trendy clothes, he couldn’t hide his chassidishe havureh.

The mix of personalities and religious levels gave me a lot of insight to perspectives I had never really thought about before. During the public speaking course, one student described his struggle with the mitzvah of tzitzis. Where I came from, every mitzvah was a treasure: tzitzis was easy and inexpensive, and we got to do it every day. I had heard over and over, with love and longing, the Gra’s comment that during your life you can gain so much just by the simple act of wearing tzitzis. People found it hard to wear tzitzis? It gave me a lot to think about.

There was downtime and breaks built into the schedule, and everyone would relax and schmooze.

The schmoozing was complicated for me. Some discussions were about topics I knew nothing about, like sports and movies. On the flip side, I didn’t know nearly as much about chassidus as the Lubavitcher chassid either. When the discussion was about movies I just sat silently, looking awkward, but when the discussion was about chassidus I found myself making vague comments and hoping I sounded like I knew what I was talking about.