BY YISROEL BESSER holdon to THE For years, he’s been shteiging in his learning, his purpose in life clear. But whatDREAM happens when circumstances, either internal or external, determine it’s time to leave the kollel bench? Rav Aaron Lopiansky, author of the widely acclaimed book, Orchos Chaim: Ben Torah for Life, says the challenge facing today’s breadwinner is to create realistic goals and craft a new message ELCHANAN KOTLER, JEFF COHEN HOLD ON TO THE DREAM • It isn’t about him, he points out, and while he’s right that the thin blue volume with The man who the unexceptional cover and rather generic name isn’t about his life, it is the story of everyone else’s life. wrote what It’s the narrative familiar to a generation of 20-somethings who sit at Shalosh Seudos picking at slices of gefilte fish and might be the wondering who they are, if bein hazmanim is still in effect, and why they are so, so tired. It’s that awkward moment between best storybook “Who are your chavrusas this zeman” and “Actually, I’m working now… yes, commercial mortgages… thank you, I’m still of the year learning the ropes.” And a blow to the ego is the easiest part of it. I ask him if it takes him back to that yeshivah to the workplace: With such doesn’t want to The path that starts with the snip of scissors and a large tallis and world — the alleys of Meah Shearim where a rich, broad inner world of Torah, why honey on holy letters is cushioned, a system of yeshivos feeding his in-laws, Rav Beinish and Rebbetzin make this your magnum opus? other yeshivos, questions that lead to answers. Esther Yenta Finkel, lived; the island of But he’s answered it. A man who can be interviewed. Until there’s no easy answer. the Mirrer Yeshivah; the rooms of the look at a picture and be back in Meah Suddenly, the comfortably trodden path splits into a crisscross Meah Shearim shtiblach where gravelly Shearim perceives how opening a of interlaced roads and passages: a thousand young couples in a voiced men never finish davening, Mishnayos during lunch in a law firm hurtling subway train, reaching for a strap that isn’t there. arguing, smoking — and if that’s what’s can put you back in kollel. The familiar system that offered answers about fleishig onions and drawing him so. And I realize that so many milchig knives isn’t there, and the gaping empty space allows gray As with every other question I conversations of the last decade — light to filter in, the world appearing like a pencil drawing which has will ask, he thinks for a while before discussions about marriage, about been rained on — lines still visible, but smudged. answering. “It has a magic. But so does parnassah, about growth — were, like Silver Spring, or every place, really. My Caesar Nero’s arrows all falling in the Rav Aaron Lopiansky has just finished deliver- rebbi, Rav Moshe Shapira, would meet same place, really all pointing to this ing a shiur in the Passaic kollel, and we’ve a person, or visit a new place, and get one. made up to meet in the rosh kollel’s basement. completely engaged. I’m a naturally At a question-and-answer session But there’s a picture on the wall, and it has curious person, but he was the one who at this year’s Agudah convention, pulled Rav Aaron in, so I wait. It’s a charm- could really tap the essence of a person Rav Elya Brudny took the mic to ing depiction of a Meah Shearim bookseller or place as soon as he saw it.” uncharacteristically push a particular hunched over the long counter of a high- Perhaps without realizing it, the Rosh book, encouraging “every family that R shelved store, a wall of colorful seforim rising Yeshivah has answered my primary has made that transition [from kollel to behind him. question. I had been wondering why the workplace] to own the book.” The rosh yeshivah of Yeshiva of Greater Washington is standing he chose to write a book about the Rav Yosef Elefant spoke next. “In the and studying the image. challenges and process of shifting from modern era, there hasn’t been a sefer 64 MISHPACHA HOLD ON TO THE DREAM that touched on the topics critical to in the street one day and saying hello, our existence, with honesty and clarity but he didn’t answer — it was strange. As and respect, like this one has.” THAT’S WHY I got closer, I realized he didn’t see me Such acclaim, even as the book itself — at all, his eyes were somewhere else. He Orchos Chaim: A Ben Torah for Life — Many years ago, I was sitting late one was walking on Rechov Meah Shearim, arrived on the scene with little drama, night with a former yungerman who but he saw nothing. That impacted me, no rollout or book launch, reflecting the was struggling with emunah. He was showed me how a person can rise above unpretentiousness of its author, who very smart, working for a large bio-tech his surroundings.” shrugs when I mention the feedback. firm engaged in cutting-edge research. But the talmidim of the past quarter “Look, it’s the topic,” says Rav “You know,” he told me, “I’m in a century aren’t seforim vendors with Lopiansky. “Within that wider challenge huge building with six hundred of the raised eyes in the streets of Jerusalem. is the essential challenge of being a smartest and nicest people I’ve ever Still, they work on reflecting that same human being in Olam Hazeh. A few years met, and not one person believes in ability — to engage without being ago, we dealt with it in an online journal anything. What does that say?” overtaken. called Klal Perspectives and I saw the “Do any of those people have a confusion. So I started to formulate the grasp of what’s good and evil, other Spoiler alert: Ev- book.” After Mir, Rav Lopiansky's new than generic phrases like ‘making the eryone needs In the shadows of the pages, there is “I will never forget the way my father frontier in Silver Spring world a better place’?” I asked him. “Do something to live a figure — it has no name, and no details said goodbye — it was a prayer and a they ask themselves what the meaning for. There, I gave are offered, but in every paragraph, you message, the words pulsating with pure of life is? Do they see the sanctity of away the book’s can see that the author has a particular ahavas Torah and dreams of my success human life? Its purpose? How many ending. balabos in mind, a role model upon whom in the beis medrash. He knew, deep down, are married and feel that they have a “Look, a person he’s basing himself. that I wasn’t coming back so fast.” legacy to pass on?” S whose goal is to When Rav Aaron spoke before Ne’ilah In the Mir of the early 1970s, there He looked up at me. “That,” he said shteig in learning, in his yeshivah a few years ago, he said, weren’t many American bochurim. softly, “is why I am still frum and raising or avodah, has a purpose in life, but usually, “Perhaps I know how to learn better than The young RJJ talmid was drawn to the my children as bnei Torah…” when people leave yeshivah or kollel, my father did, but the way he held his Torah of Rav Nochum Partzovitz and (Excerpted from Ben Torah for Life) they’re focused on making a living,” the tallis and tefillin under his arm? That I the mussar of Rav Chaim Shmuelevitz. Rosh Yeshivah says. “That occupies their can never match.” In time, he would attract the attention mind, and becomes their central goal in Reb Benzion Lopiansky learned in of the rosh yeshivah, Rav Beinish Finkel, the absence of any other objective — Slabodka, and after leaving the renowned who selected him as a son-in-law. doubt and uncertainty, clarity and because they stopped having dreams yeshivah, he went to work. After 25 years in the Mirrer kollel and resolution, hover over the white space about growth in learning.” “Now”— “My father came to America at a time as a maggid shiur in Jerusalem, Rav Aaron between paragraphs. his voice takes on a bit of shiur klali when rabbanus was at an all-time low, was asked by Rabbi Gedaliah Anemer a”h There is the humility of a rebbi facing melody—“if histapkus b’muat, for in terms of prestige and influence. He and Rabbi Yitzchok Merkin to serve as the dilemma of another, the shared example, would be a goal, they can live would quip, ‘Rabbanus is no job for a ben rosh yeshivah of the beis medrash they’d deliberation, the seriousness (and with that purpose, working to make Torah,’ and he was hopeful, even as I grew established in Silver Spring, Maryland. this is a serious book, with no thought money and live simply — but that’s not in learning, that I would find a way to With the clarity of hindsight, the match given to being amusing), but also a deep how it works. So the challenge is to find a make a living.” between the Rosh Yeshivah and the respect for the potential and spiritual realistic goal for the person whose mind The teenage talmid at Yeshivas Yeshiva Gedolah of Greater Washington expectations of the balabos.