Hey There Hi There Ho There!

When I was at my previous yeshiva, some few of us could be found at Yossi Zucker’s place between classes and especially after seder. Whenever we need a quick change of scenery or just to blow off some steam, we’d duck around the corner to Zucker’s. Ron Isaiah used to call it our “clubhouse.”

Zucker, for his part, was as good a teacher of chassidus as I’ve ever had. He was (and by all accounts still is) quite eccentric, but he knows his stuff. Before he started the Rashi Winery, he’d run his own ChaBaD house in more than one location. To me, Zucker’s was more an extension campus than a hiding place.

That’s probably why I’ve resisted my place becoming a clubhouse for some of my more restless buddies at Hadar HaTorah. I can’t give ‘em what Zucker gave us, and it would be a distraction, rather than an enhancement, to their education for them to be hanging out with me too much off campus. Never mind that my place is an embarrassing dump where I don’t allow visitors except under very special circumstances. Zucker’s was no luxury penthouse, either.

Now there’s a new reason to ban visitors, of course, as I explained to my friend, Mordechai, this morning:

“It’s tamei. The whole place is tamei”

“What? You have a dead rat in there?”

“No rodents I’m aware of, dead or alive. No, it’s my computer. I just got up from shiva for it yesterday.”

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It’s said that there are thirty-six hidden tzaddikim whose holiness keeps the world from blowing apart. My question is, do these thirty-six hidden tzaddikim know that they are who they are? Do they know who the others are? Do they ever get together and compare notes? When they have their annual kosher barbecue, what do they put on the banner?

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The RaMBaM writes in his Laws of Kings that Moshiach will not be a miracle-worker. RaMBaM then goes on to say that Moshiach will gather in the Jewish people and we will all speak with one unified voice.

Not a miracle-worker?

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This blog is in serious need of sponsorship. This nonsense of catching whatever access I can when I can is gettin’ really old really fast. Anyone with a line on an impossibly good deal on a laptop, email me pronto.

Golus Sucks!
Moshiach Now!