The Commentator

Issue date: 3/29/05 Section: YUdaica

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Dr. Howard Wettstein

I wish I could say that I applied to Yeshiva College, in 1960, because of a desire to learn Torah. The truth is that it was a good school, better than my record deserved, and my father urged me to consider Yeshiva rather than the other places at which I had been accepted. Given my spotty record in high school he probably didn't trust my going away to school, and as he said, it would not hurt to learn something about my religion. I met R. Moshe Besdin for an interview and agreed (without great enthusiasm) that I would observe what was required were I to be admitted to the Jewish Studies Program (JSP). Not a promising beginning.

And then the strangest thing happened. I came to campus and found, from the first day, something completely unexpected. It began with R. Besdin's Chumash class. A serious, devout man, he was altogether warm and wonderful, a person who loved his students, loved the text beyond words, and whose mission it was to make a shidduch between the two. The other thing he loved were good, tough questions, the tougher the better, as long - and this was really important - as they were serious and sincere. And I discovered, with his help, my mind and my spirit.

I had lived as a suburban American secular Jew, entirely bored by high school, neither an athlete nor a scholar and hardly a player in the social world of my school. The contrast was almost unbelievable. In JSP, I found something I loved thinking about, Judaism, the Bible, the tradition. The proverbial treasure was all along right under my bed.

Over the next six months, I found myself enthusiastically adopting traditional observance. I remember sheepishly asking R. Besdin whether I should wear tzitzes. Trying now to reconstruct the question, I think I was asking whether I was getting ahead of myself. Mine was a slow, steady movement under R. Besdin's wise influence, towards more and more rigorous practice. He looked and me quizzically and said "Of course." Perhaps I was a bit late on that one.

One of Yeshiva's great gifts to me was the sense that I had found a home, a community. It is a gift for which I will always be grateful and R. Besdin was the first of many benefactors. That year we began to study Mishnah with a man who could have passed for Clark Gable, R. Moshe Chait. I don't remember very well Mishnah with R. Chait - the memory merges with the later study of Gemara with him, a wondrous thing. Gemara, I've often thought, is perfect training for analytic philosophy, and it was especially so with R. Chait, a stunningly clear thinker and expositor. I can still hear him responding to our conjectures about what did and did not make sense, "I'm not so sure about that." He taught us what to ask and how to ask, and his love for learning was contagious.

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