40 Year-Olds Return to Yeshiva to Celebrate Milestone

By Eli Rosenfeld

There has been a thought that has been running through my head for the past week and a half. To my community here in Portugal, where my wife and I serve as shluchim, I am a rabbi. To my family, I am known as either a father, son, sibling, or husband. But to whom am I, just me? The answer, of course, is when I am among my friends.

I felt this so strongly when 19 of my dearest friends—all classmates from Lubavitch Mesivta of Chicago—got together to celebrate our 40th year together in the place where our friendships had formed and blossomed so many years ago.

We are a diverse group, serving as educators, lawyers, scientists, business people, and Shluchim all over the world. So this was the first time many of us had seen each other in person in a decade or more. But we picked up so naturally where we left off, just a bunch of guys who enjoy spending time together.

But this was no getaway. Hosted by the Mesivta, we recreated many aspects of our yeshiva experience. For example, we arranged a Reshimos shiur from Rabbi Moshe Perlstein, who relished teaching us as they were rolling off the presses back in the day.

As the weekend unfolded, I think many of us had a certain sense of nachas, looking around and seeing how we’d grown into real (mostly functional) adults.

I may not have seen it happen, but I was so pleased to see how my old chavrusa, who had so many ideas about how chinuch should be, had become a respected educator. We’d each grown up and grown into what we’d talked about so many years before.

Coming from Europe, I was jet-lagged and out of bed before six AM on Shabbos morning. But I was not alone. A friend, who is a businessman on the East Coast, was up as well, eager to get in a chavrusa before our official shiur with our old mashpia, Rabbi Yosef Cohen.

Of course, we also enjoyed the nachas of seeing how much Mesivta had grown. They have now expanded from one building into a campus spanning several blocks (and plans are underway for a new building). The same core of amazing educators and role models is still there, but they’ve been joined by so many other staff who clearly add so much.

Of course, there was a lot of laughter, some healthy hashing out of old issues, but mostly the wonderful feeling that comes with belonging to a group of friends in a place that had so many formative memories for us all.

This included an all-day farbrengen with Rabbi Eliyahu Nosson Silberberg, who encouraged us to make sure that our gathering would have some practical results. The next day, we had a chinuch workshop with Rabbi Sholom Ber Halberstam, who gifted us each with a copy of Chanoch Lanaar. We decided to learn it as a group virtually, ensuring that the impact of this beautiful weekend will long be felt.

So why am I writing these lines? First of all, I want to express my gratitude to each of my 19 classmates, who arranged this wonderful gift for us and to the Mesivta, which opened its doors to us and allowed us to have such a beautiful experience.

But I also want to encourage others to do the same. Hakhel may have come and gone. But this is still something that I wish others could replicate.

It may not be your whole class, and the setting may not be as special as ours. But get together with old friends—even online—relive the times you spent together—the good and the not-so-good—and feel the special feeling that only your chaveirim can give.