If someone's name bodes his future, then I, Ritchie Solomon,
should have become an entrepreneur like my father wanted. My
mother, on the other hand, thought that perhaps my name
foretold of my wisdom. She hit closer to the mark, as marks
were my specialty. I myself had other plans. I was going to
change the world. I would tell my parents this over and over
again and they would go, "That's nice, dear," as if I had
just informed them I was going out to pick up some milk.
Since I had the brains, and my father, though not as wealthy
as his name might suggest, was comfortably ensconced in the
upper middle class or lower upper class, I decided the best
way for me to change the world was to go to law school, and
what better place than Harvard? I would graduate with honors
and help the underprivileged and all those who had been
victimized by a cruel and unjust society.
But I didn't like Harvard. It was too full of the type of
people I felt I'd have to protect my clients against, and
being an `elite' Harvard law school freshman didn't exactly
go with my image of champion of the masses. I was looking for
something different, something more cosmopolitan and
culturally appealing. So I decided to go to law school in
Montreal. McGill University Law School had a good name and
the university was filled with people of all shapes, sizes,
colors, nationalities and of course, there was the lure of
the French-Canadian culture, which for a Connecticut Yankee
was pretty exotic.
But it wasn't the French Canadians in my class who intrigued
me so much as a bearded bespectacled, black-suited young man
who seemed to be brilliant and outpsoken in class but kept
pretty much to himself the rest of the time or disappeared to
be in the company of more of his ilk. I don't know why there
was something about this guy that made me curious to talk to
him, but whenever I saw him, he was either deeply engrossed
in a tome or hurrying off somewhere, mumbling to himself
about being late for something.
I took Rosh Hashona and Yom Kippur off from school and went
home, more out of habit than any deep religious commitment.
We always had friends over for a festive meal and drove to
hear the shofar being blown at the Conservative
synagogue. After a couple of days in Connecticut, I was ready
to hit the books again. Over the holiday, I had decided that
come what may, I would buttonhole my elusive classmate and
start up a conversation with him. I figured I could always
ask him about how his holidays had been.
He was absent for almost ten days. I started to worry about
him and even went up to a teacher and asked if he had dropped
out or something. He assured me that this was not the case
and that he had taken the time off for a Jewish holiday.
Jewish holiday? Oh, yeah. I remembered you sit outside with
your coat on in some makeshift hut and carry lemons around
for a week. Definitely not my thing. But how does someone
dare to take ten days off from law school at the beginning of
term and hope to catch up? Now I was really anxious to talk
to this guy. I mean, despite the black threads, he was
turning into a rather colorful character.
I had my chance when he returned the following week. I went
over to him, introduced myself and said:
"Listen, I saw you were absent all last week. Maybe you'd
like to see my notes or something to help you catch up."
"Um, no thanks," he demurred. "I've been reviewing the
material and I think I'll manage."
"Still," I urged, "it couldn't hurt to look at the notes I
took." He looked at me a long time as if trying to decide
whether to say something or not.
"You're Jewish, right?" I nodded. "Well, while it's very nice
of you to offer, I couldn't derive any benefit from notes
taken by a Jew over Succos."
I stared at him nonplussed, like he had said something
incomprehensible, like in Latin or something. "Let me try and
explain," he said, completely non-patronizingly. "You
understand how someone is not allowed to derive benefits from
stolen goods, right? And is held accountable if he knows they
were stolen, even if he, himself, didn't steal them?"
"Yeah," I ventured.
"Well, my using notes that a Jew wasn't supposed to be taking
in the first place is like deriving benefit from stolen
goods." We stood there for a moment like two aliens from
different planets, trying to see if we could find a common
language between us. Then he mumbled something about being
late and dashed off.
I was feeling very smug the next week when we took our first
exam. I had studied very hard, night and day, weekends,
weekdays, and was sure I had done well. I was equally sure
that my friend, Meir the Mysterious, as I had come to think
of him, had paid a high price for his absence the week
before. When he walked out ahead of me, my suspicions were
confirmed; he couldn't even finish the test.
I thought it would be in bad taste to rub his nose in it,
especially before we got our test scores back, but I sat up
tall in my seat when our professor handed back our papers. He
congratulated the one person who had gotten a hundred in the
test and the two next highest scorers, with 98 and 95 each. I
suppose you already guessed that I didn't get the 100. 95 was
pretty good, I guess, but it was Meir who had gotten the
100.
"How, how, how did you do it?" I practically barked at him as
I raced out of the auditorium after him. He looked at me
sheepishly. "You missed a whole week of school and you still
got 100!!! How?'
A mixture of pity, amusement and consternation played on his
face. "Why don't you join me for lunch and I'll explain it to
you." We made our way through the streets of the campus to
Hillel House where the inviting smell of simmering goulash
mingled with bubbly conversation and the warmth of the
heating turned up too high.
Over lunch and others to follow, Meir explained to me how he
had been studying gemora practically since he could
read and that however daunting Canadian or Quebec law might
be, the give-and-take of the Sages was much more difficult to
grasp and therefore, anything less so seemed simple by
comparison.
He offered to teach me and I acquiesced, mainly to restore my
injured pride. And so, we had lunch several times a week,
over which Meir taught me the mysteries of the
Amoraim, the riddles of the Rishonim, the
tenets of the Tanaim and the adages of the
Acharonim. I also found out where he was always
rushing off to all the time -- to catch a quick
minyan.
Winter break came before I knew it. I was sorry to be giving
up my learning sessions with Meir and told him as much. Even
though I found him to be very different from me in every
other way, we were intellectually very compatible. "A well
matched chavrusa," Meir would say. And well, he was a
pretty likable guy.
"Say, why don't you come and spend Shabbos Chanuka with us?"
he offered. "It's this weekend. You could delay going home
for a couple of days, couldn't you?"
"I don't know," I hesitated. "I mean, I never... I wouldn't
know what to do and I don't want to be any trouble."
"You don't have to do anything. Just come and be yourself. My
family would love to have you. I've told them all about you
and they'd love to meet you. I'll pick you up at Hillel House
Friday at noon," and he ran off to minyan without
looking back.
Meir lived with his large family in a religious Jewish area
of Montreal a few minutes walk from kosher bakeries, delis
and pizza parlors. Compared to my sprawling home in
Connecticut, his house seemed about as spacious as my dorm
room, but I quickly came to feel at home along with the other
guests who had come to partake of the Morrisons'
hospitality.
Although other parts of the city were bedecked with lights
and wreaths of holly, Xmas was markedly absent from the
houses on Meir's street. As the sun set on a cold winter's
day, the menoras were lit. Each member of the family and each
guest, even me, lit one. As it was the sixth night of
Chanuka, there were a lot of candles. I was afraid the house
would go up in flames. Then his mother lit Shabbos candles.
Within a few minutes, the entire house was aglow with the
flames of dozens and dozens of dancing wicks.
The snow-covered front walk was bathed in the warm glow of
the flames as we left for shul and we were welcomed
back by their beckoning light when we returned. I sat,
mesmerized, watching the lights for hours that night. Even as
I lay on the couch trying to fall asleep, I couldn't tear
myself away from the glow of the candles. I fell asleep only
faintly aware of the sizzle that accompanied each flame being
extinguished in the water at the bottom of its vial.
By the time lunch had arrived, I felt as if I had been
keeping Shabbos my whole life or that my whole life had been
that one Shabbos. As I dug into my second helping of
cholent (after all, I didn't want Meir's mother to
think I didn't like her food), one of Meir's sisters asked
me, "So what made you decide to go to law school?"
"I want to change the world," I said mechanically between
bites.
"Why do you have to go to law school for that?" Meir's six-
year-old (going on 17) little sister piped in innocently. "I
do it all the time."
"Hunh?" I looked at her in the same way I had looked at Meir
when he had refused to borrow my notes.
"Right now, I'm making more wheat grow because I answered
omein to my father's blessing on the challos.
And soon I'm going to make more apples grow when I eat Ima's
apple pie in honor of Shabbos and yesterday I helped Daddy
earn more money because I gave some of the Chanuka gelt he
gave me to Ruthy so she could get a new doll 'cause hers
broke," Tzippy said in one breath.
"She especially likes making pareve ice cream grow," laughed
Dovid, the middle child.
Just when I thought I had heard everything.
I answered a little more heatedly than I had meant to. "Look,
Tzipora," I began, adopting my best litigation voice, "there
are ten feet of snow out there. Nothing's growing, not wheat,
not apples, not nowhere, not for hundreds, no -- thousands of
miles, and nothing will be growing for another six months."
Tzipora looked at me, not quite as unpatronizingly as Meir
had during our first exchange.
"Of course, they are," she whispered sweetly. "Hashem is
growing them under the snow."
Mrs. Morrison, who obviously wanted to salvage what was left
of my self respect and the amiability of the conversation,
jumped in. "What she means, Ritchie, is that everything a Jew
does impacts on this world. It's enough to say a blessing or
give charity to channel Hashem's beneficence into the
world."
"You see, Reuven," Meir interjected, calling me by my Hebrew
name which he insisted on using as soon as I disclosed to him
that I had one, immediately making me sorry I had, "of
course, being a lawyer impacts on the world and is a noble
calling if you use your talents the right way, but you don't
have to go to law school to change the world. As a Torah-
observant Jew, I change the world, we all change the world,"
he added, including everyone with a sweep of his arm, "every
single second."
Mr. Morrison thought it best to change the subject and turned
to discuss something from the daf yomi with the guest
at his right.
By the time the third meal rolled around, I was beginning to
feel I could roll around, myself, but the Morrisons wouldn't
let me leave until I had eaten some melave malka apple
pie after havdola and Chanuka candlelighting.
"Well, okay," I said, winking at Tzippy, "so there'll be
plenty of apples to make more pie." I was about to take a
bite when she stopped me. "You gotta make a brocha for
it to work." I humored her and made the blessing as Tzippy
coached me. For a moment, I wondered who was humoring
whom.
I flew out to New York late that night and spent the rest of
the winter break with my family. They asked me how I was
enjoying Montreal and if I had seen any polar bears, what the
skiing was like and if I had changed the world yet.
"Well, I made some apple trees grow," I mumbled good-
naturedly. But of course, no one understood what I meant.
I was happy to get back to school and the mental stimulation
of Meir's learning lunches. Midterm exams followed and I
found, to my relief, that Meir wasn't the only one getting
hundreds any more but I knew his gemora lessons were
the driving force behind my better grades even if it meant
being dragged along to minyan once in a while.
Meir invited me back to his house for Tu Bishvat, Purim and
the Passover Seder. The Morrisons even invited my parents to
come and although they obviously felt out of their depth,
they seemed to enjoy it. Tzippy, for some reason, acted less
know-it-all around them. Ironically, I found myself
explaining a lot of things to them which until that moment, I
didn't realize I knew!
I spent the summer relaxing and reading some books Meir lent
me. We met in New York for a couple of days and I saw some
places I never dreamed existed.
As we started our second year at McGill, Meir and I started
to talk about opening a law practice together someday. Meir
joked that we'd probably get a lot of clients just because of
my name.
I think Meir will make a good lawyer. I mean, if he could
convince me to start keeping mitzvos, he could
probably convince a jury of anything. I still think I can
change the world by being a good lawyer, but I kind of figure
that if I'm observing mitzvos, I don't have to wait
until I pass the Bar.
