The visit

With all the hockey stuff swiriling around, there is only one yeshiva story I can write today.

We are in Toronto, Grade 11. Maybe grade 12. I don't remember anymore. There is a lot of whispering during Night Seder. Tonight, the boys from our grade at Ohr Chaim, are coming up to Ner for a hockey game that is all about bragging rights in shul for the local Torontonians.

The game is unofficial, of course. If the rabbis knew about it, they would lock us in the Rosh Yeshiva's office until those traif Ohr Chaim boys left. They are, after all, the other school. They do not have any respect for Torah, learning, or Judaism. How could they? They are allowed to hang out with girls, which to our understanding is two steps worse than eating traif on Yom Kippur.

Somehow they sneak into the building. Night Seder and Maariv finally end, and we leave the Beis Medrash to change and play.

Within minutes we are in the gym, hockey sticks in our hands, ready to play. Ready to play Jewish boys who are just like us, who in a few years will become part of the community that we live in, or at least the community that the canadians live in. The game starts, and we are crushing them. Even with two Americans on our team, we are too much for Team Ohr Chaim.

The game is fun, there is not a single halacha being broken, except for having those tamei Ohr Chaim students in our school. Somehow, word of our game gets out, and reaches the upper echelons of the Hanhala.

There will be one night in my two years at Ner where the Rosh Yeshiva and Mashgiach are seen in the gym.

This is that night. It takes the top level of administration in yeshiva to purify our souls, to save us from whatever might happen when sweat is exchanged in the corner between members of these two schools.

The Rosh Yeshiva, the Menahel and the Mashgiach descend on the gym. They are wearing their shocked faces, faces that ask how in the name of all that is right in yeshiva could someone let these guys into the yeshiva gym. You can sense the mashgiach planning on sprinkling the entire gym with ashes from the Para Aduma, as he wonders how long the gym will have to be fumigated for before things can erturn to normal.

The Rosh Yeshiva is deep in thought as well. If someone brought pork into the kitchen, they would go through the entire kitchen with a blow torch. But what to do with a gym and students. Can you put them to a blow torch as well? Will that Kasher them?

The Menahel is trying to remember which lecture he is supposed to give in this situation. Fortunately, he remembers the insurance policy.

The Ohr Chaim guys are told to leave the gym, and never come back. We are told that the Yeshiva's insurance policy doesn't cover those people.