Demokfim Purim Mozzai, Shabbat night, Hebron Givat Mordechai Yeshiva.
The guys are completely bewitched. Next to me sits a drunk who mumbles to himself: "So what about Minyan for the mincha? We'll manage," he replies, without hesitation.
He stood up, completely blind to my existence, and continued to mumble things from his inner world. Behind him sits another young man who is crying the tears of a third of drunks and shouting over and over again: "The Lord, King, the Lord, King, the Lord shall reign forever and ever." The third one approached me and asked me if he could pray? Mincha [with a hole under the letter H]? I asked, and I answered: Yes, there are still 13 minutes until sunset. No, the young man answered me compassionately, can I pray in my condition?
This is the drunkenness of yeshiva students. And it is beautiful.
Even in the hours when their intellect is hidden from them, and the wine extracts from them texts that they would not say 'normally', their pure souls are revealed: "Father," shouted the son of my friend Israel, as he wept bitterly at the Purim meal, "I'm sorry if I hurt you, it's my evil inclination that convinces me to wear those pants that you don't like.".
The head of the yeshiva, Rabbi Farbstein, enters the beit midrash, and dozens of young men flock to him. The questions, characterized by the speech of drunks, but strangely revolve around matters of halakhic law.
The head yeshiva, I can't be like this in a hurry, is there a way to postpone it to Sunday? The head yeshiva, I forgot to say kiddush for the baby, can I say it now? The head yeshiva, I didn't say 'about the miracles', what should I do?
Ten more minutes were enough for the Rosh Yeshiva to realize that he would no longer be able to get a minyan for Maariv in the Yeshiva hall, and he turned with a loving smile with ten young men, accompanied by three additional drunks, who warned everyone to "not allow drunks to approach the Rosh Yeshiva.".
Meanwhile, in the hall itself, several minyanim are being organized, if we can call the small gatherings that way, characterized by two central elements: a drunk with a tallit in the center who waves his hands in all directions in ecstasy, and another drunk's attempt to 'take over' the 'pillar'.
Drunks will do anything to get the attention of society, and the success of the competing drunk is trivial in their eyes. The defeated drunk, if he is charismatic enough, 'opens' another group for himself, and happily jumps around with the little band he has acquired for himself.
Unlike drunkards who are not members of the yeshiva, who sometimes fill their mouths with profanity and songs of slang, the young people from the Hebron yeshiva like to "go wild" and accompany their Ma'ariv prayer with two bold melodies: Na'imat HaYamim Nora'im - and Carlebach.
Thus, Rabbi Shlomo's classic "Zimmor LeDavid" and the Kaddish of the closing prayer are considered a significant "breaking of tradition," something like "Tzur Yisrael Ve Ge'elo" in Brisk, and hence this causes real joy for the young men who look with joy at the cantor.
This, of course, is if you ignore the bespectacled guy who forgot to shave before Shabbat, lay down on the bench and kept muttering that we mustn't forget about miracles, and in general, it's time to get the point across. The point across.
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