MY NEW FRIEND

A couple times I asked if certain tendencies toward secular reading had any validity or if they could all be chalked up to the yetzer horo. Out of character to our conversation, he cut me off. “Leave the yetzer horo out of it,” he commanded, with that chuckle I can only describe as that of a young child having the time of his life. “The yetzer horo is a catch all, it has no use to our conversation.”

Deeper than a theological observation, this comment conveyed to me that Reb Tali was not interested in a paranoid Freudian conversation about underlying motives, but in a more practical and good faith dialogue of ideas. Less suspicion, more trust. Perhaps because he’d been on this journey for so long himself, or maybe it was just his good nature, I distinctly felt he wasn’t interested in judging me but in conversing. In trusting.