The Professor

This chapter recounts the life of the author as a junior associate at a major New York corporate law firm, an anthropologist, and his early kollel year at Mesivtha Tifereth Jerusalem (MTJ). It details the months he spent studying the Mishnah with Petrushka's Yiddish commentary with Nasanel. The chapter also focuses on the tractate Kilaim, a rarely studied text that deals with the rules about forbidden mixtures of planted crops. It tackles the beginning of the entire mishnaic corpus and study Petrushka on the tractate Berachos (blessings), with the goal of eventually studying together all of the Mishnah. The chapter acknowledges the encouragement the author received from his fellows at MTJ and recalls a brief conversation he had with Rabbi Weiss, after spending some time with him and Rabbi Karp studying Mishnah berurah. Ultimately, it discusses the author's field notes from the beginning of this “project,” which give the lie to his claim that he doesn't think of the yeshiva as a separate “world.”