Yeshiva bochrim – those who attended a Jewish institute for Torah and Talmud study – have a certain affinity for one another.

Regardless of whether we continue to subscribe to the ways, laws and culture of the yeshiva world, a brotherhood exists among those who, with great verve, spent countless hours together studying Torah within the walls of a yeshiva.

It’s for this reason that yeshiva bochrim around the world are no doubt deeply and uniquely affected by the recent terrorist attack on Mercaz HaRaz and the murder of Doron Mehereta, Ro’i Rote, Yonadav Haim Hirschfeld, Yochai Lipshitz, Yonatan Yitzchak Eldar, Neriah Cohen, Pniel Avichayil and Avraham David Moses – may they rest in peace.

It has been en vogue for many years for yeshiva bochrim from all over the word to attend a yeshiva in Israel for a one-year period or longer. In 1978, I studied at Yeshivat Beth HaTalmud in Jerusalem with a number of friends from my high school days at Ner Israel Yeshiva in Toronto. I recall that there were some bochrim from Toronto who chose to learn at Mercaz HaRav.

Studying in a yeshiva is unique. One wakes up early in the morning, often at 6 a.m., to learn alone or with a chevrutah (a friend in learning) prior to Shacharit services. Throughout the day, and well into the wee hours of the night, the beit hamidrash (main area for learning) is busy with students learning, debating or celebrating (a holiday or Shabbat), as the bochrim in Mercaz HaRav were doing when the terrorist chose to attack them.

One learns at a very young age – as Pniel Avichayil, 15, must have – to mix it up with the authors of the Mishnah and Talmud on such issues as damages and the laws of Shabbat.

The day is long and intense.  

If I were to ask any guy who attended yeshiva about his most vivid memories of their time there, he might say he remembers the beit hamidrash and the male camaraderie that’s unique to the yeshiva world, in which males of all ages study, socialize and share celebrations and grief.

The person might then lower his eyes and with sadness in his voice say, “We who were once, or still are, yeshiva bochrim, ache inside at the thought of a chevrutah falling to the floor, spattered with blood, while clinging to a sefer [a holy book of learning]. We find it difficult, if not impossible, to imagine the funeral where our young friends in Torah study were laid to rest, sleeping forever, next to a Torah scroll.”

For those of us who lived and breathed Torah study within the walls of a yeshiva, the deaths of eight bochrim, and the injuries to countless others, affect us a little bit differently than it does others.

It does because we know what it’s like to stay up all night shmoozing with a friend in the dormitory, or getting drunk for the first time on Purim in the yeshiva dining room, or leaning over our shtender (the wooden book stand used for resting our holy books on) and busting our intellectual chops while grappling with our rebbe on a difficult talmudic point – just like the bochrim who were murdered at Mercaz HaRav.

On behalf of yeshiva bochrim everywhere, I extend my sympathy to the families of Doron, Ro’i, Yonadav, Yochai, Yonatan, Neriah, Pniel, Avraham and David. We know, our fellow yeshiva bochrim, who you were and where you fell while you sang and danced in celebration of one of the Hebrew calendar’s happiest months, Adar II.

We thought the yeshiva world was a safe place, one where we were protected by the mishnaic verses and by our brotherhood. This has changed, as our images of that world are now dotted with the red stains of eight yeshiva bochrim’s blood on the floor of our memories.

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