I have a friend from college. His name is Jon. It’s one of those strange relationships where I don’t really interact with him all that much, but when I do it’s very consequential. He helped me through some very difficult times and whenever he’s in Israel we hang out and talk. We’re both type 5’s on the Enneagram, a system I helped introduce him to 12 years ago. I altered the course of his life and he altered the course of mine. I can sense there is a lot more we will be interacting about in the future.

I feel alone most of the time, notwithstanding my amazing wife and family. But here and there someone pops up who, surprisingly, also gets it, and gets me, mostly.

The webmaster at Hyehudi is one of those guys. See his post on Women at the Wall here. Not what you’d expect from a Haredi guy. I don’t know who he is and he wishes to remain anonymous, understandably so. He’s some sort of Haredi libertarian guy. I can’t make it out completely. There’s a lot I disagree with him about but the disagreements are all inconsequential and academic, since they are restricted entirely to the private sphere of our own thought and not public policy which affects the lives of others.

It’s people like him and Jon who help me realize I’m not alone. As I said in a previous post I am mostly a dark side guy. I still need a little bit of light to keep going though, and these people supply that.

There is no ye’ush (despair) in this world at all, because there cannot be if God created it.

Look at his website and subscribe to his newsletter. It’s well worth it, if only to hear thoughts from someone like me who has stayed closer to mesorah and Torah Shebe’al Peh than I have.