12 | FEBRUARY 1 • 2024
you had told me when I first met them
a couple years ago that I’
d be putting
on tefillin every day, I would have been
pleasantly pleased to hear it, but it would
have been surprising.
”
Sitting with the boys reminds him of
life’s real priorities and motivates him
to do better, he explains. “It’s just about
shutting up and listening, I think,
” he
says. “That’s how much white noise we’ve
got going on, that we don’t allow the time
and space to listen to these youngsters.
”
More Fridays than not they’ll pop in
for a chat, talk about the parshah and
what’s happening in their lives, he says.
“They come from all over the place,
one of the young guys, his family lives
in Guatemala, and it’s just neat hearing
about their schedules,
” he says. “They
work so hard at the yeshiva, then when
they can travel home, you get to see some
excitement in their faces going home and
coming back.
”
In addition to meeting with the Friday
Boys, he says he also encouraged an old
coworker to connect with them. “It’s all
about having roots and a foundation,
and so the stronger your roots and foun-
dation are, it doesn’t matter how many
times you get pushed over, you’ll bounce
right back up,
” he says. “I want that for
myself, I want that for the people I care
about.
”
Alex Lebedinski, an attorney who
works in Troy, said hello to the Friday
Boys in an office common space about a
decade ago, and has been meeting with
them since. “It’s a very positive experi-
ence,
” he says, noting that they come as a
pair with an older student and a younger
student, who then often takes over the
route when the older one graduates. “It’s
been rewarding to see these kids, and a
lot of times they come for years at a time,
two, three, four years, and it’s good to see
them grow as they develop personally
and as well as scholars,
” he says.
During COVID, they even came
to his house, and during a pandemic
Chanukah, he recalls, a whole group
OUR COMMUNITY
COVER STORY
continued from page 11
Students Shneur Deren
and Berel Lipskar
share mitzvot on their
Friday route.
A Friday Boy assists
with tefillin.
continued on page 14
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