Abstract
More than fifty years ago, I was serving as youth director at a synagogue near Boston. As I finished teaching a group of teens one Sunday morning, the congregation’s rabbi approached me, followed by an elderly Hasid who was making his rounds, collecting funds for a yeshivah. The rabbi asked me if I could drive his visitor to the train station. Happy for the opportunity to have a conversation in Yiddish, I agreed. When I asked the Hasid the name of the institution for which he was seeking funds, I noticed that it was a classic Litvak institution, one that