A familiar voice broke through this painful reverie, and a kind arm draped itself across his shoulders. He looked up, startled, finding welcome in the upturned lips of his chavrusa, Meir, as well as an unaccustomed sadness in his friend’s usually cheerful, large brown eyes. Wordlessly, the two men embraced.

The years studying with Meir had been the best years of his life, he thought. The pure intellectual challenge of interpreting the holy texts, squeezing out the nectar of God’s truth, God’s will, had been his highest calling, challenging all his mental faculties and the deepest instincts of his heart. It had been a privilege to share these precious hours with a partner whose dedication matched his own.

“Have you found … Are you going to…?” Yaakov began, finding it hard to discuss his replacement.

Meir nodded. “Someone new. The rav suggested. But it won’t be easy to start over.”

Yaakov nodded gratefully at this kindness. “Maybe we could still find time on Shabbos, or in the evenings, after work?”

Meir hesitated. “We are moving next week. A bigger apartment, but a longer walk.” Yaakov understood. Neither he nor Meir were the most athletic of men, and learning together on the Sabbath when it was forbidden to drive or use public transportation would entail a long trek through Brooklyn streets.

“Maybe during the week, then? I could drive over?”

Meir smiled. “What a question!”

Yaakov exhaled. Once a week, then. It would be something to look forward to. And then there would be the early mornings on the subway on his way to work, and the late afternoons on the way back, and perhaps an hour or two in the late evenings, before bed and after the children had been put to sleep. He must find the time to continue his lifelong passion for learning the Torah. He couldn’t imagine life without it.

“And maybe then you could summarize what you were doing all week?”

Meir nodded kindly. “But as it is written: It is not the study that is essential, but rather the actions,” he said in Hebrew, quoting from Ethics of the Fathers. “We learn in order to live a good life. And that’s what you are doing.”

“Rabbi Akiva would not agree with you.”

He knew he didn’t have to elaborate. The famous debate from the Babylonian Talmud between Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Tarfon, in which the two sages argued over the primacy of study versus action, was well known to every yeshiva boy. Rabbi Akiva had championed study above all.

“Yes, Rabbi Akiva won the debate. But only because he argued that study leads to action, and is therefore greater. Rav Huna said this clearly in Avoda Zarah 17b: He who occupies himself only with studying is as if he has no God.”

“I will miss this so much.” Yaakov’s voice caught.