Remembering Moshe Kanovsky

Yehupitz commenting to mentalblog.com: daloy textual rituals:

My head is still pounding, but I'll write anyway, at least a little.

I have many "friends", dos heist, people I talk with when I see them. The conversations are good, but we both seem to make an unconscious decision not to pursue our talking to a higher level of friendship. Or sometimes only one side makes that decision, while the other person wishes the friendship was more meaningful. I've been party to that. Of all my "friendships", I find myself needing the friendship more than the other guy. I hate being in that position of weakness. So I make a point of not showing my need. Because that would make me the neb in the relationship. And I can't stand being the neb. But that's life. Perhaps that was his difficulty. I don't know.

But with Moshe, we always had good conversations, and I never felt that he wanted more from me. So did it remain superficial? Yes, as it did between me and dozens of other people in Yeshiva. Should I now feel guilty about that? Only in hindsight I suppose. He was quiet in a way that I might interpret today as sad and pained because of what has happened, but at the time it just seemed like a modest quiet. I remember him smiling. He wasn't quiet because he had nothing to say. That insight of his some 13 years ago made me realize that.

I remember talking in his dorm room one afternoon about a certain rov. It was 2nd year Beis Medrash. I remember he said something very briefly that opened my eyes in that "light bulb flashing over my head" kind of way.

I also remember a Friday night at a boys' sleep away camp. He was a counselor I think. I asked him to teach me the Bobov niggun to Y-ah Ribon, which he knew. He taught it to me, for which I have always been grateful. I am forever grateful to those who teach me niggunim.

Sevenfatcow: About Moshe by Donny Kanovsky.

See: mentalblog.com: Moshe Kanovsky leaps to death from the Empire State Bldg.
FILE: mentalblog.com's bookmarks tagged with "Kanovsky" on del.icio.us