Then as now, it was immediately apparent that Larry was a gifted teacher. Child of two educators that I was, I knew one when I saw one. Larry was the real deal. This was two years after Robin Williams’s performance as the inspiring English instructor in “Dead Poets Society,” which had led plenty of teachers to be not a little resentful, because it set what seemed like an impossibly high bar. But for me, and for many others, Larry was that kind of teacher, the kind that made you, the text (music), and the classroom (rehearsal hall) shimmer with electricity.
I had dreamed of conducting an orchestra since I was three years old. Another amazing teacher, Dan Long, gave me my first baton when I was around that age. Ever since, I would stand in front of the stereo and play-conduct: Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Brahms, whatever was on.
Larry saw the aspiring conductor in me, but he also saw much more. I remember sitting on a bench in front of the Interlochen Bowl the summer after my junior year—which, you may remember, is often the most challenging year of high school. I had done pretty well in all my classes except math, which had punched a hole in my confidence, and wasn’t entirely sure about my prospects. I had leadership roles in many activities and there were many possible doors to step through. Maybe I should go to music school? Maybe study something else? “A person like you,” Larry said, “should go to Harvard, Yale, or Princeton.” (In 1994, before the application volume increased a gazillion-fold, you could say something like that. I doubt I would get into any of those schools today.) To be seen and believed in that way quite literally changed my life.
Larry continued to be a mentor throughout college and early adulthood, and we have remained in touch over the years. But he lives in Los Angeles and I live in Chicago, and we both have busy lives. So it had been about a decade since our last in-person visit when, this week, we met while I was on a fundraising trip to LA. (Well into his 80s, Larry is still teaching and conducting. He came to dinner at 6 from a full day working with students from 10 am.) We caught up on each other’s families and our mutual friends, we talked about music and work, we reflected on our shared history, we counted our blessings. He told me about a current student of his who he hopes I might speak with and mentor in my own way. And here, 35 years after our first encounter, we both marveled at the journey our relationship has traveled. As Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perachya says in Pirkei Avot: “Make for yourself a teacher and acquire for yourself a friend.” Indeed.
Of the many curiosities of the life of Isaac, perhaps none is more puzzling than the fact that he re-digs the wells that his father Abraham had dug (Genesis 26:18). What is this story here to teach us?
Rabbi Shmuel Bornsztain (1856–1926), the second Sochatchover Rebbe and author of the Shem Mishmuel, cites his father, who cites the medieval scholar Rabbi Bachya ibn Pikuda’s Chovot Halevavot, who commented on a verse in Proverbs (20:5): “Counsel in the human heart is like deep water, but a person of understanding will draw it out.” The Shem Mishmuel continues: “The deep waters already exist in reality; they are merely covered and hidden in the belly of the earth. A person of understanding is one who removes the covering over them and draws them out. So too, the counsel in the human being already exists in reality, within a person’s mind and heart; one needs only to remove the physical materiality that covers and conceals it. This is the meaning of digging the wells.”
The Sochatchover tradition here echoes Plato’s understanding of education as “turning the soul,” uncovering that which already lies within. Or perhaps of Michaelangelo’s “Prisoners,” which, on a visit to Florence, one can see emerging gradually from the stone which seems to already bear the statue within. In one sense, it would appear to be an immaterial question. After all, why does it matter? The end product is the same.
Yet my own decades-long relationship with a teacher-mentor (in Talmudic parlance, a rav-chaver, a teacher/master-friend) helps me sense the significance here. As a young person, Larry saw my potential and helped me perceive it for myself. The idea that the deep waters already exist within and our task is to uncover them casts the work of life as not about acquisition—of knowledge, skills, people, or things—but rather revelation. It helps me imagine our lives as rooted and growing, a vocation of casting our tendrils deep into the earth to find and drink from the living waters—and of helping each other to cultivate and tend our gardens and orchards.
For Reflection & Conversation
Is there someone who has helped you realize some deep truths about your own life, who has helped you find your path? What in them helped them to do that? What in you helped you to accept their wisdom?