Shabbos In Mattisdorf

I visited my cousin Tuvia at his yeshiva on Sorotzkin Rd. Like, yeshiva as in, yeshivish (he says it's not so yeshivish, but it is). Quite yeshivish. But it was a lot of fun, I like the yeshivishe velt (yeshivish world). And not only that, the yeshiva is in a very very frum part of Yerushalayim. In fact, R Hershberg said I shouldn't wear my red sweatshirt there. I did anyway--under my red and blue coat. But I didn't get THAT many stares...
When I got off the bus I was just looking around, and BOOM! There was a rainbow in full color right in front of me, and I saw a lot of it, almost saw both ends. It was so nice, and so beautiful, and I said that bracha (Baruch...zocheir haberis, v'ne'eman b'risom, v'kayam bema'amaro). If only it wasn't God's way of saying that He would destroy the world right now if it weren't for the promise He made to Noach...
There are good guys at that yeshiva, a lot of crazy guys. It's a crayz yeshiva, but it's a lot of fun. All of Shabbos I was waiting for that one yeshivish moment, and it finally came at shaloshudes (3rd meal). For thsoe of you who don't know what I'm talking about, I'm sorry, but I will not be able to explain it, it's just one of those things:

*there was cold cuts at shaloshudes*
Dude: I think I want to be fleishig tonight, I don't want to waste money [on ice cream adn stuff].
Aryeh: I don't know if you could do that, it might be a problem of hachana.

So geshmak!

Anyway, the rebbe who was davened and ate with us, was R' Katz, Tuvia's rebbe. After the meal, there was seder for an hour. During seder we went up to ask R' Katz a question. He was looking in his sefer and Tuvia starts chuckling. I asked him why he's laughing, and he told me that whenever R' Katz opens a sefer he always opens it to the right page. Every single time (there's a gemara (I think) that says that for a real talmid chacham, HaShem will have them open to the right page every time so as to lessen bittul Torah). AND he's also a big anav (humble dude), so he'll turn a few pages in one direction, and be like, "Oh, yeah, it's somewhere around here somewhere...." but everyone knows that he knows exactly where it is, and he had it. So one time, Tuvia said to him:

Tuvia: Rebbe, it's bittul Torah.
R' Katz: No it's not, I'm chazzoring.

So when I was up there talking to him, he opened 2 or 3 sefarim, and he opened to the right page every single time. One of the times, Holland (there's a dude from Holland, so I just call him Holland) put his finger there on the page to hold it. R Katz turned 2 pages to the right, and 2 pages back to the left where his finger is and Tuvia goes, "Wow, Rebbe, back where you started! What a coincedence..." R Katz is really cool.
And I finally saw Sara Ester married. I haven't seen her in 4+ years. Wow. And Shalom Tzvi (LA dudes), that was great.
And then there was Friday night...after the meal we went to a shalom zachor, and then, walking back, we decided to see the Belz Beis HaMikdash (Belz built there building to look almost exactly like the main part of the Beis HaMikdash). We were walking toward it when Tuvia said something cute:

Tonny: So we're going to the Beis HaMikdash to see the Belzer Rebbe?
Tuvia: Well, the Kohein Gadol, but yeah...

We walk in, and it's like, woah. It quite big. I mean, it's not this big room [yet], it's all these halls and batei medrash and whatever. Holland showed us the mikvas, all the plaques of names of donors (and trust me, there's a LOT of them...), and then we're going to the Tisch.
It's a huge room with a big table in the middle. The Rebbe sits at the head, the most respected chassidim on all around the table, and everyone else on the bleachers. So first we go in, push in a little bit, and we see the Rebbe, but he's on the otehr side. So we decide to go to the front on his right side. So we're there, standing on the bottom row of those bleachers, climbing up the side of the bleachers right there, it was cool. Then we go up the bleachers on the back wall (like, 4 or 5 o'clock to the Rebbe). I get up there and look around and OH MY GOSH. Just looking at all those bleachers all around, and how many chassidim there were. There were easy, easy 1500 chassidim there. Easy. And zemiros, wow to die for. And the Rebbe gave a l'chayyim, and there was a loud, huge AMEIN booming through the room. It was amazing. I said to Tuvia, "Dude, that was ridiculous." "I know." Like, there no way to describe it. You have to see it for yourself. And not only that, they do this EVERY WEEK! It was awesome. We were there for around 2 hours. We left when the Rebbe started speaking. We couldn't hear, I was getting tired, and of standing. And the others were too, so we left. But when the Rebbe speaks, it's "SH! SH! SH!" It has to be dead silent. So we were walking out, our shoes were clicking of course, and the gabbai was walking past us and he points to our shoes, then puts his finger to his mouth and goes, "SH! SH!" And we're like, Ok, ok...

All around just your normal Shabbos.

I wish...