Homesick for Lubavitch

Rabbi Yosef Levin is a shliach in the Silicon Valley from before it was known as the Silicon Valley. Before that he grew up in Belfast and Sunderland and went to yeshiva in Brunoy, Kfar Chabad and Morristown. In this episode, Rabbi Levin shares his recollections of his years in Yeshiva, the hanholo in Brunoy who didn't believe there can be spoiled milk, the first hookups with the Rebbe's f...

Elliot R. Wolfson is a scholar of Jewish studies, comparative mysticism, and the philosophy of religion and lives today in a suburb of S. Barbara, California. He is also the author of, "Open Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel Schneerson."In this episode, we discuss his upbringing in Brooklyn and his first encounters with Chabad and Chassidus, his...

Rabbi Binyomin Scheiman grew up in Brighton Beach and is the shliach today in Des Plaines, Illinois. In this episode we discuss his introduction to Lubavitch as a young teenager and his very gradual immersion into this new way of life. We discuss his work today as a shliach who focuses on helping Jewish prisoners in the Illinois prison system and running camps for young Lubavitch children: the dif...

Rabbi Joseph Polak is the Av Beis Din of Boston and served for over four decades years as a university chaplain at Boston University. But before all of that he spent over a decade studying in the Lubavitch yeshiva and Beis Medrash in Montreal where he encountered famous personalities like Reb Volf Greenglass and many others. In this episode we discuss how those years in Yeshiva formed his identity...

Mrs. Esther Goldstein was born in Williamsburg to parents who had both survived the Holocaust. Though her family were not Lubavitchers, a year after her marriage to Rabbi Aharon Goldstein she arrived to University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan. But unlike her husband and the other shluchim in those days, her first day on the job was also the first time she encountered shlichus. In this episod...

Rabbi Yossi Lipsker grew up on shlichus in Northeast Philadelphia and lives today on shlichus in Swampscott, a suburb of Boston. In this episode, Yossi shares his childhood memories of growing up on shlichus and coming on occasion to 770 and the distance between those two worlds. We discuss the tensions between a parent's dreams for their child and the child's own dreams, between the bound...

Rabbi Chaim Zusia Fishman grew up in Providence, Rhode Island and lived in Worcester, Massachusetts where he was a teacher for more than six decades. In this episode, he recalls his years as a student in school in Providence and then yeshivos in New York and ultimately his encounter with Lubavitch and the Rebbe. We discuss the examples of dedication to education he saw along his journey and the sp...

Tzvi Kilov immigrated as a young boy from South Africa to Atlanta where he lives today. In this episode, we discuss his encounter with the Rebbe's sichos in the Chabad House where he lived, and how something about them set him off on a journey that took him through years of Lubavitch yeshivos and continues to this very day. We discuss the subjective nature of his journey and how this shapes hi...

Rabbi Aharon Cousin grew up in Leeds, England during World War II and eventually made his way to the yeshiva in Manchester where he encountered a group of young and lively Lubavitcher boys. Some years later he followed them to study in 770 by the Lubavitcher Rebbe, where he spent five years immersed in a world that inspired him to spend the rest of his life in education, as founding headmaster of...

R' Joey Rosenfeld grew up in the Five Towns and today lives in Eretz Yisroel where he works as a therapist and author of numerous essays (and posts) on Kabbalah and Chassidus. In this episode we discuss his discovery of Chassidus as an angsty teenager and the journey of learning it precipitated. We discuss what it means and if it is possible to study the chassidus of Chabad without being a Cha...

Reb Mendel Posner grew up in Nashville, Tenessee as the oldest son of the famous chossid and shliach Rabbi Zalman Posner. His coming back to Lubavitch as a young boy for schooling was rocky and Mendel quickly found himself as a boy with more questions than answers. This led to a journey of decades in and out of observance. Through it all Mendel held on to a deep connection of love with his parents...

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman lives in Sandy Springs, Georgia where he is an author and editor of chabad.orgIn this conversation, we discuss what it means to learn and process the ideas of Chassidus. Tzvi reflects on his own extensive writings in light of developments in AI, and how AI forces us to find out what human thinking - the kind machines can't do - really looks like. We discuss what it means for...

Rabbi Choni Friedman grew up in Kansas City and lives today in Pittsburgh where he is the Rov of Bnai Emunoh Chabad, a growing shul and community in the Greenfield neighborhood of Pittsburgh. He is also the dean of a new Bais Medrash Zal, which opened this year with 30 bochurim and growing In this episode, we discuss what it means to be a chossid today, if that meaning has changed over the years a...

Rabbi Shlomo Elkan grew up in Marietta, a suburb of Atlanta, in a reform and then conservative Jewish home, and is today the shliach at Oberlin College, a liberal arts school an hour outside of Cleveland. In this episode, we discuss his winding journey to becoming a Lubavitcher and then opening a Chabad House on campus with his wife who comes from a Dati Leumi family in Israel, and how he balances...

Rabbi Velvel Lipskier grew up in Crown Heights and lives in North Miami Beach where he works in plumbing and construction. In this episode, we discuss how the "voice" of Chassidus can be translated in different cultures and how it can change depending on what we pay attention to. We also discuss some of Velvel's memories from the famous Tishrei of 1992. ____ Support this podcast at: https://www.hf...

Rabbi Chaim Shaul Bruk is the shliach in Bozeman, Montana where he and his wife Chavie are now marking 18 years. In this episode, he recalls his growing up in Crown Heights, both the wonderful childhood memories and the tense years of the early nineties. He also shares how a devastating infertility diagnosis in their first years of shlichus changed how he looked at the world, at G-d and at other c...

Mayer Prager grew up in the Crown Heights of the 1960's, surrounded by the exodus of the non-Lubavitch Jewish community, the energy of the Lubavitch community that stayed, and of course, the Rebbe. In this episode, we discuss what it was like to grow up in that milieu, his special relationship with R' Yoel Kahan, and his perspective on the direction of the Lubavitch community as someone wh...

Mr. David Shabat lives today in Boynton Beach, Florida, but as a young boy from Washington, DC he was sent to study in the Lubavitch school of Bedford and Dean in Crown Heights, where he would go on to spend close to ten years in and about the Lubavitch community and the court of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. One of the listeners to the podcast is David's grandson and suggested I meet up with him. In...

Rabbi Rafi Tennenhaus is a shliach in Hallandale Beach, Florida for more than four decades, where today he directs the activities of many Chabad Houses and an exploding local Lubavitch community. In this episode, we discuss his upbringing in Montreal and before that in a small Canadian town of Bathurst, New Brunswick, where his father, R' Dovid Tennenhaus, had moved years earlier to make a liv...

Rabbi Yossi Rosenblum is an educator at Yeshiva Schools in Pittsburgh for several decades, where he began as a teacher and now serves as Head of School. In this conversation, we discuss how his priorities as a teacher has changed over time, how both the world around the school but also the world within the school makes new demands of teachers but also offers new opportunities. We discuss how he na...

Rabbi Dr. Eli Leib Rubin, Phd is a scholar and author who grew up in Edgeware, a suburb of London, and lives today in Pittsburgh. In this conversation, we discuss his recently published book, "Kabbalah and the Rupture of Modernity: An Existential History of Chabad Hassidism," a magisterial effort of research and writing tracing the idea of Tzimtzum as it developed between one generation...

Support this podcast at: https://www.hflpodcast.com/donate ____ Rabbi Shmuly Metzger is a shliach in Manhattan, where he runs Chabad Sutton in the Midtown district. A couple miles away is the famous Lubavitch neighborhood of Crown Heights, where Shmuly grew up in both its mythological and concrete past. In this episode, we discuss his childhood in the presence of the Rebbe but also the tensions on...

Support this podcast at: https://www.hflpodcast.com/donate____Yehoshua November is a poet who lives in Teaneck, New Jersey. His poetry grapples with ideas of Chassidus and their application in real "messy life," including some very personal reflections. Three collections of his poetry have been published, and his work has found appeal with audiences far outside of Lubavitch but also within Lubavit...

Support this podcast at: https://www.hflpodcast.com/donate ____ Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin PhD lives in Teaneck where he is an author, columnist and host of the 18Forty podcast. In this episode, we discuss the condition of homesickness across different parts of the religious Jewish community in the United States, the inherent problems but also the possible blessings to be found in it. We also discuss h...

Rabbi Elisha Pearl grew up in Flatbush and has spent the last few years studying in the Judean hills, which is where he wrote his groundbreaking book, "Make Peace," which explores the Rebbe's strategic vision for lasting peace in Israel. We were going to discuss the book, but ended up talking about how he found himself it writing it in the first place, how as a young Lubavitch boy his parents move...