Homesick for Lubavitch

Rabbi Ronnie Fine is a shliach in the Queen Mary neighborhood of Montreal. He grew up in Toronto in a secular Israeli family, and his exploration as a teenager took him to Ohr Sameach in Jerusalem, then to Ner Yisroel in Toronto where he met Rabbi Ezra Schochet who was teaching there at the time. In this episode, Rabbi Fine compares the journeys of the baal teshuvas of his time with those of today...

Rabbi Yosef Minkowitz is the dean of Academie Beis Rivka in Montreal, Canada. In this episode, he shares his memories growing up in Paris in the years following World War II before moving with his family to Brooklyn, NY where he studied in the famous Bedford and Dean yeshiva and then 770. He talks about being part of the first group of bochurim sent as shluchim to the Yeshiva Gedolah in Melbourne,...

Rabbi Lazer Gurkow is a shliach in London, Ontario where he serves as the rabbi of Congregation Beth Tefilah. In this episode, Rabbi Gurkow shares his memories of growing up in Boston in the home of two parents who themselves grew up in the Soviet Union, and his leaving home at six years old to study in Brooklyn. He discusses the difference between being a parent then and today, how a chossid has...

Reb Simcha Gottleib lives today in North Miami Beach where he practices Chinese medicine and works on different literary projects. Back in the 1960s he lived on a probiotic farm in Binghamton, NY where he and his friends sought refuge from the excesses of both the cultural standard bearers and the hippies that sought to tear them down. It was there that he met Reb Meir Abuhesera which would lead h...

Mrs Hadassah Carlebach was born in the Soviet Union less than a decade after the Communist revolution to Rabbi and Mrs Shneur Zalman Schneerson, second cousins of the Rebbe Rayatz. In this episode, she shares vivid memories of growing up during those times, as observed from the unique vantage point of her family, before leaving for Paris with her family just several years before World War II.She s...

Reb Don Wolf grew up and lives today in Melbourne, Australia where he runs a real estate and construction business. The child of Holocaust survivors, Don grew up in a traditional household that slowly became closer to the Lubavitch community in Melbourne at the time, a group of fascinating individuals led by Reb Zalman Serebryanski, Rabbi Itche Dovid Groner, Reb Nochum Zalman Gurevich and many mor...

Rabbi Shlomo Yaffe lives today in Springfield, MA where he serves as the rabbi at Congregation Bnei Torah. In this episode, we discuss the "temimus," the simple faith, of his grandfather who served in the British armed forces during World War I, and how one can work to retain that simple faith. We also discuss the chassidic approach to temimus, how intellect can sometimes seem to threate...

Reb Gershon Schusterman grew up in Brooklyn and today lives in Los Angeles. Almost forty years ago he was on shlichus in Long Beach, California when his first wife and mother of their eleven children suddenly passed away. In the years since he remarried, raised his children and continued to build his life, but he has also spent his time thinking about the religious and chassidic approach processin...

Rabbi Leibel Korf grew up in Crown Heights and is a shliach today in Los Feliz, a neighborhood in Los Angeles. In this episode, we discuss what it was like growing up in Crown Heights in the home of the famed chossid Reb Pinye Korf a"h and his father Reb Sheia Korf a"h, all in close proximity to the Lubavitcher Rebbe and the environment of 770.The episode is a beautiful survey of three g...

Tzvi Burston grew up in Crown Heights and lives today in Los Angeles. After an accident during his birth, Tzvi was diagnosed with cerebral palsy which resulted in his being wheelchair bound the rest of his life. In this episode, Tzvi shares what it was like growing up as a boy with disabilities in Crown Heights in the 90s, what it was like to interact with the Rebbe and 770 despite his limitations...

Rabbi Mendel Cohen grew up in Montreal and has been on shlichus to Sacramento for over thirty years. In this conversation, he lays out the case for optimism for Chabad chassidim thirty years after Gimmel Tammuz, why younger chassidim should be encouraged to think about their strengths and not what they're missing and how his commitment to study hours of Torah each day helped him come to this o...

Rabbi Meni Even Israel was born and raised in Jerusalem and lives there to this day. In this episode, we hear what it was like to be raised by his parents, Rabbi Adin and Chaya Even Israel (Steinsaltz), and how their iconoclastic personalities fit and didn't fit into the general Chabad identity. We discuss a number of fascinating anecdotes from his father's interactions with the Rebbe, and...

Rabbi Michoel Gourarie grew up in South Africa and today directs Binah, a center of adult learning and growth in Sydney, Australia. In this episode, we discuss his parents very different Chabad family histories and what led them to South Africa. We discuss how the study of Chassidus impacts an individual, the potential and the limits of engrossing the mind in the study of G-d, and the need to meas...

Rabbi Mendel Zirkind grew up in Crown Heights and was recently appointed to fill the position of his late grandfather, Rabbi Yitzchok Dovid Groner a"h, as Moro D'asra of the Chabad community in Melbourne, Australia. In this episode, we discuss the challenge of "filling the shoes" of such an enormous personality and on a more general level, finding our own place in a heritage wit...

Rabbi Dovid Eliezrie is a shliach and author in Yorba Linda, California. In this episode, we discuss his recently published book, "Undaunted: How the Sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn Saved Russian Jewry, Reimagined American Judaism, Ignited a Global Jewish Renaissance."We discuss his approach to learning and writing about a Rebbe's life and the lessons he learned fr...

Rabbi Yitzchok Kaufmann grew up in Minnesota and today is a teacher and lecturer at The Mayanot Institute in Jerusalem. In this episode, we discuss the elusiveness of Emunah, how what seems so obvious to one person seems impenetrable to the next, and how we all struggle to fully define it. We discuss the importance of an embodied Emunah, one that resides in the lived experience and history of the...

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...