Homesick for Lubavitch

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...

Rabbi Mordechai Avtzon is my father and the first shliach in the Far East, which is where he and my mother founded Chabad of Hong Kong and China forty years ago. In this conversation, we discuss his upbringing in Detroit as a child of one of the only Lubavitch families in the city, and the different outlooks his immigrant parents had on their place in their new country. We also discuss how growing...

Fifteen year ago, Nissen Goldman was a teenage son of a rabbi in Johannesburg, South Africa finding his own way. After leaving high school, Nissen ended up spending time in Cape Town where his sister and brother in law where on shlichus and ended up in a relationship with the daughter of their shul’s president. Fast forward fifteen years, and Nissen is on his shlichus at University of Cape Town wi...

Rabbi Nissan Mangel was ten years old when he came face to face with Dr. Joseph Mengele at the gates of Auschwitz and was miraculously spared the fate of too many others. In this episode, Rabbi Mangel shares his journey from his small childhood town in Slovakia to Auschwitz and then England and Canada where he eventually met a number of fellow Lubavitch survivors of the war who invited him into Lu...

Rabbi Yaakov Winner grew up in Brooklyn and has been the mashpia in Yeshiva Gedolah of Melbourne, Australia for thirty five years. In this conversation we discuss the mashpiim that most impacted Rabbi Winner as he was growing up, and how the role of a mashpia has developed over the years. We also discuss how the idea of hiskashrus and Lubavitch identity has shifted over the years, the importance o...

Rabbi Dov Yona Korn grew up in Morris Plains, NJ in a “very Reform” Jewish family and is today the shliach in NYU and several other schools in the Bowery district of NYC. In this episode, we discuss his discovering Chabad in the months after the Rebbe’s passing and the difference this timing made in his own understanding of the Rebbe and Lubavitch. We also discuss how the Rebbe’s ideas are filtere...

Mendel Treitel grew up on shlichus in Montreal and is today a modern art painter living in Sydney. In this episode, Mendel shares his journey through yeshiva and how a number of special teachers helped him reconcile his artistic disposition with the norms of the Yeshiva. We discuss the challenges in being both a chossid and an artist, the question of individuality and how the art a chossid paints...

Rabbi Yosef Katzman grew up and lives in Crown Heights, where for many years he hosted the "Cable to Jewish Life" television show. In this episode, Rabbi Katzman reflects on different pivot points through the years and how these relate to the community's changing attitude towards asking questions. He also reflects on Rosh Hashana "back in the day" and where this leaves us going into this new year....

Rabbi Naftali Silberberg grew up on shlichus in Detroit and today lives in Crown Heights where he is the co-director of curriculum for JLI and host of the Let's Talk Tanya podcast. In this episode, we trace Naftali's years in yeshiva that took him to Oholei Torah in the late 80s and then to Kfar Chabad, where he discovers a life long love - almost despite the yeshiva - for the study of Tan...

Rabbi Michoel Seligson is a teacher and author who lives in Crown Heights. He is also the son of Dr. Avrohom Abba Seligson, a"h, who was known as the Rebbe's doctor. In this episode, Rabbi Seligson shares his father's amazing story of becoming a doctor as a frum Jew in pre-war Europe, his escape to Shanghai and the role he played in saving the Jewish refugees over the course of the wa...