Homesick for Lubavitch

Rabbi Levi Avtzon grew up in Crown Heights and lives today in Johannesburg, South Africa where he is a rabbi at the Linksfield Synagogue. In this episode we continue the conversation in recent episodes about the tension between the soft and demanding voices in our community. We discuss the changing narratives in the Lubavitch community and how past demand for conformity has now given way to a ther...

Mrs. Tzivia Jacobson grew up in in the 1930s in a Lubavitch family in Kutaisi, Georgia under Soviet rule. Nobody in her family had ever seen a picture of the Rebbe at that point, let alone met him, but every night her mother would put her to bed with a blessing that one day they would see the Rebbe. Her family would eventually escape the USSR and make their way to Brooklyn where Mrs. Jacobson woul...

Reb Yossel Mochkin grew up in Crown Heights in the 1960s and 1970s, living in the cloistered world of his immigrant parents and their friends but surrounded by a fast changing and exciting world around him. Never finding it easy to fit in to the milieu around him, Yossel had to ask on his own questions about the direction his life was to take. These questions were never fully resolved, but a yechi...

Rabbi Berry Farkash is a Shliach in Issaquah, Washington and director of Chabad of the Central Cascades. Several years ago, a local crisis led Berry into the world of psychotherapy where he became a certified clinical psychotherapist and practices Hypnotherapy and other Transpersonal modalities. Today all of his clients are fellow Lubavitchers, many of them shluchim. In this conversation, we discu...

Mrs Toby Hecht is the director of Shabtai, a global Jewish leadership society at Yale University in New Haven. Toby grew up on shlichus in Seattle and was finishing up her senior year in Beth Rivka High School in Crown Heights when she and her friends were swept up in the collective grief of Gimmel Tammuz. In this conversation, Toby reflects on the feelings of that time, the emergent awareness of...

Rabbi Dr. Shmary Brownstein is a shliach in Davis, California where he also wrote his doctoral dissertation on the famous series of maamorim, Bosi Lgani. In this episode, we discuss Shmary's growing up in Crown Heights in the early 90s and his decision to leave for Brunoy. We discuss how the conception of past changed over those years and how some of the ideas of Bosi Lgani might inform how we...

Rabbi Peretz and Chanie Chein both grew up in Crown Heights and are the shluchim today at Brandeis University near Boston, Massachusetts. They have also recently founded M54, a program founded on the relational connection between learners as they embark on shared yet individual explorations, resulting in profound outcomes. In this conversation, Peretz and I discuss his growing up in Crown Heights...

Rabbi Moshe Greenwald grew up on shlichus in Long Beach, CA and is on shlichus today in Downtown Los Angeles. In this episode, we discuss his childhood memories of coming to 770 for Pesach, his coming of age during the turbulence of 1992 and the questions he's had to wrestle with since. The conversations leads us to questions about the possibility of a Chossid's living with uncertainty.

Rabbi Pinny Andrusier lives in Cooper City, Florida where he is a shliach for more than thirty years. Growing up, Pinny found his place less in the structure of yeshiva and more in the adventure of shlichus, which is where he hoped to find his place after marriage. But when the time came, he struggled to find a place in shlichus and almost gave up on his dream, until a note from the Rebbe a few da...

Rabbi Shmuly Avtzon is a Mashpia in the Yeshiva of 770 and director of Sichos In English, an organization founded by his late father and my uncle, Rabbi Yonah Avtzon a"h. In this episode, we compare and contrast our childhood experience and recollection of 27 Adar and 3 Tammuz, him growing up in the thick of the Rebbe's neighborhood of Crown Heights and me growing up across the world on shlichus i...

Marc Asnin is a documentary photographer who lives in New York City.  Over the years, Marc has photographed all kinds of subjects, from the most marginizaled people on death row to his own Uncle Charlie. In 1992, Marc was commissioned by the New York Times to photograph the Lubavitcher Rebbe and the Crown Heights community as part of a feature essay, The Oracle of Crown Heights. Just a few weeks b...

Before becoming a full time life coach, Fitz Rabin was a master sofer for over a decade. Over the years, Fitz struggled to identify with some of the practices seen as basic to being a Lubavitcher, namely the study of Chitas. Today, he celebrates 1000 days of learning chitas before shkiya. We discuss the feelings of alienation from mass practice, the search for individual connection and the general...

Mrs. Vivi Deren grew up in Nashville, Tenessee as one of the first children of shluchim in the Unites States. Today she lives in Connecticut where she has been on shlichus with her husband for nearly fifty years. In this episode, she speaks about her parents growing up as chassidim in the United States of the 1920s and 1930s, and about her grandparents who raised them. We speak about how the commu...

Rabbi Yossi Morozov grew up in Brooklyn and was on shlichus with his family for twelve years in Ulyanovsk, a city one thousand kilometers east of Moscow. After being forced to leave Russia, Yossi moved with his family to the Pomona area in New York and became a life insurance agent. In this conversation we discuss his choices to go on shlichus and then into business and the challenges these choice...

Rabbi Simon Jacobson is known today as a bestselling author and founder of the Meaningful Life Center. But for many years he was one of the transcribers and editors of the Rebbe’s Farbrengen. In this conversation we discuss some of the paradoxes he observed over the years, both regarding the Rebbe’s use of technology in sharing the Farbrengen around the world but also in how the Rebbe empowered hi...

Rabbi Ruvi New grew up in Melbourne, Australia and is a shliach today in Boca Raton, Florida. In this conversation, we discuss the changing dynamics of Lubavitch identity in the decade between his and his oldest's brother, Moshe New, cross Pacific journeys to 770. We also discuss how over those years there seemed to be a tipping point of an "arum," or atmosphere, that brought more an...

Eli Nash is a businessman and philanthropist who grew up in Crown Heights and lives today in South Florida. Starting with his efforts to raise awareness about sexual abuse and then porn addiction, Eli has become very active in different causes surrounding mental health in the community. In this episode, we discuss his own journey away from (and back to?) Lubavitch, the individuals who pointed him...

R' Chaim Itche Drizin was one of the first shluchim to set out in the late 60s, directing Chabad of Northern California from his Chabad House in Berkeley. Today he works as a therapist who in the course of his work speaks with many young men and women in the Lubavitch community. In our conversation, we speak about his growing up as the youngest son of the famed chossid, R' Avrohom Maayor,...

Rabbi Moshe Gourarie grew up in Detroit and is shlichus today in Toms River, New Jersey. He is also the co-founder of Project Likkutei Sichos. Growing up, his plan was always to complete mesivta in Detroit and then "get to Heaven" in Crown Heights next to the Rebbe. These plans came to an abrupt halt at one evening in mesivta where the boys were told that the "Rebbe had fallen.&quot...

FOR TECHNICAL REASONS, AUDIO FOR LAST TWENTY MINUTES IS LESS THAN OPTIMAL. APOLOGIES - B Rabbi Elkanah Shmotkin is the executive director of JEM, which is responsible for creating tens of thousands of hours of video content of and about the Rebbe. All Lubavitchers have watched something made by JEM, and in many ways the "Rebbe video" has become a staple of the Lubavitch way of life. In t...

Rabbi Dovber Pinson is a shliach, scholar and prolific author. Spinning off from a previous off-the-podcast conversation, Rabbi Pinson presented a hypothesis about the unique similarities between the Rebbe and the Baal Shem Tov, and what it might mean to us. This led to an eye-opening conversation about the radical turn of Dor Hashvii in Lubavitch thought and some of its far reaching implications.

Mrs. Sandy Weinbaum lives in London, England where she, together with her husband, Dr. Bunim, directs the London Jewish Family Center. Mrs. Weinbaum's story begins sixty years ago with a shliach knocking on the door of her father's office and comes full circle today with her having raised fourteen children, many of whom are themselves shluchim. Over the years, the Weinbaums have been invol...

R' Mendel Duchman lives in Los Angeles and is a businessman, business coach and motivational speaker. He is also, to my mind, one of today's most outspoken motivators and cheerleaders for shluchim and Lubavitch around the world. But while R' Mendel very much lives in "today," he is also a staunch defender of the idea of "gezhe," or the value of holding on to one&#39...

Rabbi Mendel Zirkind has taught for over a decade in the Wilkes-Barre and Jets yeshivas. Not having planned to become an educator, Mendel shares the lessons he's learned from his time spent in these so-called "outlier" yeshivas and how the discussions and questions taking place there have so much to teach everyone. We discuss the seeming changes in Lubavitch regarding the asking of i...

Zevi Slavin is a student of philosophy and mysticism and host of a YouTube channel on this topic, Seekers of Unity. He is also the son of shluchim in Sydney, Australia and a proud chossid. On this episode, we discuss if and how Zevi manages the tension between his intellectual pursuits and his Lubavitch identity. We also discuss his thoughts on the collision of Lubavitch with modernity and where i...