Homesick for Lubavitch

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 Lubavitch. As he became a chossid of the Rebbe, Rabbi Mangel would go on to work for the Rebbe in a number of capacities, starting by learning chassidus with students in the famous Beis Medrash Govohah in Lakewood and going on to teach thousands of people around the world. ____ This week's episode is brought to you by "This World Is A Garden," a new film and live concert production by Yuvla Media based on the Rebbe's first talk, Bosi Lgani. Combining beautiful cinematography with a live performance by a string quartet, this production is a meditation on hope and holding on to a vision even as time passes by. Now you can bring this groundbreaking experience of Bosi Lgani to your community. For more info please visit: https://www.thisworldisagarden.com ____ Homesick for Lubavitch began a year ago as a small passion project and has grown into an important conversation in the Lubavitch community. As we look forward to year two and iyH the years after that, I invite the listeners and viewers of this podcast to take part in ensuring this podcast is sustainable and continues to grow. To help support this project please visit: https://www.hflpodcast.com/donate ___ Homesick for Lubavitch is a project of Yuvla Media. Bentzi Avtzon is a filmmaker who specializes in telling the stories of thoughtful and heartfelt organizations. Business inquiries only: hello@yuvlamedia.com Connect with Bentzi Website | https://www.yuvlamedia.com

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 of definitions and speaking with intention, and most importantly the importance of listening to and learning from one another. ____ This week's episode is brought to you by "This World Is A Garden," a new film and live concert production by Yuvla Media based on the Rebbe's first talk, Bosi Lgani. Combining beautiful cinematography with a live performance by a string quartet, this production is a meditation on hope and holding on to a vision even as time passes by. Now you can bring this groundbreaking experience of Bosi Lgani to your community. For more info please visit: https://www.thisworldisagarden.com ____ Homesick for Lubavitch began a year ago as a small passion project and has grown into an important conversation in the Lubavitch community. As we look forward to year two and iyH the years after that, I invite the listeners and viewers of this podcast to take part in ensuring this podcast is sustainable and continues to grow. To help support this project please visit: https://www.hflpodcast.com/donate ___ Homesick for Lubavitch is a project of Yuvla Media. Bentzi Avtzon is a filmmaker who specializes in telling the stories of thoughtful and heartfelt organizations. Business inquiries only: hello@yuvlamedia.com Connect with Bentzi Website | https://www.yuvlamedia.com

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 filtered through layers of communal understanding, and how this communal understanding is sometimes in tension with the literal understanding of the individual. ____ Homesick for Lubavitch began a year ago as a small passion project and has grown into an important conversation in the Lubavitch community. As we look forward to year two and iyH the years after that, I invite the listeners and viewers of this podcast to take part in ensuring this podcast is sustainable and continues to grow. To help support this project please visit: https://www.hflpodcast.com/donate ____ This week's episode is brought to you by "This World Is A Garden," a new film and live concert production by Yuvla Media based on the Rebbe's first talk, Bosi Lgani. Combining beautiful cinematography with a live performance by a string quartet, this production is a meditation on hope and holding on to a vision even as time passes by. Now you can bring this groundbreaking experience of Bosi Lgani to your community. For more info please visit: https://www.thisworldisagarden.com ____ Homesick for Lubavitch is a project of Yuvla Media. Bentzi Avtzon is a filmmaker who specializes in telling the stories of thoughtful and heartfelt organizations. Business inquiries only: hello@yuvlamedia.com Connect with Bentzi Website | https://www.yuvlamedia.com

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 today should be different and unique from the art a chossid painted generations ago. Mendel's work can be found at:https://www.mendeltreitel.com ____ Homesick for Lubavitch began a year ago as a small passion project and has grown into an important conversation in the Lubavitch community. As we look forward to year two and iyH the years after that, I invite the listeners and viewers of this podcast to take part in ensuring this podcast is sustainable and continues to grow. To help support this project please visit: https://www.hflpodcast.com/donate ____ This week's episode is brought to you by "This World Is A Garden," a new film and live concert production by Yuvla Media based on the Rebbe's first talk, Bosi Lgani. Combining beautiful cinematography with a live performance by a string quartet, this production is a meditation on hope and holding on to a vision even as time passes by. Now you can bring this groundbreaking experience of Bosi Lgani to your community. For more info please visit: https://www.thisworldisagarden.com ____ Homesick for Lubavitch is a project of Yuvla Media. Bentzi Avtzon is a filmmaker who specializes in telling the stories of thoughtful and heartfelt organizations. Business inquiries only: hello@yuvlamedia.com Connect with Bentzi Website | https://www.yuvlamedia.com

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. ____ Homesick for Lubavitch began a year ago as a small passion project and has grown into an important conversation in the Lubavitch community. As we look forward to year two and iyH the years after that, I invite the listeners and viewers of this podcast to take part in ensuring this podcast is sustainable and continues to grow. To help support this project please visit: https://www.hflpodcast.com/donate ____ This week's episode is brought to you by "This World Is A Garden," a new film and live concert production by Yuvla Media based on the Rebbe's first talk, Bosi Lgani. Combining beautiful cinematography with a live performance by a string quartet, this production is a meditation on hope and holding on to a vision even as time passes by. Now you can bring this groundbreaking experience of Bosi Lgani to your community. For more info please visit: https://www.thisworldisagarden.com ____ Homesick for Lubavitch is a project of Yuvla Media. Bentzi Avtzon is a filmmaker who specializes in telling the stories of thoughtful and heartfelt organizations. Business inquiries only: hello@yuvlamedia.com Connect with Bentzi Website | https://www.yuvlamedia.com

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 Tanya. We discuss what makes the narrative of Tanya so unusual and how a thoughtful study of the Torah Shebichsav of Chassidus makes it more, not less, relevant for our own day and age. Presented in honor of 18 Elul - the birthday of the Baal Shem Tov and the Baal HaTanya. ____ Homesick for Lubavitch began a year ago as a small passion project and has grown into an important conversation in the Lubavitch community. As we look forward to year two and iyH the years after that, I invite the listeners and viewers of this podcast to take part in ensuring this podcast is sustainable and continues to grow. To help support this project please visit: https://www.hflpodcast.com/donate ____ This week's episode is brought to you by "This World Is A Garden," a new film and live concert production by Yuvla Media based on the Rebbe's first talk, Bosi Lgani. Combining beautiful cinematography with a live performance by a string quartet, this production is a meditation on hope and holding on to a vision even as time passes by. Now you can bring this groundbreaking experience of Bosi Lgani to your community. For more info please visit: https://www.thisworldisagarden.com ____ Homesick for Lubavitch is a project of Yuvla Media. Bentzi Avtzon is a filmmaker who specializes in telling the stories of thoughtful and heartfelt organizations. Business inquiries only: hello@yuvlamedia.com Connect with Bentzi Website | https://www.yuvlamedia.com

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 war, and his eventual arrival to Brooklyn where he developed a close, private and miraculous bond with the Lubavitcher Rebbe. We discuss his father's unique style of being a both a chossid and a doctor, where amongst many others things he showed a true example of what it means to be a "rofeh yedid." ____ Homesick for Lubavitch began a year ago as a small passion project and has grown into an important conversation in the Lubavitch community. As we look forward to year two and iyH the years after that, I invite the listeners and viewers of this podcast to take part in ensuring this podcast is sustainable and continues to grow. To help support this project please visit: https://www.hflpodcast.com/donate ____ Homesick for Lubavitch is a project of Yuvla Media. Bentzi Avtzon is a filmmaker who specializes in telling the stories of thoughtful and heartfelt organizations. Business inquiries only: hello@yuvlamedia.com Connect with Bentzi Website | https://www.yuvlamedia.com

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 therapeutic mindset, and we debate whether or not this change is in fact a true change at all. ____ This week's episode is brought to you by "This World Is A Garden," a new film and live concert production by Yuvla Media based on the Rebbe's first talk, Bosi Lgani. Combining beautiful cinematography with a live performance by a string quartet, this production is a meditation on hope and holding on to a vision even as time passes by. Now you can bring this groundbreaking experience of Bosi Lgani to your community. For more info please visit: https://www.thisworldisagarden.com ____ Homesick for Lubavitch is a project of Yuvla Media. Bentzi Avtzon is a filmmaker who specializes in telling the stories of thoughtful and heartfelt organizations. Business inquiries only: hello@yuvlamedia.com Connect with Bentzi Website | https://www.yuvlamedia.com

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 would be one of a handful to see the beginnings of the Lubavitch story in Crown Heights and up to this very day. Along the way, Mrs. Jacobson and her husband, Mr. Gershon Jacobson a"h, would found the yiddish newspaper The Algemeiner Journal and pioneer a new way of communicating the Rebbe's ideas with the broader world. In this episode, we discuss her growing up in the Soviet Union, what changed for her family and community when they moved to the United States but also what stayed - and always stays - the same. __ This week's episode is brought to you by "This World Is A Garden," a new film and live concert production by Yuvla Media based on the Rebbe's first talk, Bosi Lgani. Combining beautiful cinematography with a live performance by a string quartet, this production is a meditation on hope and holding on to a vision even as time passes by. Now you can bring this groundbreaking experience of Bosi Lgani to your community.For more info please visit: https://www.thisworldisagarden.com Homesick for Lubavitch is a project of Yuvla Media.Bentzi Avtzon is a filmmaker who specializes in telling the stories of thoughtful and heartfelt organizations. Business inquiries only: hello@yuvlamedia.comConnect with BentziWebsite | https://www.yuvlamedia.com

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 yechidus with the Rebbe gave Yossel a blueprint his is still continuing to implement. In this conversation we discuss the never ending journey of finding one's place, the private wrestling with one's faith and the ability to grow through it all.

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 discuss his own journey toward finding the Rebbe’s softer voice and the need for forgiveness and compassion. We also discuss the importance of companionship - especially highlighted by the Rebbe’s “bakosho nafshis” to find a mashpia, or in other words, to talk about real and weighty issues with someone else. ____ This week's episode is brought to you by "This World Is A Garden," a new film and live concert production by Yuvla Media based on the Rebbe's first talk, Bosi Lgani. Combining beautiful cinematography with a live performance by a string quartet, this production is a meditation on hope and holding on to a vision even as time passes by. Now you can bring this groundbreaking experience of Bosi Lgani to your community. For more info please visit: https://www.thisworldisagarden.com ____ Homesick for Lubavitch is a project of Yuvla Media. Bentzi Avtzon is a filmmaker who specializes in telling the stories of thoughtful and heartfelt organizations. Business inquiries only: hello@yuvlamedia.com Connect with Bentzi Website | https://www.yuvlamedia.com

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 needing to move forward and the responsibility we have today to take decisive ownership of the future.

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 ought to approach staying connected to the past without becoming lost in it.

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 in the late 80s and early 90s and his pivotal decision to leave Crown Heights to study in a yeshiva in Israel, only returning after the Rebbe's stroke two years later. We discuss the power narrative holds over us and the need to ground oneself in narrative, but also the need to notice the narrative and to pay attention to one's own thoughts and experiences.

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 days before 27 Adar changed everything. In this episode, we discuss the challenge of fitting in, both back then and today, and how believing in the other is often the biggest gift we have to offer.

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 in Hong Kong. We discuss the shockwaves these events had on our childhood, and whether or not they can be traced to earlier events in Lubavitch history and specifically the history of Dor Hashvii. ______ As a sidetone, I recently worked with Shmuly on a documentary about SIE's new release of Likkutei Sichos in English. You can see more about the project here: https://www.sie.org ______ Homesick for Lubavitch is a project of Yuvla Media. Bentzi Avtzon is a filmmaker who specializes in telling the stories of thoughtful and heartfelt organizations. Business inquiries only: hello@yuvlamedia.com Connect with Bentzi Website | https://www.yuvlamedia.com

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 before the stroke, Marc’s pictures are from the last and most iconic pictures of that year. In this podcast, we discuss Marc’s first impressions of the Rebbe and the Lubavitch milieu, his reflections on that photograph and what he thinks has made it such a lasting testimony.

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 tension between being true to yourself within a broader community.

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 community of Lubavitch in the United States has changed since, and how the Lubavitch ethic of individualism fits with the growth of community.