When Josh Rosenfeld left his home in Woodmere for a gap year in Israel, he thought he’d spend it like many of his Modern Orthodox friends. Lots of traveling and some studying at his home base, Yeshivat Hakotel. “In those days I had so many questions, even anger, towards my Judaism,” Josh remembers, “faith did not come easy to me.”
But a surprise awaited him in Israel. One of the classes in the yeshiva was on the Tanya, given by Rabbi Ari Heller. This being his first exposure to chassidus, Josh was fascinated by this new way of looking at the world and its creator. One thing led to the next, and after two years in the IDF, where Josh served as a combat engineer and then a sniper, he returned to New York and enrolled in the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS) to become a rabbi.
His encounter with the works of the Baal HaTanya, the first Rebbe of Chabad, left Josh with a desire to become acquainted with Chabad in its more current form. “This led me,” Josh says, “to the works of the seventh Rebbe of Chabad, and eventually to the JEM library of videos of his talks and life.”
Over the next decade, Josh became an educator, first teaching in various schools in New York City, then becoming Assistant Rabbi at Lincoln Square Synagogue, and then becoming the Head of Judaics in BCHA, a Modern Orthodox school in Stamford, Connecticut. Through this all, his interest in JEM’s videos grew, to the point that he once tweeted how his watching had grown to well over an hour a week.
By this point, he’d also become a full fledged subscriber to JEM’s library. “It’s a no brainer,” he says, “the production value of their videos are superb, you always know you’re going to get something great.”
But a question remains: With so many subscription services for content out there, why JEM? Or to ask the question differently: What brings him back again and again to JEM’s library?
“You have to understand,” he says, “whether it’s a video of the Rebbe meeting with Israeli soldiers, which moved me to tears, or the Rebbe singing a niggun I learned at Yeshivat Hakotel, or a video from the early years where you can perceive the beginnings of his genius, all the feelings I had when studying the Rebbe’s ideas became all the more real. For someone with no other connection to Chabad, who doesn’t know anybody who’d ever met the Rebbe or who had been to a Farbrengen, these videos provide an entry point to the lived experience of being by the Rebbe. ”
When asked whether he shares these videos with his family, Josh pauses. “To be honest, I never really thought of that. Watching these videos was always super personal for me. But I think it’s a great idea and I’ll make it happen soon.”
JEM offers several subscription plans. Thanks to the generosity of the Tenenbaum family, all subscription plans are 50% off for the first six months, until 11 Nissan. 11.jem.tv
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kol hakavod.
Connecting Yiden to the Rebbe, Thank you JEM I just signed and will make it a weekly ritual for my family.
articulate guy and nice to hear from an outside now insider