At 10:00 am every Monday, Mrs. Tzipah Wertheimer, a shlucha at Chabad on Campus Queens, sets aside her phone tunes into a one-hour-long, text-based lecture on a sicha from Mrs. Rivky Slonim.
The class is just one of five live weekly classes arranged by Project Likkutei Sichos.
“The weekly ritual makes me feel like I am going back in time to yeshiva, to a place where learning filled the day and the sicha of the week was the topic of conversation,” Wertheimer says.
“Rivky teaches in her classic style which is both deeply analytical and fully approachable and understandable. Even if only for one hour a week, tuning in to the live class is a refreshing break from all the daily responsibilities…Project Likkutei Sichos has transformed my Monday mornings.”
Slonim’s reputation precedes her. Her class draws between fifty and seventy-five women who join the close to 10,000 participants worldwide who are working their way through the entire Likkutei Sichos in the ground-breaking project.
Across the Pacific, at 8:30 pm on Wednesday in Melbourne, Australia, another group of women gathers on Zoom to study the weekly sicha with noted educator, Dr. Sara Rosenfeld. Rosenfeld had been giving a weekly class on a “Rashi sicha,” but when she heard about Project Likkutei Sichos, she saw it as a new opportunity to engage the women in her community. She switched her material to the weekly sicha, and her class attracts about fifteen women committed to completing Likkutei Sichos with her.
PLS devotees also have the privilege of studying from one of the foundational figures in Likkutei Sichos lore, Rabbi Leibel Schapiro, longtime dean of Yeshiva Gedolah Rabbinical College of Greater Mami. The shiur is arranged by Rabbi Yisrael Frankforter.
Rabbi Schapiro served on Va’ad L’Hafotzos Sichos, the team that prepared the sicha for the Rebbe’s review. At 8:00 pm on Wednesday, Rabbi Schapiro brings background insight and behind the scenes interactions with the Rebbe on the development of the sicha to the fifty students who tune in weekly.
Professor Abraham Boyarsky, from Concordia University in Montreal, is a devoted attendee of Rabbi Schapiro’s class. Speaking about the notoriously complex Rashi sichos in the volumes currently being studied, Boyarksy says that Rabbi Schapiro’s “masterly and patient expositions bring these deep and edifying sichos within the grasp of everyone.”
Rabbi Yisrael Frankforter, also of Miami, offers a weekly class for French speakers. For Frankforter, and for Dr. Rosenfeld as well, Project Likkutei Sichos offers a framework and structure that allows them to accomplish a lifelong dream of theirs–to complete the entire Likkutei Sichos.
Another benefit, Rabbi Frankforter says, is that it creates a family bond. He and his son learn the second sicha together every week.
The newest addition to the PLS live-shiur lineup is a Hebrew offering by Mrs. Daniella Gaulan, whose class out of Ohr Chana Yeshayahu in Yerushalayim is broadcast live on Zoom at 10:45 am (IST). Golan is the dean of the seminary, which services one-hundred and fifty young women from Israel, Russia, France, and South America.
Rounding out the 5 consistent live classes is Rabbi Pesach Schmerling, of Chabad of Far Rockaway, who gives his weekly class at 8:15 pm on Mondays.
Though not a weekly offering as of yet, Rabbi YY Jacobson brings his inimitable warmth and eloquence to an occasional live lecture on the weekly sicha at his website, Theyeshiva.net.
To find individual links to all the live weekly classes, please go to projectlikkuteisichos.org/live
If you are ready to give a weekly live shiur please contact [email protected] .
are the live classes recorded?
yes. On the website you can find everything