By COLlive reporter
Photos: Shneur Haviv/COLlive
Busses recently pulled up in front of Lubavitch World Headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway and college students and young adults spilled out onto the street.
Only, this was not another organized visit by Chabad on Campus.
The group of young men and women were part of Nefesh Yehudi, the Israel campus outreach organization that is part of the international kiruv association Olami.
They were welcomed by Rabbi Duddi Farkash, a businessman and activist who founded Chabad of Olympia in Monsey, New York. Hearing about the planned trip to New York, Farkash encouraged Olami officials to explore the world of Chabad.
They first visited the Rebbe‘s room and the WLCC room where the Rebbe’s farbrengens were broadcast to communities around the world. Rabbi Chaim Baruch Halberstam and Rabbi Mendel Aizenbach led the tour and explained how the Rebbe’s talks were heard and then studied in depth by chassidim.
The groups then visited the main shul of 770, where they encountered the many bochurim learning Gemara as part of the Central Yeshiva Tomchei Tmimim Lubavitch, and saw the ongoing loop of davening that happens there.
Accompanying the group were Rabbi Dov Rosenblum, Mrs. Tzivi Rosenblum, Rabbi Dudi Erenfeld, Mrs. Yael Zehavi and Mrs. Rivie Kirshtein.
The students then continued to the Cambria Heights section of Queens where they davened at the Ohel of the Rebbe, perhaps the most frequented Jewish site in North America. Joining them there was Rabbi Eliyahu Ilani, founder and director of Nefesh Yehudi, which offers Israeli university students a stipend for devoting 4.5 weekly hours to studying Judaism.
The visit deeply impacted and inspired the groups of both young and women. Farkash shared with them the story of Israeli diplomat Yehuda Avner meeting the Rebbe for a Yechidus.
“Let me tell you what I try to do,” the Rebbe told him. “Imagine you’re looking at a candle. What you really see is a lump of wax with a thread down its middle. When do the thread and wax become a candle? In other words, when do they fulfill the purpose for which they were created? When you put a flame to the thread. That’s when the wax and thread become a candle.
“The wax is the body, and the wick is the soul. Ignite the soul with the fire of Torah and a person will fulfill the purpose for which he or she was created. That is what I try to do–to ignite the soul of our people with the fire of Torah.”
Avner then asked the Rebbe, “My candle–has the Rebbe lit it?”
“No,” said the Rebbe. “I have given you the match. Only you can light your candle.”
B”H
Note that Olami is a Reb Aaron and Moshe Wolfson org, and everyone know they are very close to chabad, they come every year with Rav Pinson to the Kinus HaSheluchim, and Moshe’s father used to work in Lubavitcher Yeshiva
So so beautiful!!