Lottery Tickets for Beloved Rabbi

By COLlive reporter
Photos: Baruch Ezagui

The 71st birthday of Rabbi Avrohom Gerlitzky, a veteran teacher and beloved maggid shiur in Crown Heights, was marked with a grand party on Tuesday.

It has become a tradition among his students at Oholei Torah Zal since 1981 to go all out in celebrating the day with a lavish farbrengen, fliers and gifts.

The students say they do it as a small token of their appreciation for his warmth, kindness and dedication to his students for over 40 years.

“His students are like his children,” they told COLlive.com. “He puts his heart and soul into teaching, and he has thousands of grateful students all over the world.”

When Rabbi Gerlitzky arrived at school, he was surprised with a grand farbrengen party organized by his students, along with a birthday cake.

The bochurim prepared a display of colorfully wrapped gifts to present to Rabbi Gerlitzky, which included a compilation of videos of him going by the Rebbe, a 43 inch computer screen, a new chair for zal, a special “no parking” sign custom made for him, a water dispenser, and a lottery ticket for the record-breaking Powerball drawing tonight.

Another special gift was a custom Kuntres publication, gifted to Reb Avrohom and each of his Talmidim at the party, which includes a compilation of explanations on each possuk of his new Kapitel 72 – in Tehillim.

The Kuntres was commissioned by Menachem Benchemon of Visual-Torah.com compiled by Machon Shmuel, a division of JLI.

The farbrengen continued with surprise guests stopping by to give birthday wishes to the Rabbi, including his brother-in-law Rabbi Yisroel Shemtov, his brother Menachem Gerlitzky, businessman Yossi Malamud, and other friends and relatives.

Video: Gifts for Reb Avrohom

Video:

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To celebrate the 71st birthday of beloved Rebbe and maggid shiur Rabbi Gerlitzky, his students surprised him with a grand farbrengen party organized by his students, along with a birthday cake. It has become a tradition among his students since 1981 to go all out in celebrating the day with a lavish farbrengen, fliers and gifts. The students say they do it as a small token of their appreciation for his warmth, kindness and dedication to his students for over 40 years.

A post shared by COLlive (@colliveofficial) on Oct 23, 2018 at 2:31pm PDT