Rabbi Turns Tables on Participants

By COLlive reporter
Photos by Alex Gorokhov

A full crowd came to the Mayan Yisroel center on Avenue N in Brooklyn’s Flatbush neighborhood to celebrate Yud Tes Kislev, the chassidic holiday also known as the Rosh Hashana of Chassidus.

100 people came throughout the evening and sat around the tables as words of Torah and Chassidus were shared alongside Chassidic niggunim sung by Rabbi Chaim Fogelman.

The advertised speakers of the evening were Rabbi Naftali Silberberg, co-director of the Rohr Jewish Learning Institute’s Curriculum Development Department, and Rabbi Sholom Mendelson.

But after the two had spoken, Mayan Yisroel’s director Rabbi Yoseph Vigler got up and made a unexpected public request of the participants.

“The main part of the program is going to be asking you to speak,” he told the people assembled. He said he wanted to hear from the people present how they have been “been inspired by the teachings of Chassidus and the Baal Shem Tov.”

One after another, residents took the microphone and shared experiences of the relevance of Chassidus to their own lives, and how it enhanced the Yiddishkeit they grew up with.

Binyomin, who dropped out of Yeshiva to pursue a career, said he has been asking himself, “Who am I, what am I and what do I ought to be?” After he started attending a Chassidus class by Rabbi Vigler, he found the Chassidus has provided the answers for him.

Another participant said, “I was told about the Tanya shiur that happens here every morning. And like everything else, I kept pushing it off. Then I met Rabbi Vigler and joined a shiur of his. It was then that I learned about the 2 souls we all have and how struggles is something we are meant to have. Learning Chassidus changed a lot for me.”

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