By COLlive reporter
One of the tents at the courtyard of the Ohel Chabad Lubavitch center, near the Rebbe’s gravesite in Cambria Heights, Queens, was filled Wednesday night by a crowd of bochurim.
The occasion was the completion of the 32nd cycle of daily learning of the Mishneh Torah, the Rambam’s central work spanning hundreds of chapters and describing all of the laws mentioned in the Torah.
Emceeing was Rabbi Chaim Shaul Brook, Director of Lahak publications, who described the Rebbe’s establishing the daily regimen of learning Rambam to incorporate his teachings into every Jew’s daily study schedule.
The Israeli-born Brook recalled how as a bochur in the 1980s he was asked to assist a fair of bochurim from the Central Yeshiva at 770 Eastern Parkway who flew to Israel on a mission to provide footnotes for the Mishneh Torah.
He said that members of Crown Heights Kollel, which operated under the Rebbe’s secretariat, were working on a book to assist with the daily study and needed access to a large base of Torah and halachic publications.
“At the Bar Ilan University at the time, there was a revolutionary technological machine – a computer,” Rabbi Brook recalled, explaining that it assisted the two bochurim with easily finding sources to the mitzvos the Rambam mentions.
He revealed that one of the two bochurim was Rabbi Shlomo Segal, today a dayan of the Crown Heights Bais Din. He was honored with completing the 32nd cycle.
Beginning the new 33rd cycle was Rabbi Abraham Shemtov, Chairman of Agudas Chassidei Chabad International and Head Shliach of Philadelphia.
Among his many activities, Rabbi Shemtov published the elegant albums chronicling the Siyum Harambam celebrations around the world and the wide-spread rabbinical and public festivities for the Rebbe’s campaign.
The final speaker was Rabbi Dovid Dubov, the Shliach in Princeton, New Jersey, and a scholar who recently published a compilation of teachings from the Rebbe’s saintly father, R’ Levi Yitzchok Schneerson OBM.
He pointed out that this year is the 20th anniversary of the Rebbe’s yartzeit, as well as the 70th yartzeit of Reb Levik and the 50th yartzeit of Rebbetzin Chana Schneerson OBM, the Rebbe’s mother.
The event concluded with a call to increase in learning, not only the daily portion of 3 chapters, but also to take extra time to study some of the halachos more in-depth.
It is truly amazing to see more and more of these types of things happening of late.
Is this the Vaad Talmidei Hatmimim’s work?
R’ Avremel Shemtov spoke very nicely and alot of things the crowd never heard about
Thank you to all the bochurim that arranged the siyum harambam