The GW Hatchet reports: Junior Josh Abrams stands over a table in the basement of Hillel, knees bent slightly to lower his eyes to the man seated beside him.
The seated man is much older, with a dark gray beard that falls to his chest. A wide-brimmed black hat covers his long gray hair, and he wears a black jacket, tied at the waist like a robe, covered with shiny blue paisley patterns. He holds Abrams’ hand in one of his and squeezes his cheek with the other, speaking quietly into the student’s ear.
Abrams, along with about 100 other students, met with the Kalover Rebbe Moses Taub Wednesday at Hillel. Rebbe is a Judaic title that denotes the leadership of a certain sect or group. Taub is the leader of the Kalov Hasidic Jewish sect and he said he has spent the past 30 years traveling across 50 countries and meeting with students to discuss their Jewish religion and heritage.
“I come to bless them and to encourage them,” Taub said. “Part of uplifting them is to help them find things that they may have lost.”
The rebbe said he helps Jewish students regain the most important parts of their faith.
“There are a lot of Jewish students who are unfortunately not given the opportunity to know what has given strength for thousands of years to the Jewish nation – their forbearers,” he said. “These forbearers were so firm in the Torah, the mitzvah and the Commandments. Having the mitzvah and the Torah are such great benefits.”
Senior Zach Cutler organized Wednesday’s event. Cutler said he first met the rebbe eight years ago at his Los Angeles high school.
“I went to his office and spent five minutes with him and he knew things about me, like he could get a reading on my soul,” Cutler said. “It really inspired me. I promised him that I would start keeping Shabbat, and I have been doing that for eight years.”
Cutler said he contacted the rebbe’s office two months ago in hopes of bringing his inspiration to the strong Jewish population at GW.
“I think that he can really inspire people, uplift them, refresh their perspectives,” Cutler said.
Abrams, who is an active member of the Jewish community on campus and the president of the Jewish Student Association, met the rebbe for the first time Wednesday.
“He told me where I was in life and what my future might look like,” Abrams said. “He also told me what I might need to do to get there. To have a great future with all of these open possibilities, I need to study more.”
Abrams described his meeting with the rebbe as an advising session, providing a road map for success and reminding students of the importance of their commitment to their faith.
“It’s nice that he came to meet with GW students, to learn about the students and to show them what to do, according to what he believes,” Abrams said.
The rebbe said he found the students he had met so far at GW to be “very fine boys.”
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
6 Responses
Beautiful!
tells the future?
“…what the future MIGHT look like”
oh.
I know the Kalever Rebbe Shlita personally and he is a real tzaddik. My wife teaches in a kiruv school for girls and he comes there twice a year to be machazik the girls. Many have been influenced by him and go on to Bais Yakov seminaries and Israel and marry frum guys and mamish make a kiddush Hashem.
there is nothing embarssing about him going to colleges howerver when that is the only perspective of charidi jewery that these college kids get well what can i say it makes me embaressed to be charadi
#4..if your embaressed because a yid looks like a yid should look, your missing a lot in your emunnah and yiras shomaim. ‘vayigbor libo bedarkai hashem’. A gentile respects one who sticks to his relgious principles,the only ones who are embaressed are assimilated yiden like you ,and from such we will not be embaressed. True story: Many years ago a ‘chusid looking man’ got on the train at Delancey St so this assimilated ‘yid’ (like you,al least in hashkafos), started berating him in yiddish ‘this is America,not some shtetel in Europe, here we dont dress like that blah, blah’ so this ‘chasid looking’ man answers in perfect english ‘your wondering on my mode of dress, well my father, gandfather dressed this way ..so do i’ .That yid’ stammered ‘of course if your father,grand…you should too’.CHASID LOOKING YID TELLS HIM IN YIDDISH ‘THE AMISH MAY GO DRESSED LIKE HIS ANCESTRY BUT ME NOT (WITH SOME ADJECTIVES ADDED,BUT NOT DIRTY) ‘ASSIMILATED JEW’ HIGH TAILED IT OFF NEXT STOP. I ALSO READ SIMILAR STORY OCCURED WITH THE ‘BOSTENER REBBE’ OF HAR NO,F WAY WAY BACK,THOSE SAME YEARS. READ IT IN THE BOOK ‘BOSTENER REBBE’ (THINK THATS THE TITLE)DONT THINK ITS THE SAME STORY.THE FIRST STORY I HEARD WAS WITH PROMINENT REBBISHE FAMILY WHO RESIDED IN THE BRONX THOSE YEARS..(BEFORE WW2?)ANYWAY MR #4, THAT THE KIND OF ‘CHAREIDI’ YID YOU COME ACCROSS. I HAVE.
Wonderful. I am a baal tshuva. When I was getting closer to Torah I was never turned off by meeting frum people in cases like this story.
However, I WAS always turned off by:
1. People who didn’t take Torah seriously
2. People who were “pushy” with Torah observance (there were almost always new baalei tshuva!!!)