Homesick for Lubavitch Homesick for Lubavitch

Marc Asnin is a documentary photographer who lives in New York City.  Over the years, Marc has photographed all kinds of subjects, from the most marginizaled people on death row to his own Uncle Charlie.

In 1992, Marc was commissioned by the New York Times to photograph the Lubavitcher Rebbe and the Crown Heights community as part of a feature essay, The Oracle of Crown Heights. Just a few weeks before the stroke, Marc’s pictures are from the last and most iconic pictures of that year.

In this podcast, we discuss Marc’s first impressions of the Rebbe and the Lubavitch milieu, his reflections on that photograph and what he thinks has made it such a lasting testimony.

Before becoming a full time life coach, Fitz Rabin was a master sofer for over a decade.

Over the years, Fitz struggled to identify with some of the practices seen as basic to being a Lubavitcher, namely the study of Chitas. Today, he celebrates 1000 days of learning chitas before shkiya.

We discuss the feelings of alienation from mass practice, the search for individual connection and the general tension between being true to yourself within a broader community.

Mrs. Vivi Deren grew up in Nashville, Tenessee as one of the first children of shluchim in the Unites States. Today she lives in Connecticut where she has been on shlichus with her husband for nearly fifty years.

In this episode, she speaks about her parents growing up as chassidim in the United States of the 1920s and 1930s, and about her grandparents who raised them.

We speak about how the community of Lubavitch in the United States has changed since, and how the Lubavitch ethic of individualism fits with the growth of community. 

Rabbi Yossi Morozov grew up in Brooklyn and was on shlichus with his family for twelve years in Ulyanovsk, a city one thousand kilometers east of Moscow.

After being forced to leave Russia, Yossi moved with his family to the Pomona area in New York and became a life insurance agent.

In this conversation we discuss his choices to go on shlichus and then into business and the challenges these choices posed to his own Lubavitch identity.

Rabbi Simon Jacobson is known today as a bestselling author and founder of the Meaningful Life Center.

But for many years he was one of the transcribers and editors of the Rebbe’s Farbrengen.

In this conversation we discuss some of the paradoxes he observed over the years, both regarding the Rebbe’s use of technology in sharing the Farbrengen around the world but also in how the Rebbe empowered his chassidim to think for themselves.

Rabbi Ruvi New grew up in Melbourne, Australia and is a shliach today in Boca Raton, Florida.

In this conversation, we discuss the changing dynamics of Lubavitch identity in the decade between his and his oldest's brother, Moshe New, cross Pacific journeys to 770.

We also discuss how over those years there seemed to be a tipping point of an "arum," or atmosphere, that brought more and more of Lubavitch into a powerful core, and where that leaves us today.
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Homesick for Lubavitch is a project of Yuvla Media.

Bentzi Avtzon is a filmmaker who specializes in telling the stories of thoughtful and heartfelt organizations. Business inquiries only: bentzi@yuvlamedia.com

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