Rabbi Motti & Rochel Flikshtein: From Rapper To Rabbi

00:00 Speaker 1 One Shabbos many years ago, a troubled teen walked into a Chabad house in Pennsylvania.

00:05 Speaker 2 So that morning, I actually frod out my hair as much as I could so I would look as gangster as possible. I wore the baggiest clothes that I could. I wore these, uh, Timberland boots. You want me to go to synagogue? I'm gonna go, but I'm gonna go dressed like this. This was my goal. My goal was that the rabbi would see me walk into synagogue looking like this. He would make a comment or even give me a look like, "What are you doing?" Like, "Don't you realize this is a holy day, a holy time, a holy place? Why are you coming looking like that?" And then I'll be able to go back to my parents afterwards and say, "Why are you giving s- me such a hard time about coming to synagogue? Why do you want me to come? The rabbi doesn't even want me there." And then I'll never have to go back again. Mission accomplished.

01:01 Speaker 1 But that young man had miscalculated how the rabbi would respond, and he couldn't have imagined how it would help transform his life. I'm Gary Wolk, and this is Lamplighters: Stories from Chabad Emissaries on the Jewish Frontier. Life as a Chabad emissary is often joyous, but it can be unpredictable and even dangerous. Chabad has become a ubiquitous presence in every corner of the world, but behind every Chabad house are emissaries, regular people striving to transcend their circumstances, and the community that supports and relies on them. These are their stories. Rabbi Matti Flickstein grew up just outside of Philadelphia. Matt, as he was known, was raised by loving Jewish parents, but-

02:00 Speaker 2 Jewish practices were non-existent. My parents come from Russia, where it was completely, um, outlawed basically for them to practice their Judaism. Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur didn't exist in our homes. Going to a Hebrew school, a Sunday school, I didn't have that. Having a, a proper bar mitzvah was not an emphasis whatsoever in our home.

02:27 Speaker 1 The public school district Matt was in had the highest juvenile crime rate in the area.

02:32 Speaker 2 I unfortunately got swept up in the wrong crowd, and from a very young age, I started to get into a lot of trouble. At 10 years old, I already started with, uh, smoking cigarettes. At 11 years old, I already started experimenting with drugs. Started with pot, marijuana, and then moved on to stronger drugs.

02:56 Speaker 1 Matt's behavior worsened over the next few years. His parents struggled to deal with it.

03:02 Speaker 2 I was a complete rebel. You would tell me to do something, I would do the exact opposite. I was that type of kid.

03:07 Speaker 1 When Matt was still in fifth grade, his parents thought it might be time to take him out of public school.

03:13 Speaker 2 The problem was that they didn't know of any private schools to send me to, but they had these family friends who also happened to be from Russia. They started to send their kids to the local Jewish day school.

03:25 Speaker 1 They suggested the Flicksteins do the same. Matt chafed at the idea. His father did, too.

03:32 Speaker 2 My father says, "You know what? Fine. Fine, he'll go to the Jewish school, but under one condition. The second that I see that Matt is starting to become observant, religious in any way, shape, or form, we're taking him out of the Jewish school." He said, "The last thing that I need is a rabbi in my house."

03:52 Speaker 1 His parents enrolled him in a Jewish day school in Yardley, an hour's drive from their home. But according to Matt, his father had nothing to be worried about.

04:02 Speaker 2 There's no way I was becoming a rabbi. There's no way I was becoming a religious.

04:05 Speaker 1 But he had become a rapper. Matt says he spent every cent he had on CDs of his favorite hip-hop artists. He had a big collection of them. He sported baggy clothes and a gigantic afro. He started making up his own rhymes and writing and recording his own rap songs, but-

04:24 Speaker 2 I was using it totally for the negative. I was listening to all the negative stuff, all the negative messages, and when I started to rap, I was recording songs that had very, very negative messages.

04:36 Speaker 1 Would you care to tell me about those songs and those messages?

04:40 Speaker 2 Definitely not. And in fact, I don't even share what my rap name was from back in the day because I don't want people to look it up and create any association between those messages and me because it's not something I'm proud of.

04:57 Speaker 1 Matt immersed himself in rap music, but he struggled as a student at his new private school every bit as much as he had in public school.

05:06 Speaker 2 I was not interested at all. Again, I was the rebel. I was, like, completely written off by everybody. I would smoke different things, and I would get caught. I almost got expelled on several occasions for bullying other kids, which again, is, is horrible. Horrible, the types of things that I was doing just to get a reaction out of people. I was a big, big troublemaker.

05:29 Speaker 1 At the end of one school year, Matt opened up the yearbook and learned that he had won two awards.

05:35 Speaker 2 Award number one was class clown. Whoo. Yeah, that was good. Lots of naches for my parents on that one. And, uh, the second one was least, and I believe it was a unanimous decision, it was least likely to become a rabbi, because there was no way that I was gonna become a rabbi. There's no way I was gonna become observant.

06:02 Speaker 1 As Matt was flaming out in day school, his parents met Aryeh Weinstein, a rabbi at their nearby Chabad shul, Lubavitch of Bucks County, just north of Philadelphia. The Flicksteins weren't religious, but the rabbi had made an impression on them. They wanted Matt to meet him too.

06:20 Speaker 2 And it was a Shabbos morning. They wanted me to come, and I did not want to come. Come on, it's Saturday morning. Are you kidding me? This is my time to sleep. This is my time to hang out with friends. This is, like, no way.

06:34 Speaker 1 But Matt's parents pulled what he calls the wild card. They threatened to take the keys to his car. Matt reluctantly agreed to go, but he had a plan.

06:45 Speaker 2 So that morning, I actually Fro'd out my hair as much as I could, so I would look as gangster as possible. I wore the baggiest clothes that I could. I wore these, uh, Timberland boots. You want me to go to synagogue? I'm gonna go, but I'm gonna go dressed like this. This was my goal. My goal was that the rabbi would see me walk into synagogue looking like this. He would make a comment or even give me a look like, "What are you doing?" Like, "Don't you realize this is a holy day, a holy time, a holy place? Why are you coming looking like that?" And then I'll be able to go back to my parents afterwards and say, "Why are you giving s- me such a hard time about coming to synagogue? Why do you want me to come? The rabbi doesn't even want me there." And then I'll never have to go back again. Mission accomplished.

07:44 Speaker 1 But Matt didn't know how Chabad works.

07:47 Speaker 2 And so I walked into the synagogue, made eye contact with the rabbi, waiting for this negative reaction, but he actually made a run towards the back of the synagogue where I walked in.

08:00 Speaker 3 I gave him a full hug.

08:02 Speaker 1 That's Rabbi Aryeh Weinstein.

08:05 Speaker 3 I embraced him fully, and I just gave him a complete full hug and a big smile.

08:12 Speaker 2 He gave me a huge bear hug. And I remember thinking to myself, "Well, this wasn't part of the script. This wasn't supposed to happen. This isn't part of the... You're ruining everything."

08:26 Speaker 3 And it was just an embrace to say, "There are no barriers between us, so whatever you may think I'm thinking, we're all good."

08:36 Speaker 1 Matt and his family began attending more often, and something dawned on him.

08:41 Speaker 2 He was seeing right through the costume. He was hugging me not because of what I looked like, not because of some kind of external shell, but because of something really special that I have inside of me, which I later came to find out is the Yiddishe Neshama, the Jewish soul, the spark of God that we have within.

09:00 Speaker 1 Flickstein says that although the hug didn't lead to immediate changes, it planted a seed within him. In the fall of 2003, Matt Flickstein went off to college. Brandeis has traditionally had a strong Jewish community, but...

09:19 Speaker 2 When I got there, I was still not connecting to my Jewish roots in any way, shape, or form. Had no interest in connecting to the Jewish community there on campus.

09:29 Speaker 1 Flickstein was an economics major because he wanted a better way to run his new business venture.

09:35 Speaker 2 I decided to be one of the campus drug dealers. So I had lots of drugs. I had lots of money. I was high all the time. I was partying every night. I had lots of friends, was very popular on campus, but I still felt a little bit empty inside, and that started to bother me a lot because it made no logical sense. Because in my mind, I literally have everything, so if I have everything, I should feel fulfilled. But for some weird reason, I felt very empty inside.

10:08 Speaker 1 But it got worse than just feeling empty, much worse. One night, Matt and a group of his friends had taken some hallucinogenic mushrooms he had acquired.

10:20 Speaker 2 And we noticed right away that they are laced. So our whole group started to have this really bad, bad trip, and I believe it lasted somewhere from eight to 10 hours, so it was horrible. One of my friends, who also had that same batch, didn't survive the night. He actually took his own life. And I thought to myself, "If, God forbid, that was me, then would I have been satisfied with the life that I lived until that point?" And the answer that I gave myself was a very strong no.

11:02 Speaker 1 Matt struggled a lot, but he was still in touch with Rabbi Weinstein, who offered guidance.

11:09 Speaker 3 I wanted to do everything I could do to just let him know that I'm here, I'm fully open to you, and you guide me in how I can support you.

11:17 Speaker 1 But Matt, who was still steadfastly not religious, wasn't sure what he should do about his feeling of emptiness. He called his best friend, Jason Sugarman, who he had met in ninth grade at the Jewish day school. Jason had grown up in Wilmington, Delaware, in a traditionally observant family. Now he was exploring his Jewish roots in a deeper way at Ohr Somayach, a yeshiva in Jerusalem. Matt was able to convince his parents to let him visit Jason there during spring break.

11:48 Speaker 2 And I spoke to him about all these things that were going on, this feeling of emptiness, this friend who passed away, and I went on and on and on. I got it off my chest. But then, I'll never forget, Jason looked me straight in the eyes, and he said, "Dude, you just don't get it." You know a lot about a lot of different things in your life. You know about, you know, rap, and you know about making friends, and making money, and drugs. But he said, "You don't know anything about who you are as a Jew." And when he said those words, I have to tell you, it hit me like a ton of bricks, because he was absolutely right. What does it mean to be a Jew? What does it mean to, to have a connection to Torah and to mitzvahs? I, I didn't know any of that. And then when he said those words, I had like a memory flash back to the hug that Rabbi Weinstein gave me. What that hug taught me was that I have something special inside of me. And then I looked at Jason, I said, "So what should I do about it?" And he says, "Well, if you're gonna ask me my opinion, then I'll suggest that you take a couple of months off from college, and you come and you join me here in yeshiva. You spend some time learning about who you are as a Jew."

13:13 Speaker 1 Matt didn't like that idea at first, because he didn't really know anything about yeshiva.

13:19 Speaker 2 Yeshiva to me meant a room full of old men with like long white beards sitting over big dusty books that when you turn the page it's like, poof, a cloud of dust pops out.

13:30 Speaker 1 But when Jason took Matt on a tour of Ohr Someach...

13:33 Speaker 2 I saw that my vision of yeshiva was totally off, because he was in a yeshiva that was full of kids just like us, kids who didn't have much of a Jewish background, if any. And they were just going to learn in this distraction-free zone about who they are as Jews.

13:53 Speaker 1 Matt attended Ohr Someach the next fall. But then he met Rabbi Shmuly Weiss, the Chabad shliach at the Kotel, and began learning Hasidus, the deeper aspect of Torah that explores the Jewish soul. He transferred to Mayanot, the Chabad yeshiva in Jerusalem.

14:11 Speaker 2 And so then boom, the light bulb started to go off, and I learned that I can take these leather straps, right, to tefillin, and I can wrap them on my arm. And in so doing, I'm infusing that leather with holiness. Not only that, but the cow that the leather came from is infused with holiness. But not only that, but the farm that the cow was raised on is infused with holiness. And there's this domino ripple effect of holiness that extends the entire cosmos, and that applies to every single mitzvah that we do. Every mitzvah that we do is with us forever. So throughout that year, I'm learning, I'm growing, I'm taking on different mitzvahs, and I stopped doing drugs by the end of that year, Baruch Hashem.

14:59 Speaker 1 Flickstein returned to the US. He says he couldn't go back to Brandeis. His reputation had preceded him, so he transferred to Yeshiva University in New York and earned his degree in economics. And he began to date a young woman named Rachel.

15:15 Speaker 2 And it became pretty clear pretty quickly that we would likely end up getting married. And, um, we were talking like young couples talk about what type of career path are we going to take. So Rachel looked at me and she said, "Well, what are you truly passionate about?" And I thought for a moment and I said, "Well, the only thing that I could think of right now is that I love learning Torah and sharing it with others." And she said, "So then you should become a rabbi." And I said, "Come on, me? You know where I was just a year ago. Rabbi? God, that's not gonna happen." And she didn't think it was very funny. She kept a straight face and she said, "Well, if it's something that you're really passionate about, then you'll find a way to make it happen."

16:08 Speaker 1 So Matt, now Matty, and Rachel, now Rochel, were married in 2007. They moved to Morristown, New Jersey, where Matty enrolled in the Smicha program at the Rabbinical College of America. He was ordained in 2010. The young couple decided that they would go out on shlichus as emissaries of the Rebbe.

16:29 Speaker 2 We are going to find a community. We're gonna rock the house. Let's do this.

16:32 Speaker 1 They got an offer to work in Northern New Jersey, but before they accepted, they reached out to the Vogels, with whom Rochel and her family had become close in Wilmington, Delaware.

16:43 Speaker 2 So after speaking to the Vogels, they thought it was a, a fantastic idea.

16:47 Speaker 1 The Flicksteins hit the ground running. Their Hebrew school started with eight kids. Now they serve over 40. Their summer camp now has over 50 kids.

16:58 Speaker 2 And we started a teen program, which is part of an international teen organization called CTeen, which is an absolutely incredible program.

17:08 Speaker 4 CTeen has become an incredible international network for Jewish teens, where teens can come to meet other Jewish teens that are just like them.

17:16 Speaker 1 That's Rebbetzin Rochel Flickstein.

17:18 Speaker 4 But it's also a place to really come and explore what does it mean to be a Jew. So we try to bring out like real significance for them in what they're doing and how they're connecting to their Judaism.

17:26 Speaker 1 The Flicksteins have helped many teens in the Wilmington area do that. When I asked them if a particular success story leapt to mind, they were unanimous.

17:36 Speaker 5 When I first started CTeen, I definitely enjoyed it a lot.

17:40 Speaker 1 That's Meir Horowitz, known until fairly recently by his friends and family in Wilmington as Zach. When he was in 10th grade...

17:48 Speaker 5 My mother told me that Hip Hop Rachel from JCC Camp years ago is coming to the house to talk to me and my brothers About a Jewish teen group that she's starting in Wilmington, Delaware.

18:04 Speaker 1 But who's Hip Hop Rachel? That was what they called Rochel Flickstein when she was a counselor at the local JCC camp, where she taught hip hop dance for several summers.

18:16 Speaker 4 They thought it would be a cool thing to give to the kids at the camp.

18:19 Speaker 1 Young Zach had Rachel as a counselor starting when he was just seven years old.

18:24 Speaker 5 And I remember Hip Hop Rachel. I just remember her walking around in her hip hop clothes and, uh, teaching us hip hop dances. And, uh, little did I know that Hip Hop Rachel would end up having a extreme pivotal impact on my life.

18:37 Speaker 1 At that first meeting at the Horowitz's home in 2013, Rochel persuaded Zach to be the social director of the new C-Teen chapter, which was funny because-

18:48 Speaker 5 I had no idea what the C in C-Teen stood for. I had never heard of Chabad, and I don't think she even mentioned the word Chabad, just C-Teen. So I figured, okay, sure, that sounds great.

18:58 Speaker 1 It was also funny because of Zach's predisposition against religion of any kind. He had once stood up in history class-

19:06 Speaker 5 I raised my hand and very, like, strongly said to my teacher, "It's quite clear that religion is the cause of all the world's problems."

19:16 Speaker 1 But none of that stopped Zach from scheduling and taking part in a full calendar of C-Teen social events, including Shabbos meals, paintball outings, and trips to Philadelphia to see magic shows.

19:30 Speaker 4 Everyone came because Zach was there. He was the light of the party, you know? And he would make things fun, but my husband would come to put tefillin on with the boys, and he would, like, run to the bathroom and stay there until until everyone was finished and the tefillin were away, and then he'd sneak back in.

19:44 Speaker 5 I would really give Motty a hard time when he would try to wrap tefillin on me. I was genuinely very annoyed by that 'cause I wanted nothing to do with the actual religious part of it.

19:54 Speaker 1 But the Flicksteins loved Zach unconditionally. They'd often stay up until the wee hours of the morning answering his many questions about Judaism and what he considered to be irreconcilable differences between religion and academic views of science and philosophy.

20:11 Speaker 4 He wasn't doing the mitzvahs. He wasn't keeping Shabbos. But he was already philosophically developing his mind to be s- in such a place where he was searching for the meaning and the purpose behind everything.

20:23 Speaker 5 But as the years went on in C-Teen, for these few years, I definitely was feeling more of, of a fire. My neshamah was definitely firing up and getting hotter and I think slowly preparing itself to ultimately jump in.

20:39 Speaker 1 Between his junior and senior years, Zach went on the C-Teen Heritage Quest, a trip to Poland and the former concentration camps there, followed by a two-week trip to Israel.

20:51 Speaker 5 And that trip just brought me to a, a whole new level. It was a real game changer for me.

20:56 Speaker 1 Zach began to study Torah and take on more and more mitzvahs. He even began wearing a yarmulke to the Quaker school he attended. He says that the Flicksteins never once pushed him to do anything.

21:08 Speaker 4 We really wanted him to be making this decision and driving the car 'cause we knew if there was any pressure, then that's enough for somebody to push back and go the other direction, and it was really just from his own, you know, embracing it.

21:19 Speaker 1 Zach finished high school and committed to George Washington University, where he said he wanted to study politics. But he took a gap year in 2017 and studied for a year at Mayanot and then decided to skip college. He now studies full-time in kollel and goes by his Hebrew name, Meir, and he was married barely three months ago. Now he and his wife, Chana, want to be Chabad emissaries.

21:45 Speaker 5 I absolutely want to become a shliach. I know I love working with teens. I love inspiring. I love just trying to light up people's souls like my soul was lit.

21:57 Speaker 1 Meir credits the Flicksteins' unconditional love, patience, and lack of agenda for helping him each step of the way. But he sees something else behind those qualities.

22:08 Speaker 5 Now I look back and see, wow, it was the Rebbe. The Rebbe was just shining from their faces.

22:14 Speaker 4 I think that the Rebbe really gave over the ability to really transform our lives and to constantly be in a state of growth, and I try to emulate that myself. And I think that's really the way to be able to teach, is you yourself live it and grow, and then hopefully that becomes a contagious energy that people can pick up on and taste and want more of as well.

22:35 Speaker 1 Now, remember that this all began with a hug from Rabbi Ari Weinstein. He says the Rebbe's unconditional love for every Jew led him to embrace Matt Flickstein. But, he adds, giving out hugs is not usually in his nature.

22:51 Speaker 3 But I did , and I'm very happy I did.

22:55 Speaker 1 These days, the Flicksteins are raising seven children. They run several programs at Chabad Lubavitch of Delaware, including J Kids Hebrew School, Gan Yisroel Camp, women's programs, holiday events, and of course C-Teen. You could say that helping young people is their forte. But Flickstein also takes a special pride that his parents have also made huge strides in their Jewish observance.

23:21 Speaker 5 They keep strict kosher. They keep Shabbos. My father wears a yarmulke and tzitzit everywhere he goes, and I'm proud to call myself their son.

23:31 Speaker 1 Flickstein is also proud to call his best friend, Jason, his brother-in-law because his wife, Rochel, formerly known as Hip Hop Rachel, is actually Jason's sister.

23:42 Speaker 5 I honestly today could not imagine being happier than I am now. To say that I'm living the dream is an understatement. It's the dream that I could have never even dreamt of, right? My father saying, "The last thing that I need is a rabbi in my house," and my class voting unanimously least likely to become a rabbi. It's a dream that I could have never dreamt of. My friends who know me from back then still can't believe that it's me. That, "There's no way you're Matt Flickstein. Where, where'd you put him? Where'd you, where'd you lock him up? Because there's no way that you are him."

24:20 Speaker 1 Rabbi Motty Flickstein is 36 years old, double chai, which is fitting perhaps for someone who has made such a second life for himself. He doesn't want to bring back the old Matt anytime soon, although there is one part of his old life that has made a resurgence: rapping.

24:39 Speaker 5 In his heart of hearts, a child always wants to come home. And his father wants to bring his children into his arms. You simply open up your ears and hear he's trying to call for you to come home. Please come home. Just come home to Tatty.

24:54 Speaker 1 For three years after he became observant, Motty Flickstein stopped rapping, but at one meeting, Weinstein asked him-

25:02 Speaker 5 "What are you doing with your rap?" I said, "What are you talking about, rap? Go on, I'm an observant Jew now. A Hasid. A rap? Come on." And he says, "No." He says, "Everything that we have is a gift from God to share our light, and positivity, and godliness, and goodness with the world. And for you, that's rap." He has an ability to reach people in a way that I will never have, not only because of his natural gifts and personality, but also because of his storyline, where he began, and how he evolved, and his understanding of a world that I don't understand, and therefore can never fully, uh, connect with on the level he can. I'll never forget his line, that he said, "What you can accomplish through one of your rap songs, I can't accomplish through a thousand sermons." And he's doing it, and he's doing it very, very well. Now when I use rap, obviously, I've totally re-channeled it, and I use it for, uh, positive messages. It's all good, yeah. We all have those times in life when we think, "If God were good, he wouldn't put us through this." But we still gotta remember

26:18 Speaker 1 In 2010, Rabbi Matty Flickstein, AKA More2Life, released a 10-song collection of rap songs called Coming Home. This one's called It's All Good.

26:29 Speaker 5 It should be understood, it's all good, it's all good. Often we try to see why bad things happen logically. We're crying and dying. If God exists, what kind of God is he? It's hard to see properly that this is how it's gotta be. But you gotta peek and try to see that God is playing hide and seek. He wants us

26:42 Speaker 1 I end our conversation by asking Rabbi Flickstein to tell me about the inspiration for the lyrics.

26:47 Speaker 5 I would never want my kids to experience what I experienced and I would never tell anybody to do the things that I did. But in retrospect, the fact that I went through all of that gives me a vantage point to be able to connect, particularly with the youth. I'm able to relate to what they go through with stresses, with trouble, with, uh, peer pressure, with, uh, the pressures of college, and SATs, and all of that. It's all good. It's all good. Everything is for a reason. It's all God, so it's all good. All good. Love life 'cause it's all good. Listen up, people, it's all good. Don't ever forget that it's all good.

27:34 Speaker 1 I'm Gary Wolik. Thanks for listening to Lamplighters: Stories from Chabad Emissaries on the Jewish Frontier. We welcome your questions and comments about what you've just heard on Lamplighters. Please email us at podcast@lubavitch.com. And if you know of a great story involving Chabad emissaries or the people they inspire, please let us know about them. That's podcast at L-U-B-A-V-I-T-C-H.com. To subscribe digitally to Lubavitch International Magazine or to receive it at your doorstep, please visit lubavitch.com/subscribe. This is a Lubavitch International podcast.