Bagels, Bears & Baalei Teshuva in Berkeley: Rabbi Yehuda & Miriam Ferris

00:00 Speaker 1 And we went on our first date. I mentioned children, and she fell apart.

00:07 Speaker 2 Why was that?

00:08 Speaker 1 She said, "I thought we're just supposed to enjoy each other's, uh, company." So 10 dates later, I popped the question. She said, "Yes." The next day she said, "Maybe." I, I said, "Wait a minute, you, you said yes yesterday." She said, "I know, but I'll have to say maybe." She liked me-

00:26 Speaker 2 That's Rabbi Yehuda Ferris talking about his life partner, Rebbetzin Miriam Ferris. In addition to their responsibilities as spiritual leaders, he's a stand-up comedian and leader of a Hasidic rock band. She once planned a Shabbaton at Yosemite National Park with an emphasis on avoiding the bears. To say that they're characters is an understatement. Maybe that's why their outreach to Jews in wild, eccentric, free-thinking Berkeley, California has been so enduring and so successful.

00:59 Speaker 3 That's the way it feels.

01:02 Speaker 2 People who have come through the doors of Chabad House Berkeley have included ex-hippies, political activists, gifted UC Berkeley science and math students, and all manner of free-wheeling transients.

01:14 Speaker 1 So we're all a little bit meshugge. And I think the Rebbe sent me to do that crazy stuff. So I think the Rebbe put the right person in Berkeley.

01:24 Speaker 2 But for all their quirks and peccadillos, the Ferrises' primary job is to share the beauty of the Torah with the Jews of Berkeley. 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. Before we get down to the serious business of talking about Jewish outreach in the Bay Area, Rabbi Yehuda Ferris wants me to know something.

02:23 Speaker 1 I removed the broccoli between my teeth before the interview.

02:26 Speaker 2 With that out of the way, I ask Rabbi Ferris about his upbringing in a somewhat observant family. When he was young, he wanted to learn more about Judaism than his synagogue could provide, so-

02:38 Speaker 1 My grandfather gave me a Megillas Esther when I was eight years old, and he said, "Do you know what this is?" I said, "Not a rolling pin."

02:46 Speaker 2 You might already have noticed that Rabbi Ferris has the delivery of a seasoned stand-up comedian.

02:53 Speaker 1 He said, "Right, not a rolling pin. This is a megillah. Are you gonna take care of it?" And I said, "Yes," without knowing what I was getting into.

03:05 Speaker 2 But Ferris says that reading the megillah his grandfather smuggled out of the Soviet Union was a major breakthrough, and that his grandfather's gift had laid out a clear path for him.

03:15 Speaker 1 He handed me the baton, and I had to go for the finish line. I read the Torah also, and from then on I was hooked.

03:24 Speaker 2 A few years later while living in a Chicago suburb, Ferris met an Orthodox rabbi and began doing outreach in the community. One day his best friend handed him a pamphlet he had been given at a Chabad House in Milwaukee.

03:38 Speaker 1 And there was a line in there that really captured me. That was my gotcha moment, and it was a saying from the previous Rebbe that a Jew neither wants nor is capable of being ripped away from godliness. And I said, "Okay, where do I sign up?"

03:56 Speaker 2 So Ferris attended a farbrengen in Crown Heights when he was just 17 years old.

04:01 Speaker 1 And the Rebbe gave me a l'chaim. We locked eyes.

04:06 Speaker 2 Ferris resolved to become a baal teshuva, or master of return. Soon he was learning at Yeshivat Hadar HaTorah. In neighboring New Jersey, Ferris' future wife was making her own journey to Torah Judaism, only hers began from a place of almost total non-observance.

04:25 Speaker 3 We had a Christmas tree growing up. We had bagels and lox on Sunday morning, and we went to Reform Sunday school. And, uh, when I was in about fourth grade I dropped out, but I always wondered what the meaning of life was. I just did. I wondered about God. I'd lie in bed and I'd think about who created the world and where did we come from, and I didn't have any answers, and I had no clue that Judaism held any answers.

04:49 Speaker 2 But one day in the mid-'70s, 17-year-old Miriam was invited to a Shabbos meal with a family in Brooklyn.

04:57 Speaker 3 So they had me light a Shabbos candle. I'd never done it before, and I, I got tears in my eyes. I felt like I landed on a different planet. I couldn't believe this is my religion.

05:05 Speaker 2 With a burning desire to learn more about Yiddishkeit, Miriam deferred her first year of college and flew with her sister to Bais Chana Girl's School in Minnesota. Her parents didn't approve at first, but their daughters went back to Crown Heights to study at Bais Rivkah. Miriam went on to Yeshiva University's Stern College for Women, but her heart was with Chabad.

05:29 Speaker 3 Learning Hasidus was everything to me. Learning Tanya, that's what really clinched the deal for me.

05:34 Speaker 2 By the time they were in their early 20s, the Ferrises had returned to their Jewish tradition with a passion. In 1980, a matchmaker suggested to Yehuda Ferris that Miriam would be a good match for him. 10 days after their first date, Ferris proposed.

05:50 Speaker 1 She said, "Yes." The next day she said, "Maybe."

05:54 Speaker 2 So Ferris went back to the matchmaker.

05:56 Speaker 1 And I said, "She said maybe." He said, "Let me speak to her." And he got her to clarify her feelings. She said, "I don't know about getting married. It's a big commitment." But he said, "He's a nice guy. He'll work for a living. Do you wanna marry him?" And she said yes. And so we got to the chuppah.

06:15 Speaker 2 They were married that year.

06:17 Speaker 1 And the Rebbe gave us a blessing, "Certainly they will establish their house on the foundations of Torah and Mitzvahs. I will mention it at the resting place of my father-in-law."

06:27 Speaker 2 The Rebbe's father-in-law is Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, the previous Rebbe, whose saying had prompted Yehuda Ferris to sign up for life as a Hasid. He received his rabbinical ordination not long after he and Miriam were married. The Ferrises spent their first year together in Crown Heights. Then they were offered salaried positions in Berkeley, California, working for Rabbi Yosef Langer as the educational directors on the UC Berkeley campus.

07:01 Speaker 3 Me as a wanna-be hippie, I thought, "Wow, California, that sounds neat."

07:05 Speaker 2 They arrived at the airport in San Francisco in August of 1981.

07:10 Speaker 3 We arrived. We were so excited. I still remember it was like yesterday. Rabbi Langer drove us across the Bay Bridge, and here we were.

07:16 Speaker 1 We were, uh, very shocked to see palm trees and beautiful weather. It was a very different experience from Brooklyn.

07:24 Speaker 3 We loved it. We hit the ground running. We didn't feel at all that it was some kind of struggle or adjustment.

07:30 Speaker 2 Even though the '60s were long over at that point, many of the movements that marked that era were still in full force.

07:37 Speaker 1 It's the Free Speech Movement and, uh, the hippie movement. Anything goes. People are experimenting with religions, with cults, with drugs.

07:47 Speaker 2 But the Ferrises knew where to begin.

07:52 Speaker 1 People were open to the concept of change, to, uh, meaning in life, and, um, we really did make a lot of headway.

08:00 Speaker 2 They started with Shabbos meals, which they cleverly branded Friday Night Live. They ran a Stump the Rabbi campus table with a sign that read, "Ask the rabbi, five cents. Ask his wife, six cents." They offered home koshering services and a wide assortment of classes at UC Berkeley.

08:20 Speaker 1 And, uh, if there's free food on the Sabbath, why not? I'll try anything once. We had no manual. We had great role models, but basically we didn't know what to do. The Rebbe told us, "You should spread the joy and inspiration of Yiddishkeit," but he didn't tell us how. So we were basically experimenting with humor, with music, with food, different programs. Whatever sticks, you throw it against the wall.

08:54 Speaker 2 Rabbi Ferris, does being a baal teshuva create any disadvantages or even maybe advantages for you in your outreach?

09:01 Speaker 1 I feel being a baal teshuva gives me an advantage, that I can see where people are coming from, the jump that they have to make from non-observance to observance, and, uh, how to blend the two.

09:14 Speaker 2 What about you, Rebbetzin Ferris?

09:16 Speaker 3 I would say only advantages because I could empathize with people, wh- whatever s- position they were in, and also if they were having a hard time with their parents.

09:27 Speaker 2 But some of the Ferrises' success stories involve people a little bit older than college age. In 1984, Noah Alper made a trip to Israel. Though he had not grown up in an observant family, the trip had turned Alper, then a 38-year-old, on to Judaism. A couple of months after his return to California, he met the Ferrises.

09:51 Speaker 4 Warm and funny, I would put it that way.

09:53 Speaker 2 One of the first things Alper noticed in the Ferrises' home was a page in a siddur containing the Kiddush prayer.

10:00 Speaker 4 And I noticed that it was totally full of wine stains that were all over the page. You're supposed to be joyous, and you'd spill it on the page. It was fine. And I think that was emblematic of who they are. And also what struck me was total transparency. They were very, uh, open about their lives and about where they came from and where they are now, and I think I learned more by just observing them than I did all what I was taught. It was a way of looking at the world. It was a way of interacting with the world. It was a way of being a proud Jew.

10:34 Speaker 2 It's noteworthy that Alper is not one of the radicals Berkeley is famous for. In fact, he's a lifelong entrepreneur.

10:42 Speaker 4 I opened up a bagel shop in Berkeley, and, uh, I was questioning whether to make it kosher. And short story long is that I wanted to be able to eat a bagel there with Rabbi Ferris. So it resulted in us making the store kosher, and then we went on to build 37 more of them, and then we became the largest kosher retailer in the United States as a result.

11:08 Speaker 2 In 1996, Alper sold his bagel business for $100 million. By that point, he had grown spiritually as well as materially.

11:18 Speaker 4 Well, I eventually became shomer Shabbat. Without Yehuda, I wouldn't be where I am now. So for sure, his influence was tremendous on me.

11:28 Speaker 2 Sometimes the success stories happen in even more unusual ways and in unusual places. As Miriam was giving birth to the Ferrises' second child in a Bay Area hospital, Shabbos was fast approaching.

11:41 Speaker 3 And my candles were in my little overnight bag, and I couldn't get up at that moment to light them. And it was like either we light them now or they're not gonna get lit.

11:49 Speaker 2 Miriam thought the delivery nurse looked a bit familiar. It turned out that she had attended Passover Seder at the Ferrises'.

11:57 Speaker 3 She was really excited that we were there, and I said, "Oh, would you like to light the candles?" And she said, "Yes," you know? So she did, and then we just became very friendly, and she would come over all the time and for Shabbos and holidays. And she ended up becoming religious, and she married a Chabad guy, and then she became a nurse-midwife in Monsey. And she's very well-known. She delivered thousands of babies. So that's a big success story.

12:21 Speaker 2 It's like you gave birth to two frum Jews that day, right?

12:25 Speaker 3 I guess. I didn't think of it like that, but you're right.

12:29 Speaker 2 But not all of the stories surrounding Chabad of Berkeley are as light. Around 2002, the Ferrises saved a life.

12:37 Speaker 1 I was sitting in my office in the Chabad house, and the phone rings, and it's the Reform rabbi. And she said, "Hi, Rabbi. I'm just wondering if you can speak to a recent convert of mine. He's looking for something more spiritual, and I thought of Chabad." So I said, "Sure, send him over." He comes over, and, uh, he sits down in my office, and I said, "So start at the beginning, and don't leave anything out." And he didn't.

13:07 Speaker 2 For more than an hour, the man told Ferris about his childhood in a suburb of San Francisco, how his Jewish friends had made a deep impression on him, how he had a non-halakhic conversion and became engaged to a Jewish woman.

13:21 Speaker 1 And then she dumped him, and he was so low, it was such a low point in his life, that he went to his grammar school, to a little park right above his grammar school. He put a rope around one end of a tree, and he put the other rope around his neck. And he said, "This is it. It's over. I have nothing to live for." At which point he looked around. Every house was dark except for one, and it was light, and there was candles burning, and there was singing, and there was camaraderie. There was optimism. There was holiness. And he took the rope off of his neck, and he said, "I think I'm gonna live another day." So I said, "What was the name of that school that you went to?" He said such and such. I said, "Okay. That was my house."

14:19 Speaker 3 He was up in the tree in a little park across the street, and it's a l- huge, huge live oak tree. You know, he's up there with his rope. And he looked across, and he saw into our windows.

14:31 Speaker 1 We keep the curtains open. We keep the Shabbos candles in a place where they can be visible.

14:38 Speaker 3 Many people crowded around quite a few tables pushed together, and all singing loudly and enjoying. And, you know, the candles are flickering, and it's a very beautiful scene. And he saw us singing and making kiddush and everything. That was special.

14:57 Speaker 1 So I didn't even know that it, it was affecting anybody, but that's the beauty of Shabbos, that you can have collateral mitzvahs.

15:08 Speaker 2 The extra mitzvah in this case was the saving of a man's life simply by making Shabbos. A year later, he had a halakhic conversion, got married, and started a family. For many years, the Ferrises operated out of different rented or loaned venues. They purchased their own Chabad house in 2019. They run a daycare program and a summer day camp. Miriam is the educational director of a local mikvah. Rabbi Ferris is a busy prison chaplain, radio host, and stand-up comedian, and he's the leader of a Hasidic rock band called The Ferris Wheels. And the Ferrises insist that people know that they are very proud of the couple who now do outreach on the UC Berkeley campus, Rabbi Gil and Rebbetzin Brocha Leeds, who the Ferrises first met in the early 2000s.

16:10 Speaker 3 They met here as freshmen. They became religious here, both of them, and they got married and came back here to work on campus. So that's very special.

16:20 Speaker 1 When we got here to Berkeley, there were no baal teshuva on campus. Today, our campus luchim are baal teshuva that we helped bring to Yiddishkeit. And I do anticipate a tsunami of more baal teshuva. One shliach makes another shliach.

16:39 Speaker 2 The Leeds took over as Chabad emissaries to UC Berkeley in 2007. Amid all this talk of baal teshuva, Miriam Ferris points out that although coming to Jewish observance later in life can be an advantage for people doing outreach at colleges, that doesn't mean that emissaries who have been religious from birth can't also be totally effective in their outreach.

17:01 Speaker 3 Even though they ha- they may not know the name of the rock bands or the movies or anything, but they relate on an essential level. They understand the neshamah.

17:10 Speaker 2 If you attend Shabbos services at the Ferrises' shul in Berkeley, you'll hear about another success story, or more accurately, you'll actually hear another success story, because Shabbos regular Michael Diamond, who grew up in an Orthodox home and was trained as a hazzan, has come full circle after decades of dabbling in Berkeley's underground politics and party scene.

17:32 Speaker 5 I guess it was about six months ago. I asked Yehuda, "Hey, can I have maftir?"

17:37 Speaker 2 By that, Diamond means the aliyah, or the blessing over the concluding Torah reading each Shabbos.

17:43 Speaker 5 And, uh, he said, "Sure." And then I'm standing up there doing the aliyah, and he whispers in my ear. He goes, uh, "I, I hope you know this entails doing the haftarah, right?"

17:53 Speaker 2 The haftarah is the reading from the prophets that illuminates the weekly Torah portion.

17:58 Speaker 5 And I turned to him, and I went, "Oh, no, you're kidding."

18:01 Speaker 2 Diamond hadn't done that for decades.

18:03 Speaker 5 And he looked a little bit concerned. He didn't know what to expect. But it all just flowed out naturally. And since then, he, uh, offers it to me every Shabbos.

18:18 Speaker 2 Noah Alper credits the Lubavitcher Rebbe with sending just the right emissaries, Yehuda and Miriam Ferris, to just the right place, Berkeley.

18:27 Speaker 4 The Rebbe was very good at choosing people who were the right people for the community, and for sure, they fit like a glove. I, I, I look at Chabad as the flame, and they're keeping things going, and they're, they're doing an, an incredibly important job.

18:43 Speaker 2 What do all these success stories, the candle-lighting nurse, the man whose life was saved because he saw you making Shabbos, the former hazzan-turned-radical-turned-hazzan again, what do these stories say about the increase in Jewish life in Berkeley and all over the world?

19:01 Speaker 1 I think people are searching for meaning, and they find it with lasting Jewish values in the Torah.

19:09 Speaker 3 We see people identifying positively with their Jewish tradition. It's happening. It's growing. It's thriving. It's healthy. It's about the neshamah, the soul connection, so it's great.

19:24 Speaker 2 I'm Gary Wolk. 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.