Transforming Unfathomable Loss Into Jewish Light And Warmth: Rabbi Yisrael & Vivi Deren

00:00 Speaker 1 We're opening a Chabad house. In those days, Jews, frum Jews didn't know what the word Chabad house meant.

00:05 Speaker 2 That's Rabbi Yisroel Deren. In 1975, he and his wife, Vivi, were looking to make a big splash in the community they'd been sent to as emissaries, the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

00:18 Speaker 1 I, I needed a, a hook, so I decided perhaps what we oughta do is make a concert with a, a well-known singer and get the people to come to the concert.

00:27 Speaker 3 And he went for the top from the beginning to get a big-name draw for the concert.

00:33 Speaker 2 Deren got one, and the big concert was scheduled for a Sunday in November of 1975 at the brand-new 2,000-seat UMass Fine Arts Center.

00:44 Speaker 1 We pulled out all stops, and it was a no, no expense spared, this is going to be the greatest thing ever.

00:50 Speaker 2 As concert day approached, Rabbi Deren called the box office to see how many tickets had sold.

00:56 Speaker 1 So the lady says, "87." I thought I would die.

01:02 Speaker 2 Rabbi Deren felt that his entire career in Jewish outreach would hinge on the success of that event. But what happened at the concert in 1975 still amazes the Derens.

01:15 Speaker 1 As far as I'm concerned, it was a m- literally a miracle from heaven.

01:18 Speaker 2 That miracle marked the beginning of their half-century-long career in Jewish outreach, an outreach that's touched many lives. Along the way, the Derens have transformed unfathomable tragedy and personal loss into Jewish light and warmth in communities across the Northeast. 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 a community that supports and relies on them. These are their stories. In 1972, Yisroel and Vivi Deren had a private audience, or yechidus, with the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

02:26 Speaker 1 This was before we got married.

02:28 Speaker 2 The Derens had told the Rebbe that they wanted to go out on shlichus.

02:32 Speaker 1 And the berakhah that we remember ab- ab- that was the most striking was the Rebbe said to us, "Ir vet makhen likhte k'un varm bay undere," you'll make it light and warm for others, "un der Ribono shel Olam vet makhen likhte k'un varm bayikh," and Hashem will make it bright and warm for you.

02:54 Speaker 2 But the Derens weren't exactly sure what the Rebbe meant by light and warmth.

02:59 Speaker 1 No, I'm not quite sure I know now either. Uh, I think that it be- would be characterized by putting smiles on other people's faces, genuine smiles as a result of our interaction with them, leaving them hopefully in a better place than they were before we had a chance to meet them.

03:21 Speaker 3 Warmth and light, those are words that if you have any familiarity with Hasidus and the Hasidish life would be beautiful family, beautiful marriage, and the connection with the Rebbe.

03:36 Speaker 1 And, uh, so we decided to spend the rest of our lives trying to make it brighter and, and warmer for everybody around us.

03:43 Speaker 2 The Derens were married in 1972. They asked the Rebbe to choose a community for them to go to.

03:50 Speaker 3 We didn't care where. We didn't care what type. The only thing that we wanted was we wanted the Rebbe to tell us where he wants us to be. That was our most cherished dream.

04:02 Speaker 2 But by this point, the Rebbe had delegated that responsibility to his secretary, Rabbi Chodakov. The Derens still insisted the Rebbe make the choice and sent a list of 18 possibilities. The Rebbe narrowed the list to three locations and asked the Derens to send more details about them.

04:20 Speaker 1 Which I did, and then the Rebbe picked Amherst.

04:25 Speaker 2 So the Derens rented an apartment in nearby Springfield and began making regular visits to Amherst in 1973.

04:33 Speaker 3 We moved up there after Pesach, it was May of '74, with the understanding that our first project would be to open a, a Chabad house on campus in Amherst, Massachusetts. We were breaking new territory, and thank goodness we had absolutely no idea what that would mean, so we just kind of jumped in.

04:54 Speaker 1 One of the first things I did was meet with the president of the Amherst Jewish community, as it were. They would meet, I think, once a month in the basement of the Lutheran Church, and came and explained, you know, we're opening a Chabad house here, and, uh, we're, I'm, I'm here to hear what it is that you have to say, to get any advice that you have for us. And the answer was fairly clear. He said, "My advice, Rabbi, is for you to go back to Brooklyn." Uh, so that basically was the welcome we got in Amherst.

05:27 Speaker 2 But the Derens were undeterred.

05:29 Speaker 1 We rented a, a small house right adjacent to the campus, uh, a bungalow would probably be a more accurate term, and began inviting students to come join us to start meeting students. And little by little, we were able to gather a group together, one, two, three, five, 10, each one a, a separate story, each one a, a, a whole series of encounters, and classes, and questions, and so on.

05:58 Speaker 2 One of the first people the Derens met was a young geology major named Clara, an unaffiliated Jew who yearned for a deeper connection to Yiddishkeit.

06:08 Speaker 4 They did a melaveh malkah, which is the party you make after the end of the Shabbat is over.

06:15 Speaker 2 So what was your first impression of the Derrins?

06:17 Speaker 4 They just made a very genuine impression on me. They never, ever said, "Oh, Clara, maybe we think it's time for you to X, Y, Z." Never. There was no fluff, baloney. So it was a perfect match.

06:32 Speaker 2 Clara began studying Hasidic stories with Vivi. The Derrins were impressed by her intellect and open-mindedness.

06:40 Speaker 3 She's an incredible person. She's a deep thinker. You know, argue, question, whatever the idea might happen to be.

06:48 Speaker 2 Clara wasn't sure at that time whether she believed in the existence of God, but she remembers when that began to change at the Derrins.

06:56 Speaker 4 And I remember we were sitting around the Shabbos table in their small little house, and one of the students said, "So how could you prove the existence of God?" And I remember feeling like, "I'm gonna sink under the table." You're eating the man's chicken. How could you challenge him in this way? And Rabbi Bert Derrin proceeded to discuss it. The experience of Mount Sinai, it was a revelation that occurred in front of two million plus human beings. You could not fake a story that would hold in front of that many people for this many generations. And he talked about it, and that was amazing to me.

07:42 Speaker 1 And she became very close with my wife, and in a relatively short period of time, she changed her life in so many ways.

07:49 Speaker 2 Clara began taking on more Jewish observance. She left UMass to study in a geology lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but decided she'd leave academia behind and study at Machon Chana, a college for Jewish women in Crown Heights. And she set her sights on marriage and family life. Clara married Rabbi Nachman Simon.

08:10 Speaker 1 And they have a incredibly beautiful family, children and grandchildren. They have their own Chabad house. Their children have Chabad houses.

08:17 Speaker 2 The Simons are co-directors of Chabad of Del Mar, New York. She learned the ropes through her decades of friendship with the Derrins and through their example.

08:26 Speaker 4 What they stood for, their interpersonal relationships, their caring for other people, their tolerance of other people. You have to be tolerant in this line of work.

08:38 Speaker 3 She's accomplished tremendous things in her life, and I think, um, that was a very profound experience for me.

08:45 Speaker 2 In 1975, the Derrins were looking to raise their profile in the UMass community.

08:50 Speaker 1 So I, I needed a, a hook. So I decided perhaps what we ought to do is make a concert with a, a well-known singer and get the people to come to the concert.

08:59 Speaker 3 And he went for the top from the beginning to get a big-name draw for the concert.

09:12 Speaker 1 We got Theodore Bikel, who was at the time, I, I guess the, the superstar, as it were, of Jewish music.

09:20 Speaker 2 The concert was scheduled for a Sunday in November of 1975 at the brand-new 2,000-seat UMass Fine Arts Center.

09:28 Speaker 1 We pulled out all stops, and it was like no expense spared. This is going to be the greatest thing ever.

09:35 Speaker 2 Rabbi Derrin arranged a reception and kosher brunch, a Hasidic art exhibit, a parade from the Fine Arts Center to their Chabad house, featuring a new sefer Torah and a mitzvah tank from the Brooklyn Battalion, and he printed deluxe four-color brochures and hundreds of letters the Lubavitcher Rebbe wrote to be distributed to each concertgoer. But despite the investment of large amounts of money and effort, there was a problem. Just two days before the event...

10:06 Speaker 1 I call up the ticket office to find out, okay, how many tickets were sold? So the lady says, "Let me check." And she comes back, and she says, "87." I said, "No, no, I'm talking about the Chabad concert this Sunday." So she said, "With Theodore Bikel?" I said, "Yeah, yeah, that one." "87." I thought I would die, and I'm thinking to myself, "Israel, the Rebbe sent you here to make a Kiddush Hashem, to make a Kiddush Lubavitch. How is it possible that in one year you're on shlichus and you can already create such a catastrophe?"

10:49 Speaker 2 It was late afternoon before Shabbos. Derrin couldn't call or write to the Rebbe, so he sent a telepathic message.

10:57 Speaker 1 Rebbe, Rebbe, save me. Rebbe, Rebbe, you sent me here to make a Kiddush Lubavitch, and it's going to be... Rebbe, save me.

11:09 Speaker 2 On the morning of the concert, the Derrins thought the caterer had failed to show. It turned out that he had just set up in the wrong room, but that did little to quell Rabbi Derrin's anxiety. After the brunch, he and Vivi walked to the Fine Arts Center.

11:24 Speaker 1 I remember the moment that we turned the corner, and long lines of people standing in front of the ticket office waiting to buy tickets.

11:32 Speaker 3 Lines and lines and lines of people. It was, uh, uh, unforgettable. And here are these hundreds and hundreds of people lining up to come. It was breathtaking.

11:45 Speaker 1 We had over 1,000 people. It was beyond incredible. The concert was wonderful. It's impossible to describe the feeling that a person has to give 1,000 people a letter from the Lubavitcher Rebbe to them.

12:01 Speaker 2 What happened at that concert in 1975 still amazes the Derrins. It set a solid foundation for their half-century-long career in Jewish outreach.

12:12 Speaker 3 Yeah, for sure. It was definitely an, an introduction into the community. For many people, we were, you know, d- Oh, you're the ones that had that beautiful concert

12:22 Speaker 1 As far as I'm concerned, it was, um, literally a miracle from heaven.

12:28 Speaker 2 As you would expect, the Derrins' 15 years in Amherst yielded other success stories.

12:34 Speaker 3 Our Shabbos table was the most happening place, the exchanges, the discussions, and a lot of students actually formed relationships with our kids.

12:46 Speaker 2 Vivi Derrin remembers one of those relationships. It had long-lasting consequences. There was a grad student who would visit on his motorcycle.

12:55 Speaker 3 And at some point in the afternoon, he would pick up the helmet, and he's, you know, getting ready to leave, and one Shabbos afternoon, our four-year-old son said, "Where are you going?" He said, "I'm going home." He said, "But why are you wearing your motorcycle helmet?" He said, "Well, I'm going home on my motorcycle." He said, "You're going home on your motorcycle, but it's Shabbos. Why are you going on your motorcycle on Shabbos?" Now, an adult could never say that, and we were kind of cringing, oh my goodness, and later he said, "I couldn't come up with a good answer for myself. Why am I getting on my motorcycle on Shabbos?" And he started to become observant, made his way to yeshiva to Morristown after a number of years, married a lovely baalas teshuva, went on to become a shliach himself. You never know what the ripple effects are going to be, and this was, you know, from a child.

13:57 Speaker 2 Rabbi Derrin, do you feel you were successful during your decade and a half in Amherst?

14:02 Speaker 1 No, of course we weren't successful. If we were successful, Moshiach would be here.

14:05 Speaker 2 But when I press a bit, Rabbi Derrin relents.

14:08 Speaker 1 Did we do some good stuff? I certainly hope so. I perhaps did lots of good stuff.

14:12 Speaker 3 It was fascinating and very, very, very challenging, very fulfilling, and it was a very, very wonderful experience in so many ways.

14:20 Speaker 1 During the 15 years in Amherst, what it taught us and what it gave us, incredibly important in terms of learning how to listen, learning how to have a meaningful impact.

14:32 Speaker 2 The Derrins purchased their own Chabad house on the UMass campus. It's still there today. They also helped establish ones at nearby Amherst College, Smith College, and Chabad of the Berkshires. Their influence is still deeply felt in Western Massachusetts, but the Derrins' success would lead them elsewhere. In the late 1980s, the Rebbe wanted the Derrins to help expand Chabad outreach in Connecticut.

15:00 Speaker 1 Basically, we were given the responsibility for everywhere in Connecticut where there was not yet a shliach, which meant basically everywhere in the New Haven area where Rabbi Hecht and yeshiva is.

15:11 Speaker 2 Rabbi Derrin began by bringing emissaries Yosef and Miriam Gopin to West Hartford, and they turned their attention to Stamford.

15:19 Speaker 3 It was probably the last, like, big city in Connecticut that did not have a Chabad connection.

15:24 Speaker 1 So I did not know whether I should bring a new shliach there, which would be difficult, or perhaps we should move to Stamford and bring other shluchim to take our place in Amherst.

15:37 Speaker 3 The choice was given to us, do we stay in Amherst, Springfield, and bring somebody else to Stamford, a new couple there? Most typically, I think that's what would be done, but the choice was given to my husband to decide what would be best in this situation.

15:56 Speaker 2 The Derrins decided that they should move to Stamford.

15:59 Speaker 1 Which is what we did, and it began a whole new chapter in our lives, and we, we began from the beginning again.

16:09 Speaker 3 So before we actually moved down, we were meeting with people in the community, and we'd ask them, "Can you complete this sentence? I hear that Chabad is coming to town. I hope that they will..." And the answer that we got over and over and over again was, "I hope that they will open a preschool." There were not a lot of options. There were some things, but people wanted more in terms of Jewish education.

16:33 Speaker 2 The Derrins got right to work. In 1989, they opened the Gan Yeladim Early Childhood Center. The curriculum there is every bit as modern as Gan Yeladim's architecture.

16:44 Speaker 3 The building itself is a mission statement. It looks like an open book, and that's exactly the message that we wanted to give of a place where people are welcome to come in and explore and experience, and it's beautiful. It's a warm, inviting space where beautiful Jewish experiences can happen.

17:04 Speaker 1 Interestingly, the nursery school ended up being our flagship program in many respects, and it became an incredible vehicle by which we were able to reach families.

17:14 Speaker 3 It was tremendous because that introduced us to the community, and that's how we met people and formed relationships, and we made a Shabbaton in the Gan, and without turning around, there are 120 people there, and, uh, a lot of other things, you know, flowed from that.

17:32 Speaker 2 The Jewish community the Derrins were strengthening included some influential people.

17:37 Speaker 5 Yeah, I tell you, it's so long ago that I met, uh, Rabbi Yisroel Derrin and Vivi that I can't even remember exactly when it was.

17:45 Speaker 2 That's former US Senator Joe Lieberman, who was Connecticut's attorney general when the Derrins moved to Stamford in 1988.

17:53 Speaker 5 The Derrins are very warm, very personable, very strong people, and they, like, like so many of the Rebbe's shluchim, they draw people in and to be contributors to the community, which they, uh, have been in Stamford for a long time.

18:10 Speaker 2 Soon after the Derrins moved to Stamford, they learned that Lieberman's mother, Marsha, lived in their neighborhood.

18:17 Speaker 1 She lived right around the corner from us, and we went to see her.

18:22 Speaker 3 We walked over Shabbos afternoon, and we had such a lovely visit

18:27 Speaker 1 And she said, "Since my husband passed away, I've, I don't think I remember ever hearing Havdalah, unless Joseph is here." So I said, "You know what? From now on, I'm gonna come make Havdalah for you every Motzei Shabbos."

18:38 Speaker 3 And from that point on, for the rest of her life, if we were available on Saturday night and she was available Saturday night, we would go there, and he would make Havdalah.

18:47 Speaker 5 It was a beautiful thing. I remember once that I said to Yisroel after I realized this was happening for some months, I said, "I can't thank you enough for what you're doing. It's just the sweetest, kindest thing you could do." He said, "Well, I don't think you understand that Vivi and I are not doing this for your mother. We go there for ourselves. Your mother is like a substitute mother for both of us."

19:14 Speaker 1 She literally became like a second mother to both of us.

19:18 Speaker 3 And there were times that we would sit and visit with her for hours, and the wisdom that we received from her is something that illuminates my life to this day.

19:31 Speaker 2 The Darins stayed in contact with Joe Lieberman as he climbed the political ranks to US senator, and in 2000, to vice presidential candidate. Lieberman remembers a big surprise waiting for him at the nominating convention in Los Angeles.

19:47 Speaker 5 I was so happy to find that, uh, Yisroel Darin and Vivi Darin were there. Heh, but they went one better. They printed a special sefer. It had Mincha and Maariv and bentching in it, and on the front it had Democratic National Convention 2000 nominating our own senator, Joe Lieberman. And, um, we, we davened. Yisroel led us in, um, um, Mincha and later in Maariv, so it's a beautiful story. He brought Chabad with him, heh, to, to the convention in Los Angeles, and of course, he brings it wherever he goes. They've taught me a lot, uh, both of them, by what they do and what they say, and they've really built up a community around them. In Stamford, they built a beautiful Chabad house, and they've done really wonderful work. They have produced magnificent children who are now all carrying on as shluchim. Closest of all, of course, is Rabbi Yossi Darin in Greenwich.

20:50 Speaker 2 According to the Darins' count, they've opened or helped open 23 Chabad centers in Connecticut and Western Massachusetts. Gan Yedidim, which had started with 29 children in its first year, now enrolls 120. But with the Darins' success has come great tragedy. In 1996, the Darins' six-year-old son Shloime was battling kidney cancer. After a bone marrow transplant, he was in isolation.

21:21 Speaker 1 And we lived with the motto tracht gut vet zein gut: think good, and it'll be good. His room, we had a, a sign on the door: This is a happy room. You have to come into this room happy, and you have to be happy. Always had happy music playing, and you need to be happy, and, and you have to be happy, and we were.

21:43 Speaker 2 One Shabbos, doctors told the Darins that Shloime had mere hours to live, but the Darins, with all their other children, were determined to make Shloime as happy as they could.

21:54 Speaker 1 And we were singing around his bed, and it was actually while we were singing the Rebbe's father's Hakafas nigun. That's when Hashem took his neshama. Imagine if we hadn't lived this way, tracht gut vet zein gut. Then the last three weeks of Shloime's life I would have spent on the couch miserable, and the, the room around him would have been miserable. But because we tracht gut, we thought good, vet zein gut, it was good. It wasn't the good that we had hoped for, but it was good. It was good.

22:41 Speaker 3 When Shloime passed away, it was late, late Saturday night. His funeral was on Sunday. And we came back to Stamford in the evening, and we faced a room full of community members, friends, and we looked out at this room full of people, and they were grief-stricken. And these were people that had davened for Shloime. These were people who had lined up to, for a blood drive in case there was a bone marrow match. They were very, very invested in this little boy, and it was very personal for them.

23:14 Speaker 2 The Darins sensed that their community needed to hear from them, so they began comforting the people who had shown up in great numbers to comfort them. Joe Lieberman and his wife Hadassah were among them.

23:26 Speaker 5 And this is a measure of their profound emunah, just a level of emunah and kiddush Hashem which is extremely high. Well, that was a great lesson.

23:39 Speaker 3 So we started, and we couldn't stop. Everybody was just listening. And somebody said to me, "Shouldn't it be a time that you could focus on your own grief?" And I said, "You've got it backwards." The things that we were sharing with the community, those were the things that we ourselves needed to hear.

23:58 Speaker 2 The loss of just one child would cause more than enough grief for any one family, but the Darins lost three more children. Blumi Darin succumbed to liver cancer in 1997. She was just 16. Their son, Rabbi Mendel Darin, who was diagnosed as a child with Bloom Syndrome, a genetic disorder, passed away in 2010 at the age of 36. Mendel was the young shliach who inspired the motorcycle rider to keep Shabbos. Their daughter Rivkie Berman, a shlucha who also suffered with the disorder, died in 2016. She was 29. But the Darins and their remaining children responded with typical positivity. There are Torah scrolls dedicated to the memories of Shloime, Blumi, Mendel, and Rivkie.

24:49 Speaker 1 And I'll tell you, holding the Machzor Torah, and I feel like I'm holding my children.

24:54 Speaker 2 Now, you might wonder how a family that's endured so much loss would still have any positivity left, but for the Darins, that's not even a question.

25:03 Speaker 3 We're not trying to whitewash it. We're not trying to say it didn't happen. We're not in denial of anything. But we can choose what is the lens that I'm going to look at the world with after this happened. You're always empowered. Awful things may have happened, but we, we're here, and we're not helpless. You know, you make the effort to make things warm and bright, you get warmed as well.

25:32 Speaker 6 We have lives that are filled with beyond brilliant and beyond good, including delicious, wonderful children and grandchildren.

25:41 Speaker 2 The Derrins have eight children, and over 30 grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren

25:47 Speaker 6 They should live and be well for many happy and healthy years.

25:54 Speaker 2 Going forward, Yisroel and Vivi Derrin say they're comforted and challenged by the words of the Lubavitcher Rebbe in a telegram to the Kfar Chabad community after a terror attack there killed five students and a teacher in 1956.

26:09 Speaker 3 "Behem shech habinyan tenu chamul," by continuing the building, you'll be comforted. And that's true. It's true on a personal level.

26:20 Speaker 6 My hope is between now and next that we have at least 12 new shluchim in Connecticut and Western Massachusetts. That's what I hope to – one of the, one of the things that I hope to accomplish. I hope that I'll be able to teach more people on a one-to-one or a Zoom-to-Zoom basis.

26:42 Speaker 2 Vivi Derrin's plan is a simple yet profound one

26:46 Speaker 3 To greet moshiach. Yeah.

26:49 Speaker 2 And she wants to know what you and I are doing, and will do, to make that a reality. She has a suggestion

26:56 Speaker 3 Do something, anything, in the field of Torah learning, however small that it is, and just keep building from that. There are so many ways now, uh, online and podcasts, so there's no excuse for not learning. Don't get stuck in, "I didn't grow up that way. I don't have the education." Forget about what was. Today is the day. Don't look backward, look forward. Hashem believes in you. The Rebbe believes in you. Let's get it done.

27:39 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.