From 'Grateful Dead' fans to Chabad emissaries: Rabbi Dov Yona & Sarah Korn

00:00 Speaker 1 One day in the mid-'90s, a butterfly flew into a yeshiva

00:04 Speaker 2 I had a shirt that had embroidered on it the words from a Grateful Dead song, "I'll get up and fly away," with a butterfly, which was my moniker, embroidered on it.

00:13 Speaker 1 That's Rabbi Dov Yona Korn, then known to his friends as Butterfly.

00:17 Speaker 2 I had dreadlocks, big fat dreadlocks that had things sewn into them, and I wore like a purple velvet Rasta hat. I had patchwork shorts that I wore over my pants and Birkenstocks. I was, I, I was a circus.

00:31 Speaker 1 On a key date on the Hasidic calendar, Butterfly joined a farbrengen.

00:35 Speaker 2 And I walk in and I, I look like a, you know, said circus, and it was a c- wild farbrengen. And at 4:00 in the morning we're singing, "Ai-nai, nai-nai, nai-na. Ai-nai, nai-nai, nai-na." And I couldn't help but feel these songs were inside me.

00:52 Speaker 1 But Korn was still conflicted.

00:54 Speaker 2 I was begging God, "No, I feel myself becoming a Hasidic Jew. Please don't let it happen to me."

01:02 Speaker 1 But Butterfly would metamorphose. Now he and his wife, Rebbetzin Sara Korn, who had a transformational journey of her own, run Chabad House Bowery. It's a unique resource in a unique New York City neighborhood that's perfectly suited to the Korns' unique energy. There they inspire and support hundreds of Jewish students and young professionals who flock to their Chabad house. 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. Rebbetzin Sara Korn grew up on Long Island and in Pomona, New York, about a mile-and-a-half drive north of New York City. Rabbi Dov Yona Korn grew up in Morristown, New Jersey. Early on, they had something in common. They were from families that were not Jewishly observant.

02:26 Speaker 3 No, definitely not.

02:28 Speaker 2 No, Jewish, but not observant in any traditional sense.

02:31 Speaker 1 Did you feel that anything was missing when you were young?

02:35 Speaker 2 Yes.

02:36 Speaker 3 I don't think that I was consciously aware of it or could have articulated it as a child, but looking back now, yes, I, I felt very uncomfortable in certain environments, and now I know why. But at the time, I, I don't think I could say, "I'm a Jew and I don't belong here."

02:54 Speaker 1 Maybe that's why both of them ended up in a few places where they didn't belong. Rabbi Korn, then known as David, grew up with the strong message that if he got into a great school, he'd get a great job-

03:09 Speaker 2 Make great money, and then you could have all the things that you want to have, and a home in the Hamptons, and Italian car, et cetera. While interesting and alluring, I didn't see it being a sufficient answer to what the purpose of life was, nor a sufficient cause to go through all of the schooling that was ahead of me just so I could hopefully land that lifestyle.

03:29 Speaker 1 So David rebelled, or at least he appeared to.

03:32 Speaker 2 When I was about 15 years old, I'd asked my parents to sign me out of school. They took me to a therapist, which was certainly a, a good move, and he recognized that I wasn't rebelling, I was looking for something deep.

03:46 Speaker 1 So young David explored what he then considered to be fitting spiritual pursuits.

03:51 Speaker 2 Buddhism, Hinduism, Rastafarianism, Christianity, and then general hippie culture, Grateful Dead band following, psychedelic exploration, et cetera. And I, uh, of course, didn't look into Judaism, which did not appeal to me at all the time.

04:08 Speaker 1 I've heard that you were baptized by a Franciscan monk. Is that really true?

04:13 Speaker 2 It happened, man. "" as we say in, in Hebrew. But yeah, it happened. And after really opening my heart to that whole path, I, after, uh, like, you know, a month or something, I was just like, "No."

04:27 Speaker 1 Sara was also seeking spirituality, and also had an affinity for the Grateful Dead. Like many of their fans, she followed them around the country. In the early '90s, she saw the band at a concert in Washington, DC. A friend pointed out to her a real character who was a fixture at their concerts.

04:46 Speaker 3 And I saw him at RFK Stadium. From far away, he had, like, this very frizzy hair, big fro, and a tie-dyed shirt with a peace sign, and he was well-known around there.

04:57 Speaker 1 The he in question was David Korn. And actually, Sara is underselling the spectacle.

05:03 Speaker 2 I had a shirt that had embroidered on it the words from a Grateful Dead song, "I'll get up and fly away," with a butterfly, which was my moniker, embroidered on it.

05:11 Speaker 1 How did you get the nickname Butterfly?

05:13 Speaker 2 I was meditating one day and really, like, trying to reach out to the universe for a more spiritual identity, and a butterfly came and landed right in front of me, so I, uh, I ran with it. I had dreadlocks, big fat dreadlocks that had things sewn into them, and I wore, like, a purple velvet Rasta hat. I had patchwork shorts that I wore over my pants and Birkenstocks. I was, I, I was a circus.

05:41 Speaker 1 You say you had wanted a more spiritual identity, but were you finding that in the things you were doing at the time?

05:47 Speaker 2 No. I was happy to be off the track of society for a while, and had the freedom to be really communicating with God. I was-- I always believed in God, and m- many people I met were very, very inspirational or interesting, and many of the places I went to I took great gems of wisdom, but I had not felt that I'd found what I was looking for by any means.

06:08 Speaker 1 But as so often happens, what Koren was looking for was right nearby.

06:14 Speaker 2 I have an aunt and uncle who then lived in Morristown who had become Orthodox. They're the only people in my family that had. They became Chabadniks, Lubavitchers, and they were always trying to get me to come to experience Judaism, you know, and I, I wasn't interested. And one night my uncle was driving me home from his house, and he said he had to stop off at the yeshiva to buy a prayer book for his daughter, and he said the shop was gonna close. So I said, "Okay." I didn't wanna go inside. And then finally my Jewish spark said to me, "You you, you w- were at the feet of gurus, and you won't walk inside a Orthodox yeshiva?" So I went inside, and it was Yud Tes Kislev.

06:52 Speaker 1 On the Hebrew date of Yud Tes Kislev in 1798, the first Chabad Rebbe was liberated from a Czarist Russian prison, and once again free to spread Hasidic teachings after having been arrested on charges of heresy for disseminating those teachings. The men in the yeshiva were celebrating what came to be known as the Rosh Hashanah of Hasidism.

07:14 Speaker 2 And I walk in, and I, I look like a, you know, said circus, and the whole place turns around.

07:20 Speaker 1 Sara wasn't there, but she heard about it.

07:23 Speaker 3 Yeah, he wore patchwork pants and, you know, tie-dyed shirt and the rabbi said like, "What is this, Purim?" He stood out.

07:32 Speaker 1 But the rabbi saw right through Butterfly's act.

07:35 Speaker 2 The rabbi of Ramat Lipsky, may he live and be well, came up to me, and he said, "What's your name?" I said, "My name's Butterfly." He said, "What's your Jewish name?" I said something Dov, Yo- Dovid, Yonah. He grabbed me and kissed me on the lips with his vodka-infused breath and, uh, said, "Welcome home." I said, "I'm not home." And he had me make a l'chaim, and it was a wild farbrengen. There's vodka, and there's pickles, and there's plates, and at 4:00 in the morning we're singing And dancing on the tables. And like there's nothing more that I wanted to not connect. I'm a hippie. I wanna smoke pot on Friday nights. I wanna, I wanna marry whoever I wanna marry. Don't tell me what I can't do. I wanted freedom, and these rabbis and these students were so rigid, white and black and beards and that. I mean, I had a beard, but still. But I couldn't help but feel these songs were inside me. These nigunim, they captured me in a way that was totally different. It hit me to my core in a way nothing even close to ever did, and I stayed for a week. I put on tefillin for my first time in the yeshiva. I had my first Shabbat experience in the yeshiva.

08:52 Speaker 1 But Butterfly continued to convince himself that he wasn't quite ready to make his next transformation.

08:58 Speaker 2 I was begging God, "No, I feel myself becoming a Hasidic Jew." Which is a term that now I, I have such affinity for, but then felt like I was some sort of alien, and I was wishing, "Please don't let it happen to me." I left 'cause it was way too difficult to swallow the implications of what I was experiencing.

09:20 Speaker 1 Still, he took some things with him.

09:22 Speaker 2 And I left. I took a Tanya, a siddur, and a pair of tefillin, and I would go on the next year of my journey, I would put on tefillin with occasion, study the Tanya with occasion, pray from the Tehillat Hashem English prayer book with occ- on occasion, until I was yearning to be a firm Jew.

09:37 Speaker 1 Koren began to take on more and more Yiddishkeit. He was putting on tefillin every day and embracing Shabbos observance. Now that he had found the path to what he was looking for, Butterfly, now Dov Yonah, found who he was looking for, Sara. It was in 1995.

09:55 Speaker 2 So I met her at a Grateful Dead concert in Las Vegas. Uh, she was hanging out with a bunch of my friends, and I experienced love at first sight. I knew the second I met her I'm gonna marry her, and I was just smitten by her.

10:07 Speaker 3 And one of the first things he asked me was if I believe in God, and I said, "Yes, I believe there's a creator." And he said, "Okay, so what does he want from us?" You know, like, "What is it that we're, we're here to do?" And that was like a moment for me where I was like, "Oh, no," like, "I need to figure this out."

10:23 Speaker 1 Sara was sold on answering Dov Yonah's question, but she wasn't sold on him yet. Dovid returned to the East Coast to attend Yeshiva University. He was on a seven-year track to earn a PhD in psychology. He began spending the weekends in the Morristown Yeshiva. Sara attended Heartwood Institute, a school of natural medicine in the mountains of Northern California. She didn't expect what she found there.

10:49 Speaker 3 All of a sudden, like six hours north of San Francisco or something crazy like that, in, in like a very non-Jewish town, and I'm meeting all these Jews who go by their Jewish name in this like hippie, like medi- natural medicine school. I met an Aviva and an Akiva, and I'm like... And a Moshe. I'm like, "Where are all you people coming from all of a sudden?" Like I couldn't get away from it.

11:09 Speaker 1 Sara stayed in touch with Dov, who visited her in California. She began to learn about the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

11:16 Speaker 3 And there was actually a picture of the Rebbe in the recycling bin.

11:21 Speaker 1 Dov had sent a pamphlet to one of the teachers there. It featured a photo of the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

11:27 Speaker 3 But I saw it, and I'm like, "That, he, the Rebbe's holy. He, he can't be in the recycling bin." Like

11:32 Speaker 1 Sara rescued the photo, and she realized something.

11:36 Speaker 3 The Rebbe followed me there, you know? I was like, I couldn't get away.

11:41 Speaker 1 Sara returned to the East Coast and reconnected with Dov Yonah, who invited her to New Jersey to meet his mother.

11:48 Speaker 3 And the first thing she said was, "Oh, you have a nice Jewish friend? Bring her to your Aunt Devorah and Uncle Moshe's for Shabbos." It had a profound impact on me just seeing her take the time to thank God for the food she had just eaten. It was like, just remember that bentching. There was also a very big picture of the Rebbe in her living room that I think just- I immediately connected with the Rebbe. She spoke about the Rebbe a lot, so I got a sense of the Rebbe's holiness.

12:16 Speaker 1 Sara was absorbing more Yiddishkeit, but she wasn't yet ready to take on a totally observant lifestyle. She even joined a Christian cult for a short time.

12:25 Speaker 3 And that's when I really had my awakening, because I think that sometimes your neshamah just comes so full force when you're in such an alien environment that it was like, "Whoa, get yourself to Crown Heights, girl. What are you doing here?" And that's basically what happened.

12:40 Speaker 1 In 1997, Sara attended Machon Chana, a yeshiva for women.

12:45 Speaker 3 And they just welcomed me in with open arms, and that was it. I never turned back.

12:51 Speaker 1 And she never stopped thinking about Dov Yonah, who was studying at Hadar Hatorah in Crown Heights.

12:57 Speaker 3 So I think it was a couple months into being there that I just felt a little lonely, and I felt like I was yearning for that connection again. You know, we understood each other so well. We were so deeply bonded, and I think once I was on the same path as him, I, I was like, wow, like, I really, I want him back in my life.

13:16 Speaker 1 Sara told a rabbi that she missed Dov.

13:19 Speaker 3 And he was like, "Wow, it sounds like you guys are soulmates. Why don't you just get married, you know?" I was like, "Oh, that's a good idea, you know?"

13:25 Speaker 1 Sara and Dov began to date and to learn Torah together. They were married in 1997. Dov received his rabbinical ordination shortly thereafter. He had already left Yeshiva University and the goal of becoming a therapist behind.

13:45 Speaker 2 I just knew we're supposed to become shluchim. I walked to 770 to 7 Meyer and saw my friend who was opening a Chabad house in Greenwich Village, looking for a partner.

13:53 Speaker 1 That friend was Rabbi Yakov Bankholter. In 1998, the Kornes and the Bankholters opened a Chabad house for NYU students near Greenwich Village's Washington Square Park. They started in an 800-square-foot basement room where they served Shabbos meals and taught Torah to students and young professionals.

14:12 Speaker 4 It was like this tiny room in a basement. It was the m- by far the most lively room on the entire campus.

14:19 Speaker 1 That's former NYU student, Yaniv Hoffman.

14:22 Speaker 4 So anybody that comes in contact with it was pulled into its magnetic, almost mysterious energy, 'cause especially 'cause it was like you had to walk down these stairs into this basement room. You didn't know where you were going at first, and then so you'd walk down, and you'd open up into this room with hundreds of people squished together and cholent flying around and-

14:42 Speaker 1 Of course.

14:43 Speaker 4 Yeah. Yeah. I was just pulled in.

14:48 Speaker 1 So were many others. Soon, the basement room was too small for the growing community. The Bankholters had moved on to a different Manhattan neighborhood, so the Kornes were left to figure out how and where to continue their outreach.

15:02 Speaker 3 We felt like this would be perfect for us to work with college students, so we took it on.

15:05 Speaker 1 In 2006, 353 Bowery became available.

15:10 Speaker 3 And, uh, we got it in the recession. We got a very good price. It's an amazing space, and it's right in the heart of NYU campus.

15:17 Speaker 1 Just a couple of decades ago, the Bowery was a sketchy neighborhood infamous for its flophouses, and most notably for CBGB, the music club that incubated the punk rock movement of the 1970s. But that's gone now, along with the Skid Row hotels.

15:34 Speaker 2 The year we bought it, there was an article in New York Times, "The Bowery is entirely gold." Some of the most expensive real estate in the world. So it's become a very posh neighborhood, very fancy. It still has the Bowery feel. It's still wild, and parties and, but it's now a much, uh, more expensive version of that.

15:52 Speaker 3 We bought it for $3.6 million. It's worth like 10 or 11 million now.

15:56 Speaker 1 The Kornes are very proud of their two-floor, 8,000-square-foot Chabad house, which was inaugurated in early 2012. The gleaming building features a sanctuary, library, student lounge, kitchen, and a 2,500-square-foot function room that accommodates hundreds for meals. Chabad House Bowery is perfectly matched to their community and their programming.

16:20 Speaker 2 We offer everything: learning, leadership, professional development, counseling, spirituality, Ohel trips, Hasidic learning, basic learning, Shabbos, holidays, social events, culinary events, fashion events.

16:36 Speaker 1 As if that wasn't enough to keep the Kornes busy, the Chabad House Bowery community is actually three communities in one. Unaffiliated Jews, the Kornes' oldest daughter, Liba, and her husband, Yisroel Kievman, run programs for them. Young professionals are served by Yakov and Dasi Zarr. The Kornes oversee all the programs, but Sara feels particularly close to the kids who were raised in Modern Orthodox households.

17:02 Speaker 3 You know, it's so interesting, because you would think that my son and daughter-in-law, who both grew up in the religious community, would do better with the Modern Orthodox kids, and me, who grew up as a baal teshuva, might do better with the secular. But it actually is the other way around.

17:16 Speaker 1 One way or the other, anyone who sets foot inside Chabad House Bowery will find a warm, welcoming home and many different opportunities to learn and grow.

17:26 Speaker 3 And I think that they really don't even know how badly they need us until they come here, and they're like, "Thank God you're here." And this becomes their home away from home, and you know, they come here all week long. They do their work here. The Chabad House is like their safe haven.

17:43 Speaker 2 One thing we don't lack here is young people. Thank God. There's just so many young Jews. We just get so many, thank God.

17:49 Speaker 1 And yet the Kornes and the Zarrs and the Kievmans find the time to get to know many of them personally, like a recent Fashion Institute of Technology graduate.

17:59 Speaker 5 My name is Tali Geles.

18:01 Speaker 1 Tali was born and raised in a Modern Orthodox home in Teaneck, New Jersey. She moved to the Bowery in 2018 when her college studies began.

18:10 Speaker 5 I felt, when I first walked into Chabad, a sense of, like, hominess. So I kind of felt comfortable almost immediately.

18:19 Speaker 1 Now, it might seem logical that a young woman raised in a modern Orthodox environment would feel at home in a Chabad house, but it's not quite that simple.

18:29 Speaker 5 Yeah, growing up in a modern Orthodox high school, I hadn't really learned much Hasidis, and it was hard for me at first to kind of wrap my head around some of the different concepts that are so prevalent in Chabad Hasidut. But I think that more and more and more over my time there, I learned to really love the mentality.

18:51 Speaker 3 The story of Talia is common to a lot of our students. They think they don't want to learn Hasidis, and then they realize it's their lifeline, and that they absolutely need it.

19:00 Speaker 1 Talia very quickly became involved in running Chabad House Bowery programs, facilitating social events, and leading the community of young women who learned Torah once a week.

19:10 Speaker 5 I always joke that I came in a little bit resistant, and I left painting pictures of the Rebbe.

19:16 Speaker 1 Talia graduated in the spring, and she'll be moving to Israel.

19:19 Speaker 3 She's a really, really great girl.

19:25 Speaker 1 Remember Yaniv Hoffman, the guy who was attracted to the mysterious energy and flying cholent in the cramped Washington Square basement? The Kornes became very close with him as well. Yaniv's path to graduation was slightly different than Talia's.

19:40 Speaker 4 I went to the IDF. I enlisted in a unit called Givati, which is a combat unit. It was a, a very powerful, challenging, amazing experience. I became a commander. I served in the West Bank for over a year.

19:53 Speaker 1 Yaniv joined in 2012 at the end of his freshman year and served for over two years.

19:59 Speaker 4 And throughout that whole time, I stayed connected to Chabad House Bowery.

20:02 Speaker 1 Yaniv and Rabbi Korne sometimes farbrenged via phone when his unit was in the desert, which gave him an idea. Once, when Yaniv returned on leave to New York, he didn't tell Rabbi Korne, who thought Yaniv was still in Israel. They were scheduled to make a phone farbrengen.

20:19 Speaker 4 When I was hiding in his attic.

20:21 Speaker 3 And my husband was gonna be going that night into our attic to take down our Pesach dishes, so he decided to hide in the attic so he could surprise my husband. So can you imagine? My husband's like, climbs up to our attic to get down our Pesach dishes, and all of a sudden he hear him go, "Ah!"

20:36 Speaker 4 And I was sitting there. And he almost, I think he had a heart attack. And then once he realized it was me, it was a joyous reunion.

20:44 Speaker 1 Yaniv completed his IDF service, returned to NYU, and finished his degree in music business. He also returned to Chabad House Bowery with a fresh outlook about Judaism and what it meant to him.

20:58 Speaker 4 And, uh, that's when I really locked in, and I was like, "All right. I guess I gotta, gotta put on the uniform." So I started growing my beard and taking part in those Chabad customs.

21:08 Speaker 1 Yaniv also worked at record labels and artist management companies, and he began to write and perform his own songs and form a new band with childhood friend and fellow musician Shlomo Gayson. They called it Jericho.

21:22 Speaker 4 My middle name is Joshua, and Joshua fought the Battle of Jericho, and the way that he fought that battle was, uh, with the shofar, right? This idea of sound breaking down walls, and that's exactly what I wanted to do, so...

21:35 Speaker 1 On the Bowery, we light up the night. In 2018, Jericho released the song On the Bowery with accompanying video. It features scenes shot in the Bowery with cameos from Rabbi and Rebbetzin Korne and footage of Yaniv and his friends dancing at the Kotel in Jerusalem. Yammie-da-da-da-da-da. Yammie-da-da-da-da-da. Yammie-da-da-da-da-da.

22:05 Speaker 4 Music connects people. I get videos all the time of people in weddings in South Africa, in Australia, in Israel, all over the world dancing at weddings, you know, and, and bar mitzvahs and events to, uh, to this song.

22:17 Speaker 2 Yeah, it's so funny because that song has become, like, an international song. Like, there's videos of him in Israel, and they're all- and he starts singing On the Bowery, and everybody starts going crazy. It's like, it's really hilarious.

22:28 Speaker 4 And, uh, I think it's hilarious because people then message me also. Like, they're like, "What's the Bowery?"

22:36 Speaker 1 We sing, we dance, and we fight. Yaniv and his wife are now raising three children. He manages musical artists. Jericho's latest song and video, At Your Door, was released this past April. He's still very grateful to the Kornes for their love and inspiration over the years.

22:56 Speaker 4 They're kinda like these magical characters that have this amazing life story, and they do an amazing, amazing job of pulling people in and having people be magnetized to them through their narrative and their personality and their unique approach to life and to Judaism.

23:11 Speaker 1 Rabbi Korne's willingness to share his life story, the good and the not as good, the Hasidic breakthroughs, as well as the brief digressions into hippie culture and religions not his own, was a big reason why Talia Gellis, who grew up in a Frum family, appreciates him.

23:29 Speaker 5 When you hear his origin story, it's not an everyday story. It was the first time I ever saw a leader be so candid and be so authentic and himself. I think it's awesome. And I think having a rabbi and rebbetzin candidly talk about their past, something that they're not ashamed of, something that they grew from, and the reason why they are who they are today, was one of the best things that could have happened to me in my college experience, and I think it'll really stay with me way past when I'm gone.

24:04 Speaker 1 As for the Kornes, they agree that their own stories of embracing Torah Judaism help them connect with young Jewish people from all backgrounds. But they also see their outreach as a natural outgrowth of the Lubavitcher Rebbe's continued inspiration.

24:20 Speaker 2 Uh, listen, I really believe, and the Rebbe says it, we are in the era of Mashiach. I believe my story and my wife's story is a story of Mashiach. This is a story of the redemption.

24:33 Speaker 3 I think that we're accomplishing turning over the world, like the Rebbe told us to do.

24:37 Speaker 1 Rabbi Dov Yonah and Rebbetzin Sara Korne feel that as more and more souls walk through the doors of Chabad House Bowery, the closer the world gets to the final redemption.

24:50 Speaker 2 And the Jewish souls are always awake, but they're stirring right now, and they're looking for something deep. And these souls have, they have a life of their own.

25:11 Speaker 1 I'm Gary Wolek. Thanks for listening to Lamplighters: 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@lubavitch.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.