The Once-Reluctant Speaker Who Reaches Millions: Rabbi Manis Friedman

00:00 Speaker 1 I was the most introverted, the most bashful, the most timid. Public speaking? Are you kidding?

00:08 Speaker 2 That's Rabbi Manes Friedman. Today, he's easily one of the most visible and honorable public speakers and online influencers in the Jewish world. He remembers the first step in his outward progression decades after it happened.

00:24 Speaker 1 One year, the yeshiva declared that every bachur is gonna have a shul, and you have to go there Shabbos afternoon and teach a sicha. The mashpia said, "No exceptions." I said, "No, you gotta be kidding." He said, "There are gonna be no exceptions."

00:41 Speaker 2 What Friedman didn't know at that time is that he was being shaped and molded by the Lubavitcher Rebbe for a lifetime of extroversion and Jewish outreach, including the founding of a groundbreaking school for Jewish women.

00:55 Speaker 1 And you look back and go, "What did the Rebbe say that brought that change?"

01:03 Speaker 2 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. Back to our story in a moment, but first, I'd like to tell you about a great opportunity. You can partner with Lamplighters in sharing stories of Chabad emissaries doing amazing work all over the world. Please consider dedicating an episode. You can email us at podcast@lubavitch.com to explore dedication opportunities. That's podcast@lubavitch.com. You can also let us know how we're doing and about the shluchim you think we should consider for upcoming episodes. Please rate and review Lamplighters to make it easier for other podcast listeners to find us. Lamplighters is a project of Machne Israel, the social services arm of Chabad Lubavitch.

02:31 Speaker 1 My mother was Ukrainian, my father was Polish, and they both escaped the war by moving to Tashkent.

02:38 Speaker 2 It was there in Uzbekistan that Manes Friedman's parents, Miriam and Rabbi Yakov Moshe, met, and it was there that they began to meet members of the large Chabad community.

02:51 Speaker 1 And some of the really great Hasidim, teachers, mashpiyim, were there, and my parents were deeply influenced by these great Hasidim. They had been Hasidim, too, but in Poland. They had no idea what Chabad was all about.

03:07 Speaker 2 But also living in Tashkent was the great Chabad Hasid Peretz Mochkin, who knew Friedman's father, a rabbi, and his father, also a rabbi.

03:17 Speaker 1 They knitted socks. Peretz Mochkin actually borrowed money to buy a knitting machine for my grandfather so that he could support himself without working on Shabbos. My father ran the machine, and that allowed my grandfather to sit and study.

03:35 Speaker 2 Friedman's parents survived the war, after which the family moved to a displaced persons camp in Prague, where, in 1946, Menachem Manes Friedman was born. One of his earliest memories was of that camp.

03:50 Speaker 1 Everybody thinks a DP camp is like a big tent. It's not. We were living in hotels, but my father worked with a very heroic individual by the name of Yakov Griffel.

04:03 Speaker 2 Griffel was an activist and a key member of the Jewish underground. He was wanted by the Soviet secret police.

04:11 Speaker 1 He had offices in Paris, New York, and, uh, Prague, getting people out of Communist countries. Most people needed false papers. They needed visas and passports. Some even needed birth certificates, faked. My father worked in that organization, and thousands of people were rescued. Hundreds of orphans were able to escape the Communists on these papers. Life was very tense. These people who came to my father for help needed food and lodging, and my mother took care of that, which was also illegal. Of course it was dangerous. The Czechs were not as vicious as the Poles or the Ukrainians, but there was no shortage of antisemitism. And besides, you're violating the laws, so the danger was very real.

05:06 Speaker 2 The Friedmans could only go so long without being discovered.

05:10 Speaker 1 At one point, my father was told that the secret is out, the police know about this, and that he should leave town immediately. He didn't. He had a visit from the police, and he was able to talk his way out of it, but stayed.

05:24 Speaker 2 Rabbi Yakov Moshe Friedman continued his highly illegal and highly dangerous work.

05:31 Speaker 1 And then a half year later or so, they came and arrested him. So he was in a Czech prison for six months. They wanted names, information, and of course he wouldn't give it. So he endured some mistreatment, to put it mildly.

05:51 Speaker 2 By this time, Friedman's paternal grandfather was already in New York.

05:55 Speaker 1 And he went to the previous Rebbe and asked for a bracha for my father when he was in jail. And the previous Rebbe said, "What was he, harming anybody? He was helping Jews. They'll let him go." And then they released him, so he immediately got out of there and came to New York

06:15 Speaker 2 That was in 1950. Manes was just five or six years old.

06:20 Speaker 1 We lived in East New York, and then in Bedford-Stuyvesant. We lived in a cellar next to the coal furnace. Literally, the next room over was the coal, and every morning we would wake up to the landlord shoveling coal into the furnace, so the coal dust. Thankfully, we didn't live there too long, but that was our introduction to America, and adjusting to America was not easy.

06:52 Speaker 2 But because of Friedman's father's Chabad connections, he was able to get a job at the Lubavitcher yeshiva in Crown Heights.

06:59 Speaker 1 He was the bus driver. He was the caretaker. So naturally, I ended up in a Chabad yeshiva, having no idea what that meant.

07:08 Speaker 2 Young Manes would find that out in a very direct and very personal way. When the family moved to Crown Heights, they lived at 1414 President Street, directly next door to Rebbetzin Chana, the mother of the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

07:23 Speaker 1 When I was around bar mitzvah age, I discovered who the Rebbe was and what Chabad was all about and how different they are.

07:31 Speaker 2 Before 1940, when the previous Rebbe arrived in America, the Orthodox Jewish world was very insular.

07:38 Speaker 1 And the best that people expected was that Yiddishkeit would survive, although that was very iffy. In America, there was very little hope. My grandfather was convinced that he is the last of the breed, and that his grandchildren would not be observant. That was the mentality. The Jews of Europe were the last Jews, and here in America, it's just not gonna take. Whereas Chabad was the exact opposite. Everyone is going to become observant, and that was, like, crazy and very attractive. So for a teenager, I mean, if I had a choice of sitting and listening to people moan and groan about the past, or go over to 770 where people were dancing in the streets, I mean, what's the question, right?

08:31 Speaker 2 Beginning in the early '60s, Friedman studied in Lubavitch yeshivas. He was studious and quiet, but Friedman, who desperately wanted to avoid public speaking, got over his aversion by teaching sichas of the Rebbe. At the age of 18, Friedman began work as a public speaker for the Lubavitch Youth Organization, which focuses on educational outreach to young Jews. He studied for two years at Lubavitch Yeshiva in Montreal. By the time he returned to Crown Heights, he had turned his energies outward.

09:04 Speaker 1 Whole new world, and I couldn't wait to graduate and go on shlichus.

09:12 Speaker 2 But Friedman says that by the late '60s, most shluchim were married couples.

09:17 Speaker 1 So I wanted to get married just to go on shlichus. My, uh, entry into the world of shlichus is to get married.

09:24 Speaker 2 Manes Friedman met his wife to-be in New York. Chana had studied at Bais Yaakov in New Jersey. She's from a well-known Hasidic family, the daughter of Rabbi Sholom Ber Gordon of Newark. They were married in 1968. The following year, Manes Friedman was ordained at the Lubavitch Rabbinical College of Canada. He submitted a list of places he and his wife were considering for shlichus.

09:51 Speaker 1 And the Rebbe chose Minnesota.

09:54 Speaker 2 In 1970, Friedman joined Upper Midwest Mirkos Lubavitch in St. Paul, Minnesota as director of its student outreach program under Chief Chabad Rabbi Moshe Feller.

10:06 Speaker 1 At the time, the only project he had going was a summer camp, so I went out to run the summer camp and do whatever else. So it was pretty much left to your imagination. There was no plan. There were no instructions. Go there and become part of the community. And do what?

10:26 Speaker 2 The Friedmans purchased a home on Montreal Ave. in St. Paul, so they decided that summertime should also be time to celebrate Shabbos with local teenagers there.

10:37 Speaker 1 So we got a Chabad house, and we had weekends inviting the community to come for a Shabbos, which was very successful. We had this big house, or we thought it was big, and, uh, it was empty in the summer. People were away at the country. Kids were away at camp. College students were off. What are we gonna do with this big building?

11:00 Speaker 2 With fewer communal Shabbosim to plan for, Friedman sat down with Rabbi Moshe Feller, and they brainstormed.

11:07 Speaker 1 There are two baal teshuva yeshivas for men. There was nothing for women, so we were joking about who are these guys gonna marry? If you don't educate women, you're not gonna have another generation of Jews, and back in the '70s, they wouldn't be educated as Jews. So we said, "Let's make something for women."

11:29 Speaker 2 In the summer of 1970, they did that.

11:32 Speaker 1 We sent flyers to six universities in the Midwest, and we invited women to come stay for the summer and learn. We didn't know what to expect. 18 women showed up from various campuses. They were the former radical students, the SDS, Students for a Democratic Society, who were creating all sorts of havoc because they wanted to stop the war in Vietnam, and they wanted to change the, uh, the nature of the curriculum of the universities, but it failed. That was in the '60s. Now, in the early '70s, these frustrated, disappointed, and disillusioned radicals responded to our flyer because it said, "Come learn the purpose of life." And they walked in there militant and angry. "You know the purpose of life?" We thought they would do a little shopping, a little sightseeing. Oh, no, not them. It was really intense, all day and all night. We have some of the best women teachers in Chabad, excellent teachers, and they really understand Hasidus. It's not watered down. It's not pop psychology. It's the real thing. By the second day, people feel like they belong there, that they're comfortable there, and that they're understood.

13:06 Speaker 2 Friedman says the women left wanting to learn even more.

13:10 Speaker 1 I think 15 out of the 18 went off to Crown Heights at the end of the summer.

13:15 Speaker 2 Sensing that they were onto something, in 1971, Chabad of Minnesota purchased a large stone mansion at 15 Montcalm Court with enough room for the program to expand, and it's a good thing they did.

13:29 Speaker 1 42 women the second summer, 102 women after that. I mean, we had a large building with 30 rooms, but 102 women? Violated all the safety rules, all the fire... But they were hippies, so they didn't need anything fancy. A sleeping bag was fine, and they just couldn't stop learning.

13:55 Speaker 2 Beis Chana hired the most highly respected teachers, Rabbi Moshe and Rebbetzin Mindy Feller, Rabbi Yisroel Rubin from Albany, Rabbi Chaim Moshe Bergstein of Michigan, and Rebbetzin Nechama Greissman. The Rebbe wholeheartedly supported Beis Chana as a part of his wider initiative to ensure that Jewish women have access to the full depth of Jewish learning. In 1972, Beis Chana added a new winter program at the Rebbe's suggestion.

14:25 Speaker 1 And that was over-the-top questions and questions and personal conversations, and it was really, really highly spiritual. It was wild. It was wild. And it was all ages eventually. We didn't turn anyone away. We had some teenagers. We had some grandmothers all in the same class. It was mostly word of mouth because we really didn't advertise after the first time. We just announced dates, and the place filled up. Minnesota became a destination for Jewish studies. Women came from Israel to study Judaism in St. Paul, Minnesota.

15:05 Speaker 2 "The Fellers," Friedman says, "were totally committed to Beis Chana's growth."

15:14 Speaker 1 No expenses spared. They were willing to support and foot the bill for any woman from anywhere in the world who wants to learn Judaism. So it became quite a phenomenon.

15:26 Speaker 2 In the summer of 1973, a young mother who had just finished her studies at SUNY Binghamton came to ask Paul. Her name was Hinda Langer.

15:36 Speaker 3 I went to 15 Montcalm Court, and actually there was no room in the mansion that they had, and I lived in an apartment off campus with a whole group of girls that were my age.

15:52 Speaker 2 Langer remembers her first day of class.

15:55 Speaker 3 Nobody was sitting in the first row. The first row of the classroom had tape recorders, not people.

16:02 Speaker 2 Why tape recorders?

16:03 Speaker 3 Everybody needed to hear over and over Rabbi Friedman's talks. People wanted to have a record of everything he said, and he actually said a very funny thing in one of his classes. He said, "Who would want every one of their thoughts or their words that they spoke recorded?" And I started laughing to myself because that was what was happening with him. The main class was Tanya. He was teaching Tanya, which was totally new for everyone there, and then some other people taught classes in the afternoon or the evening, but Rabbi Friedman was the main teacher. Rabbi Friedman has a way of teaching with certainty, and the certainty didn't leave me.

16:54 Speaker 2 Can you tell me about something you learned, a, a new concept you were introduced to that really made an impact on you in your early years at Beis Chana?

17:03 Speaker 3 That everybody has the Yetzer Hara, that everybody, including the person next to me, had issues they had to struggle with, and that was a relief because the whole idea of holiness and being a holy person is very daunting.

17:20 Speaker 2 Langer says she returned twice to Beis Chana, both times with friends. By that second visit in the mid-'70s, she was a Chabad shlucha doing outreach in the Bay Area. Her education at Beis Chana had inspired her to learn more in Crown Heights, and she married Rabbi Yosef Langer, with whom she's run Chabad of San Francisco for over four decades. For most of that time, Hinda Langer has specialized in Jewish education.

17:49 Speaker 3 So Beis Chana was very foundational for me.

17:54 Speaker 2 Early Beis Chana students call the school by that name, but actually until 1974, it was called the Women's Institute for the Study of Judaism. According to Rabbi Mendel Feller, son of Rabbi Moshe Feller, a list of names was presented to the Rebbe for a rebrand. And he chose Beis Chana, honoring his mother on her 10th yahrtzeit. After that, attendance continued to boom. I asked Friedman why the curriculum at Beis Chana resonated so strongly with women of that generation.

18:29 Speaker 1 People were looking for something more than materialism. Many of the women who came to Beis Chana had been members of cults, and had studied in India and in Tibet, and yet they felt the need to come home. So a big part of the conversation and the learning was, what does Judaism say compared to what Buddhism says? I think the fact that it was only for women made it appealing. Feminism was very hot, and a program of Jewish learning just for women, that was something new. They wanted something spiritual, but they got something godly, which is of course much greater than spiritual.

19:12 Speaker 2 Now remember that in addition to Manis Friedman running this new groundbreaking women's school, he and his wife Chana were running a Chabad house at their home in S Paul.

19:22 Speaker 1 We loved every minute of it. Seeing the results and the success of the programs, the Shabbos weekends, the holiday programs, the big Sukkah downtown Minneapolis, the matzah bakery for kids before Pesach. I mean, all of these things, they were all new. There was no blueprint for them. So how do you create a m- a, a matzah oven? You hide a , you hide a microwave inside a bunch of bricks. And they, and they were all fantastically successful, and eventually we started a cheder for the shluchim's kids, which was very good for them. We discovered suburban living, a normal pace of life, which was very pleasant, and life was ideal.

20:10 Speaker 2 Was your wife Chana actively involved in Beis Chana?

20:14 Speaker 1 Nope. She didn't want to be involved in Beis Chana. Once in a while she would go in, and women would ask her questions about raising children, about being a mother. But generally, she stuck to the house and the Che Chabad programs, but we did not share any projects, which I think was good. She had her own identity.

20:33 Speaker 2 A big part of that identity was raising your 14 children. How many of them have gone out on shlichus?

20:40 Speaker 1 13 out of 14, boys and girls. It's not bad. And the 14th makes a living.

20:55 Speaker 2 Friedman is referring to his son, Rabbi Benny Friedman, a world-famous singer and performer, which is certainly a type of Jewish outreach in its own right. Manis Friedman is quick to credit Rabbi Moshe and Mindy Feller, the pioneering shluchim to Minnesota, for the Friedman's success in the bustling Jewish hub of S Paul.

21:19 Speaker 1 Rabbi Feller was the best shliach to work for, and he was always proud of his shluchim. Never failed to put in a compliment, so it was, it was really, it was heaven. Heaven.

21:33 Speaker 2 But as his shlichus evolved, Friedman had to leave his Minnesota heaven now and then. Beginning in the early '70s, the Rebbe's farbrengens at 770 Eastern Parkway, Chabad's international headquarters, were available to listen to all around the world via telephone hookup.

21:51 Speaker 1 Where hundreds of shluchim could call in to a bank of telephones and hear the farbrengen. So for the community in Minnesota, I translated for the non-Hebrew-speaking or non-Yiddish speaking.

22:04 Speaker 2 Then, in the early '80s, the farbrengens and talks by the Rebbe were made available through a much more advanced mode.

22:11 Speaker 1 Cutting-edge technology where this 18-wheeler would pull up in front of 770 full of, uh, electronics, and they put a huge dish on the roof of 770 to send it throughout the world. It was amazing technology, way ahead of its time. But they needed someone to do the translation into English simultaneously, and I got the job.

22:38 Speaker 4 The Rebbe will take a seat at the table there, and, uh, the farbrengen will begin. The Rebbe will speak for, oh, approximately a half hour, 40 minutes.

22:48 Speaker 1 So for eight years, six times a year, I would fly into New York to do the translation, and that was an experience of its own, being the voice of the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

22:59 Speaker 4 You notice on your screen that people have these little wires hanging out of their ears. Those are in-house translations for people who don't understand Yiddish, and they are listening to simultaneous translations in a number of languages.

23:17 Speaker 2 Friedman says that the task of translating during live broadcasts was exhausting. So what does an exhausted shliach do? He adds more. Friedman, a highly sought-after public speaker, was in high demand. One day in the late '80s, he was giving a talk about modesty in San Francisco.

23:39 Speaker 1 Sitting in the audience was one of the vice presidents of HarperSanFrancisco, a nice Jewish man, and he comes over to me and he says, "You wanna write a book?" I said, "No." He says, "If you can speak about modesty in the hot tub capital of the United States, you have a book."

23:57 Speaker 2 Friedman eventually said yes.

23:59 Speaker 1 My first book came out in 1990, and it was about relationships and about modesty, and we called it Doesn't Anyone Blush Anymore? It was surprisingly successful, published by HarperSanFrancisco, published by a secular publishing house.

24:17 Speaker 2 Much of your work seems to hit a nerve with people who might not consider themselves to be religious, quote, unquote. Why is that?

24:26 Speaker 1 It's because they're starving. They're starved. Jews are not stupid. You can't dumb them down and make them religious. So when they hear something that makes a lot of sense, it's irresistible.

24:41 Speaker 2 Around the year 2000, while Friedman's public speaking career was in full swing, Beis Chana purchased a 23,000-square-foot building at 400 Marie Ave with space for educating hundreds more women. One person I spoke with described Beis Chana as a train station that made connections to other learning communities.

25:05 Speaker 1 Yes, they walked out wanting to study more, and some of them went to Crown Heights and sat in on Beis Rivkah with eight-year-olds learning to read.It was an incredible time.

25:18 Speaker 2 But over the following two decades, things changed in Minnesota.

25:23 Speaker 1 People don't want to travel to Minnesota anymore. In the hippie days, nothing mattered. Wherever, whatever. Now people are a little more particular. It's cold. It's far away.

25:36 Speaker 2 Friedman says financial support diminished, and Beis Chana was ready for new leadership.

25:41 Speaker 1 So after about 20 years, one of the students, who is now a rebbetzin here in Crown Heights, Hendeleya Sharfstein, took over the, uh, administration of the program. She lives in New York, so that became the headquarters, and, uh, she had a very new vision of how it should be done, which is f- you know, more appropriate for non-hippie times.

26:06 Speaker 2 Now, Beis Chana is thriving in new ways. There are still programs for teenagers, college women, single mothers, and older women. Programs are held all over the country, and many emphasize exercise and the outdoors.

26:21 Speaker 1 So it has been very, very successful in its new format.

26:28 Speaker 2 Kate Goldstein agrees. Goldstein grew up in San Jose, California. Her mother is Jewish, her father Catholic.

26:36 Speaker 5 They weren't very religious in observance. We celebrated Christmas because it was, like, the American thing to do, and I was pretty secular.

26:44 Speaker 2 Goldstein connected with Chabad through Sacramento shluchim Rabbi Mendy and Dini Cohen. She kept that connection going after her 2013 graduation from Sacramento State College. She first attended Beis Chana a year or two after that.

27:00 Speaker 5 I learned Tanya, and then as time went on, I learned more, and I learned Hebrew.

27:08 Speaker 2 Goldstein has returned to Beis Chana for their snorkel and study program in the Florida Keys, as well as a Jewish women's adventure in Utah. As exciting as those were for her, what she talks about today is what she learned there.

27:23 Speaker 5 You know, basics in Torah and mitzvot and things that are relevant, like how to raise children and how to take care of a kosher kitchen and how to light the candles and, and all the reasons why the Rebbe really pushed for that, and I, I'm really grateful for that because I, I love to learn, and I think it's important that women learn. We shouldn't do things blindly. From the time you wake up, you have a full schedule of options to learn, to have activities, to go on a boat, to go hiking. It's just so many options depending on your trip, and they just make it so much fun.

28:01 Speaker 2 Goldstein is married. She and her husband observe Shabbos and kashrus, and she says she's always looking to add to her Jewish knowledge and observance.

28:11 Speaker 5 Definitely. Beis Chana and the people in the program had a huge impact on my life and how I am observant. I will say I'm not perfect. Nobody is. But I do have the goal to always think about why I do mitzvot, to do them with my heart and soul, to love being Jewish, to love Judaism, to love the Rebbe, to learn and to grow, and have fun on the way.

28:36 Speaker 2 About 30,000 women have come through Beis Chana's doors over the last 55 years, but there's one number that seems to make Rabbi Manes Friedman the most happy. He estimates that about 3% of those who attend Beis Chana are unaffected by its programs.

28:54 Speaker 1 No matter how short the time, very few people walk away unchanged. Those who are changed, of course, you know, they run the whole gamut or the whole spectrum, completely observant, more observant, marrying Jewish, but something significant and substantial happens to the vast majority of them. What's not to like?

29:17 Speaker 2 I agree, but usually I expect a shliach to say something like, "Well, you know, it's all good, but the Rebbe wants us to do more."

29:26 Speaker 1 Of course he does, and we are. We're always looking to do more, and why wouldn't we? It's like potato chips. Can't have just one.

29:35 Speaker 2 A little over five years ago, Beis Chana celebrated its 50th anniversary. Alumni were asked to send in pictures of themselves and their families, along with a short description of where they are now, for inclusion in an album. Hundreds responded.

29:52 Speaker 1 And it was so stunning. Every one of those women had become a tribe. The family picture was a tribe. This is what the Rebbe wanted. Educate a Jewish woman, you end up with a, with a tribe. There are so many women who are now shlichas. They started from scratch when they were in college, and now they're shlichas. They're influencers, and their goal and, and ambition in life was to do for others what was done for them. And they're very qualified for the job. So the individual sagas of people, the variety of it is breathtaking.

30:31 Speaker 2 While Beis Chana rolls on, Manes Friedman does, too. As mentioned in an earlier Lamplighters episode, he's helped one of his sons, Rabbi Chaplain Yochanan Friedman in Santa Cruz, California, develop a successful cutting-edge prison program called Choices for Life. And he maintains a very high profile on social media and podcast platforms. Around 2010, Manes Friedman launched the It's Good to Know website, through which Friedman offers inspirational videos, live Q&As, one-on-one life coaching, and marriage counseling. I ask him what's different about the website from his previous work.

31:13 Speaker 1 I don't think the content is any different. It's all Judaism when you get right down to it. But it's the core, the big questions, the fundamentals. Like what makes a Jew Jewish? What do we know about God? Are we serving him or is he serving us? Why were you born in the first place? What is the purpose of life? To use a very powerful example, if the world ended tomorrow, just ended, gone, would it be a tragedy?

31:46 Speaker 2 Yes.

31:47 Speaker 1 To whom?

31:49 Speaker 2 To Hashem.

31:51 Speaker 1 People have no idea, particularly religious people. We're so focused on what we need and how to get it from Hashem, they forget that we don't need anything. That is life-changing.

32:07 Speaker 2 About eight million people are engaged in the It's Good to Know website, but Friedman doesn't seem very dazzled by that.

32:15 Speaker 1 Eight million out of eight billion? Not even impressive. That's a drop in the bucket. Although, when I think about it, when I first came to Minnesota, I started a Tanya class at the Hillel House. If eight people showed up, I thought I was so successful. I was in seventh heaven. Now I'm talking to eight million.

32:37 Speaker 2 Rabbi Manes Friedman and his wife Chana now live in New York. I asked him if that had been the plan.

32:45 Speaker 1 I, I never planned it that way. I didn't plan to go online. I didn't plan to start Beis Chana. I didn't plan anything. But when it comes your way, you jump on it. So whatever comes next, hopefully we'll be able to participate in all the new developments, whatever that's gonna turn out to be. Most of the shluchim are just ordinary guys with a dedication to the Rebbe's initiatives. How they are successful and how they accomplish everything that they accomplish, it's the Rebbe's influence. It's the Rebbe's doing. In some subtle, very pnimiyusdik way, the Rebbe molded his Hasidim, and is still molding Hasidim. And you look back and go, "What did the Rebbe say that brought that change?" Like a master educator, he turned a bunch of ordinary people into influencers.

33:47 Speaker 2 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@lubavitch.com. To subscribe digitally to Lubavitch International Magazine or to receive it at your doorstep, please visit lubavitch.com/subscribe. Lamplighters is a project of Machne Israel, the social services arm of Chabad Lubavitch.