Sea Gate is a quiet, gated community on the Atlantic Ocean, at the edge of Brooklyn. The composer, Yossi Green, lives there and nearby lives the king of Jewish music, Mordechai Ben David. The two share not only musical interests but an interest in learning Chassidus.
Their morning learning session was the initiative of Yossi. When he was 15, he learned Tanya with the old Chassid, Rabbi Yitzchok Dubov of Manchester. The age difference was immense, but the Tanya bridged the gap of their ages.
“R’ Yitzchok would occasionally burst into a joyous Chassidic tune,” Yossi Green told Beis Moshiach nostalgically.
“I once asked him what he did in yeshiva. He would sit near a small table in the middle of the beis midrash, but I did not know what his job was. He answered me mischievously, ‘30 years ago I came to the yeshiva for an entrance exam and since then I still haven’t gotten an answer about whether I’ve been accepted. So I’m here, waiting …’”
When Yossi Green was learning in London, he met R’ Yankele Weiser (today in Vienna). They learned Tanya, the kuntres “U’Maayan,” the maamer “Adam Ki Yakriv,” and many other maamarim.
Even when Yossi left England and returned to the United States, his interest in Tanya in particular and Chassidus in general, did not abate.
“After I married, I lived in Boro Park where I felt a longing for Chassidus but didn’t know how to access it. I did not know any Lubavitcher Chassidim in Boro Park. Someone told me that there is a Chabad shul. I went there and unashamed, I asked the first person I met who could learn Tanya with me.
“He introduced me to Yossi Rubashkin who agreed to regularly learn Tanya with me. Forty years have passed since then and ever since then I feel like it gave me the fuel to really start living.”
When Yossi Green moved to Sea Gate, Mordechai Ben David moved there too because his Rebbe, the Ribnitzer zt”l, who was living there at the time. From the very start, they decided to start their day by learning Chassidus before davening.
“We both live near the beach. I slept near the window and he, who woke up at four in the morning, would wake me up by tossing pebbles at the window above my bed. We would go to the mikva and then to his house, where we learned Tanya. That lasted nearly a year.
“I felt a real closeness to the Tanya. One might say that my connection to the learning is more pronounced than to following in the ways of Chassidus. I always had the feeling that I needed to get back to it and I knew it would happen, and it did.”
Yossi feels a real nostalgia for the learning of Tanya. He even developed an attachment to the traditional page format. When the Tanya was published in an enlarged format with English translation, he used it for a while but then went back to the old, familiar page layout that he knew and was etched in his brain.
When asked what Tanya taught him, he was quiet and then cautiously said, “Tanya gave me the desire to get into the whole study of Chabad Chassidus. It was the gateway for me. I always knew that Tanya is like a sweet concentrate to which you need to add water so that it provides the right taste to the nefesh and the neshama. And in order to understand this concentrate you need to learn and review it again and again.”
Yossi always marveled over the fact that whoever learned Tanya with him was particular about starting from the title page, the introduction and the approbations. It was an inseparable part of the learning.
In conclusion, Yossi told a personal story having to do with learning the teachings of the Alter Rebbe, not necessarily Tanya.
Hurricane Sandy was brutal. It came in off the Atlantic and pummeled the East Coast of the United States, including Sea Gate. A few days in advance of the hurricane, residents were told to evacuate the area. When they returned to their homes to see what remained of them, it was devastating. Entire sections of houses had disappeared; there was tremendous destruction all around them. At least 100 houses belonging to frum families were destroyed. People were shocked and rendered helpless by the losses and had a hard time digesting what had become of their homes. Yossi Green and Mordechai Ben David were among them. Water flooded their basements and even higher floors. Insurance did not cover most of the damages.
“About a month later, Mordechai and I had a series of concerts to do for shluchim in Brazil. The truth is that under those circumstances, when I didn’t have where to sleep, I wasn’t in the mood of music and singing but since the tickets had been sold already, we couldn’t cancel and we went to Brazil.
“We arrived on a Friday and I told Mordechai that from the time that I learned Tanya, I remember that there is a maamer of the Alter Rebbe on the words, ‘Many waters cannot extinguish the love.’ I wanted to learn it with him.
“At first we couldn’t find the maamer, but the shliach then came to our aid and he printed it out for us. Every morning, we sat together in our hotel room and learned the maamer to find some ray of hope, a glimmer of insight in to what happened to us.”
Did you find it?
“Of course, but that’s not the point. The learning itself and the search for the light infused us with an elevated feeling. That in itself was worth it. It breathed life into us.”