What the Traveling Chassidim have learned along the way is that the Jewish neshamah has many ways of being ignited

Photos: Naftoli Goldgrab, personal archives

Rabbi Aryeh Royde, a Belzer yungerman from Manchester who’d moved to Monsey, thought he knew all about kiruv. He studied the sources diligently, prepared to debate G-d’s existence, and acquired an intellectual chavrusa through Partners in Torah. But although he engaged his phone-pal every week for two years, the fellow at the other end of the line still had no interest in keeping halachah. And then he traveled with his fellow Belzer friend Eli Bineth to Dallas for a community kiruv shabbaton.

“During the Friday night oneg, there was such warm chassidishe energy. Everyone was into the niggunim, and this guy drives up in his car, comes into the shul, sits down next to me, and asks me for a beer,” Rabbi Royde remembers. “I brought him a bottle, opened it for him as a gesture of friendship, and after that, we just bonded. On Motzaei Shabbos at the kumzitz, he sidled up to me and said, ‘You know, I’m 40 years old and haven’t put on tefillin since my bar mitzvah. Maybe you can help me do it tomorrow?’ I was astounded. We didn’t give lectures, we didn’t prove Hashem’s existence — we were just nice. We smiled. We danced. We sang. The people saw Shabbos. All I did was give him a bottle of beer, and the next thing I knew, he wanted tefillin.”

It would become a formula for the Traveling Chassidim, a national kiruv venture he himself would lead.

Rabbi Royde and his friend Eli Bineth, at the time director of a mentoring program training  yungeleit to learn with teenage bochurim, took a kiruv training course through Project Inspire, and after that, “we couldn’t just go back to our complacent lives,” Rabbi Royde says. “How could we let millions of American Jews remain assimilated while we continued to bury our heads in Monsey? What could I do with my chassidishe friends that would be unique? How could I make my contribution?”

They didn’t have to wait long. In 2010, Rabbi Royde attended a Discovery Seminar held in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Rabbi Raphael Nemetsky of the town’s congregation came up to him and sighed, “You know, nowadays no one cares that you can prove to them what’s true.”

“You know what,” answered Reb Aryeh, “I have a group of friends. Maybe we’ll come to your city and show them a real chassidishe Shabbos.” The rabbi was excited. “Great!” he said, “I’ll just put you down as the ‘Traveling Chassidim.’

“And so,” says Rabbi Royde, “we were invented.”

From that first Shabbos in Wilkes-Barre with the Royde and Bineth families, the Traveling Chassidim have grown into a large network of over 70 families who travel across the United States and Canada, providing unaffiliated Jews with a taste of Shabbos, chassidish-style. Rabbi Royde’s brother Reb Yisroel, a long-time kiruv personality in Monsey whom Reb Aryeh credits with his own initial foray into kiruv, is also part of the team. They go to Young Israel communities and places like Aish centers where the leadership is frum yet the congregants are mostly unaffiliated.

“We just decided to take our chassidish flavor around — after all, that’s who we are. And what did people see? A group of happy people, living Shabbos, living Yiddishkeit, and that resonated with them,” says Rabbi Royde.

If you’re wondering how a group of Belzer avreichim got involved in Project Inspire, founded by Rabbi Noach Weinberg ztz”l, with his vision of every frum person becoming a “kiruv ambassador,” Rabbi Royde says it was a natural outgrowth of the Belzer Rebbe’s own inspiration. The Rebbe is a big kiruv promoter — the Tzohar and Hidabroot organizations in Eretz Yisrael are under the auspices of Belz.

“When we started out, we discussed everything with the Rebbe,” says Rabbi Royde, “and at that point we developed a close relationship. We speak every time I go to Eretz Yisrael. He sends me letters to ask how it’s going and to give us chizuk, especially since in some circles people might look askance at our being too ‘out there.’ ”

He sometimes gets that reaction from participants themselves. “We recently had a Shabbos in Manhattan, and at the Friday night Q and A, someone asked, ‘Aren’t chassidim really insular? How come you do this?’ ”

After years of traveling to other communities, and even launching Traveling Chassidim all around his native England, Rabbi Royde saw a void within his own neighborhood. “We were doing all this work with the secular population, giving them a taste, demonstrating authentic Yiddishkeit. But what about those of us within the community? We could all benefit from the beauty and inner meaning of Shabbos.”

With this in mind, Rabbi Royde created “Taamu,” starting out with a series of classes on foundational Yiddishkeit, which he says are “a sort of reeducation” for many people: davening (does Hashem need our tefillos?), emunah and bitachon (what does it mean to rely on Hashem, to let go?), sechar v’onesh (if Hashem loves us why does He punish us — or does He?), and how to keep Yiddishkeit relevant.

Innumerable encounters and 250 shabbatons later, Rabbi Royde had learned many lessons that have shattered preconceived ideas about kiruv and the resilience of the Jewish neshamah.

“Thirteen years ago, we had an idea,” says Rabbi Aryeh Royde. “Now we have stories.”