Tel Aviv’s golden age of chassidus is long-gone. But hidden away in the start-up capital are a few beloved rebbes, whose unlikely chassidim range from the city’s “invisibles” to high-profile media stars

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tart-up powerhouse. Nonstop city. Israel’s culture capital. Among the many names that Tel Aviv calls itself, center of chassidus isn’t one of them.

With its combination of high tech, yuppies on electric scooters, and in-your-face liberalism, Tel Aviv often feels closer to San Francisco than Yerushalayim, just 60 kilometers up the road. A brash symbol of secular Israel, it’s a place that bans Chabad rallies because they separate men and women and where the municipal authorities are fighting to open shopping on Shabbos.

Look hard, though, and the city’s streets tell a different story. Walking through central Tel Aviv is like crossing a condensed map of Eastern Europe — a giant open-air museum to a vanished chassidic past. The shtiblach of Modzhitz, Ger, and Ozherov recall Poland’s glorious heritage. Galician Belz rubs shoulders with Chasam Sofer, once a bastion of Hungarian minhag. Round the corner is the barely functioning shtibel of Koidenov, a chassidus that hailed from Russia. And the glories of Lithuania find a faint echo in the halls of Heichal HaTalmud, once home to old-style Lithuanian lamdanim. In these few square miles, more than 60 chassidic dynasties were once active. But the chassidim are gone and the rebbes are down the road in Bnei Brak.

Yet the shuttered buildings and struggling minyanim are only part of the story — an extraordinary story. Somehow, some chassidim — and rebbes — have held out. And those who have survived here have had an outsize effect on their surroundings: engaging in kiruv, creating communities, and altering hundreds of lives.

Actors, professionals, and laborers — Tel Aviv’s chassidim may not look like they stepped out of a Baal Shem Tov tale. But real chassidim they are, nonetheless, followers of the Rebbe’s derech, some of them inspired to utterly change their lives. This strange mixture of high tech and holiness is the story of the last rebbes of Tel Aviv. It’s a tale about the power of authentic Torah to transform even the most hostile surroundings.

Vintage Vasloi

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t’s Shabbos morning,  and I make my way to the Vasloi shtibel. Sunlight glints off the whitewashed buildings; at the end of the boulevard, the Mediterranean is sapphire blue. The cafés around the corner on Rothschild Boulevard are, unfortunately, full. Just down the block on Sderot Ben-Gurion is the house that Israel’s founding father occupied for decades. Did Ben-Gurion ever make up a minyan? It’s an intriguing thought: The proximity of these two places captures the way that chassidim and Israel’s elite once coexisted in Tel Aviv of old.

The beis medrash is on the first floor of a nondescript small apartment building. Entering it is like making Kiddush — crossing the threshold from chol to kodesh. The obliviousness to Shabbos outside is replaced with a seriousness inside: At the front is Rav Avrohom Shimshon Sholom Halperin, the Vasloier Rebbe.
Wearing the domed shtreimel of the Ruzhin dynasty, and seated on an imposing rebbishe chair, the Vasloier is every inch a rebbe. Yet together with the dignity comes an obvious warmth as he steps forward to welcome his visitors.
If the Rebbe at the front of the shul, as well as his son-in-law, could be in Bnei Brak or Boro Park, his chassidim certainly couldn’t. Dressed in flat caps or knitted kippot, middle-aged and younger, these are unmistakably Tel Avivians of a secular background. Add a few of the down-and-outs who populate Tel Aviv’s shuls and it makes for an eclectic mix.
But it’s the caliber of the mispallelim that makes Vasloi and the Rebbe stand out. One after another, they turn out to be people of substance, and their remarkable relationship with the Rebbe is testament to the power of gadlus to affect those who are searching for more.

A quiet man in his fifties at the back of the shul turns out to be Yotam Yeini, a well-known actor and singer. The stage is in his genes: His parents starred in Hatarnegolim, an Israeli troupe famous in the 1970s. Yotam sounds thoughtful as he describes how a secular Israeli actor ended up a baal teshuvah and a dedicated chassid of Vasloi.

“Twelve years ago, I was a secular Tel Avivian with a ponytail. Like many Israelis, I looked for a place to go on Yom Kippur. I had seen Vasloi, but I never would have gone in because the chassidim in black clothes were not my cup of tea. But that Yom Kippur I went in, and from the first moment I felt at home.” The secret of the place lies in a word that many in Vasloi repeat: Family. “I have the privilege to be in the holiest place in Tel Aviv. It’s pure. There are no politics or financial gain — they just accepted me as part of the family.”

If Yotam Yeini hails from one side of the entertainment industry, Yair Raveh is from the other. He’s a well-known Israeli film critic, and his own Jewish journey sounds like a movie cliché: It began in Chabad of Kathmandu.

“When I came home to Israel,” Yair says, “I looked for a small, intimate place. Someone recommended that I go to Vasloi, and I loved it straight away.

“I didn’t know what an admor is. When he prayed, he looked like an elderly gentleman. But when he put his ‘admor shtreimel’ on for Kiddush, his appearance changed. That’s when I knew he was special.”

It turned out that Raveh had an unknown family connection to Vasloi. The original Vasloier Rebbe was also the admor of a place called Galatz, Romania, and that was where Raveh’s father was born.

“I never met my grandfather — he died in the Holocaust,” says Raveh. “I thought that in some way I’m similar to him. That gave me a notion that this is the correct place for me and was preordained.” And he uses the same words as Yeini: “I love that it is a small place and that I’m part of the family.”

Another unlikely chassid is Eran Avidan. He practices alternative medicine and now lives in Cholon, but comes back to spend Shabbos every week with the Rebbe. “I came in the first time because I wanted to say Kaddish for my father. Vasloi was near where I lived, but I was worried because it was chareidi and I was a secular Sephardi. But on my father’s yahrtzeit it was the only minyan, so I went in.

“Reb Avrum Chayim was there,” says Eran in a chassidish accent, referring to the Rebbe’s son-in-law, “and he was very kind to me. I saw the Admor making Kiddush. I had never seen someone with such kedushah, so I started to come every so often. He’s very serious in avodat Hashem, yet very happy. He always has a smile and always behaves respectfully. The Admor has life wisdom — he never tells anyone what to do. People see him connected to Torah and happy. They are great men.”

Gadlus and warmth, it seems, are the secret ingredients of Vasloi’s success. That and a certain humility I experienced firsthand a few weeks earlier. Next door to a kiruv program I help run is central Tel Aviv’s mikveh. Standing outside, I saw a dignified chassidic rav come quietly toward the mikveh. After a short conversation, I ask the rav’s name.

“They call me Halperin,” he said, and then I realized I’d been talking to the Vasloier Rebbe.

So how does a rebbe come to be involved in kiruv on this scale? The Rebbe doesn’t want to be interviewed, but from what his son says, kiruv is part of the family’s DNA.

“Vasloi is next to Iasi in Romania and is part of the Ruzhin dynasty. My grandfather, Rav Yaakov Shlomo Halperin, came in 1950 to Eretz Yisrael, to Nahariya, where a lot of Romanian Jews had settled. The Chazon Ish and Belzer Rebbe both thought that he could have an impact there. He built a mikveh and then a Talmud Torah. In 1956 he moved to Tel Aviv, because he couldn’t find chinuch for his children in Nahariya, and he founded the beis medrash here.”

The current Vasloier Rebbe is a son-in-law of Rav Shiya Brim, a talmid of the Chazon Ish and rosh yeshivah of Tiferes Yisrael Ruzhin in Yerushalayim. He took over when his father died in 1985, but despite living in Bnei Brak, he continues to treat the Tel Aviv shtibel as the main branch of the chassidus. From 4 until 7 p.m. each day he has kabbalas kahal there, and he gives a daily shiur between Minchah and Maariv. But the highlight of the week is Shabbos.

“People come from far away to see a rebbe making Kiddush and watch him dance after the meal,” says the Rebbe’s son. “The levush, the minhagim, people are looking for the original flavor.”

But all this isn’t easy. The family hosts 60 to 70 people each Shabbos in the shtibel, with the Rebbetzin preparing all the food. The family has to uproot itself each week. So what drives the Rebbe to continue?

“He feels a shlichus for this,” the Rebbe’s son says.

The Vasloier Rebbe’s approach is best summed up by my first encounter with him, once again outside the Tel Aviv mikveh. It was four o’clock in the morning, at the end of a Shavuos night at our kiruv program. As vasikin approached, I went outside and saw a moving scene. A small circle of chassidim surrounded the Rebbe, dancing fervently, eyes closed. But this standard chassidic pose was unusual in one way: The chassidim were all whispering silently.

That down-to-earth kedushah is at the heart of the Vasloier’s success. On the one hand, authentic chassidus; on the other, sensitivity to secular Tel Aviv. As Yotam Yeini, Yair Raveh, and Eran Avidan can testify, for those who are searching, all it takes is authenticity.

Am Yisrael's Rebbe

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t’s the voice that first catches my attention. Clear and melodious, this distinctly Yerushalmi rendition of mevarchin hachodesh fills the big wood-paneled shul on Rechov Olifant. Under the tallis is Rav Mordechai Auerbach, Rav Shlomo Zalman’s middle son. The voice is his, but the smile is his father’s, and the tones are straight from the Shaarei Chesed neighborhood of his youth.

My encounter with Rav Mordechai Auerbach had been long in the making. “Rav Auerbach’s community” is famous across religious Tel Aviv as a place where many baalei teshuvah have found a home; finally, after two years of spending Shabbos in the city working in a kiruv program, I make time to see it for myself.

Heading southeast from Dizengoff, I cross gentrifying Shenkin Street and upmarket Rothschild Boulevard. The scenery changes as the shops, cafés, and grit of the city center give way to shady residential streets lined with towering ficus trees. Passersby on Yehuda HaLevi Street don’t know where Rechov Oliphant is, but finally I find it.

Framed by two giant office blocks, Rav Auerbach’s shul is located in what residents call the “ghetto,” a visibly religious enclave in downtown Tel Aviv. The boys playing outside the shul have peyos, the girls are undoubtedly from Bais Yaakov. In one building lives the dayan of the Belzer community; next door is an avreich in Rav Auerbach’s kollel.

But if walking into the ghetto is an adjustment, entering the shul itself is like walking into a different world. The beams of colored light that filter through the stained-glass windows highlight the most intense ruchniyus I’ve seen in Tel Aviv. At tables and benches scattered with worn seforim, about 80 people are davening. This is no kiruv minyan; slow and intense, this could be a yeshivah community anywhere in the world — anywhere but Tel Aviv.

The architect of all this is one man, Rav Mordechai Auerbach. Heir to Yerushalmi aristocracy, he himself is a chassid. Now 77, over nearly four decades of ceaseless leadership he has built a community of baalei teshuvah that anchors religious Tel Aviv. In the process he has become what might be called “Am Yisrael’s Rebbe,” whose influence goes far beyond his own community.

The best chronicler of Rav Auerbach’s community is a man from outside of it. Moshe, we’ll call him — he didn’t want to be featured in this article — is a chareidi Tel Aviv native and a raconteur of note. He’s known Rav Auerbach since he was a young man. According to Moshe, what’s unique is that the rav has never attempted to do kiruv, to reach out to the wider Tel Aviv world.

“Rav Auerbach sits and learns and serves Hashem, and individuals come to learn with him. They’re changed by the power of his personal example.” His secret is something he got from his father, Rav Shlomo Zalman ztz”l. “People were drawn to Rav Shlomo Zalman’s famous he’aras panim,” says Moshe. “Rav Auerbach also has this — people are drawn to him.”

At the beginning of the 1980s, when many kiruv organizations were active in Tel Aviv, newly minted baalei teshuvah were looking for someone to teach them and a place to call home. They found both with Rav Auerbach.

“He became a father and mother figure to them,” explains Moshe. “They ate with him on Shabbos and then, when they got married, they went back as young couples.”

Decades later, this tradition is going strong. Every Shabbos, Rav Auerbach hosts up to 30 guests in his house: baalei teshuvah, couples from the community, and beyond.

This home is today a full-fledged kehillah. A midweek visit reveals a minyan downstairs and a dynamic beis medrash upstairs. Avreichim from the community’s kollel sit next to students from the Nefesh Yehudi outreach organization. Rav Auerbach himself gives shiurim around the clock: to avreichim, beginners, and working men. Tens of families live around the shul. Another group has moved about 15 minutes away, to Yad Eliyahu in South Tel Aviv, where prices are a third cheaper. Yet they are drawn back to this hive of activity, walking in to learn and daven with the Rav.

Is Rav Auerbach chassidish? That’s certainly the impression given on Shabbos morning, when 70 people gather around a tish-like setup, with a shtreimel-wearing Rav Auerbach at the head of the table. The shul’s name provides a clue as well: it’s called Abir Yaakov, after Rav Avraham Yaakov Friedman, the Sadigura Rebbe who passed away in 1961. Rav Auerbach took over the rabbanus of the Sadigura community from his father-in-law, Rav Lemberger, and the minhagim practiced there come from Sadigura.

Part of the initial appeal, says Moshe, was that this was a chassidishe shtibel. “He’s a chassid, but he’s also a rebbe of a very unusual type.” He’s referring to the fact that so many groups are close to Rav Auerbach, despite the fact that they come from different worlds. “Rav Zander, the Gerrer dayan in Tel Aviv, is close to him. He also says a shiur in Maaleh Eliyahu, a local hesder yeshivah. He’s the posek of Hatzolah and the nasi of the Central Taharas Hamishpacha organization whose offices are located in Jerusalem. Because he’s unconnected to politics or any particular stream, he has authority far beyond his own community.”

This ability to understand all sorts of people is echoed by Elad Narkis, a member of Rav Auerbach’s kollel, who joined the community about ten years ago.

“I lived in Manhattan for two years, where I was involved in event production,” he says. “Then at age 25 a friend brought me to see Rav Auerbach. What is special here is that the Rav allows people to do teshuvah in a very natural way; not to totally disconnect from their past. For example, if a person connects to Hashem through film or music — as long as it is kosher — that is good.”

But outside of the shul is a vast city that is basically hostile to the values taught within. What is the secret to surviving in this environment?

“That’s what Rav Aharon Leib Steinman once asked me,” Rav Auerbach tells me when I visit on that Shabbos morning. “ ‘How can you raise children in Tel Aviv?’ I told him that the Bnei Brak children know where Rechov Shenkin is, but my children don’t!”

Perhaps that best encapsulates this unusual rebbe’s philosophy. Segregation from what lies outside, but an open door and a warm welcome to those who come inside. Litvishe lomdus, chassidic warmth — and a unique ability to build and understand the nascent baal teshuvah.

Bitshkov Blend

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hen a few families gathered on a sand dune in 1909 to found Tel Aviv, they had no idea that urban sprawl would one day swallow up its neighbor, the ancient coastal city of Yafo.

Only a few kilometers separate the two, but they could be on different continents. The minimalist Bauhaus style that German Jewish refugees brought to Israel in the 1930s defines central Tel Aviv — and gives it the nickname “White City.” Drive south down the boardwalk to Old Yafo and West gives way to East: pastel hues and gracefully crumbling villas with Moorish windows show the Arabesque influence.

Unlike Tel Aviv, Yafo isn’t secular per se. It has lots of believers — just not of the right persuasion, Jewishly speaking. A fair-size neighborhood mosque occupies a prominent place on Yerushalayim Boulevard, Yafo’s main street; a gleaming Church of Scientology is further up. But like Tel Aviv, religious life is thin on the ground.

One shining exception is housed in a big pistachio-green villa off Rechov Aza. Welcome to Bitshkov, an authentic chassidus that has been in Yafo for decades. It was founded by Rav Shmuel Zeideh Rosenbaum, a son of the Rebbe David Moshe Rosenbaum of Kretshenif (and brother of the Kretshenif Rebbe of Rechovot); he was also a son-in-law of Rav Moshe Ze’ev Friedman, who became av beis din of Yafo after Rav Kook. Under the current Rebbe, who took over the leadership in 2014 when he was in his late thirties following the sudden death of his father, Bitshkov has become a magnet for the city’s Sephardic Jews, for chassidim from near and far, and for anyone searching for a hot meal and an open house.

The Rebbe is receiving a chassid in a side room when I visit late on a Wednesday afternoon. The beis medrash features the normal appurtenances of a rebbe: wide chassidic-style “throne”; a shtreimel box resting on the table; a sign declaring that this is “Chatzer Hakodesh Bitshkov.” But this is a place where Eastern Europe meets the Middle East; a blend of Berditchev and Baghdad, if you like. The Rebbe’s Minchah, which begins a few minutes later, is interrupted by the call of the muezzin, from only 50 meters away.

So a Rebbe there is, but who are the chassidim? Looking around the shul, there are three people in traditional chassidic garb. But the worn work clothes of some of the others tells me they’re probably not working in high tech. These are clearly the regulars; they’re here 20 minutes before Minchah and are saying Tehillim. The media personalities in Vasloi and the musical types in Rav Auerbach’s community reflect the makeup of swanky central Tel Aviv. Here in Bitshkov, this is unpretentious Yafo: a mixture of chassidim and amcha.

Yoram tells me as much. A Yafo native in his fifties, he became close to the Rebbe (whom he calls “Rebbe Duvid” in an impressively chassidic accent) in 2014. “All the shkufim in Yafo, the ones who nobody cares about and who get no help from the welfare authorities, they come to get hot soup and help here in Bitshkov.”

That welfare aspect is immediately obvious. Just off the beis medrash is what looks like a kitchen — it was part of the previous Rebbe’s living quarters. The old Rebbetzin is sitting there, in her own kitchen, when a mispallel-cum-supplicant walks in and opens the fridge, while talking to the Rebbetzin. Here in Bitshkov, they clearly don’t stand on ceremony.

How Yoram became a card-carrying chassid is an interesting story.

“I used to be totally secular,” he says. “My parents were Holocaust survivors from Budapest and Salonika, but they brought me up with no Judaism. I served in a special forces unit of the paratroopers and fought in Lebanon in the 1980s. My commander was Roni Alsheich [now famous as the Orthodox police chief who recently recommended that Netanyahu be indicted]. But in 2012, after watching a movie about the battle for Beaufort Castle in Lebanon, I was hit by delayed helem krav (PTSD). For two years I didn’t come out of my room.

“Then in 2014, I tuned in to the Hidabroot channel on TV and I got interested in discovering my Judaism. One day I saw the Admor walking in Yafo and started talking to him and came in to his shul to put on tefillin.” It was the Rebbe who helped him overcome his PTSD. “There are many ways to get to Hashem,” Yoram tells me. “Not all of them are pleasant. PTSD is the door that brought me in. I have friends who see mental health professionals for their shell shock. But Hashem heals me through the Rebbe; I feel good when I’m near him.”

The stream of pictures and updates that Yoram sends me after we meet shows how much of his life is focused on this community, or “Mishpachat Bitshkov” as he calls it. Invitations for the Purim seudah; the Rebbe’s Torah at the seudah; a video of the Rebbe dancing. And true to Bitshkov’s blend of East and West, a picture of Yoram kissing the Rebbe’s hand, Sephardic-style, while wearing a shtreimel and beketshe.

But if Bitshkov is firmly rooted in the gritty reality of Yafo, it presents another face as well. Young as he is, Rav Dovid Rosenbaum is rebbe to many traditional chassidim as well. One of them is Asher Korlanski, who lives down the road in Tel Aviv. By day he manages the computer systems for the Bnei Brak Municipality, but at night he’s made himself the closest thing Bitshkov has to a gabbai. Perhaps it’s his computer background, but he comes up with a pithy analysis of this unusual chassidic court.

“There is no such thing as a Bitshkov chassidus,” he says. “But the Rebbe has a thousand chassidim.”

What he means is that the hundreds of people who look to the Rebbe as a rav belong to other communities. Asher himself is a Gerrer chassid; others are Belzers; even Litvaks come to him. “They all identify as something else, but their aseh lecha rav is the Rebbe,” he says.

What is the Rebbe’s secret? What draws chassidim from Bnei Brak and Sephardim from Yafo to him?

“It’s like something out of the Baal Shem Tov,” Asher answers. “The Rebbe has no sparkling beis medrash, like in other places. His mother invites everyone into her kitchen. And the Rebbe is humble; what I’d call ammami — able to give everyone a hug and come down to people’s level. He jokes that people only come to listen to him because they’re friends who have mercy on him so he shouldn’t be lonely.”

Leadership like this doesn’t happen from one day to the next; clearly, it has to be learned from somewhere. “The previous Rebbe was like Avraham Avinu,” Yoram says. “He had an open house for everyone.”

Asher adds that the kiruv aspect of this place began decades ago. “There are families today who the Rebbe was machzir bi’teshuvah decades ago as a young avreich. He used his chein to influence people who were from crime families here in Yafo.”

Sitting with open seforim on his shtender, the Rebbe’s lengthy kabbalas kahal session is coming to an end. He’s been fielding phone calls from all chassidim, and he’s going to one of the shiurim that he gives all over the area: in a Sephardic shul in Yafo, to a community in Rishon L’Tzion, or to chassidim in Bnei Brak. The Rebbe himself doesn’t want to be interviewed. But we talk about kiruv in Tel Aviv, and he offers to host anyone who lives in Yafo and needs a place for Shabbos.

In a symbolic finale to my sojourn in Yafo, as Minchah in Bitshkov begins and the muezzin sounds, I walk a few steps across to Yerushalayim Boulevard. There, just across from Abu Hilweh, a gleaming Arab-owned butcher shop, a Sephardic-looking woman sees me dressed in hat and jacket, and she assumes I’m looking for people to make up a minyan.

“Bachur’chik!” she yells in my direction. “Does the Admor have a minyan?”

That, you might say, is a perfect illustration of Bitshkov.

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he journey into Tel Aviv’s chassidic present is not, distance-wise, a long one; all these different communities exist within a few miles of each other. But the surroundings and personalities make each beis medrash a world of its own. What Vasloi, Rav Auerbach, and Bitshkov have in common, though, is more important — and the tools they use to build Torah can be used anywhere.

For secular Jews who are open to discovering their Judaism, what they are looking for is not the razzmatazz that is sometimes offered to them; authenticity is the most important thing. What draws others is the empathy and care of one Jew for another. And everywhere, they want to grow at their own pace.

As Yoram of the Bitshkov community puts it, his rebbe is the “consul of HaKadosh Baruch Hu in Yafo.”

Decades after the heyday of chassidic holiness in Israel’s high-tech capital, Bitshkov and these other holy “consulates” are still open, for those who are seeking.  —

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 757)