Rav Meilech Biderman has no formal beis medrash, yeshivah, mosdos or website, yet he dances through life, taking thousands along on his journey to the Heavens with both feet on the ground. A privileged glimpse at the magnetic force who, like every Jew he touches, is nothing and everything

photos Flash90, Mishpacha archives

I

’ve never seen anyone get out of a car like that. On this late summer day, as pedestrians on Bnei Brak’s Rechov Rashi appear to wilt from the intense heat, Rav Meilech Biderman springs out of the small black car and moves, liquid-like, from the passenger seat across the sidewalk to the shul entrance. He is nodding to one passerby, smiling to another. An earnest young man with a dusty black hat and dark suit stops Reb Meilech because he just has to share an incredible vort. It’s a fairly well-known vort. If I’m familiar with it, then Rav Meilech Biderman has known it forever.

But he leans forward to listen, and in his eyes I see the joy — hearing a vort he knows, giving life to its teller. Now Reb Meilech enters the shul and slides into a plain wooden chair at the head of the table. The shiur will be broadcast to an audience of thousands, but around the table, there are just a few people, regulars, it appears, who come to be part of the experience. He asks for a Chumash, then closes his eyes for a moment. There is a flicker, a hint of something in his face — a glimmer of fatigue.

“The coffee is coming,” his young driver whispers, and Reb Meilech smiles in gratitude.

He opens the Chumash and the words pour out in a tumble of unfiltered fire, each vort, story, comment delivered as if this thought alone will make the day worthwhile. The coffee arrives and Reb Meilech grasps the cup with both hands. His eyes go up for a moment, he says the brachah, and as he sips, a near-visible surge of energy lifts his shoulders. The hot drink, the way he holds it and sips it, is a shtickel Torah too.

In Moshe Rabbeinu’s final speech to his people, Reb Meilech says, he recounts how he ascended the mountain to receive the Luchos, telling them, “I remained there 40 days and 40 nights: bread I did not eat and water I did not drink.” Was Moshe Rabbeinu taking pride in the fact that he didn’t eat in the presence of the Ribbono shel Olam? Would any human being be able to eat in the Heavenly realm?

Reb Meilech quotes great tzaddikim who explain that Moshe Rabbeinu was bemoaning the 40 days and nights in which he had no desire or inclination to eat, 40 days and nights during which his body was in another dimension. Man was created to know precisely how and when to eat, to elevate the mundane and use it to fuel closeness to Hashem. During those 40 days, Moshe Rabbeinu hadn’t really lived. There had been no desire for bread, and thus, none of the challenge, the tension between Heaven and earth, that equals life. For you, Moshe Rabbeinu told them, I sacrificed 40 days of life.

That’s the idea expressed by the coffee, by the electronic cigarette that Reb Meilech grasps during the shiur, pausing every so often in a long, contemplative silence. And it’s encapsulated, too, by the image of Reb Meilech on a table, dancing, suspended in a world uniquely his own.

Rav Meilech Biderman throbs with life. And life is about both Heaven and earth — and about finding ways to bind them together. The divrei Torah and stories flow so easily, the mastery of the classic works of halachah, mussar, and chassidus so complete, that one would imagine Rav Avrohom Elimelech Biderman spent years preparing for this role.

In fact, he never saw it coming.

B

nei Brak’s Slabodka Yeshivah is an interesting place: While faithful to its own history as a classic litvishe yeshivah, it draws an overwhelmingly chassidic student body.

About 15 years ago, a group of American talmidim in the yeshivah felt they needed someone to oversee their growth and development as ovdei Hashem beyond the formal yeshivah framework. The search for a rosh chaburah began. They tried one talented young man, then another, looking for the right fit for their little group.

Someone suggested Reb Meilech Biderman, a scion of the Lelover dynasty living nearby in Bnei Brak. He was a young man, just over 30 years old.

Back then Reb Meilech spent his days learning, an avreich in Ponevezh. He wasn’t known to be dynamic. Diligent, yes, focused on his learning, for sure. But there was something else, too. The son of Rav Alter of Lelov was a devoted chassid of his grandfather, Rav Moshe Mordechai, and he reflected the light of a chassidus that had evolved along with the Old Yishuv, a chassidus brushed with the charm of the ancient walls of Jerusalem.

Yerushalmi unpretentiousness, Yerushalmi candor, and Yerushalmi humor.

Meilech, they called him back then. Just Meilech, the Lelover einekel from Rechov Hoshea, with the bright eyes and rolling waves of thunder in his voice.

The fledgling chaburah pulled him in without quite knowing what it was they sought; he showed them. These American bochurim liked being in his presence, they delighted in Reb Meilech’s Shabbos, the way the man who’d been born and raised in Bnei Brak donned his Yerushalmi gold beketshe each Shabbos, wrapping himself in a tallis for Kabbalas Shabbos as his fathers had done before him.

And the Kiddush… a slim man, of average height, appearing ten feet tall as he swayed back and forth clutching the becher and ushering Shabbos into every corner of the world.

They attached themselves to Reb Meilech. They found that his weekly shmuess, in which he fused classic sifrei avodah with the chassidus they craved, gave them life. In private conversations, too, they felt that he understood, related, identified — and knew the way out, the path that could help them rise above whatever it was that threatened to pull them down. On Leil Shabbos, the whole chaburah would often come together for the seudos in the crowded apartment. Reb Meilech showed the ability that would define him a decade later — the power to speak to a group as individuals, to communicate with each one privately even as he spoke to all of them. The questions and private fears they’d shared with him over the week were addressed, analyzed, broken wide open in his divrei Torah.

One week, Reb Meilech sang zemiros and then, spontaneously, the bochurim stood up to dance.

Reb Meilech, during the most exalted moments of the week, rose along with them, but made a request. “Let’s take off our shoes before we dance,” he said. “There’s an older woman who lives downstairs and she’s probably tired.”

That would become Reb Meilech’s dance, a dance that spoke of the uniqueness of the host: jumping for the heavens, but in stockinged feet.

N

ot everyone was immediately sold.  The bochurim organized a rotation among themselves, so that along with the formal get-together late on Thursday night, each could have private time with Reb Meilech. One of the early skeptics decided to make an appointment and see for himself. He showed up at the apartment, expecting to see seforim shelves that reflected the fluency of their owner in all the classic sifrei avodah and many of the lesser-known ones. But there was only a well-worn Shas. That was it.

Rather than talk about personal growth, challenges in avodas Hashem, or finding joy, the dubious bochur asked Reb Meilech a question on the sugya the yeshivah was learning — a Tosafos in Bava Kamma.

And Reb Meilech was right there, too — not a commander, leading the way through a mountain pass — but a partner, holding the bochur’s hand as they jumped from peak to peak.

That group of American bochurim eventually moved on, several of them going to learn in the Mir, in Yerushalayim. But how could they leave Reb Meilech?

He would come to them, he said. Of course he would.

Late on Thursday nights, Reb Meilech would show up in Jerusalem. As a grandson of the rebbes of Zhvil — his father-in-law, the Zutchke Rebbe, is a son-in-law of Rav Mordechai of Zhvil, who was a son of Rav Gedaliah Moshe of Zhvil, the son of the famed Rav Shloim’ke Zhviler — Reb Meilech received permission to use the apartment that had belonged to Reb Shloim’ke, just across from the Mir. The Thursday chaburah was back on schedule.

That weekly chaburah began to draw others. First they would stand at the windows and try to listen in, but there was something about the rosh chaburah — there is something about him — that invites you to approach, that tells you it’s okay to come over and say hello.

Late on those Thursday nights, Reb Meilech would stand outside the Mir and speak with bochurim, one after another, leaving each bochur with a feeling that they had accomplished during the preceding week and would do even greater things in the week ahead.

Then he’d disappear, off to the Kosel Hamaaravi, the sacred place where his grandfathers, the rebbes of Lelov, exerted themselves in prayer.

E

ven as the crowds grew bigger, even as the invitations to speak in yeshivos and kehillos started to pour in, that first chaburah remained special.

Many of them returned to America or Europe, establishing homes of their own. But they knew that they’d found something extraordinary, and they weren’t prepared to let it go.

The avreich from Ponevezh found himself taking phone calls from these young men — they sought advice in shidduchim, wanted chizuk before Yom Tov, pshat in a Rashi — and receiving visitors to the apartment, a flow of people who’d heard about him.

The word was out, and he had to make a decision.

And so he did.

Rav Meilech Biderman would belong to the people.

He agreed to speak wherever, whenever, whomever asked.

There were no restrictions, no red tape or fees. If Jews wanted to hear, he’d be there.

It wasn’t just that he could speak both Hebrew and Yiddish — it was that his Torah seemed to come from somewhere without boundaries: a rush of chassidus and Kabbalah, classic mussar and drush, stories and lomdus. He could speak in Meah Shearim or in a Ponevezher kollel, in a yeshivah for American bochurim or in a Sephardic beit knesset.

There were those who predicted the path ahead: There would be gabbaim and drivers, the construction of walls around him, layers and layers preventing access. He would become a face familiar to people from gedolim-picture spreads, but not a person you could meet in real life. He would no longer be that person you could stop on the way home from the makolet to share a good vertel or story.

It was then that this scion of great rebbes performed a miracle of his own.

A

nd this is the great wonder of Reb Meilech — as far as his reach extends, he is nowhere.

Rav Meilech Biderman has no formal beis medrash, yeshivah, or kollel, no mosdos or website, no organization. He dances through life, from the deepest corners of his beloved Meron to side rooms in Itzkowitz. Late at night, he is often circulating in hospitals; he knows that the people inside have trouble sleeping, and he has the words that might help, words of comfort and hope and life. No one can really know his schedule, but somehow he’s there to inject a chasunah with vitality, the shivah house with the sense that the sun will rise again.

No, he hasn’t remained the same person he once was. He’s become even more humble.

He attended an event a few years ago and the musicians started to play the then-new hit song, “Ki Hirbeisa.” The song was hot, sending ripples of excitement through the room and onto the dance floor.

He smiled wryly. “I’m ‘Ki Hirbeisa,’ ” he remarked to someone seated next to him. The flavor of the month. The trend. A popular fad.

But the song has gone, replaced by others that have also been replaced, yet Reb Meilech’s song is still playing.

nce a year, there is a special Shabbos in Meron; not for a crowd of thousands, but for a much smaller group.

Those first talmidim, the ones from Slabodka.

On Shabbos Shirah, they hide away in Meron and sing shirah together.

This past year, as they prepared to set out, one of those original talmidim stopped Reb Meilech on the way to the car.

“I have a request,” he said.

Reb Meilech listened.

“We’re going to Meron now,” the talmid said. Meron, place of massive gatherings, of parenches and long tables and overflowing rooms. “I’d like to leave Rav Elimelech Biderman in Bnei Brak, and go with just Reb Meilech.”

Reb Meilech heard him. Then he threw his head back and laughed.

“I was hoping you would ask that,” he said. “Let’s go.”

T

hese days Rav Meilech gives several formal shiurim each week, in both Yiddish and Hebrew, along with his constant travels throughout the country. One by one, the most intense yeshivah communities are asking the chassidic mashpia to join them for a Shabbos, to allow them to taste whatever it is he’s been sharing with others.

Hundreds of people came to spend Shabbos Rosh Chodesh Elul with Reb Meilech in Meron, the tish on Leil Shabbos continuing until dawn. On Motzaei Shabbos, there was a hadlakah; as flames leapt into the night like dancing Jews, Reb Meilech cradled the microphone and walked back and forth, back and forth. Against the crackle of fire, he cajoled, sang, implored, reassured — a master badchan mixing Torah and song, pleading with the people to give forth small kabbalos, a gift in honor of Rabi Shimon bar Yochai.

On Sunday, the crowds left, and Reb Meilech was alone again.

On Monday, when I meet him, he is talking about the time of year, expressing something akin to envy of the Sephardim, who’ve already begun to recite Selichos every night.

He tells of Rav Pinchas Epstein, av beis din of the Eidah HaChareidis, who was seen participating in Selichos at a Sephardic minyan one night in Elul. People gathered to catch a glimpse, speculating that the av beis din had gone just for that one night. Then, they overheard one of the Sephardic mispallelim on the way out remarking to his friend that “Rabi Pinchas amar et zeh yafeh halaylah — Rav Pinchas had recited one of the responsive sections nicely that night.”

“So they realized that he’d been going every night. His neshamah was thirsty for the Selichos,” Reb Meilech says.

There is something else in his smile, too.

Later that day, someone forwards me an item from a Hebrew website: “The Mashpia joins the Sephardim for Selichos,” reads the headline, showing a picture of Reb Meilech — who’d slipped into a Sephardic minyan in Meron the night before — with a siddur pressed into his face.

And I understand the smile.

T

his derashah, the weekly parshah shiur, will be broadcast across the world, but Reb Meilech is remarkably focused on the people at the table, tapping arms, squeezing shoulders, like a fresh young cheder rebbi on the first day of school.

The shiur is long, close to two hours, but it doesn’t feel that way. Perhaps because it isn’t being delivered systematically, but in a series of bursts, each thought growing organically out of the one that precedes it. It isn’t a speech as much as an outpouring.

Reb Meilech is taking the most subtle, sophisticated concepts of chassidus and giving them out like candies, inviting you onto a roller coaster that takes you up, up, up, and suddenly you’re rushing down breathlessly again. He starts to analyze a concept, removing layers — the letters of the word, the meaning of the word, the depth of the word, the hidden light concealed within — then abruptly bringing it in to the olam hamaaseh. Suddenly, his voice is that of the bank officer calling in a loan, the doctor about to give a diagnosis; then it’s back to hope. There is no place, Reb Meilech is really saying, devoid of His presence.

It’s all one.

He quotes a kaleidoscope of tzaddikim — Rav Chaim Friedlander and Rav Zalman Brizel, Rav Tovia Weiss and Rav Chatzkel Levenstein — great rebbes and roshei yeshivah. He quotes whole paragraphs of Rabbeinu Yonah without looking down, and the names Sfas Emes and Chofetz Chaim are repeated every few minutes.

It’s all one.

When he speaks of simchah, his eyes light up and his head snaps back, as if he just remembered something at that moment.

Chacham Benzion Abba Shaul, he says, and then, as the name leaves his mouth, it’s as if Reb Meilech is sitting at his kitchen table talking to one person. You know, he says, the rosh yeshivah of Porat Yosef. So a person came to Rav Benzion complaining about his wife. She was too tense. Too free with money. Too this and too that.

“You’re like a poor man who finally gets invited to the home of the wealthiest man in town,” Rav Benzion told the man. “The beggar is ushered in by the servants, and instead of looking at the beautiful furniture and luxurious surroundings, the guest heads straight for the garbage pail. He sticks his head in and sniffs, then says, ‘I’m not impressed with this house; it smells just like my own.’ ”

Reb Meilech finishes the story and sits quietly for a long moment. He wants this to sink in.

“The whole world is here for us to enjoy. Look around. Be freilech.”

But in an instant, he’s back to the gravity of Elul, the folly of one who would miss the opportunity to do teshuvah, who ignores the massive door that’s open at this time of year.

Later, after the shiur, people file by — not for a ceremonial hello, but for real conversation. His shoulders are slumped with post-shiur exhaustion, but his eyes are alive with interest; he is listening intently. Reb Meilech Biderman is totally present. A middle-aged man wonders if all the Elul talk, the solemnity and worry, is a good thing. Perhaps it makes younger people anxious.

Reb Meilech looked concerned. “Oy,” he says, “do you think I was too severe?”

The gentleman is clearly uncomfortable. It wasn’t an accusation, just a thought, but Reb Meilech is looking inward.

“Because Elul is serious,” Reb Meilech says, “but only b’simchah. Elul is roshei teivos ‘Leibedek uhn veiter leibedek.’ ”

He locks eyes with the next person. “I have it in mind,” Reb Meilech whispers, clearly referring to an earlier conversation. The other man says nothing, but gratitude floods his face.

He takes my hand, urges me to sit. He laughs when he hears that I’m from Canada, like it’s a great joke, then tells me that the baal tefillah for Shacharis on the Yamim Noraim calls out the first word of tefillah — Hamelech — while standing in place. “Because wherever you are, you can crown Him. That’s the point of saying it from your place. “You’re here before the Yamim Noraim,” he says, “you can get the best lawyers in the world on your side, Mammeh Rochel, Rabi Shimon, you can go to the Kosel Hamaaravi. It’s great.”

In the car after the shiur, the driver — a close talmid named Reb Mordechai Schwartz of Woodmere — asks where they are headed. Reb Meilech lets the question hang there. Reb Mordechai, who will be returning to America in a few hours, mentions that he was planning to go daven at the kever of a great man. Reb Meilech decides to join him.

“Shtefenesht,” he nods, approving the plan. His hat slides low on his face as the car moves in to traffic.

Reb Meilech, man of the people, has withdrawn into himself. The eyes that glow with attentiveness are covered as waves of people pass by the car.

The eyes. Elul, he has said a few minutes earlier, stands for Anu l’Kah ve’einenu l’kah. Sometimes, the eyes are raised to Hashem, other times lowered in His honor.

On the way, we stop for Minchah. Reb Meilech washes his hands, peers into a shtibel where they are just beginning Shemoneh Esreh, and chooses to go wait in the nearby room for the next minyan. He sits himself down in one of the center rows on the right side of the room. I wonder if he doesn’t notice the way the air seems to move around him — people stopping in mid-conversation to stare and take pictures — or if he just makes himself oblivious.

(At that night’s shiur in Elad, though, he will quote a random conversation he overheard. A young man with his arm in a cast seemed to be having trouble removing a siddur from the shelf, and a spectator hurried over to help him. “Eizeh siddur atah rotzeh? Which siddur would you like?” he asked.  “Siddur malei,” quipped the first man. [In Hebrew, siddur malei refers to an arrangement in which a young couple receives full financial support.] Reb Meilech will repeat the exchange and reflect that, “Really, the young man was right, because in Elul, one can ask such things — a person can request the whole world. Now is the time.”)

A new minyan has formed and concluded. They davened nusach Ashkenaz, so Reb Meilech belts out a lone “L’Dovid Hashem Ori” in the empty shul. On his way out, he is stopped by the usual flow of storytellers and vort-sharers. A Sephardic gentleman walking out of a nearby fruit store cries out “Rav Biderman!” and bows low to kiss Reb Meilech’s hand. Reb Meilech resists the gesture, embracing the man like an old friend instead.

They are equals.

At the cemetery, Nachalas Yitzchak, Reb Meilech washes his hands, and then walks slowly down the narrow path to the kever of Rav Avrohom Mattisyahu of Shtefenesht. The Shtefeneshter, a grandson of the holy Rebbe of Ruzhin, was a rebbe in Romania (the admorim of Skulen and Ribnitz were his chassidim) and he was niftar there, but was reinterred in 1969 in Nachalas Yitzchak. His kever draws petitioners throughout the year, and Reb Meilech is a frequent visitor.

On this Elul afternoon in the cemetery, Reb Meilech suddenly disappears. It takes me a full half minute before I locate him, folded over the kever; there is no drama in his pose, just pure supplication. For a moment, I feel like I’m invading his privacy by being there, but within minutes, I realize that there is no privacy to invade because I am seeing nothing at all. Reb Meilech has made his way to other kevarim, spending several minutes at the kever of Rav Avrohom Yaakov of Sadigura, and before going back into the car, he suddenly cranes his neck and looks back to the Shtefeneshter for a while.

We’re seeing nothing at all.

R

eb Meilech is a regular visitor at the homes of contemporary tzaddikim like Rav Yaakov Meir Schechter and Rav Chaim Kanievsky. He considers himself a talmid of the roshei yeshivah in Ponevezh and a chassid of his father and grandfather.

And then there’s the Bas Ayin.

Rav Avrohom Dov of Avritch, a talmid of Rav Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, was one of the first rebbes to leave Europe for Tzfas. Most of his history is concealed, and the sefer Bas Ayin is his enduring legacy. It’s that sefer and burial place that’s most connected with the movement around Reb Meilech. The 12th of Kislev — the day when the Bas Ayin passed away 178 years ago — is a Yom Tov, when Reb Meilech and thousands of followers board buses all across the country to travel north.

Reb Meilech’s attraction to the sefer isn’t new. Those in the original chaburah remember the young man who hadn’t been blessed with children. They recall how he shared his pain with Reb Meilech on one of those Thursday nights in Reb Shloim’ke’s dirah opposite the Mir.

Reb Meilech listened and said, “Next week is the Bas Ayin’s yahrtzeit. You will host the seudah in your home.”

The yungerman was bewildered by the advice, but the next week, the little group gathered in his apartment. Nine months later, they rejoiced when their friend had his first child, a girl.

Why the Bas Ayin?

No one can know for sure, but a close talmid speculates. Nearly every single vort in the sefer Bas Ayin centers around the same theme: Hachna’ah. Submissiveness. And who takes up less space than Rav Meilech Biderman? He is a smile and voice, a call of courage and hope, but he takes nothing, asks for nothing, needs nothing. The man who dances on tables and throws himself on kevarim, who sits down on the low wall outside the shul after the shiur to chat with a dejected 15-year-old bochur.

He presides over massive tishen with no ornate silver and no oversized chair. He doesn’t sit at the head of the table, but on a bench between others. In the middle of a recent derashah, he stopped speaking, craned his neck and looked up over a sea of faces to the top of the bleachers. “Please,” he begged, “you don’t have to push each other — if you all give up a little space, you’ll see that everyone will be more comfortable.”

Years ago, a European businessman saw Reb Meilech in action at a Bnei Brak chasunah, the way he seemed to leave a tangible trail of joy in his wake. The captivated visitor asked around and discovered that the simchah Reb Meilech generates is a reflection of something much deeper. Getting others to dance is a miracle, but this man works even greater miracles: getting them to believe, to feel, to care. He wanted to benefit this radiant Jew, and he handed Reb Meilech a significant sum of money.

One of Reb Meilech’s talmidim noticed the exchange and hurried to find Reb Meilech’s rebbetzin. He knew that there was no way that money would be used for its intended purpose — to help this tzaddik feed his family — unless the funds were given to the devoted, efficient woman who runs the house.

The rebbetzin came out of the women’s section, and the talmid asked her to wait a moment while he ran back to Reb Meilech.

“Reb Meilech, can I please have that envelope?” he asked.

Reb Meilech shrugged. It was too late. It had all been given away to those he considered more deserving.

There was nothing left for him.

This is Reb Meilech’s secret.

With hachna’ah, one can take over the world.

M

any of the American and European followers of Reb Meilech call him “the Rebbe.”

And in fact, Reb Meilech will read kvittlech and focus on different names, asking pointed questions. He carries the problems of others on his heart, asking precise questions months after an issue was first raised with him. So is he a rebbe? Is he a poel yeshuos, a wonder worker? I ask this to a member of Reb Meilech’s inner circle, who thinks for a while.

“Reb Meilech,” he finally says, “shows you that you are a poel yeshuos. His themes — emunah, simchah, tefillah — inject you with such power, such a sense of your own ability, the koach every Yid has in Heaven. So yes, he does work wonders; just he does it his way.”

Reb Meilech doesn’t like being called a rebbe. His zeide was a rebbe. His father was a rebbe, and so is his father-in-law, but not him. He sees his eldest brother, the Lelover Rebbe of Boro Park, as his father’s successor. He is Reb Meilech, busy with his shiurim and with people. And if he has to choose, it will always be the second.

Tuesday is the day he prepares for the shiur that will be broadcast across the globe. Under the name Be’er Haparshah/Torah Wellsprings, it will be printed in four languages — Hebrew, Yiddish, English, and French, with Spanish in the planning stages — for the tens of thousands of Jews thirstily drinking his Torah every week. To date, five seforim called Be’er Hachaim have been released by Machon Be’er Ha’emunah, which is ably chaired and overseen by Reb Shmelka Schlaff.

Tuesday, shiur day, Reb Meilech prefers to be alone, to “koch” with ideas, the themes he will be addressing. He isn’t available then to speak in public or meet with communal leaders. But if there’s a broken soul that needs healing, one of the lonely or forgotten ones, then his time belongs to them. If he hears of a family in crisis or pain, then time stops.

And even on the Day of Rest, he belongs to others.

If he is asked to come to a community for Shabbos, he will go. He isn’t home for Shabbos at all during Chodesh Elul or during the winter weeks of Shovavim. Aside from that, he is often in Meron for Shabbos. And even when he is home, he will speak on Friday night in whichever shul invites him. The walk home from shul Leil Shabbos is an event, with Reb Meilech stopping off to say Gut Shabbos at various homes, using calculations known only to him. In one, the father is in prison and Reb Meilech’s visits carry the mother and her children through one rough week after another. Reb Meilech will bless each child in the family, his hands over their heads, like a father. There is an older Yemenite couple with no children of their own, and Elimelech, as they call him, injects their quiet seudah with vibrancy and happiness. On every street corner, it seems, he is stopped by someone with a story or vort that he must hear. He finally makes it home to his family, to his becher, to his Kah Ribbon.

The Kah Ribbon… a song of longing and hope and connection. The niggun with roots in Toldos Aharon, taught to him by the late Rebbe of Shomrei Emunim, is like an anthem to Reb Meilech — sung not just on Shabbos, but at the yahrtzeit of the Bas Ayin and at other sublime moments. When you see him singing it, tears flowing down his cheeks, it’s clear that the song lives inside Reb Meilech, that it never really stops playing.

He often points that out that the zemer doesn’t mention Shabbos, but focuses instead of the glory of the Creator, the incredible fortune of the mere human allowed to praise Him, the perpetual longing for redemption. These Shabbos meals are Reb Meilech’s time with his family, but even then, he is hefker; there is always an assortment of guests, and he will be introduced to people for the first time at his own Shabbos table.

And then the doors open again and the crowds come, the small apartment jammed until the late hours of the night, Jews experiencing the Shabbos.

R

osh Hashanah used to be a fairly low-key affair, since the Lelover Rebbes traditionally spent Rosh Hashanah in Jerusalem. Reb Meilech and his brothers would rent a room in the Old City and daven together, overlooking the Kosel Hamaaravi. In recent years, this, too, has become public, and there is no more space. Reb Meilech himself davens Shacharis from the amud.

Yom Kippur is spent between the walls of his father’s shul in Bnei Brak.

Then comes Succos.

The time of faith and joy is Reb Meilech’s season, and his voice seems to ring out from every corner of the Land. His dancing feet, raised arms, and enthusiastic roar infuse life in masses of sweet Jews seeking to rejoice at a Simchas Beis Hashoeivah. The master of drawing water pulls forth reservoirs of purity and happiness, but the people aren’t celebrating with him; Reb Meilech is celebrating with them, showing them the joy within, the simple pleasure in each moment of life. Inside the sefer Torah, the letter tav in the pasuk “Tamim tihyeh im Hashem Elokecha” is oversized. That tav, Reb Meilech says, is “di greste Succah in velt — the greatest Succah in the world.”

Hide within it; be embraced by temimus, simple faith.

“One of the tzaddikim of Tzfas saw a chassid who was afraid to walk into the succah,” Reb Meilech said. “The succah is filled with Hashem’s names — how can I walk in?” the chassid wondered.

“A Yid is also filled with Hashem’s names,” the tzaddik replied. “It’s sheimos on top of other sheimos.”

The glory of the succah holding the glory of the Jew; you are nothing, but you are also everything.

The twin messages of Rav Meilech Biderman.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha Issue 728)