What’s drawing national-religious youth to the most insular chassidic courts

Photos: Shuki Lehrer, Flash90, Refoel Schwartz
Rachel Ginsberg contributed to this report.

They’re easy to spot at Friday night tishen in chassidic courts, with their white shirts, ear-to-ear huge knitted kippot, long peyos and untrimmed beards. Yet for some of these national-religious bochurim, a chassidic tish is not just another cool Shabbos activity, but a sign of retaking stock and making profound, meaningful life changes. And surprisingly, some of them are ideologically not so far away from their chassidic hosts either

You can see them at almost every tish of Jerusalem’s many chassidic courts. They’re usually off in their own corner, but easy to spot amid the beketshes and shtreimels: white shirts sashed with a gartel, long peyos, untrimmed beards, heads topped with large knitted yarmulkes that go from ear to ear.

Welcome to the phenomenon of young “srugim” (as they are called because of their kippot serugot) who have become regulars among the chassidim — bochurim and avreichim affiliated with “kippah serugah” yeshivos, well-versed in chassidic seforim and filled with lofty aspirations, who’ve forged personal bonds with rebbes and chassidic mashpi’im, and merit a special status even within the most insular chassidic groups.

Perhaps the most visible leader of this trend is the Toldos Avraham Yitzchak Rebbe, Rav Shmuel Yaakov Kohn, who has become a personal mashpia to many of these spiritual seekers. The chassidus was established in 1996 as an offshoot of Toldos Aharon after the previous Toldos Aharon Rebbe, Rav Avraham Yitzchak Kohn, passed away. His oldest son, Rav Shmuel Yaakov — a talmid of Vizhnitz — became the Toldos Avraham Yitzchak Rebbe, while his son Rav Dovid was called back from his Monsey kehillah to lead the Toldos Aharon chassidus. The two brothers hold court a block apart from each other.

Some bochurim — like Yonatan Lieber of the Mercaz Harav yeshivah — have forged such close personal ties with Toldos Avraham Yitzchak that any personal simchah without the Rebbe wouldn’t be complete. That’s why, when Yonatan got married last year, he chose to make the chuppah outside the Toldos Avraham Yitzchak beis medrash, just like the other bochurim of the chassidus do. With the permission of his rosh yeshivah, Rav Yaakov Shapira, the chassan asked the Rebbe to be his mesader kiddushin, and the very un-chassidish-looking wedding party stood under the chuppah on Rechov Oneg Shabbos across the road from the Meah Shearim shuk.

Afterward, chassidim stood alongside friends from Mercaz Harav as the chassan danced   in another kind of mitzvah tantz, an embrace with both the Rebbe and Rav Yaakov Shapira.

(For Rav Shapira, who spent all his yeshivah years in Mercas Harav as son of the previous rosh yeshivah, it wasn’t really foreign territory. “What did we do on Friday night?” he once told his students. “We went to the tish of the Beis Yisrael of Gur, then on to the Biala Rebbe’s tish, and before that, we would go listen to the shmuess of Rav Ovadiah in the dining room of Yeshivat Porat Yosef.”)

“During the dance, people had tears in their eyes,” says Chagai Suissa, a fellow Mercaz Harav talmid and a close friend of the chassan.