Conference taveng::bagels

365.0. "Bostoner Rebbe" by IAGO::SCHOELLER (Help! | !pleH) Tue Sep 15 1987 15:38

The following was reprinted from Boston Magazine, Sept. 1987

Without permission (naturally) 8^{).

-Gavriel

The Bostoner Rebbe
A portrait of a twentieth-century man with an eighteenth-century title
and a mission as ancient as Abraham.

by Emily Isberg

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Grand Rabbi Levi Horowitz cradles the telephone in one hand, and with the
other jots down notes on a tiny yellow Post-it pad.  The caller, a young
doctor from the West Coast, will be visiting Boston soon on business and
would like to meet a nice Jewish girl, someone suitable for marriage.

The rabbi togs at his long, untrimmed white beard and slouches down in his
massive leather chair.  All this is visible above the broad and cluttered
desk is his head, a black velvet yarmulke topping a disembodied face of
great patience and understanding.  "Let me check it out," the rabbi tells his
caller, explaining that he knows of a young woman from a very fine family
who might not balk at the doctor's having been married before.

Strictly speaking, under Jewish law the doctor, who is a kohen, a descendant
of the first Israelite priests, may marry only a virgin or a widow.  Asked
whether such constraints make sense in the eighties, when the high divorce
rate underscores the difficulty of finding a lifelong helpmate no matter how
large the selection, the rabbi can barely disguise his horror.

"Just because there's divorce doesn't mean more doors should be opened to
make marriage possible," he exclaims.  "Maybe we need more constraints.  It's
clear more than the heart is involved."

Behind him the dim light plays on a glass case of kiddush cups, candlesticks,
and other ceremonial objects.  On his right the walls are lined with hundreds
of books, most in Hebrew, interpreting the laws that Moses brought down from
Mount Sinai.  On his left the windows overlook the Star Market on Beacon
Street, and from his office adjoining the study comes the steady clacking of
a computer printer.

Rabbi Horowitz is the spiritual leader (rebbe) of the Boston-based Hasidic
dynasty founded by his father nearly three-quarters of a century ago.  And,
as such is more familiarly known as the Bostoner Rebbe.  Over the decades, he
has invited thousands of college students into his own home and the homes of
his congregants for a taste of Yiddishkeit, or Jewish culture.  He oversees
a medical referral program with a $250,000 annual budget the not only connects
desperate medical patients the world over with the most prestigious specialists
Boston has to offer but also houses them and their families for months or even
years while they undergo sophisticated medical treatment.

On the day of the doctor's phone call, the rebbe is getting ready for a six-
month stay in Israel, where he is building a shul (Yiddish for synagogue) and
organizing a community in a newly built neighborhood of Jerusalem called Har
Nof.  Until he leaves, he will lead daily prayer services and classes at
Congregation Beth Pinchas, a Brookline shul with a membership of about 300
families who live within walking distance.

The relatively small size of the congregation belies the scope of the
Bostoner Rebbe's influence.  His mailing list, used to solicit donations for
various charitable causes, boasts the names of 12,000 families.  Some of these
people consider themselves his Hasidim -- ultra-Orthodox Jews who turn to him
as a religious mentor, father figure, and counselor in times of crisis.  Others
identify themselves with more liberal denominations -- Reform or Conservative --
but want to support him in his work as a guardian of tradition.

Amid all these responsibilities, the 67-year-old Bostoner Rebbe listens to the
request for a match as if it is one of the most important he has to deal with.
In a way, it is.  For on the proper choice of a mate will hinge the happiness
of the young man; the scrupulousness with which he will follow the Jewish laws
concerning prayer, diet, the Sabbath, and marital relations; and the
willingness of his children to follow those laws as well.  From the rebbe's
perspective, this marriage will either forge or break a link in a chain
stretching back thousands of years, a chain ensuring the survival of the
Jewish religion and the Jewish people.

The following story is told by the rebbe's wife, Raichel Horowitz:

Once a young woman came to the rebbe because her estranged husband would not
give her a get, or bill of divorce.  (Under Jewish law, only the husband may
petition a rabbinical court for a bill of divorce, without which neither
party may remarry.)  She expected the rebbe to give her a broche (blessing)
and tell her to pray.

Instead, he asked her what her husband did for a living.  She replied that he
was studying to pass his psychiatric boards.  Tell your husband that you will
go before the psychiatric board and accuse him of mental cruelty, suggested
the rebbe.  The woman mentioned the plan to her husband, who agreed immediately
to give her a get.

As the story illustrates the, the Bostoner Rebbe is a curious blend: a
twentieth-century man with an eighteenth-century title and a mission as ancient
as Abraham.  The first Hasidic rebbe to be born in the United States, the
Bostoner Rebbe speaks to his congregation in English, sprinkling his
conversation with words like "input" and "copout".  Unlike some Hasidic rebbes
in New York, he does not require his followers -- many of them doctors, real
estate agents, academics, high-tech managers, and other professionals -- to
isolate themselves from the rest of society in order to maintain their Judaism.
And he doesn't hold with pomp and circumstance.  His followers speak of his
approachability, and of the time and attention he invests in his callers.

But he is still a rebbe, a role laden with history and symbolism.  In the
person of rebbe is combined, to some degree, the attributes of a saint and a
therapist, a scholar and a tzaddik (righteous person), a religious mentor and
a community leader.  Dedicating his life to holy pursuits, he is above worldly
concerns.  Yet at the same time he is cloaked in the trappings of royalty: he
holds court; he inherits his title (usually as the son of a rebbe, occasionally
as a rebbe's disciple); and he can trace his lineage through one of a number
of dynasties originating with the founder of Hasidism, the Baal Shem Tov.

He (there are no women rebbes) is both man and superman: an intermediary
between humankind and heaven who explains the ways of G-d to his people and
intercedes on behalf of his people before G-d.  It is thus through its concept
of the rebbe that Hasidism distinguishes itself most clearly from the rest of
Judaism, which holds that all Jews can communicate equally and directly with
G-d.

Hasidism was born in the Ukraine in the 1730s, a time when the Jews of Eastern
Europe lived in wretched poverty, and were victims of legal and economic
sanctions and vicious pogroms.  In the Carpathian Mountains, an impoverished
teacher named Israel ben Eliezer, later know as the Baal Shem Tov (Master of
the Good Name), brought a message of hope and deliverance to the masses: it was
not only scholarship but also fervent prayer, purity of the heart, and
scrupulous observance of the law that brought one closer to G-d.

Indeed, the Hebrew word hasid means "pious one."  All Orthodox Jews are bound
to obey the 613 commandments contained in the Torah (the first five books of
the Bible), which transform eating, dressing, and other daily activities into
a form of worship.  But the Hasidim are known for the zeal with which they
approach this task.  For at a time when misery seemed to know no limit, the
Baal Shem Tov portrayed religious practice as a boundless source of song and
joy.  Building on the Kabbalah, the mystical tradition within the Jewish
religion, he sent the downtrodden on a glorious mission: through a righteous
life the could hasten the arrival of Messiah and the return to the Promised
Land.

According to legend, the Baal Shem Tov traveled the countryside, rekindling the
heavenly spark in everyone he met.  As a result of his blessing, said his
followers, the sick were healed, the barren woman bore children, and the
peasant was freed from his landlord's jail.

His disciples spread through Eastern Europe, establishing independent dynasties
in villages from Russia to Hungary.  While the rabbis of traditional Judaism
dealt primarily with questions of law, explains the Bostoner Rebbe, the Hasidic
rebbe opened up the "inner sanctum" to all aspects of a follower's life,
providing counsel on issues from child rearing and marital problems to physical
health and livelihood.  The rebbe could furnish answers because, in a mystical
sense, the souls of a rebbe and his Hasidim were attached to one another,
taking root from the same family tree and becoming intertwined throughout the
generations.

In the twentieth century, the Nazi death camps virtually eliminated the
Hasidim from Europe.  Many who survived emigrated to Israel or the United
States.  After World War II, Brooklyn became the home of some 40 rebbes and
their courts, many bearing the names of the towns from which they came: Satmar,
Lubavitch, Belz, Gere.  Transplanted, they struggled against assimilation,
maintaining their own schools, newspapers, businesses, and stores, their own
style of dress.  To this day some sects remain isolated even from each other,
at war over issues ranging from kashrut, or dietary laws, to whether the
secular state of Israel should be recognized.

According to a 1985 demographic study by the Combined Jewish Philanthropies,
about 4 percent of the 185,000 Jewish adults in metropolitan Boston consider
themselves Orthodox; while there is no official tally, very few of the 7,400
Orthodox are believed to follow a Hasidic rebbe.  Yet the Hasidim in Boston
have an illustrious history.  The Talner Rebbe, Professor Isadore Twersky, is
a widely proclaimed scholar who heads a Brookline congregation --  Congregation
Beth David -- as well as the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University.
His father, Grand Rabbi David Twersky, emigrated from the Ukraine in 1924.
The New York-based Lubavitchers, the largest Hasidic group in the world, with
about 250,000 followers, have maintained a shul in the Boston area since the
late 1880s.  A movement known for both its intellectual bent and its
missionary-like efforts to reclaim Jews from assimilation, the Lubavitchers
have a shul in Brighton; schools in Brookline, Milton and Stoughton; and
community centers, called Chabad houses, stretching across Massachusetts from
Springfield to Kenmore Square.

Asked how one becomes a rebbe, the Bostoner Rebbe recounts a folk tale:

A Hasid came to see his rebbe and said, "I dreamed that I'm going to be a
Hasidic rebbe."  The rebbe said, "Go back to sleep."  The next day the man
came in again and said, "I had a dream I'm to be a Hasidic rebbe."  The rebbe
said, "Go back to sleep."  The Hasid came back a third time with the same
report.  The rebbe replied, "You can dream from today until doomsday, and that
won't make you a Hasidic rebbe.  It's your Hasidim who have to dream."

Before launching into the story of how his father, Pinchas David Horowitz,
became a rebbe, Rabbi Horowitz waves a visitor into a chair with a lack of
formality that makes one feel not so much welcome as at home.  Speaking
slowly, deliberately, he explains that the first Bostoner Rebbe arrived at his
post not through his own efforts but through hashgachah pratit, Hebrew for
"divine supervision."  (A basic tenet of Hasidism rooted in the Kabbalah, it
holds that each event in our lives takes place for a reason, conveying a
message or presenting an opportunity sent by G-d.)  The great-grandson of Rav
Moshe of Lelov, who moved his court from Poland to Jerusalem in 1851, Pinchas
Horowitz was in line to succeed the Lelover Rebbe.  His uncle, a respected
Hasidic leader known for his uncanny ability to see into the future, told the
young scholar to leave the Holy Land and go to America.  Pinchas Horowitz
refused.  Then, in 1913, he traveled to Poland to serve on a rabbincal court.
When World War I broke out, the only refuge he could find was aboard a boat --
bound for the United States.

In 1915 Boston already had a sizable community of Hasidic Jews from different
courts in Russia, Poland, Lithuania and Hungary trying to maintain the customs
of a rebbe far away.  They urged Pinchas Horowitz to be their leader and he
agreed.  But despite enormous Hasidic emphasis on yihus, or lineage, he
adopted the name of his new home rather than that of his ancestors.  (A family
tree on the basement wall of Beth Pinchas shows the Baal Shem Tov at its roots,
with famous rebbes arrayed along its branches.)  "He said, 'What can one
expect of a Bostoner rebbe?'" explains his son.  "That way he would not
mislead his followers; they would not expect the rebbe of Lublin or Lelov to
work miracles for them."

The first home of the New England Chasidic Center was on Poplar street in the
old West End.  Always open to the poor and homeless, it was a way station for
the Jews who had fled from the Nazi storm.  It also served as a focal point
for Jews throughout New England, says the rebbe.  When his father visited
Jerusalem in 1929, Checker Cab -- owned by the son of one of his Hasidim --
provided 100 cars to take his followers to the airport to send him off.  On
Rosh Hashanah, the first day of the Jewish year and the beginning of a 10-day
period of repentance, Grand Rabbi Pinchas Horowitz would sometimes lead
hundreds of white-clad followers to the banks of the Charles, where they would
symbolically cast their sins into the water.  (This September 24, Grand Rabbi
Levi Horowitz will lead a procession of his own up Beacon Street to the
Chestnut Hill Reservoir.  There the celebrants will perform the same ceremony
and eat apples and honey for a sweet new year, along with other foods selected
for their mystical significance.)

Without suitable Jewish day school in Boston, the young Levi Yitzchak Horowitz
studied at home with a tutor before attending yeshiva (seminary) in Jerusalem
and earning a rabbinical degree from Mesivtah Torah Vodaas in Brooklyn.  But
his most important training, he says, was observing his father's acts of hesed,
or loving kindness.

"Even after I took over, for many many years, I felt very inadequate filling
his shoes, so to speak, because of what he was," says the rebbe.  "To this day
I would say that my mission in this world is to have made his being the
Bostoner Rebbe worthwhile."

Rabbi Pinchas Horowitz dreamed a dream that was never fulfilled: to return to
Palestine.  One visit in the twenties was cut short by pogroms in the West
Bank city of Hebron; another, by the depression.  Returning to the West End in
1936, he found that the neighborhood had changed and much of his congregation
had moved away.  In 1940 he moved his court to the Williamsburg area of
Brooklyn.

Two years later, he died.  He was succeeded by his Jerusalem-born eldest son,
Rabbi Moshe Horowitz, who decided to remain in New York.  Then, recalls Rabbi
Levi Horowitz, "the Boston community, realizing they missed the Hasidic court
of my father, insisted that if they can't have my older brother at least they
could have me."

By his own account, the 23-year old Levi Horowitz was a very reluctant rebbe.
He turned a deaf ear when his father's former followers came to woo him at the
yeshiva in New York.  In the meantime, he agreed to a felicitous match arranged
by a mutual friend and married Raichel Ungar, a descendant of a Galician
Hasidic dynasty and the stepdaughter of the Cleveland Rebbe.  A down-to-earth
woman with a passionate concern for others, she has proved equal to the
demanding task of feeding, billeting and organizing festivities for the
multitude of visitors the rebbe invites to their house.

After the wedding, the young rabbi invested his wife's dowry in a friend's
envelope company, hoping to use the income to continue his studies.  But the
business went down the drain, and the dowry with it.  He tried his hand at
several pursuits, including say his followers, a brief stint in the diamond
business.  They all failed.  Once again the rebbe refers to divine supervision.

"Our son was born, I was a father, we couldn't live on hope," he says,
chuckling out loud at himself.  "I fought the elements.  I did not want to
face the fact that I have to go back to Boston.  But whatever I did, did not
work out, so my hand was forced.  I saw the sign from Heaven above that that's
the only route I can take."

By all outward appearances, Rabbi Horowitz enjoys being the Bostoner Rebbe, at
least as he has fashioned the post.  He likes schmoozing with the politicians,
from the late John F. Kennedy to Barney Frank and Maureen Reagan, who have
come to his study to seek his advice and support.  The most eminent physicians
in Boston come to the phone when he calls.  He is known for getting results,
for putting people in touch with those who can help them.  He is acclaimed for
humanitarian work that crosses denominational lines.  In 1985, when he
celebrated his fortieth year of leadership, the Massachusetts House of
Representatives adopted a resolution declaring October 20 Bostoner Rebbe Day
and 600 people attended his testimonial dinner.

And yet there are drawbacks.  His religious stature sets him apart from even
his closest friends, who laugh and grieve with him but don't call him by his
first name.  "We can be alone in a room and I always feel that distance,"  says
Bernard Hyatt, editor of the Jewish Advocate, who has known the rebbe for many
years.  "He doesn't impose it, but I feel it anyway."  The demands of his
followers take all his time and energy.  He appears to have virtually no
private life, no division between work and not work.  His phone is still
ringing at 11 o'clock at night, when his followers in Israel are just beginning
their day.  It has been more than two years since he last rode the exercise
bicycle that stands in the corner of his study.  His idea of relaxation is an
hour or two by himself to read or study.  His wife jokes that when she or
another family member needs to talk to him, "we make an appointment."  Asked
if she minds the lack of time alone with him, she replies, "Life is sharing."
His children, however, admit that so much sharing is no easy task.

Given a choice, says the rebbe, he would like to spend more time reading and
browsing through the 15,000-volume library of Judaica he has collected, or
writing his interpretations of Jewish law, particularly in the field of
medical ethics.  "A rabbi usually has the privilege of retiring -- businessmen
certainly do -- but there is no such thing for a Hasidic rebbe," he says.
"Even where I am anchored, Boston or Jerusalem, tears me apart.  When I am in
Jerusalem, there are calls from Boston, and when I am here, calls from
Jerusalem."

But these very calls are what offer a sense of fulfillment.  Take, for example,
an attempt to set up a match for a New York divorcee with two children.  "Even
if nothing happens, this person will feel that someone is taking the time to
help her and make life more meaningful," he says.  "It will be a source of
strength for her that there are people who care, people out there rooting for
her."

This year, the Purim holiday begins on a Saturday night, and a brilliant full
moon is shining as the Sabbath draws to a close and a day of merry-making is
about to begin.  If you ask Hasidim what distinguishes them from other Orthodox
Jews, they may say that nothing can equal the joy of a Hasidic celebration.

And so there is much hoopla on Purim, a topsy-turvy holiday of Mardi Gras-like
abandon when the sacred texts are mocked, children wear costumes into shul, and
celebrants rejoice in the victory of Queen Esther over a wicked Persian vizier
named Haman, who plotted a massacre of the Jews.

Inside the shul at 1710 Beacon Street, the men are completing evening prayers.
Their low voices mingle with the high tones of young boys in long payess, or
side locks, chanting in unison the prayers that have sustained their ancestors
for centuries.  Men with long beards, wide brimmed black hats, and knee-length
suit coats rub shoulders with clean-shaven men in business suits or sweaters
and yarmulkes.

As the men conclude the prayers, the women are just beginning to file in for
the reading of the Megillah, a handwritten scroll of the Book of Esther.  While
Jewish men are required to say specific prayers each morning, afternoon and
evening, women are exempt from this and other time-bound commandments, which
might interfere with their child-rearing responsibilities.  (Many Jewish
feminists interpret this exemption as an exclusion, as one of several major
forms of discrimination that should be revised to give women a fuller and more
equal participation in religious life.)

Their hair covered with wigs, scarves, or caps, the women gradually fill up
their section of the shul -- first the grey metal folding chairs in the front,
then the wooden pews in the back.  In place of the wall or screen that usually
separates men and women in an Orthodox shul, Congregation Beth Pinchas has
fashioned a partition of one-way-mirror windows from the John Hancock Building
(from the first set of windows, which fell down and had to be replaced).  The
women have a relatively clear view of the bimah (podium), where the Torah is
read, but they cannot be seen by, and thus distract the men.

Tonight the rebbe's second-oldest son, Rabbi Mayer Horowitz, reads the
Megillah.  At the mention of the wicked Haman, the congregation stamps, hisses,
and boos, and the children use noisemakers to create a din not heard in the
shul since the previous Purim.  The shul, says one of its members, "is very
unlike the Conservative temple where I used to go -- a magnificent structure
that's usually empty."

A house of prayer and study, Beth Pinchas is for the most involved of its
members a home away from home; in fact, it takes up the first floor of a
former private house built before the turn of the century and converted by the
Horowitzes into the New England Chassidic Center in the sixties.  The second
floor includes the rebbe's study, a kitchen, and a dining room.  The basement,
used for communal meals and lectures, connects to a mikvah, or ritual bath.
The third and fourth floors shelter a steady stream of overnight visitors.  The
Horowitzes lived there until eight years ago, when the rebbe's cardiologist
suggested he purchase a house where he could get away from it all.  His
Shangri-la is a rambling Victorian a scant one-block walk away, and on weekends
guests are usually put up there as well.

The services are followed by a holiday dinner for three dozen friends and
family members.  The rebbe enters the dining room, wearing an imposing round
fur hat called a shtreimel and a black caftan that covers his white shirt and
reaches to the knees of his dark trousers.  With his entourage following him,
he is like a flagship sailing majestically with a small armada in its wake.  He
takes his place at the head of a large U-shaped table covered with clean white
tablecloths under plastic sheets and adorned with a large oil-burning
candelabra.

To the rebbe's right are two of his sons. Reb Mayer, as he is called by the
congregation, is the rabbi and administrative director of the New England
Chassidic Center, and Reb Naftali is the center's dayan, or authority on Jewish
law.  Each son has his own home down the street.  The rebbe and the rebbitsin
have three other children: Pinchas Horowitz, the oldest, rabbi of an Orthodox
congregation in the Chusters Community, in Brooklyn; Shana Frankel, married to
a rabbi in Flatbush, Brooklyn; and Toby Geldzahler, whose husband, Rabbi Moshe
Geldzahler, leads the Jerusalem congregation when the rebbe is in Boston.

Before the meal, the men and women file over to separate sinks for the ritual
washing of hands.  After saying a blessing over the bread, the rebbe takes a
piece of gefilte fish from a platter and passes the dish to the rest of the
men;  when the group is too large to be served from one platter, he will stick
a plastic fork into each piece of fish.  This practice is based on the Hasidic
custom of shirayim, which holds that food blessed by a pious person becomes
spiritually elevated.  In some other Hasidic courts, devoted followers scramble
for the leftovers from the rebbe's plate.

As at all public gatherings, the women are seated separately.  Seating males
and females together, the rebbitsin later explains, "could lead to lewdness."
Tonight she is wearing a tailored beige suit with her house key pinned to the
lapel (it is forbidden to carry objects on the Sabbath) and a small cap over
her reddish brown wig.  As guests fill their paper plates with rice and
chicken, and their cups with Stop & Shop ginger ale, she sups on a bowl of Rice
Krispies.  She is taking a gastronomical vacation, she explains, amid a
whirlwind schedule that includes her oldest grandson's wedding, a Purim dinner
for 250 people, and a Shabbaton (a weekend retreat for students and young
professionals), all with a few weeks of their planned departure for Israel.

Between bites, the rebbitsin converses alternately in English and Hebrew with
women seated at the table.  They include longtime followers, a young Israeli
woman being treated for cancer of the larynx, and a New York divorcee seeking
a match.  Her efforts to include everyone go beyond hospitality: women from
Hasidic groups in other cities who would not shop at one another's stores or
venture into one another's neighborhoods have been known to sit together at her
table.

The rebbe launches into a song.  Between each course, the men rise from their
seats and dance around the table, their hands resting on the waist or shoulders
of the man in front of them.  The rebbe, who as angina, remains seated for all
but one song, which he dances with a stately bob.  When he sits he sings and
keeps time by pounding his fist on the table, swaying calmly as his son Mayer,
who composed some of the melodies, sings with more animation.  Tonight the
festivities are led by Meir Wikler, a Brooklyn social worker and longtime
friend of the rebbe's.  As the Purim Rav, a kind of court jester, he makes fun
of the true Rav, or rebbe, and all things religious.  Dressed in a rebbe's
garb, he alternately struts like a rooster, stands on his chair, and tells the
"real" story, in verse, of how Esther became queen.

Children dash in and out of the dining room, led by seven-year-old Batsheva,
the oldest of the rebbe's five granddaughters.  Some of the boys join in the
dance with their fathers.  The meal ends, as always with a blessing.  The rebbe
leads his procession away from the table, and the women and a few of the
younger men stay behind to clear away the plates.

The next afternoon, Sunday, Purim is celebrated on a grander scale.  Two
hundred fifty people fill the Brookline High cafeteria to dine on roast
chicken, dance to a band, and admire the children's costumes, all with the
rebbe's blessing.  The rebbe sits on the men's side of the hall at the head
table, and his followers come up during the meal to wish him good health, press
a few dollars into his hand, and pour a bit of brandy into his cup.

As the evening draws to a close, the rebbe puts on his black-framed half-
glasses and talks about the significance of Purim.  When Queen Esther and the
king in the palm of her hand, she did not ask him to make his subjects stop
harassing Jews but simply to let her people arm themselves against attack.
This is the tenuous position of the Jew, the rebbe explains, as long as he or
she inhabits a non-Jewish land.

"We're people who somehow found our lives to be empty and wanted something to
give it meaning.  Judaism made it authentic," says Jacob Singer (not his real
name) one evening as the youngest of his five children, aged one and a half,
bounces across the plush navy couch between him and his wife, Wendy.

A computer company executive, Jacob Singer joined Congregation Beth Pinchas
more than a dozen years ago.  Sporting aviator glasses, a burgundy knit vest,
and a short black beard, he almost indistinguishable from his neighbors but
for the yarmulke perched on his head.  He sprinkles his conversation with
references to the TV show "Moonlighting" and to the Red Sox pitcher Oil Can
Boyd, sends his kids to karate and gym class at the Jewish Community Center,
and lives in a brick house with a columned portico that looks down from a hill
in one of Brookline's more elegant neighborhoods.  But from the moment he
awakens with a prayer on his lips until the moment he goes to sleep, his life
is different, with interwoven rituals and commitments that reinforce his sense
of purpose.

Like many members of the congregation, the Singers are ba'alei teshuvah (the
Hebrew term literally means "masters of repentance") -- Jews who became
observant through their own choosing rather than by their upbringing.  Unlike
insular Hasidic groups in New York, the members of Beth Pinchas are very much
"out in the world."  If anything, says the rebbe, his followers' dedication
to Jewish law is stronger because it is tested every day; their footing on the
path of observance is more secure because so many have trodden, and turned
their back on, other ways.

"It's always a struggle to be difference -- to have five kids, to eat different
foods, to go home early Friday afternoon,"  says Wendy, who is wearing a pink
sweater and a plaid skirt.  (Orthodox women are expected to cover themselves
from the neck to the elbow and knee, and to refrain from wearing slacks, which
are considered men's clothes.)  Like other married Orthodox women, she has her
hair covered with a scarf.  "But the more years I live the lifestyle, the more
I know it's right."

When Wendy Singer, who comes from a Reform Jewish background, used to visit her
grandparents in Williamsburg, "the Hasidim always looked strange to me, like
people from outer space."  But later, as a student at the State University of
New York in Buffalo, she became interested in Judaism as a source of permanent
values.  "There was no definition of morality -- it was all personal opinion,"
she says of the mood on campus.  "What's true today could be false tomorrow.  I
wanted to live by something stronger."  Now a part-time real estate agent with
a master's degree in social work, she views acquaintances in the "regular
world" as consumed with career and material gain.  "That's not what you're
here in this world for," she says.  "The purpose of the Jew is to do mitzvot
[good deeds] and elevate the world by the way you live, to live the way the
Torah describes."

To many people, the biblical injunctions appear restrictive and antiquated,
affecting all aspects of life from the dinner table (prohibiting, among other
things, the consumption of milk and meat products at the same time) to the
bedroom (all physical contact between husband and wife is banned during a
woman's menstrual period and for seven days afterward).  To those who
subscribe, however, the commandments provide a set of guiding principles of
complete clarity.

Jacob Singer recounts that he was once asked by a co-worker if he could work
late Friday night -- and make up for it by observing the Sabbath longer on
Saturday.  "Sundown," he replied, "is not negotiable!"

To the observant Jew, values are not relative.  "Sundown is sundown, adultery
is adultery, abortion is abortion.  You have to believe there is right and
wrong because there is a God in this world who gave us the laws,  and who am
I to question this one and not that one?" says Singer.

The newcomers, now an integral part of the congregation, were brought into the
fold out of necessity.  Returning to Boston in 1945, the young rebbe was
greeted by an exceedingly small band of congregants with an average age of
about 80.  To revitalize his shul, he sized up Boston's natural resources --
an approach that also led to his medical-referral network -- turned to the
colleges and universities.  In an outreach effort later institutionalized as
the Shabbaton program, he invited practicing and non-practicing Jewish students
to eat at his tish, or table, stay at his home or in the homes of his
followers, pray at the shul, and generally taste the peace of the Sabbath.

The goal of the Shabbaton program, explains the rebbe, is not so much to
enlarge his own following as to educate young people about their heritage and
to encourage whatever commitment to Judaism they can make.  "When I first came
to Boston, even the ignorant would be scholars compared to today's Jews,"  he
says.  "We're dealing with an element that knows nothing about Yiddishkeit.
It's like talking to a Kelly or a Murphy."  Unlike the Orthodox, who consider
the Torah divine revelation, the more liberal branches of Judaism hold that one
can remain faithful to the spirit, if not the letter, of Jewish law.  Those
"who identify themselves as Jews but take it lightly,"  the rebbe says, "will
not be able to give that heritage to their offspring.  That's todays tragedy."

The Shabbaton program reached its zenith in the sixties and early seventies,
that near-legendary period of spiritual seeking, when more than 150 people
would sit at the tish and as many as two dozen Brandeis students would walk in
from Waltham.  (It is forbidden to drive on Sabbath.)  Now, says the rebbe,
students are so concerned about getting good grads and a good job that they
are afraid to take a weekend away from their studies.  A Shabbaton this past
March attracted a scant three dozen participants.

Instead, Beth Pinchas is replenished from within.  The ba'alei teshuvah of the
sixties and seventies come to the shul with children in tow.  Families with
five or six children are the norm.  True, the first commandment in Genesis is
"Be fruitful and multiply," and birth control is prohibited by the Torah
unless the life of the mother is endangered.  But many couples also see
childbearing as a contribution to perpetuating the Jewish people, replenishing
the ranks mowed down in the Holocaust.

In recent years the congregation has been experiencing a kind of exodus, with
members moving out of the high-priced neighborhoods between Coolidge Corner and
Cleveland Circle to buy homes in more affordable communities, like Lowell,
Sharon and Randolph.  Families have also relocated to Israel, New York,
Baltimore, and other cities with a wider choice of religious schools.  To
reverse this trend, the Singers joined the rebbe's sons and several other
families six years ago to found an independent elementary school called Torah
Academy, on Williston Road across from the Chassidic Center.

The small number of Jewish high schools highlight the general lack of services
for Boston's Orthodox community, say some congregation members.  The fault,
says one observer, must be ascribed to both the community and its most
prominent leaders, including the Bostoner Rebbe.  These leaders say the
observer, have been "so interested in promoting their own brand of Jewishness
that the community suffered.  They never sat down to talk about how they could
work toward a common Jewish Orthodoxy outside their own interests."

Others contend that the rebbe's hallmark has been his effort to overcome
divisiveness and reach out to the Jewish community at large, an effort
exemplified by the individual counseling he offers.

Somebody once called the rebbe on behalf of a young man with AIDS.  He asked
the rebbe to recite a Mishebeirach (special prayer for the ill) for his friend,
expecting that his request might be denied.  To the contrary, explains the
rebbe.  "I said prayers should be said, even though the illness may have
resulted from a commandment of the Torah being broken.  Every person who is
sick deserves our prayers."

In a series of conversations with the rebbe, the AIDS patient asked if there
were a way he might make teshuvah, becoming worthy of the world to come.  The
rebbe replied that according to the twelfth-century philosopher Maimonides,
sincere repentance, even in the moment before death, is accepted by God.  He
also suggested that the young man establish a fund for poor brides in Israel in
need of money for marriage and an apartment, because, by virtue of his
lifestyle, he had deprived a Jewish woman of a husband.

What the rebbe offered the dying man was, in short, the opportunity to do a
mitzvah, to help others, to feel fulfilled.  At the same time, he clearly
expressed his disapproval of homosexuality, which he believes is determined by
social, not biological, factors.  "God does not ask us the impossible,"
he explains.  "If he asks us not to live that lifestyle, then it's possible not
to.  We can't compromise on that which is divine."

The rebbe decries lack of religious observance -- and intermarriage above all --
as a "spiritual holocaust" that jeopardizes the very survival of Judaism.  He
has called invalid the conversions, marriages, and divorces performed by
non-Orthodox rabbis because they do not conform to religious law.  Yet he is
sought after as a counselor by Jews of all denominations.

Although the Hasidim as a group are sometimes accused of being holier-than-
thou, the Bostoner Rebbe himself has a reputation for tempering his
interpretation of halachah, religious law, with a sense of individual need, and
for distinguishing the deed from the doer.  "He searches out the best in other
people,"  says Rabbi Richard Yellin of the Conservative Congregation Mishkan
Tefila, in Newton.  "He respects what people do rather than condemns what they
don't do."

He is also known for staying up all night puzzling over the solution to a
problem.  Says Meir Wikler, "He has a bottomless reserve of compassion,
sympathy, and concern and is able to maintain intimate relationships with
thousands of people."  Wikler, whose grandfather used to go to Rabbi Pinchas
Horowitz, did not meet the rebbe until he was in college, about 20 years ago.
In 1971 Wikler's father died, an event Wikler found so unbearable that he
refused to leave his room during shivah, the seven-day mourning period when
friends and relatives visit the house to offer comfort.  Suddenly a figure
appeared in Wikler's room, and he looked up to see the rebbe, who had flown
from Boston to New York City and would fly back later that day.  "It made a
lasting impact on me that he extended himself on my behalf," says Wikler.  "It
wasn't based on his feeling that I was important, but because I needed it."

In some courts the rebbe exercises considerable control over the lives of his
Hasidim, telling them whom to marry, what job to take, where to live.  The
Bostoner Rebbe says he resists such responsibility.  When he began reaching
out to the college community, he was worried that young intellectuals would
spurn his advice.  Instead, he discovered that most people, no matter what
their level of education, don't want to make their own decisions.  "They do
whatever the doctor says.  They don't even want to investigate."  The rebbe
says his function is to educate, to involve the individual in the
decision-making process.  "We don't let them off the hook.  In some groups, you
throw in with the rebbe no matter what, but I feel that's almost a cop-out."

Whether or not those who hear his advice choose to follow it, they believe the
source of his insight is his piety.  "Someone who spends his whole day thinking
about hesed [kindness], doing things for others, seeing holiness in every
object in the world -- he can bring that out in you," says Jacob Singer.  "He
can bring out sparks in you that make you better.  He's a good coach."

The following was reported in the "Jewish Observer" in January 1985:

A woman from New York sought the attention of a prominent gastro-intestinal
specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Bostoner Rebbe persuaded
him to take the case.  Shortly afterward the rebbe, then in Jerusalem,
telephoned the physician for a progress report.  The patient's kidneys had
stopped functioning, said the physician, and he feared that even with dialysis
she would die within a week.  Under the circumstances, there was no way he
could justify to his colleagues the expense of such a heroic measure as hooking
her up to a dialysis machine.

The rebbe grilled the specialist:  Was she alert?  In pain?  Finally he told
the doctor to put her on dialysis.  The doctor was relieved and elated.  So was
the woman -- she needed dialysis for only a few days before her recovery was
complete.

While rebbes of days gone by healed the sick with mystical incantations, the
Bostoner Rebbe uses the telephone and the second opinion.  Call it networking,
fund-raising, contacts -- if he hasn't saved the lives of hundreds of people,
he certainly has put them in touch with professionals who could.  Whether he is
indeed a powerful intermediary between man and his Maker is matter of faith;
but even the skeptical attest to his success as an intermediary between doctor
and patient, between the individual and the system, between ancient values and
new technology.

For nearly 40 years the Bostoner Rebbe has fielded calls from throughout the
United States, Israel, Canada, South Africa, South America, and other regions,
connecting desperate patients with the physician he believes most able to
handle their case.  "He is sort of a traffic policeman.  He has a very astute
judgment of medical problems and over time has worked out who is the best
doctor to handle different types," says Dr. Bernard Lown, professor of
cardiology at the Harvard School of Public Health and codirector of Physicians
for the Prevention of Nuclear War.

"He gets all the information before calling," says Charles Trey, chief of
gastroenterology at New England Deaconess Hospital, who for years has treated
patients referred by the rebbe.  "He knows what he's talking about and can give
a history of the case.  He's virtually like a referring physician."

Most important, by taking the time to explain frightening procedures to the
bewildered and often non-English-speaking patient, by questioning both doctor
and patient about the prescribed treatment, he gives religious people the
psychological support and confidence they need to undergo treatment.  "You
have a rabbi who is a wise man giving his blessing and support, a reason to go
ahead, to be able to pursue the recommended course,"  Lown explains.  "I'm
convinced many people are alive to day because of this."

It all started in 1949, when an Israeli living in Rhode Island asked the rebbe
to help arrange an appointment for delicate heart surgery for his brother, who
lived over seas.  The rebbe arranged the hospital admission, secured round-the-
clock interpreters to stay in the hospital room for three weeks, and offered
the man a room in his home for the rest of the recuperation.

The referral effort has grown into an international organization, Project ROFEH
(the Hebrew word for "doctor," also an acronym for Reaching Out For Emergency
Health care).  It serves as a bridge spanning not just the various Jewish
denominations but the community at large; although almost all the patients
involved are Jewish, many of the doctors are not.  The organization is directed
by the rebbe's daughter-in-law, Sima Horowitz.

Several decades ago the rebbe received a request from the wife of a rabbi
seriously injured in a car accident while traveling in Maine.  She asked if
he could arrange for a private plane to fly her husband to a Boston hospital.
The rebbe called Senator Edward Kennedy -- and the plane was ready within
minutes.  The rebbe said he was simply acting in accord with a higher design.
"I believe we're dealing with mystical aspects here.  Ever since that episode,
when someone asks me for something unusual, I never turn it down.

"God created the world and gave the world the opportunity to exist under the
laws of nature.  We have no right to expect the miraculous to happen.  We're
not even allowed to pray for miracles -- that would be interfering with the
laws of nature.  But that does not mean that miracles don't happen."

During the summer, while physicians are on vacation and the colleges are in
recess, the chair in the rebbe's study sits empty.  His sons, Mayer and
Naftali, continue to celebrate the holy days, refer medical calls, and
otherwise share the tasks of running the Chassidic Center.  But out of respect
for their father and teacher, they refrain from sitting in his chair during his
annual trip to Jerusalem.

Over the past decade, the Horowitz family has been building a second Chassidic
Center in Har Nof.  The community now houses nearly 2,000 families, says Mayer
Horowitz, 30 of which emigrated from Boston.  The center includes a religious
school for American girls, a kolel (where married men can continue religious
studies), a mikvah, and of course a shul, where a thousand men pray each
morning and evening.

When the center was dedicated, last December, some of Israel's most prominent
Hasidic leaders set aside their differences and came to the ceremony to welcome
the rebbe.  His congregation is known for its ecumenical nature: Sephardim
(Spanish and Portuguese Jews) mingle with Ashkenazim (Eastern European Jews);
Hasidim with mitnagdim, their historical opponents, mainstream Jews.  In a
country where some extremists throw rocks at cars on the Sabbath, the Bostoner
Rebbe enjoys a reputation as a moderate and a peacemaker.

The rebbe has promised to return from Israel each fall, in time to spend Yom
Kippur, the Day of Atonement and the holiest day of the year, with his Boston
congregation.  He intends to winter in New England and spend the spring and
summer in Israel.  He also has assured both communities that whenever he is
away, one of children will be on hand.

The question of who will one day succeed the rebbe is rarely broached, for it
is considered an inauspicious reference to his mortality.  As he explained,
Hasidic rebbes do not retire.  Furthermore, the answer is unpredictable.  Their
are followers of the Bostoner Rebbe who question how anyone will be able to
fill his shoes.  His eldest son leads a New York congregation of his own.  The
younger two brothers, to a degree, both embody a different side of their
father's personality; Reb Mayer, his charisma; Reb Naftali, his compassion.

With graying hair and a stunning smile that occasionally brightens an intense
countenance, Reb Mayer has been involved in running the Chassidic Center since
he returned from yeshiva, 18 years ago.  In addition, he has proved to be a
highly successful businessman, buying and selling real estate and founding
Nesher Travel, a Brookline agency specializing in tours of Israel, which he
recently sold.  He and his family are about to leave for a sabbatical in Har
Nof and may make the move permanent.

The scholarly Reb Naftali, say congregation members, is caring but shy, far
more comfortable with books than with a microphone.  After his rabbinical
studies, he returned six years ago to the Boston shul, where he answers
questions on Jewish law and occasionally arbitrates civil disputes.  With
short jet black hair and beard, he looks very much like the photographs of his
father taken 30 years ago.

Meanwhile, as the rebbe's international prestige grows, followers here worry
that his local involvement is on the wane.  After he moved into a Jerusalem
apartment a few years ago, one of his followers asked him who was now in
charge of Boston.  "As long as I'm the rebbe, I'm the rebbe," he responded.

Whether he is in Boston or Jerusalem, the rebbe continues, he is only a phone
call away.  But says congregation member Howard Steinberg, "There's something
different when he's gone.  Something missing."

It is a rainy Saturday night in March, a few days before the Bostoner Rebbe
is scheduled to leave for Israel.  After the evening service, the congregants
walk upstairs for the Havdalah ceremony marking the end of the Sabbath, only
to find the rebbitsin and a member of the staff scurrying to shove a plastic
garbage can under a leak in the dining room ceiling.  As the family jokes
about why they can't manage to fix these things, the rebbe sits quietly at the
head of the table, looking a bit sad that the last fleeting moments of the
Sabbath of have been interrupted.

He solemnly fills a kiddush cup with wine until it overflows into a saucer.  He
lights a twisted candle with two wicks, says a blessing, and sniffs a
clove-studded citron, which is passed first among the men and then among the
women to infuse the week with the perfume of the Sabbath.  In a ceremony that
symbolizes the separation between the light and the dark, the Sabbath and the
profane, he says the blessing over light.  In silence, the rebbe dips his
fingers into the wine-filled saucer and dabs the wine next to his eyes, over
his heart, and toward his pockets, a vivid supplication for clarity of vision,
compassion, and sustenance during the coming week.  Finally, he extinguishes
the candle over the saucer.  The Sabbath is over.

The rebbe looks up at his family and friends and smiles.  "Next week," he says,
"in Yerushalayim."

Was I ever going to type this in?

yes, but I got lazy.  Thank you Gavriel for doing it!