Rabbi Ari Schonfeld leads night seder for 1,500 eager teens
At 7:45 p.m., Rabbi Ari Schonfeld launches a Zoom meeting from his home office in Passaic, New Jersey. By 7:46, 271 teenaged boys are logged on. Join the meeting at 7:47, and you can actually see the number of participants rise at a dizzying pace: 328, 452, 581. As the clock ticks closer to eight, and Rabbi Schonfeld, the mastermind behind Night Seder America, schmoozes with the boys, the numbers keep rising: 649, 666, 723, 759.
You listen to Rabbi Schonfeld play One Hen Two Ducks, or lead a Zoom version of Simon Says (“Not very well, but everyone has a good time”), or do an impression, or chant in a singsong. It’s nuts and wild and you can’t keep up, you’re breathless with anticipation every time he singles out another boy.
And this is just the warm-up.
All around America, and beyond, homebound boys are clicking on and dialing in and clamoring to join, and it doesn’t stop, the numbers keep changing: 774, 798, 802 — or actually double that number, because this is only one of Rabbi Schonfeld’s two Zoom accounts, and the other is just as busy. You’re overwhelmed as boys continue logging into this nightly seder, a free Gemara shiur and program that’s taken frum middle school boys — close to 1,500 of them — by storm.
He jokes, he teases, he plays Jewish geography, he teaches, and the kids lap it up.
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