Season of Song and Fire

Rav Mordechai Zilber never intended to become a rebbe. But then he became a conduit for the Torah of his teacher, Rebbe Yehudah of Stutchin ztz”l, and today, Toldos Yehudah-Stutchin is its own fiery corner of Torah and avodah, with masses of talmidim flocking to Reb Mottel as he opens the gates to the deepest levels of service

It’s 1:30 a.m. on a warm Shabbos night in Jerusalem. Inside a massive tent erected for the summer, a huge crowd of Yidden stand shoulder to shoulder, their eyes fixed on a slight figure at the head of a long table. The haunting notes of a well-known niggun rise and fall, filling the air with longing. Suddenly, the Rebbe’s voice — pleading, insistent — takes over: “Oy, libi uvesari yeranenu l’Keil Chai — My heart and my flesh, my heart and my flesh, will sing out to the living God.” The crowd responds, two thousand voices echoing the ancient cry with the haunting tune.

The niggun eventually shifts into dance. The Rebbe joins the circle, his feet moving with such speed and intensity that the crowd struggles to keep pace. It’s as if the holiness of Shabbos itself animates his thin frame.

To step into this tent is to enter a separate universe. Chassidim in both spodiks and shtreimels together with clean-shaven Litvaks stand alongside knitted-kippah wearers, as external boundaries dissolve. The magnet is Rav Mordechai Menashe Zilber, known simply as “Reb Mottel,” the Rebbe of Toldos Yehudah-Stutchin.

A man who began life in Paris, grew up in Boro Park, and now splits his time between Brooklyn and Jerusalem, Reb Mottel has become a spiritual phenomenon. His gatherings are part tish, part spiritual revolution, drawing those who yearn not only to belong but to search, to seek, and hopefully, also to find.