By COLlive staff
Photos: Shneur Zalman Reinitz
This past Motzoei Shabbos at 10:00 PM, a 15-hour marathon of Torah, music, and humor began with Rabbi Shais Taub welcoming viewers to the SoulWords campaign and learn-a-thon.
Rabbi Taub began the live stream event, which aired live on COLlive.com, by explaining: “Everything in this world has energy and container, light and vessel, soul and body. The soul of ‘soulwords’ are the ideas of Chasidus. The words are the way we contain those ideas by speaking them in everyday language.”
Musical director Eli Marcus played a medley of Motzoei Shabbos classics and taught a chasidisher niggun known as the “klos hanefesh niggun.” Singer Mordechai Shapiro then joined and in addition to singing his new hit Ein Od Milvado broke out into a spontaneous rendition of the Alter Rebbe’s Keili Atah.
Campaign matcher, Florida businessman Eli Nash, joined by zoom to discuss how Rabbi Taub’s teachings inspire him and asked viewers to donate generously. He shared a story of hashgacha pratis that recently happened in his business and also spoke about his new passion for studying Likkutei Sichos.
Also joining by zoom was Taub’s younger brother, animator and puppeteer, Dovid Taub, who spoke about how the mitzvah of shluach hakan (shooing away the mother bird) teaches us to say thank you to the Amazon robot Alexa.
Although the Motzoei Shabbos program, filmed at 321 Motion in Crown Heights, was scheduled to end at 1:00 AM, emcee and producer of the event, Chaim Kohn, announced that due to the end of daylight savings time, if the show went on until 2:00 AM it would again be 1:00 AM at that point. The show then continued for another hour.
Motzoei Shabbos Livestream Replay (4 hours)
On Sunday at 1:00 PM, the livestream continued. Jewish music superstar Avraham Fried was on hand to talk about the importance of joy and to bless the audience with birkas kohanim. Fried sang many of his greatest hits and was later joined on zoom by his brother Rabbi Manis Friedman who spoke about Moshiach and the important work of SoulWords.
Chazan Yanky Lemmer was next to join in the studio. He sang chazanus and niggunim and even joined in an impromptu duet with Chaim Kohn. Chazan Aryeh Leib Hurwitz sang a beautiful “My Yiddishe Mame” accompanied by Zalmy Schreiber on the keyboard.
Also joining the livestream was Usher Parnes from Lakewood who hosts the Let’s Get Real podcast as well as Menachem Benchemon who discussed some of the projects he has done with Rabbi Taub and Yochanon Polter from Detroit with Rabbi Shimon Russel from Eretz Yisrael who announced the opening of Fresh Start, a new program to address Jewish survivors of trauma.
Singer and composer Eli Schwebel was next to join the livestream. He spoke about overcoming shyness to become a singer and shared a brand new song “Whole With You,” based on recent personal experiences. With an hour left to go in the program, singer Benny Friedman entered the studio. Schwebel accompanied him on piano and their amazing energy together was unstoppable. When the campaign reached its initial $180,000 goal, Schwebel and Friedman announced they were going to continue singing until the new bonus goal of $200,000 would be reached. The Sunday program finally finished at close to midnight, eleven hours after it had begun.
Generous matchers for the campaign tripled all donations: Eli & Fraida Nash, Moshe & Yaffa Popack, David & Eda Schottenstein, Michal & Avi Singer, Getzy & Alisa Fellig, Mayer & Naomi Gniwisch, and Lakewood Friends of Rabbi Taub.
In addition, nine teams helped to bring in donations: The Crown Heights Shul, Footagers, Fresh Start, Mimush, the Schusterman Family, Tzivos Hashem led by Shimmy Weinbaum, Bais Shmuel led by Moshe Pinson, N’shei Chabad Newsletter led by Rishe Deitsch whose house was also the operations center for the volunteers, managed by Rabbi Taub’s daughter Teibel Taub. The most prolific team was From the Inside Out Podcast led by Rivkah Krinsky and Eda Schottenstein.
The Charidy campaign page is still open for donations if you would like to give at SoulWords.org/LIVE.
Sunday Livestream Replay (11 hours)
