Chabad Madison @ UW Madison — May, 2011
I was in Madison for my sister’s college graduation and was able to briefly stop in for Shabbat lunch. The visit was so short that I didn’t even eat anything other than a piece of challah (this cuts out about 50% of my normal blog content!).
The house was very spacious — a front living room area (with a random guy sleeping on the couch mid-day), the main dining room area that has 3 very long tables, and the back kitchen area on the first floor. The dining room had around 40 people, probably about half students.
The Rabbi had 2 kids, the first a baby who he was holding and the second maybe 4 years old who was consistently doing dances in between the U-shaped 3 dining tables. Both very cute!
The Rabbi seemed extremely nice and had me and my family sit right across from him so we could talk for a few minutes. He was very hospitable and kept inviting us to other events and and was really pushing us to eat more.
The Rabbi called on a young boy who was just Bar Mitzvah’d to speak about the weekly portion. It was called Behar and he did a nice job talking about the importance of not lending money with interest in order to show that the ultimate form of giving is when it’s done purely for the good of others. Instead of benefiting by gaining interest, you benefit by being proud of yourself for being selfless.
The last part felt most applicable to me — I’m learning that generosity more often than not results in feeling good about yourself and in many cases can even lead to a special connection that otherwise wouldn’t have existed if a more selfish route (such as charging interest) were taken.
Somehow the young boy who did the d’var Torah was the Rabbi’s brother!! I assumed the Rabbi was in his 30s, but the beards can be deceptive and I believe the Rabbi is the oldest and that was his youngest sibling. That was pretty crazy, yet awesome, to figure out.
In future, if I am at a Chabad for Shabbat, I will be sure to include a brief lesson from the Torah portion of that week.
