Tanya Baal Peh Awards at Lubavitcher Yeshiva!

CROWN HEIGHTS, Brooklyn [CHI] — In what was the first of its magnitude, close to 200 parents, grand-parents and friends looked on, as a record breaking 78 Lubavitcher Yeshiva Students were honored for their achievements in learning Tanya Baal Peh. Basically every student who has mastered to memory an entire Perek, or more of Tanya, received an award.

The event opened with the inspiring words of Rabbi Shmuli Turk, who spoke of the importance of learning Tanya Baal Peh, now, in these final moments of golus.

Next, Rabbi Y. Simpson, principal of the Yeshivah enlightened the crowd with details of the program and how precious the study of Tanya is to the Rebbe.

He then introduced Rabbi Mordechai Kanelsky of Bris Avrohom, who is sponsoring the awards in memory of his daughter Bas-Sheva a”h.

Rabbi Kanelsky spoke of how parents buy all types of gifts for their children, but for his daughter, the only thing he can buy her is the Zchus of children studying Tanya in her memory.

Rabbi Kanelsky also spoke of how it was for him to learn Tanya Baal Peh, as a child, in communist Russia.

At this point several students were called up and asked to say parts of the Tanya they’ve learned baal peh.

Special mention was made of one class, in which every single student has memorized at least 3 prokim, and some who are already in the 5th perek. Obviously this is something that took much encouragement hard work on the part of their Rebbi; Rabbi Y. Zwiebel.

The Children then each were called up to receive their awards: A beautifully decorated certificate declaring the amount of Tanya they’ve memorized Baal Peh. A Tanya, as was given out by the Rebbe in Tof Shin Nun, still in its original plastic. Remarkably, these are the last of what was still leftover from what the Rebbe gave out and the next time we can get something like this will be when Moshiach comes. And finally each child received a brand new, crisp fresh, $5 bill.

Awards were followed by a large group picture. After which many parents were seen standing around saying L’chiam in honor of this momentous occasion.

The Yeshivah staff, as well as Rabbi Kanelsky, assures us, this is not the end of the program for this year. They insist that they will keep on giving out the same awards to every child who finishes an entire Perek from now until the end of the school year.

They also say that they will be having a huge raffle at the end of the year for all the new lines of Tanya learned by heart from now onwards.

Learning Baal Peh isn’t easy. It takes much toil on the part of the students, many words of encouragement and lots of support from teacher, parents and friends alike. It’s a team effort that brings about these tremendous results.

There was no exact number of lines learned Baal Peh available at the event, as it is changing constantly, as of this report there were more than 13,500 lines learned and tested on, this year in our Yeshiva.