Hundreds attend Shloshim of R’ Mendel Shemtov

Click Here to listen to a recording of the Shloshim. [2:01, WMA, 17.9MB]

Thurdsday evening a crowd of over 500 family members, friends and acquaintances, including many mashpi’im and shluchim gathered in the second tent outside the Rebbe’s Ohel, in Queens New York. The shloshim of R. Mendel Shemtov started off with R. Levi Azimov, a shlich in South Brunswick NJ, asking the people gathered to “have a seat, and in English to make themselves comfortable”. He then went on to explain that although it’s not 30 days since the passing, the geziaras shloshim ends today.

“In general these types of events don’t follow a specific program”, he continued “so first-of-all we have to realize where and in front of whom we are standing. In Lubavitch we generally don’t make eulogies and the sort, we gathered here though and the reason why the family wanted to host this event here specifically is; as everyone knows, R. Mendel connected himself very strongly with this place. He bought a house, and even before he owned the house he would; come for shabbos and yom tov, make his car available for bochurim to come for shabbos, and his wife would make food for the bochurim coming for shabbos, understanding that this is now the Rebbe’s daled amos.”

More pictures in the Extended Article.

The program which lasted approximately two and a half hours, continued with R. Azimov calling on the oldest son of R. Mendel, a shlich in Tuscon AZ and menahel of manny regional camps there, to make a siyum culminating the learning of the entire mishnayos taking place across the globe. He went on to say that: “We came to farbreng, not to eulogise, but to gather inspiration, we will therefore start with a d’var malchus immediately following the siyum mishnayos, to be follwed by a seudas mitzvah.

Throughout the seuda that followed various people got up to speak about R. Mendel. For the entire sound track with all seven speeches. (link located at the top of the article).