Profiles

Dr. Benzion Wasserman

video  aired live 5.31.04

A short bio...

I was born in Detroit, MI and was Bar Mitzvah at my grandparent's Conservative synagogue. I attended a suburban public high school and then later The University of Michigan from which I graduated with a B.S. in Biology.  While I was in medical school I met Larry, a religious Jew from the Lower East Side.  He invited me for Shabbat. I finally accepted after about 6 months, and one thing led to another until I slowly but surely became more religious.   I started to wear a yarmulke and tzistzis (the 4 cornered garment with strings that remind us of G-d’s commandments).

Later on during my medical residency in Chicago, I joined a neighborhood softball game that included a few Chabadniks, Chassidim of the Lubavitcher Rebbe.  I played left field and 3^rd base.  The pitcher, one of the Chabadniks, had learned in yeshiva under Rabbi Lipskier in the seventies.  We got to know each other and he invited me for the Passover Seder. I had a wonderful time with his family and started visiting for Shabbat, too.

During my visits he would tell me stories about his yeshiva days. I listened.  His enthusiasm for Yeshiva and his teachers was infectious. It wasn’t long before I was contemplating to go to yeshiva too.

So it was that I interrupted my residency program after one year and went to yeshiva. The night I left for Yeshiva on January 8, '01 there was a full-fledged snowstorm raging. I drove my way through it and finally arrived after midnight to catch the tail end of my first farbrengen (a Chassidic gathering).   The next night I was off with the students to celebrate the wedding of one of the yeshiva’s former students. It’s hard to explain the full impact of these 2 days, but they certainly set the tone for the next 2 weeks. As I look back I can sense the same joy and enthusiasm for yeshiva as my friend's from Chicago. It was as if I felt my soul rising from a deep slumber.

About a year ago I met my wife during the first year of my current residency. We make our home now on the upper east side of Manhattan, which is close to my job and to the nearby Chabad House.

email  Benzion via the Yeshiva

at reply@visityeshiva.com