Skverer Hasidim at the Wall in Jerusalem

I played in Jerusalem Wednesday night at my CD release party. Wonderful night and I'll write about that another time. What I want to relate now is what happened afterward in the "wee hours of morn!" I went to the Kotel. It must have been 1am or so and I was with a few friends. When we got there, there was a huge group of hasidim and we found out it was the Skverer Rebbe (also Square Rebbe) and his followers. A Twersky, his dynasty began in the 1700s in Chernobyl, as followers of the Baal Shem Tov. At one point their synagogue was located in Skverer in the Ukraine, hence the name of his title, the Skverer Rebbe. Now it's based in New Square in New York and the current Rebbe, whom I saw at the Kotel, has over 20,000 followers.


How they hung on to every word their Rebbe said. There were a few hundred of them, all singing and praying together. I grabbed by cell phone and took this little video.