Irvine's Cast of Charachters: episode Breslav

Over on Dovbear's blog someone asked me in the comments about Irvine's Breslavers.

The local community of Breslav in Irvine is a very small group. Currently, the population is 1. As far as I know.

This guy, is an amazing person and I'm always feeling lucky to have him in our community. He and his wife often have the single people from UCI over for shabbos meals so many of my younger friends probably know him better than I do, but on with the story.

The story is that like most youts interested in spirituality pre 1990, he traveled to India and learned all things Indian. One day, while his peers were mediating and having images of 4 headed dragons, and other beasts, he medidtated and had images of Gefilte Fish. This sent him back to the U.S and into Judaism. Somehow he became breslav, and still goes to Ukraine ever Rosh Hashana/Yom Kippur.

The best part about his story, is that his step-son is a real litvak. Walking to shul you see the man in the long black coat and long white beard with giant payis, standing side by side with this sharp suit, black hat clean shaven guy. His step-son ended up getting married to the daughter of Irvine's ex Rabbi just months after the Rabbi and his family moved back to Israel.

That story right there is probabbly the story of most people who move to Irvine. They either leave for some abscure job (Irvine is way to expensive to live in) Or people move to Baltimore(so far everyone who has moved to balitomore has done so for thier child's education) (some reason people would rather move to balitmore than do what my parents did, and send them to L.A.- thats how evil L.A. is) , or they move to Israel.