Jewish Educational Media will begin to feature a new segment in its flagship Living Torah video collection. The new segment, titled My Encounter, will feature short stories and experiences with the Rebbe, as retold by the individuals who recall the events.

My Encounter with the Rebbe is an oral history project to record the life-story of the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory, through videotaped first-person testimony. Over the past several years, JEM has taken testimony from over one hundred persons across the world.

According to Rabbi Yechiel Cagen, producer of the My Encounter with the Rebbe series, “There is an incredible level of interest in every detail of the Rebbe’s life, but there exists no formal biography or record. And how could there be? It resides in the hearts and minds of tens of thousands who were impacted by him throughout the years. The goal of My Encounter is to record the testimony of these individuals from all walks of life. Through their lives, and through the Rebbe’s continued inspiration, the story continues to unfold.”

The inspiration for including segments from the My Encounter interviews in Living Torah was the result of a series of consultations among the JEM team to further improve the already immensely popular Living Torah series. “Living Torah is viewed by almost 100,000 people every week. At the same time, we wanted to raise awareness about the My Encounter with the Rebbe project. So it occurred to us to feature these segments in Living Torah,” says Living Torah’s Production Coordinator, Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro.

The stories are heartwarming and diverse. The first Living Torah disc features recollections by the former President of Uruguay; a young student in the 1940’s who borrowed a typewriter from the Rebbe; a child who grew up next door to the Rebbe in Crown Heights and a 90-plus year-old rabbi who was counseled by the Rebbe regarding his retirement.

JEM anticipates that the heightened exposure caused by featuring My Encounter segments in Living Torah will also attract more leads for interviews, as well as funding for the project.

For more about Living Torah visit www.LivingTorah.org

For more about the My Encounter with the Rebbe oral history project visit www.jemedia.org/MyEncounter