A rav who teaches with Chassidic fire
Rabbi Yussie Zakutinsky is a rav on Long Island whose shiurim have found an audience well beyond his own kehilla. His teaching is marked by the language and warmth of Chassidus — he draws readily on Chassidic thought and machshava to open up a verse or an idea from the inside. Rather than only explaining what a text says, he presses toward what it asks of a person's inner life, which gives his classes an unmistakable emotional charge.
That approach shows in the very titles of his shiurim. A class called "Keeping Warm With the Fire of the Torah" is characteristic: heat, light, and closeness to Hashem are recurring images. His listeners tend to describe the experience less as attending a lecture than as being invited into a way of feeling Torah, where the intellectual point and the spiritual one arrive together.
The parsha and the festivals
A large part of Rabbi Zakutinsky's library follows the weekly parsha and the Jewish year. His shiur on Parashas Vayigash takes up Mashiach ben Yosef and Mashiach ben David and the shape of the ultimate geulah; his Parashas Shemos class turns on the theme of longing for redemption. On Chanukah he connects the light of the menorah to the light of the seven days of creation, reaching for the deeper current beneath the holiday.
He treats the moadim as more than dates to observe. On Asarah B'Teves he speaks of living on both sides of the fence — the balancing act of holding grief and hope at once — turning a fast day into a meditation on how a Jew carries tension in avodas Hashem. In his hands each point on the calendar becomes an entry into a larger conversation about redemption and the inner work it demands.
Leadership, redemption and the inner life
Beyond the calendar, Rabbi Zakutinsky returns often to themes of Jewish leadership and geulah. His series on the different types of Jewish leadership includes a class on the Kohen Gadol as a figure set apart — a position of otherworldliness — using the role to explore what it means to lead a people toward holiness. These shiurim treat leadership not as politics but as a spiritual station.
Running through all of it is the language of Chassidus, Navi, and Jewish philosophy woven together. A listener who works through his shiurim comes away not with a stack of facts but with a vocabulary for the inner life — for longing, for balance, for the fire that keeps a Jew close to Torah. That is the through-line that ties his parsha, his moadim, and his leadership classes into one voice.
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At a glance
Key takeaways
- Rabbi Yussie Zakutinsky is a Long Island rav who teaches the parsha and the moadim through the lens of Chassidus and machshava.
- His festival shiurim reach for the inner meaning — linking Chanukah's light to creation and turning Asarah B'Teves into a lesson in balance.
- He returns often to geulah and Mashiach, including a Vayigash shiur on Mashiach ben Yosef and Mashiach ben David.
- His series on Jewish leadership treats roles like the Kohen Gadol as spiritual stations, not political ones.
- Search FilteredTube for kosher, approved Torah video — the catalog grows every day.