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Torah · 7:50

The Story of Joe Mendelson, A"H

Oorah

An inspirational life story of Joe Mendelson and the miracles that transformed him.

What’s said in this shiur

The opening of this shiur, in Oorah’s own words — taken from the captions, so names and Hebrew terms may be approximate.

this is joe mendelsohn known by his friends and fans as uncle joe his physical presence alone he's a tall big man with a ready smile cannot be ignored this is a story that needs to be told the story starts in minnesota where joe was living working in his spare time riding a motorcycle with his gang i'll tell you the gang we weren't something that you would fear if you saw us on an isolated road even in the middle of the night in the middle of the night we really were a group of middle-aged people and uh we were really road for the excitement of just the ride feeling the air blowing through our hair or at least what's left of mine and it was more of a social run most of the time on a visit to his religious sister in baltimore joe got an inkling that there was something more on shabbos he went to shul and listened intently to the rabbi's speech he enjoyed the relaxed special atmosphere of the table atmosphere of the table the aristocratic feel of a day in which money making traffic phones and work were all banned from the agenda by the time the day was over joe had just one question for his sister like all this mumbo jumbo everything it's fantastic although i don't quite understand it a lot of it if i just want to talk about hashem you know i can't say all these prayers and stuff we talked about what's like is there some kind of simple phrase or something i can say just to communicate at least

Jump to a moment

  1. 0:05this is joe mendelsohn known by his friends and fans as uncle joe his physical presence
  2. 0:35in the middle of the night we really were a group of middle-aged people and uh
  3. 1:38i can say just to communicate at least my you know beliefs right now whenever you
  4. 2:08bike through town the warm sun shone down on him and lit up the scenery like
  5. 3:08and they did that was the first thing i did was wiggle my fingers and my
  6. 4:10to lakewood new jersey which he had heard was the jerusalem of america there he sought
  7. 4:40people had to pray long and hard to obtain but then the smooth ride hit another
  8. 5:41seemed inevitable one day when the situation had taken another bad turn joe realized that there
  9. 6:11for the to feel those or the long ones or the long words but i know
  10. 7:12of positive energy he was the perfect person to help jewish children discover what he has

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Before this shiur could appear, it was reviewed against one written standard — the same standard for every video in the library, no exceptions and no algorithm deciding on its own. It was reviewed on August 9, 2026. It is listed under Torah. If you believe something here does not belong, tell us — every challenge is read by a person.

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