One year after its launch, Derher’s Among Chassidim podcast has become a familiar part of the Chassidishe media landscape, bringing listeners into honest, unscripted conversations with Chassidim from across the world.

Hosted by Rabbi Yossi Kamman, director of A Chassidisher Derher, the podcast was launched with a simple idea: to let listeners feel as if they are sitting among Chassidim, listening in as they speak openly about the Rebbe, Chassidus, shlichus, history, and life as a Chossid in dor hashvi’i.

Over the past year, that idea has struck a deep chord.

Wherever Rabbi Kamman travels, listeners stop him to share how much the podcast has meant to them. Some are long-time Derher readers. Others may not naturally connect to a written magazine, but have found themselves drawn in through the warmth and immediacy of a conversation. For many, the podcast has opened a new doorway into the personalities, memories, and lived experiences of Chassidim they may never have heard from otherwise.

From the start, Among Chassidim was never meant to be a polished interview show. Its strength is the opposite. The conversations are raw, real, and wide-ranging, with the feeling of a farbrengen more than a formal program. Guests speak from memory, from experience, and from the heart.

The result has been a growing library of conversations that capture the depth and color of Chassidishe life.

In one episode, Rabbi Yisroel Noach Vogel relived the awe and warmth of Tishrei with the Rebbe, describing the overwhelming feeling of standing before the Rebbe, and the unforgettable moments of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Neilah, and Napoleon’s March.

In another, Rabbi Dovid Margolin offered a rich and eye-opening look at the story of Yud Beis Tammuz, explaining the complex world of Soviet Jewry, the ideological war against Yiddishkeit, and the Frierdiker Rebbe’s fearless leadership in the face of Communist oppression.

A conversation with Avraham Fried brought listeners into a deeply personal side of the singer’s life and career, as he shared how the Rebbe encouraged him from the very beginning to see his music not merely as a career, but as a shlichus.

In honor of Yud-Aleph Nissan, Rabbi Shais Taub joined the podcast for a discussion on connecting to the Rebbe through learning Igros Kodesh, showing how the Rebbe’s letters offer not only answers, but an entire way of seeing and approaching life.

Other episodes have touched on shlichus in far-flung places, memories from 770, the writing and preserving of the Rebbe’s Torah, the meaning of hiskashrus after Gimmel Tammuz, chinuch, mivtzoim, shleimus ha’aretz, Moshiach, and the daily avodah of living as a Chossid today.

Together, the episodes form something larger than a podcast archive. They are an ongoing conversation, one Chossid after another adding his voice, his memories, his perspective, and his personal experience.

When Among Chassidim launched in Iyar last year, Derher described it as a way to break the limits of the written magazine format and allow for deeper, more expansive conversations than can fit on a printed page. A year later, that promise has become a reality.

For a generation eager to hear, understand, and feel the living world of Dor Hashvi’i, Among Chassidim has become a place to listen in.

New episodes are released weekly and are available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, 24Six, or at Derher.org/amongchassidim.

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