The Hidden Heroes Behind the Historic 120 Tank Parade

Much has been spoken and written about the beautiful and historic 120 Mitzvah Tank Parade in honor of the Rebbe’s 120th birthday, but there is one group of people who deserve a special thank you.

By Rabbi Mendy Goldberg – 120 Tank Parade Driver Coordinator

Much has been spoken and written up about the beautiful and successful 120 Mitzvah Tank Parade in honor of the Rebbe’s 120th birthday.

With the major achdus expressed this year and an abundance of the Rebbe’s brachos, the parade was a smashing success with no less than 120 tanks passing by 770 on the parade, on their way towards Manhattan and all over NYC, to celebrate the auspicious day of 11 Nissan, and to prepare all Yidden for the upcoming Yomtov of Pesach by putting on Tefillin, giving out Matzoh etc.

Putting together such an awesome feat requires countless hours of hard work by motivated bochurim and yengeleit to make this parade the success that it was.

Aside from everyone else in charge of making this happen, starting from the experienced yearly parade organizers along with all the other top arrangers of the different departments and teams that made this parade a reality, there’s one major team worth mentioning, and that is:

The drivers.

It starts with the 3 Head-drivers: Dudi Ashkenazi, Moishy Serebryanski and Shmuel Hendel who worked tirelessly for weeks in advance, and spent many days and nights finding drivers, and working on the logistics of filling up the 120 slots needed for drivers.

What sometimes can go under the radar – is the many hours that the drivers gave away from their day, to do the pickups and dropoffs from/to the RV locations.

This year, due to the large amount of tank rentals, RVs were picked up from 9 locations from 4 different states, including locations as far as Albany, NY, Ottsville, PA and New Haven, CT.

Bochurim and yengeleit drove up to 7 hours round trip just to do a pickup of a tank, and up to another 7 hours for the returns on Tuesday night after the parade.

One group even returned to CH early Wednesday morning…

All this was besides those driving the day of the parade, which was also a full day of driving.

The success of this (and every year’s) parade, is largely due to the overwhelming effort and time put in by all these drivers to make it happen.

Also worth noting are the 15+ van drivers who drive the drivers, and Mendy Hirsch who arranged those rentals.

These van drivers take groups of tank drivers to their respective locations for pickup & dropoff and help facilitate the trips back and forth.

Last but not least, are the location heads that arrived at these RV locations hours in advance to make sure the rentals can go quick and smooth when the drivers come in to pick up the tanks.

All these 150+ drivers deserve a major Yasher Koach in making this parade the beautiful success that it was.

Thank you!!

דער רבי בלייבט נישט קיין בעל-חוב!