Swan Lake, NY - The Ballooner Rebbe Rides In

Swan Lake, NY - Around the summer camps of Sullivan County, around the hospitals in Brooklyn and a few cancer wards, children know him as the Ballooner Rebbe.

Pulls up in his black SUV sparkling with slogans like "May Your Bubble Never Burst."
He's the man in the long black coat.
He wears a Shtrimal of black balloons.

The kids come running when the Ballooner Rebbe comes to town. "When you are full of hot air, you have to put it to good use," jokes the Ballooner Rebbe, Rebbe, Moshe Finer.

The Ballooner Rebbe blows his air into a tiny green plastic tube and it expands into some shape he starts twisting it. Voila, a bug-eyed beetle, a green spaceman with a ray gun, a smiling Daffy Duck, every shape imaginable flies out of his fingertips. Twists 'em in 30 seconds flat.
A clown once taught him how to twist balloon sculptures, ever since, he's been going around the area entertaining children. While at the Yeshiva in Rockland County, Moshe Finer got his nickname - the Ballooner Rebbe. As a dad, he twisted balloons to keep his four kids smiling. "I go all over with the balloons," he said. "It doesn't matter if it is 20 kids or 500 kids." Now it is 2 p.m. at the Hillcrest Estates in Swan Lake. The children leap from wooden benches and crowd around the table, where the Ballooner Rebbe is twisting a fish on a hook and line.

"Who did not get one?" a lady calls out. "Who did not get?"
"Meeeeeee," 50 little mouths squeak.

"He's famous," said one young woman in a long black dress. He's the Pied Piper of balloons.
They call him the Ballooner Rebbe.