Shemini Atzeres/Simchas Torah 5774

Rabbi YY Jacobson

• September 23, 2013
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• 19 Tishrei 5774
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  We Enter and Leave the World with Light

  Rabbi YY Jacobson

  • September 23, 2013

  They've Stolen the Steering Wheel

  An elderly Floridian called 911 on her cell phone to report that her car has been

  broken into. She is hysterical as she explains her situation to the dispatcher: "They've stolen the stereo, the steering wheel, the brake pedal and even the accelerator!" she cried. The dispatcher said, "Stay calm. An officer is on the way."

  A few minutes later, the officer radios in.

  "Disregard," he says. “She got in the back-seat by mistake."

  First Creation

  Once again, we begin the Torah anew, exploring the story of creation:

  בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹקים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ: וְהָאָרֶץ הָיְתָה תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ וְחשֶׁךְ עַל פְּנֵי תְהוֹם וְרוּחַ אֱלֹקִים מְרַחֶפֶת עַל פְּנֵי הַמָּיִם: וַיֹּ֥אמֶר אֱלֹקים יְהִ֣י א֑וֹר וַֽיְהִי־אֽוֹר

  In the beginning of God's creation of the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was astonishingly empty, and darkness was on the face of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the water.

  G-d said: “Let there be light.” And there was light.

  Light, then, was the first creation in Genesis. In fact, it was the only creation of the First Day.

  But this seems strange. Light, by definition, is not an entity in its own right. Its sole purpose is to illuminate other objects. It is the link between two other entities, the communication from its emitter to an observer or recipient. Light would have no function unless it is expressing the former and influencing the latter. So what sense is there in light as a first creation? Why create light on the first day if the first sighted creatures (animals) were not created until the fifth, the first beneficiaries of light (plants) were not created until the third, and the first luminary bodies in the universe were created only on the fourth day of creation?

  It would make sense that G-d first create other entities that require light, and then create the light?

  The bigger question is: Only on the fourth day does G-d create the sun, the moon and the stars. So what is the light created on day one of creation? We must conclude this is a different type of light all together. But what is it?

  Finally First

  The Lubavitcher Rebbe shared the following explanation. In a public address on Simchat Torah 1965, the Rebbe shared a deeply moving insight.

  Whenever a person creates a company, an organization, or even writes a book or an essay—he or she first has to articulate a “mission statement,” clearly defining what the purpose of this undertaking is. Many people “shoot from the hip,” first building their company or home without clearly defining the objective—and it comes back to haunt them as they have to often redo the work.

  Ditto with the author of creation. Before beginning the details of creation, G-d first defined the mission statement: “Let there be light”!

  Why a world? What's the point to this tremendous work of art, the function of this engineering marvel? What is the purpose of all life? Light.

  Our world on its own seems like just a meshugene jungle. Our job is to reveal in every situation, in every moment, and in every experience the light and meaning present there.

  No matter where we are in the world, and no matter what is going on in our world, our role is to discover the hidden light within the situation—the meaning, the purpose, the goodness, the opportunity, the Divine light embedded in it.

  When we confront ourselves with all of our own negative or challenging traits, our mission is: to find our inner light and to transform even our challenges and negative tendencies into light.

  To be alive is to be an ambassador of light. To bring light to every situation, and to every person, and to every experience.

  "Let there be light"! was not the crreation of physical light -- that takes place only on day four. Rather, it is the light that constitutes the core and purspose of everything, of every existance, of every moment of creation, the purpose of transforming darkness and concealment into light, crisis into opportunity, challenge into growth, matter into energy, earth into heaven.

  Illuminate the Dark and Cold World

  A distinguished Chossid, Rabbi Zalman Posner shared with me the following moving story. As a young man he was once summoned by the previous Chabad Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn. The year was 1949, and as Reb Zalman told it to me, it was hard to understand all the words of the Rebbe, so it was crucial to also watch his hand gestures.

  The Rebbe has requested from him to travel to a far community and become a rabbi and spiritual leader there. He hesitated. He, a young man with little babies, did not want to travel to such a remote community with almost no Jewish infrastructure.

  The Rebbe began dramatically, in Yiddish: When a neshomo, a soul, has to come down to Earth, it doesn’t want to go. Why? Because heaven is warm and comfortable, while life on Earth is cold and dark -“kalt un finzter”. What happens? In heaven the soul is ordered: “You must descend below.” And to demonstrate the point the Rebbe took his index finger and repeatedly pointed downward in a deliberate motion: You must go down below into the dark and cold world, and there you must bring light - “machen dort lichtig”.

  The Rebbe then continued and instructed Reb Zalman to travel on his mission.

  “To this day I never forget,” Reb Zalman told me, “the Rebbe’s finger pointing downward, ‘you must go down and illuminate the dark and cold world.’”…

  That very year, Reb Zalman would settle in Nashville, Tennessee, where he remained a Rabbi and educator for over half a century.

  The Rebbe validated that the world really is challenging, dark, and cold, but we were nevertheless sent here to illuminate our surroundings. More importantly, it inspires: We have the power to illuminate the world; ultimately light is stronger than darkness, and darkness is just there to be lit up. They key is to always remember this story, and our charge.

  So, the next time you face a dilemma, a challenge, the next time you encounter a disappointment, the next time you witness the pettiness, greed and corruption around you and wonder whether we can ever overcome this challenge – visualize the Rebbe’s finger pointing downward: “You must go down into the cold and dark world, and there you must bring light”.

  We just need to never forget our mission. In a way, this is the story of the very first few lines of the Torah.

  Sammy Rosenbaum

  I would like to share with you a story, related by Simon Wiesenthal, the famous Nazi hunter of Vienna.

  In 1965, a Mrs. Rawicz from the city of Rabka, Poland came into my office in Vienna to testify at a War Crimes trial. Mrs. Rawicz related to me a story about a Jewish boy, Sammy Rosenbaum who lived in her city Rebka. Sammy was nine years old in 1939 when the Germans entered Rabka, Poland and made life a nightmare.

  Sammy's father was a tailor who lived in two musty rooms and a tiny kitchen in an old house. But they were happy, Torah observant Jews. Every Friday night Sammy went with his father to the synagogue, after his mother and sister lit the Shabbat candles every Friday evening.

  In 1940 the SS set up a training center in a former Polish Army barracks near Rabka. The SS men were being hardened at Rabka so they would become insensitive to blood, to the agonizing cries of women and children. The job must be done with a minimum of fuss and maximum of efficiency. That was a Fuhrer-befehl—the Fuhrer's order.

  The Police school practiced executions in a clearing in the woods. SS students shot Jews and Poles rounded up by the Gestapo, while the commander of the training school SS Fuhrer Wilhelm Rosenbaum observed students' reactions with clinical detachment. If a student flinched, he was removed from the execution squad and sent to the front. These SS men practiced daily: Fifty, a hundred, even a hundred and fifty people a day.

  Early in 1942, SS Rosenbaum ordered all Rabka's Jews to appear at the local school to "register." The sick and the elderly would be deported, and the others would labor for the Wehrmacht.

  Toward the end of the registration, SS Fuhrer Rosenbaum appeared, accompanied by two deputies. SS Fuhrer Rosenbaum read through the list of names. "Suddenly, he beat his riding crop hard on the table," the woman from Rabka told Simon Wiesenthal. "We each winced as if we had been whipped." SS man Rosenbaum shouted: "What's this? Rosenbaum? Jews! How dare these ‘verdammte Juden’—cursed Jews—have my good German name?"

  He threw the list on the table and strode out. We knew the Rosenbaums would be killed; it was only a matter of time. People would be executed because their name was Rosenberg, or if their first name happened to be Adolf or Hermann. The Germans could not tolerate a Jew having their name.

  After the registration, Mrs. Rawicz worked in the police school as a charwoman. "When the SS men came back from the clearing in the woods I had to clean their boots covered with blood." It was a Friday morning in June 1942. Two SS men escorted "the Jew Rosenbaum," his wife, and their fifteen-year-old daughter Paula. Behind them came SS Fuhrer Rosenbaum.

  "The woman and the girl were marched around the schoolhouse and then I heard some shots," the witness said. "I saw SS man Rosenbaum beat our Rosenbaum with his riding crop, shouting: 'You dirty Jews, I'll teach you a lesson for having my German name!' Then the SS man took his revolver and shot Rosenbaum the tailor two or three times. Then the SS sent an unarmed kapo (Jewish policeman) to the quarry to get Sammy, the youngest of the Rosenbaum family, who was 12 at the time.

  The women told Simon Wiesenthal that the rest of the story she heard from the Kapo himself.

  The Kapo obeyed. In a horse drawn cart he went to the place where Sammy was working. He stopped and waved at Sammy Rosenbaum. Everybody in the quarry stared -- the Jewish laborers and the SS guards. Sammy put the stone in his hands on the truck, and walked toward the cart.

  Sammy looked up at the kapo. "Where are they?" he asked - "Father, Mother, and Paula. Where?" The kapo just shook his head.

  Sammy understood. "They're dead." He muttered, and spoke matter-of-factly: "Our name is Rosenbaum, and now you've come for me." He stepped up and sat down next to the kapo.

  The policeman had expected the boy to cry, perhaps run away. The Jewish kapo policeman was full of guilt. He asked himself, why he could not forewarn the boy, allow him to disappear in the woods, where the Polish underground might help him. Now it was too late. The SS guards were watching. There was no escape any longer.

  The kapo told Sammy what had happened that morning. Sammy asked if they could stop for a moment at his house. When they got there, he stepped down and walked into the front room, leaving the door open. He looked over the table with the half-filled teacups left from breakfast. He looked at the clock. It was half past three. Friday afternoon. Father, Mother and Paula were already buried. The kapo stood outside, watching what Sammy was doing. Slowly methodically, Sammy cleaned off the table and put the Shabbat candlesticks on it.

  "I could see Sammy from the outside," the kapo told Mrs. Rawicz. "He put on his yarmulka, kipa, and lit the candles. Two for his father, two for his mother, two for his sister. And he prayed. I saw his lips moving.” The kapo approached the home and he heard Sammy saying Kaddish for his mother, father, and sister. Kaddish is the prayer for the dead. His father Mr. Rosenbaum always said Kaddish for his dead parents, so Sammy knew the prayer. Now he was the only one left in his family. He stood quietly, looking at the six candles.

  The Jewish kapo policeman outside saw Sammy slowly shaking his head, as though he suddenly remembered something. Sammy went, placed two more candles on the table, took a match and lit them.

  "The boy knew he was already dead," the kapo told the woman. "He lit the candles and said Kaddish for himself."

  Sammy came out, and sat down near the kapo, who was crying. The boy didn't cry. The kapo wiped away his tears with the back of his hand and pulled the reins, but the tears kept coming. The boy didn't say a word. He gently touched the older man's arm, to comfort him…

  They rode to the clearing in the woods, where SS Fuhrer Rosenbaum and his students waited.

  "About time!" screamed the SS man.

  A few seconds later, Sammy’s holy soul was reunited with his mother, father and sister.

  Simon Wiesenthal concluded the story: “No tombstone bears Sammy Rosenbaum's name. No one might have remembered him if the woman from Rabka had not come into my office. But every year, one day in June, I light two candles for him and say Kaddish.”

  A few years ago, Mr. Wiesenthal passed on. So today we remember Sammy Rosenbaum—and his family.

  He Kindled a Flame

  When I read the story for the first time, my blood was fuming with rage—anger at those despicable German monsters, dressed in clean uniforms, and polished boots, enjoying Mozart and Wagner, but heartless to the cries of the holiest and noblest of men and woman walking on our planet. Even educated humans are capable of evil beyond our imagination! But today allow me to focus also on something else: Sammy’s nobility. Before he was murdered, he went and lit eight candles. And he said kaddish—for his loved ones and for himself. His final act in this world, was lighting a candle, generating light in a dark, hellish world.

  In the darkest of nights, in the midst of horrific evil and pain, Sammy declared the opening words of Genesis: Let There Be Light!

  And Sammy’s flame still burns in my heart and in all of our hearts. The SS monster Rosenbaum is gone; but the memory of Sammy, his light, his love, his passion, his sensitivity, his nobility, his clear mindedness, his sanctity, his being—will forever remained etched in my soul. Sammy will forever teach me that it is possible to light a candle even in the darkest moments.

  Beginning and End

  There is a moving tradition in many Jewish families. The Jewish mother as we know light a Shabbos candle each Friday before sunset. With every child born, the mother adds another candle.

  There is another Jewish custom. When a person passes on, we light a candle—for the Shivah, for the year, and then for the yartzeit.

  So you see my friends, when a Jewish child comes into the world we welcome it by increasing more light. As we enter the world, we add light into our world.

  And when the soul leaves, again we kindle a flame. As we leave the world, we add light into our world. For this remains the mission statement behind all: Let there be light!

   

  (Based on an address by the Rebbe, Simchat Torah 5726 (1965), Likkutei Sichos vol. 10 Bereishis)

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