Elie Wiesel and the Rebbe
I Shall Teach You How to Sing: The Rain, the Sun, and the Parent
- July 7, 2016
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- 1 Tamuz 5776
Rabbi YY Jacobson
137 viewsElie Wiesel and the Rebbe
I Shall Teach You How to Sing: The Rain, the Sun, and the Parent
Rabbi YY Jacobson
- July 7, 2016
A Talmudic Story
As we explore in the weekly portion the role of the Jewish leader, and as we commemorate the 22nd yartzeit of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (who passed away on 3 Tamuz 5754, June 12, 1994), let us study a story of the Talmud.
סנהדרין קא, א: ת"ר כשחלה ר' אליעזר נכנסו ארבעה זקנים לבקרו ר' טרפון ור' יהושע ור' אלעזר בן עזריה ור' עקיבא נענה ר' טרפון ואמר טוב אתה לישראל מטיפה של גשמים שטיפה של גשמים בעולם הזה ורבי בעולם הזה ובעולם הבא נענה ר' יהושע ואמר טוב אתה לישראל יותר מגלגל חמה שגלגל חמה בעולם הזה ורבי בעולם הזה ובעולם הבא נענה רבי אלעזר בן עזריה ואמר טוב אתה לישראל יותר מאב ואם שאב ואם בעולם הזה ורבי בעולם הזה ובעולם הבא נענה רבי עקיבא ואמר חביבין יסורין אמר להם סמכוני ואשמעה דברי עקיבא תלמידי שאמר חביבין יסורין.
The Talmud relates:
When Rabbi Eliezer—Rabbi Eliezer ben Hurcanus was one of the most prominent sages, of the 1st and 2nd centuries, disciple of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, colleague of Raban Gamaliel, whose sister he married, is the sixth most frequently mentioned sage in the Mishnah—fell ill, four of the sages, his contemporaries and students, came to visit him.
“You are better for the Jewish people than a drop of rain,” Rabbi Tarfon told Rabi Eliezer. “For a drop of rain is [beneficial only] in this world, while [the Rebbe benefits us by teaching Torah] in this world and the world to come.”
“You are better for Israel than the orb of the sun,” Rabbi Yehoshua said to Rabbi Eliezer. “For the orb of the sun is in this world, whereas [the Rebbe provides light] in this world and the world to come.”
“You are better for Israel than a father and mother, for a father and mother [create life] in this world, whereas [the Rebbe creates life] in this world and the world to come.”
This is a strange story. The first three remarks also seem out of place. They are all sitting by their master who is ill. One students compares him to rain; the second one to the sun; the third one to a father and mother. Why? Was this a eulogy at the funeral?
In truth, each one of these sages was providing his definition of what a Rebbe is, what a leader is. What is his role? What’s his function? What purpose does he serve?
Actualizing Potential
Rabbi Tarfon compared a Rebbe to drops of rain, explaining that Rabbi Eliezer is superior even to rain, because the benefits lasts for both worlds. What is the function of rain? The earth has enormous potential for vegetation and produce, yet without the descending rain, all of its potential would remain dormant. It would just remain dirt, something to step on and trample at. It is the rain that reveals and actualizes the incredible possibilities contained within the soil.
This, says Reb Tarfon, is the contribution of his master Rabbi Eliezer, and of every genuine Rebbe of the Jewish people—serving as droplets of rain for the Jewish people and for the world, showing us the power and potential, the incredible energy, which lay in us, pointing us to a deeper, higher, and nobler self; ensuring that our true selves, our destinies and possibilities, don’t die within us.
Do More
How appropriate a description of the Lubavitcher Rebbe.
Perhaps Rabbi Adin Even Yisroel (Steinsaltz), one of the greatest Jewish scholars and authors living today, put it best in a lecture delivered a numbers of years ago in Boston, on the Rebbe’s yartziet. He shared the following experience:
I once wrote a letter to the Rebbe. I tried to describe what I was doing, tried to explain that one project I'm involved with is enough work to occupy me all day, every day. There was also a second project, which was also enough work to fill my entire day. And then there was a third undertaking which was a full day's work. I told the Rebbe that I find it hard to carry on with them all, and that every day is more difficult than the one before, because there is just so much. So what should my priorities be? What should I cut out? This is the letter I wrote. So he responded -- this is practically the last letter I received from the Rebbe -- the Rebbe's answer was, "continue all these things that you are doing and add more to all of them."
What a strange answer! Seemingly insensitive.
You know the famous story about the farmer who comes to the rabbi complaining about his small house so full of children. It's unbearable. So the rabbi tells him to take a goat into his house, a noisy, smelly, dirty goat. Very soon the farmer comes back to the rabbi. "Every problem I had is worse!" he cries. The rabbi tells him to take the goat out. So he takes the goat out of his house and soon he's back to tell the rabbi what a big wonderful house he now has.
A very old story but what the Rebbe did was similar and yet quite different. When people complained about how hard their work was he would give them more to do. When they complained how terrible that was he would give them even more. He told them to add the goat, and them he'd give them camels to put in their house! That was the way he worked all the time. Whenever anybody complained about their inability to cope or the hard times they endured, he would suggest "take on something more."
How could he overburden people like this? It was not because he was insensitive. It was because he saw in people the potential for infinity. And he dreamt to actualize it.
The Sun
Reb Yehoshua says something more. A Rebbe is like the sun. What is the function of the sun? To confer light and warmth upon our planet. This, says Rabbi Yehoshua, is the purpose of the Rebbe. In a confusing world, one needs vision, direction, the clarity to navigate the winding pathways if life and dark stumbling blocks of one’s journey. Like the glowing sun, the Rebbe offers direction and guidance, and even warmth and passion.
There is, perhaps, no better example for this than the story of Noble Laureate Elie Wiesel, the author of Night, the eloquent “witness” of the Holocaust, who passed away, last Shabbos, on 26 Sivan 5776, July 2, 2016, at the age of 87.
It is a story that needs to be told.
Elie Wiesel
Eliezer Wiesel was born on Sept. 30, 1928, in Sighet, Rumania, a small commercial town on the present-day border of the Soviet Union. He was born on Simchat Torah, when we celebrate our study and relationship with Torah to a family connected to the Vishnitz Chassidic dynasty.
''During the day I studied the Talmud, and at night I ran to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the Temple,'' he recounted in ''Night.''
Isolated in the Carpathian Mountains, Sighet (which was part of Hungary from 1940 to 1945) almost escaped the cataclysm engulfing Jews elsewhere in Europe; not until Passover week of 1944 did the Nazis and their collaborators deport the town's 10,000 Jews. Wiesel's father and mother and the youngest of his three sisters, Tziporah, died in the concentration camps. His mother and sister were sent to the gas chambers upon arrival. He would speak of the eight words repeated by the Germans without emotion: “Women to the right; men to the left”—eight words that sent millions to their deaths. His father was beaten by an SS guard and died just a short while before liberation. (His two other sisters, Hilda and Batya survived. Batya died eight years ago; Hilda lives in France.)
Wiesel was 16 years old when he was liberated in April 1945.
He has returned to Sighet only once, 20 years after being deported. The town's so-called ''Jews' Street'' had been renamed ''Street of the Deported,'' and it was deserted. In the kitchen of Wiesel's old house, where once hung a photograph of a Chassidic leader, a cross dangled. He went to the family garden and unearthed the bar-mitzvah watch he had buried as the Nazis advanced, only to find it ''covered with dirt and rust, crawling with worms, unrecognizable, revolting.'' The discovery, he has written, was ''the epilogue to my childhood.''
The Book Night
His first book Night, written in the 50s, was rejected by dozens of US publishers. At the time, people were uninterested in the Holocaust. Finally, in July 1959, Hill & Wang purchased ''Night,'' paying Wiesel an advance of $100. In the first 18 months after its publication in the United States, ''Night'' sold only 1,046 copies. Today it has sold more than ten million copies.
I once heard from Wiesel this funny story. He remembers being asked to lecture about ''Night'' to a Jewish men's club in 1960. He prepared his talk for two months, but on the way to the lecture ''it hit me they must have made a mistake,'' and did not realize the book was a concentration-camp memoir - hardly a popular subject. So Wiesel told the audience his book was a romance set in an earlier century. No one objected, because no one had read or even heard of the true ''Night.''
Elie Wiesel, as so many survivors, was a haunted soul. In Wiesel’s own devastating words on his book, Night:
“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed.
Never shall I forget that smoke.
Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.
Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever.
Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live.
Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.
Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.”
Quite a number of Holocaust survivors took their lives. Wiesel himself has contemplated it. He recalls two instances in the early 1950's, both times standing alone beside the railing of ships at sea. ''I don't swim,'' Wiesel says, ''and I looked into the ocean and felt the attraction, feeling the depth of all that nothingness. It's Freudian - what he called the oceanic feeling. We are tired. I am tired. My imagination's tired. How can I go on speaking? And awakening? And altering? To just lie down, it feels so easy.''
The Rebbe’s Influence
But Wiesel decided instead to embrace life, love and humanity. And, as he himself maintained, this was in no small part as a result of his relationship with the Rebbe. They spent hours together in private conversation and developed an impressive correspondence. He often came to the Rebbe’s public gatherings and consulted the Rebbe.
“My first visit to his court lasted almost an entire night,” writes Elie Wiesel in his Memoirs regarding how he came to Brooklyn, sometime in the early ’60s, in order to make the acquaintance of the Lubavitcher Rebbe.
The Rebbe had read some of my works in French, and asked me to explain why I was angry with G‑d. ‘Because I loved Him too much,’ I replied. ‘And now?’ he asked. ‘Now too. And because I love Him, I am angry with Him.’ The Rebbe maintained: ‘To love G‑d is to accept that you do not understand Him.’
‘Rebbe,’ I asked, ‘how can you believe in G‑d after Auschwitz?’ He looked at me in silence for a long moment, his hands resting on the table. The he replied, in a soft, barely audible voice: In whom should you believe after Auschwitz? In man? If there is any faith left at all, it must be only in G-d.[1]
In 1964, Wiesel published his second novel, The Gates of the Forest, which includes a detailed account of that meeting in the Rebbe’s quarters. The account is grueling, heartbreaking, painfully vulnerable, and at some points just shocking.
In Wiesel’s own account, at one point, when Wiesel accuses the Rebbe of indifference to the pain of Auschwitz, the Rebbe says: “Do you think that I don’t know it? That I have no eyes to see, no ears to hear? That my heart doesn’t revolt?”
In his book of memoirs “All the Rivers Run to the Sea,” the Noble Prize tells the following episode.
At my first visit to the the Lubavitcher Rebbe's court [at 770 Eastern Parkway, in Brooklyn, NY]... I had informed him at the outset that I was a Chasid of Vishnitz, not Lubavitch, and that I had no intention of switching allegiance.
“The important thing is to be a chasid,” he replied. “It matters little whose.”
One year, writes Wiesel, during Simchas Torah, I visited Lubavitch, as was my custom.
“Welcome,” he said. “It's nice of a chasid of Vishnitz to come and greet us in Lubavitch. But is this how they celebrate Simchas Torah in Vishnitz?”
“Rebbe,” I said faintly, “we are not in Vishnitz, but in Lubavitch.”
“Then do as we do in Lubavitch,” he said.
“And what do you do in Lubavitch?"
"In Lubavitch we say L’chayim.”
“In Vishnitz, too.”
“Very well. Then say L’chayim.”
He handed me a glass filled to the brim with vodka.
“Rebbe,” I said, “in Vishnitz a Chasid does not drink alone.”
“Nor in Lubavitch,” the Rebbe replied.
He emptied his glass in one gulp. I followed suit.
“Is one enough in Vishnitz?” the Rebbe asked.
“In Vishnitz,” I said bravely, “one is but a drop in the sea.”
“In Lubavitch as well.”
He handed me a second glass and refilled his own. He said L’chaim, I replied L’chaim, and we emptied our glasses.
“You deserve a brocha (blessing),” he said, his face beaming with happiness. “Name it.”
I wasn't sure what to say.
“Let me bless you so you can begin again.”
“Yes, Rebbe,” I said. “Give me your brocha.”
And the Rebbe blessed Eli Wiesel to begin his life anew. The man who was still tormented by the horrors of “Night” (the name of his first book), where he saw the most horrific sights the human eye could endure, the individual who refused to marry and have children feeling that it is unfair to bring Jewish children into such a cruel and brutal world, ultimately rebuilt his life from the ashes, creating a family, and becoming a spokesman for hope and conscience the world over.
Longest Letter
The longest private letter of the Rebbe was one written to Wiesel, in 1965, discussing how one can believe in G-d after Auschwitz. In it the Rebbe urged Wiesel to stop living in the shadow of death and to blow Hitler a final punch by getting married and building a Jewish family.
“I do not care of your child will be a Vishnizer Chassid or a Lubavitcher, or just a regular Jew,” the Rebbe humorously concluded the letter.
In 1969 he married. The Rebbe sent a beautiful bouquet of flowers to the wedding, which took place in the Ramban’s shul in Jerusalem. In 1972 his wife Marion and he gave birth to their son, named after his father, Elisha.
''When Marion, my wife, told me she was pregnant, my first feeling was fear. What am I doing? The world is not worthy of children. I was frantic. But the next wave was joy. Will it be a boy or a girl? Whose name will it have - my mother's or my father's?
''I must confess, I felt something special when I carried him for the circumcision. The circumcision is a very mystical rite. The rabbi had a very beautiful way of putting it. He said, 'A name has returned.'' ' Wiesel pauses. ''A name has returned. When I was called to read the Torah by name, Eliezer ben-Shlomo, now there was Shlomo ben-Eliezer. For weeks and days and months, I would carry him in my arms. I saw myself when I was a child.
On the day of his son’s bris, he writes, friends sent gifts. “But the most moving gift came from an unexpected place.” It was a beautiful bouquet of flowers sent from the Lubavitcher Rebbe.
The same year, he published his book Souls On Fire, about the early Chassidic masters and their spiritual passion. The Rebbe wrote him a long letter, congratulating him for the fact that he decided to take the ultimate revenge in Hitler, by not only writing about the destruction of European Jewry, but also about the spiritual majesty of Judaism, inspiring young Jews to embrace Torah and Mitzvos.
To Cry Again
One of the deepest moments of their encounters happened when At the end of a long soul-searching session with the Rebbe, Eli told the Rebbe: “You asked me once what I expect of you, and I said I expect nothing. I was mistaken. I do want something from you. Make me able to cry.” Like many survivors, Wiesel could not cry. Wiesel recalls how the death of his father in Buchenwald had traumatized his capacity for tears. The light of his world was extinguished, he writes. “But I did not cry, and this is what causes me the most grief: this inability to cry. The heart had petrified, the fountainhead of tears had dried up.”
So Eli Wiesel pleaded with the Rebbe, “Make me able to cry!”
And the Rebbe’s response? Did the Rebbe put his arms around the broken man and allow him to experience his long-awaited catharsis? Did he come forth with his famous paternal love, and allow Wiesel to weep on his shoulder and mourn for the father lost in Buchenwald?
Again the Rebbe responded in an unexpected manner. Yes, he did encourage Wiesel to find the needed catharsis for his grief. But not in weeping. Because weeping is not an adequate form of catharsis for the colossal suffering of Auschwitz and Buchenwald.
The Rebbe shook his head.
“That’s not enough. I shall teach you to sing,” the Rebbe said.
“No, crying is no use. You must sing.”[2]
And sing he did. Over the next forty years, Eli Wiesel not only cried for the 6 million victims, but also sung their melodies, recounted their dreams, taught their ideals, shared their passions, wrote of their dreams, and ensured their ballad would not go silent.
Making Up with G-d
In an up-ed for the NY Times, published before Rosh Hashanah 1997, Wiesel wrote:
What about my faith in you, Master of the Universe?
I now realize I never lost it, not even over there, during the darkest hours of my life. I don't know why I kept on whispering my daily prayers, and those one reserves for the Sabbath, and for the holidays, but I did recite them, often with my father and, on Rosh ha-Shanah eve, with hundreds of inmates at Auschwitz. Was it because the prayers remained a link to the vanished world of my childhood?
But my faith was no longer pure. How could it be? It was filled with anguish rather than fervor, with perplexity more than piety. In the kingdom of eternal night, on the Days of Awe, which are the Days of Judgment, my traditional prayers were directed to you as well as against you, Master of the Universe. What hurt me more: your absence or your silence?
In my testimony I have written harsh words, burning words about your role in our tragedy. I would not repeat them today. But I felt them then. I felt them in every cell of my being. Why did you allow if not enable the killer day after day, night after night to torment, kill and annihilate tens of thousands of Jewish children? Why were they abandoned by your Creation? These thoughts were in no way destined to diminish the guilt of the guilty. Their established culpability is irrelevant to my ''problem'' with you, Master of the Universe. In my childhood I did not expect much from human beings. But I expected everything from you.
Where were you, God of kindness, in Auschwitz? What was going on in heaven, at the celestial tribunal, while your children were marked for humiliation, isolation and death only because they were Jewish?
These questions have been haunting me for more than five decades. You have vocal defenders, you know. Many theological answers were given me, such as: ''God is God. He alone knows what He is doing. One has no right to question Him or His ways.'' Or: ''Auschwitz was a punishment for European Jewry's sins of assimilation and/or Zionism.'' And: ''Isn't Israel the solution? Without Auschwitz, there would have been no Israel.''
I reject all these answers. Auschwitz must and will forever remain a question mark only: it can be conceived neither with God nor without God. At one point, I began wondering whether I was not unfair with you. After all, Auschwitz was not something that came down ready-made from heaven. It was conceived by men, implemented by men, staffed by men. And their aim was to destroy not only us but you as well. Ought we not to think of your pain, too? Watching your children suffer at the hands of your other children, haven't you also suffered?
As we Jews now enter the High Holidays again, preparing ourselves to pray for a year of peace and happiness for our people and all people, let us make up, Master of the Universe. In spite of everything that happened? Yes, in spite. Let us make up: for the child in me, it is unbearable to be divorced from you so long.
Light and Warmth
Here was the Rebbe embodying the gift of the sun: to give vision, direction, and moral and spiritual guidance to a generation so deeply tormented and confused, for good reason. Light and warmth—this is what the Rebbe gave Elie Wiesel and hundreds of thousands of more people, directly, and indirectly. With his brilliance, genius, mastery of sciences and of course deep faith in G-d and in man, the Rebbe helped people find their way, their soul, their light.
Eli Wiesel once shared this Chassidic tale: “Somewhere,” said Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, “there lives a man who asks a question to which there is no answer; a generation later, in another place, there lives a man who asks another question to which there is no answer either—and he doesn’t know, he cannot know, that his question is actually an answer to the first.”
The Parent
The Rebbe was like rain. The Rebbe was like the sun. But it was Rabbi Eliezer ben Azarya who took it to the next level. The Rebbe is like a father and mother. The rain and sun, as invaluable as they are, constitute forces above us, outside of us. But my father and mother are not outside of me; rather, they constitute my essence. I own their genes, their DNA. A part of their soul live in me. On some level, we are one with our parents, even after we grow up and become independent.
A real Rebbe, says Rabbi Eliezer ben Azarya, is not only a mentor, a source of comfort, light and guidance; a Rebbe is connected to every single Jew. Like a father and mother, his soul is innately bound up with every Jewish soul, feeling them, experiencing them, thinking of them, caring for them, and simply one with them.
The Fold
Rabbi Mordechai Pinchas Teitz (1908–1995) was the well-respected, innovative leader of the Jewish community in Elizabeth, New Jersey, for many decades. Rabbi Pinchas Teitz made twenty-two trips to Russia in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. Even during the height of the Communist empire and the secret police, he managed to secure permission for his visits. He had good contacts in the government, and they trusted him. Nevertheless, he was often able to utilize his visits to secretly smuggle in important Jewish paraphernalia, such as tefillin and prayer books, for the benefit of the oppressed Jews of the USSR.
Although Rabbi Teitz was born, raised and educated in Lithuania and its yeshivot, which rarely associated with Chabad chassidim, it was impossible to be involved in Jewish life in the Soviet Union in those days and not laud the activities of the Chabad chassidim, who had dedicated their lives to the preservation of Torah Judaism there. Thus, many times he merited to bring objects from the Lubavitcher Rebbe to his chassidim in Russia, and vice versa.
One summer, when he was preparing for another trip, a representative of the Rebbe showed up at his house, bringing him a package of prayer books, Bibles and several pairs of tefillin. This was no surprise; he was already used to, and even expected, the arrival of an emissary and the usual package.
But this time the messenger from the Rebbe also took out a small-sized volume of Tanya, the foundational book of Chabad teachings, and handed it to the rabbi. It was the Rebbe’s personal Tanya. He explained that the Rebbe asked that Rabbi Teitz take it and carry it with him while in Russia—but didn’t say whom to give it to.
“I was astonished,” related Rabbi Teitz afterwards. “To cooperate with the Rebbe to deliver basic Jewish necessities to the deprived Jews of Russia was one matter, but to go with a copy of Tanya in my luggage that had the Rebbe’s name inscribed in it? To Russia? It seemed unnecessarily dangerous. The KGB knows very well what a Tanya is and despised the name Schneerson which was in the Tanya. What plausible explanation could I give if it were detected?”
In the end, he decided to take it. If the Rebbe was making such an unusual request of him, he must have a good reason.
On the third day of his stay in Moscow, in the evening, while he was walking back to his hotel from the Great Synagogue after the evening prayer, two young men suddenly approached him as he passed through a dark side street. They took him by the arms and forced him to quickly go into a nearby parked car. The rabbi was taken by surprise and, of course, frightened. Were they the KGB? Was this a kidnapping?
His fears were soon dissipated, however, as his two “snatchers” turned out to be local Chabad chassidim. They apologized for the rough treatment, explaining that this was the only means by which they could possibly bring him to a safe house to talk to them without arousing suspicion, and they needed to discuss urgent matters with him.
Only after they were safely in the house did the two introduce themselves. They said they had investigated and discovered that he could be trusted, and what they wanted of him was that he should deliver a message to the Lubavitcher Rebbe for each of them. They had major life decisions to make, for which they needed the Rebbe’s input, and they couldn’t wait for an official emissary.
The older one had recently found out that the KGB was actively pursuing him. He wanted to know whether the Rebbe thought he should flee Moscow and move to another city, or remain, despite the obvious danger, in order to maintain and further his important educational activities in the Jewish underground, of which the Rebbe was already aware.
The second, younger man wanted the Rebbe’s advice whether he should apply for an emigration visa to Israel. Recently, a number of such requests had been approved. On the other hand, he currently held an excellent position as a top engineer, and as soon as he would submit his application, he would be fired from his job; if the request was refused, he would be left without any means of support. He and his family would starve.
Rabbi Teitz was very moved by the encounter, and especially by the fiery dedication of the two chassidim. He promised to commit to memory their names, their mothers’ names and their questions for the Rebbe, because it would be much too dangerous to write them down and have such a paper in his possession.
After this, the three men relaxed and engaged in conversation, marveling at the differences between their lives. The rabbi happened to mention that soon before his departure from home, the Rebbe had given him a copy of Tanya to keep with him on the trip, but hadn’t explained what should be done with it.
The eyes of the two chassidim opened wide. “Do you mean to say that you have this Tanya from the Rebbe in your possession? Now? Here?” they exclaimed enthusiastically.
Rabbi Teitz silently took the Tanya from his coat pocket and showed it to them. They grabbed it from him and eagerly examined it from all sides and angles. Their increasing excitement was palpable. Clearly, they were overjoyed to be holding a book that less than a week ago had been in the Rebbe’s own holy hands.
While fondling the book, one of them shouted out in amazement. Too excited to speak, he pointed to what their intense scrutiny had uncovered: a page had been crimped by folding down the top corner, as a person sometimes does in place of a bookmark.
They opened to the page and were awestruck by the very first words on the page in the Tanya: “He is extremely pressed for time, and finds it utterly impossible to delay” (Tanya Kunres Acharon, p. 162a, top line).
“That’s it! That’s my answer from the Rebbe!” cried out the older chassid, visibly shaking with emotion. “The Rebbe is telling me to hurry and escape from here.”
Rabbi Teitz, not a Chabadnik, felt this was absurd. You decide a fateful question based on a fold in a page of a book by a man who knows not what is going on?! He remained silent, but felt this was absurd.
The younger chassid quickly picked up the book and eagerly examined it even more closely, hoping to find another crimped page. And there was one! Again they were overwhelmed.
Here is what that second page with a fold read: “They said, we will enter the Land. From where was their faith in G-d’s ability [to bring them into the land] restored?” (Tanya ch. 29, p. 37b).
“That’s the answer for me!” he shouted excitedly. “I should apply to make aliyah to the Holy Land now.”
Again, the American Rabbi felt this was strange.
The two pleaded with Rabbi Teitz to allow them to keep the book. He refused, saying that the Rebbe had instructed him to carry it with him but had said nothing about giving it to anyone.[3]
Rabbi Teitz returned to the US. He paid a visit to the Rebbe and reported of his journey. He did not want to share the Tanya story, as he felt that the Rebbe might be pained himself that these Chassidim took the folds in the pages as a sign based on which to decide life and death decisions.
But at some point, the Rebbe asked him if he had a chance to take the Tanya with him? Rabbi Teitz said yes, and shared with the Rebbe that he met two Chassidim who were excited to see and hold the Tanya.
Then the Rebbe then asked one question which left the Rabbi stunned:
די קנייטשן האבן זיי געזען?
Did they see the folded pages?
A Rebbe is rain; a Rebbe is a sun. And a Rebbe is a father and mother.
An Example to Us
The Rebbe was one of G-d’s gifts to the Jewish world after the horrific concealment of G-d’s face during the Second World War.
Here was a man that received up to 500 letters a day and answered them all; advised concerned parents of unwell children and singles searching for life partners with the same love and attention as he advised presidents and prime ministers on world affairs; had the vision to set up a web of institutions around the globe in order to rebuild Judaism after the war; promoted values and morals for the non-Jewish world; was as comfortable in the sciences as he was in Torah wisdom, and found G‑d in both; healed the sick with his blessings, and answered people’s questions before they even asked them; took the responsibility of the world on his shoulders, but had time for every individual.
For a superhuman to achieve all the above is no big deal. They don’t have to work hard to become heroes. But for a human being of flesh and blood, it is nothing short of amazing. The Rebbe always reminds me of what a human can achieve, and that I can always do more to better the world.
This is our privilege and duty today, 22 years after his physical departure from this world. For each pf us to see ourselves as drops of rain—revealing our own potential, as well as those of the people around us and in pour reach. For us to become like the sun—to bring forth light, clarity, vision, moral focus, direction, and warmth to our world. And to fathers and mothers, to care, to connect, to nurture, to love, and to be present with all our souls, to complete the work which the Rebbe wished to achieve more than anything else: to bring redemption to our world, to see the coming of Moshiach, speedily in our days, may it be now!
[1] Elie Wiesel, Memoirs: All the Rivers Run to the Sea (New York, 1995) pp. 402–3.
[2] Elie Wiesel, Memoirs, p. 200
[3] “To this day,” related Rabbi Teitz to Aharon Dov Halperin, the editor of Kfar Chabad magazine, “whenever I study something from this volume, or even happen to glance upon it, I recall this extraordinary episode and get excited all over again.” Rabbi Teitz warned the editor not to publish the story, so as to not damage the rabbi’s relationships with his valuable contacts in Russia and the government’s trust in him. For over a decade the story was suppressed, but when Rabbi Teitz passed on to his Heavenly award in the final weeks of 1995, it quickly found its way into print. Translated and adapted from V’rabim Heishiv Mei’avon, and Sichat HaShavua #471 by Yerachmiel Tilles.
- Comment
Class Summary:
The Talmud relates: When Rabbi Eliezer—Rabbi Eliezer ben Hurcanus was one of the most prominent sages, of the 1st and 2nd centuries, disciple of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, colleague of Raban Gamaliel, whose sister he married, is the sixth most frequently mentioned sage in the Mishnah—fell ill, four of the sages, his contemporaries and students, came to visit him.
“You are better for the Jewish people than a drop of rain,” Rabbi Tarfon told Rabi Eliezer. “For a drop of rain is [beneficial only] in this world, while [the Rebbe benefits us by teaching Torah] in this world and the world to come.”
“You are better for Israel than the orb of the sun,” Rabbi Yehoshua said to Rabbi Eliezer. “For the orb of the sun is in this world, whereas [the Rebbe provides light] in this world and the world to come.”
“You are better for Israel than a father and mother, for a father and mother [create life] in this world, whereas [the Rebbe creates life] in this world and the world to come.”
This is a strange story. The first three remarks also seem out of place. They are all sitting by their master who is ill. One students compares him to rain; the second one to the sun; the third one to a father and mother. Why? Was this a eulogy at the funeral?
In truth, each one of these sages was providing his definition of what a Rebbe is, what a leader is. What is his role? What’s his function? What purpose does he serve? He is like a droplet of rain. He is like the orb of the sun. And he is like a father and mother.
The sermon illustrates these three roles in the life of the Rebbe and his impact on the Jewish world, through three dramatic stories, including the decade-long relationship with Elie Wiesel who passed away last Shabbos. What did the Rebbe say when Elie pleased with him to teach him how to cry again after his well of tears dried up in Buchenwald.
A Talmudic Story
As we explore in the weekly portion the role of the Jewish leader, and as we commemorate the 22nd yartzeit of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (who passed away on 3 Tamuz 5754, June 12, 1994), let us study a story of the Talmud.
סנהדרין קא, א: ת"ר כשחלה ר' אליעזר נכנסו ארבעה זקנים לבקרו ר' טרפון ור' יהושע ור' אלעזר בן עזריה ור' עקיבא נענה ר' טרפון ואמר טוב אתה לישראל מטיפה של גשמים שטיפה של גשמים בעולם הזה ורבי בעולם הזה ובעולם הבא נענה ר' יהושע ואמר טוב אתה לישראל יותר מגלגל חמה שגלגל חמה בעולם הזה ורבי בעולם הזה ובעולם הבא נענה רבי אלעזר בן עזריה ואמר טוב אתה לישראל יותר מאב ואם שאב ואם בעולם הזה ורבי בעולם הזה ובעולם הבא נענה רבי עקיבא ואמר חביבין יסורין אמר להם סמכוני ואשמעה דברי עקיבא תלמידי שאמר חביבין יסורין.
The Talmud relates:
When Rabbi Eliezer—Rabbi Eliezer ben Hurcanus was one of the most prominent sages, of the 1st and 2nd centuries, disciple of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, colleague of Raban Gamaliel, whose sister he married, is the sixth most frequently mentioned sage in the Mishnah—fell ill, four of the sages, his contemporaries and students, came to visit him.
“You are better for the Jewish people than a drop of rain,” Rabbi Tarfon told Rabi Eliezer. “For a drop of rain is [beneficial only] in this world, while [the Rebbe benefits us by teaching Torah] in this world and the world to come.”
“You are better for Israel than the orb of the sun,” Rabbi Yehoshua said to Rabbi Eliezer. “For the orb of the sun is in this world, whereas [the Rebbe provides light] in this world and the world to come.”
“You are better for Israel than a father and mother, for a father and mother [create life] in this world, whereas [the Rebbe creates life] in this world and the world to come.”
This is a strange story. The first three remarks also seem out of place. They are all sitting by their master who is ill. One students compares him to rain; the second one to the sun; the third one to a father and mother. Why? Was this a eulogy at the funeral?
In truth, each one of these sages was providing his definition of what a Rebbe is, what a leader is. What is his role? What’s his function? What purpose does he serve?
Actualizing Potential
Rabbi Tarfon compared a Rebbe to drops of rain, explaining that Rabbi Eliezer is superior even to rain, because the benefits lasts for both worlds. What is the function of rain? The earth has enormous potential for vegetation and produce, yet without the descending rain, all of its potential would remain dormant. It would just remain dirt, something to step on and trample at. It is the rain that reveals and actualizes the incredible possibilities contained within the soil.
This, says Reb Tarfon, is the contribution of his master Rabbi Eliezer, and of every genuine Rebbe of the Jewish people—serving as droplets of rain for the Jewish people and for the world, showing us the power and potential, the incredible energy, which lay in us, pointing us to a deeper, higher, and nobler self; ensuring that our true selves, our destinies and possibilities, don’t die within us.
Do More
How appropriate a description of the Lubavitcher Rebbe.
Perhaps Rabbi Adin Even Yisroel (Steinsaltz), one of the greatest Jewish scholars and authors living today, put it best in a lecture delivered a numbers of years ago in Boston, on the Rebbe’s yartziet. He shared the following experience:
I once wrote a letter to the Rebbe. I tried to describe what I was doing, tried to explain that one project I'm involved with is enough work to occupy me all day, every day. There was also a second project, which was also enough work to fill my entire day. And then there was a third undertaking which was a full day's work. I told the Rebbe that I find it hard to carry on with them all, and that every day is more difficult than the one before, because there is just so much. So what should my priorities be? What should I cut out? This is the letter I wrote. So he responded -- this is practically the last letter I received from the Rebbe -- the Rebbe's answer was, "continue all these things that you are doing and add more to all of them."
What a strange answer! Seemingly insensitive.
You know the famous story about the farmer who comes to the rabbi complaining about his small house so full of children. It's unbearable. So the rabbi tells him to take a goat into his house, a noisy, smelly, dirty goat. Very soon the farmer comes back to the rabbi. "Every problem I had is worse!" he cries. The rabbi tells him to take the goat out. So he takes the goat out of his house and soon he's back to tell the rabbi what a big wonderful house he now has.
A very old story but what the Rebbe did was similar and yet quite different. When people complained about how hard their work was he would give them more to do. When they complained how terrible that was he would give them even more. He told them to add the goat, and them he'd give them camels to put in their house! That was the way he worked all the time. Whenever anybody complained about their inability to cope or the hard times they endured, he would suggest "take on something more."
How could he overburden people like this? It was not because he was insensitive. It was because he saw in people the potential for infinity. And he dreamt to actualize it.
The Sun
Reb Yehoshua says something more. A Rebbe is like the sun. What is the function of the sun? To confer light and warmth upon our planet. This, says Rabbi Yehoshua, is the purpose of the Rebbe. In a confusing world, one needs vision, direction, the clarity to navigate the winding pathways if life and dark stumbling blocks of one’s journey. Like the glowing sun, the Rebbe offers direction and guidance, and even warmth and passion.
There is, perhaps, no better example for this than the story of Noble Laureate Elie Wiesel, the author of Night, the eloquent “witness” of the Holocaust, who passed away, last Shabbos, on 26 Sivan 5776, July 2, 2016, at the age of 87.
It is a story that needs to be told.
Elie Wiesel
Eliezer Wiesel was born on Sept. 30, 1928, in Sighet, Rumania, a small commercial town on the present-day border of the Soviet Union. He was born on Simchat Torah, when we celebrate our study and relationship with Torah to a family connected to the Vishnitz Chassidic dynasty.
''During the day I studied the Talmud, and at night I ran to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the Temple,'' he recounted in ''Night.''
Isolated in the Carpathian Mountains, Sighet (which was part of Hungary from 1940 to 1945) almost escaped the cataclysm engulfing Jews elsewhere in Europe; not until Passover week of 1944 did the Nazis and their collaborators deport the town's 10,000 Jews. Wiesel's father and mother and the youngest of his three sisters, Tziporah, died in the concentration camps. His mother and sister were sent to the gas chambers upon arrival. He would speak of the eight words repeated by the Germans without emotion: “Women to the right; men to the left”—eight words that sent millions to their deaths. His father was beaten by an SS guard and died just a short while before liberation. (His two other sisters, Hilda and Batya survived. Batya died eight years ago; Hilda lives in France.)
Wiesel was 16 years old when he was liberated in April 1945.
He has returned to Sighet only once, 20 years after being deported. The town's so-called ''Jews' Street'' had been renamed ''Street of the Deported,'' and it was deserted. In the kitchen of Wiesel's old house, where once hung a photograph of a Chassidic leader, a cross dangled. He went to the family garden and unearthed the bar-mitzvah watch he had buried as the Nazis advanced, only to find it ''covered with dirt and rust, crawling with worms, unrecognizable, revolting.'' The discovery, he has written, was ''the epilogue to my childhood.''
The Book Night
His first book Night, written in the 50s, was rejected by dozens of US publishers. At the time, people were uninterested in the Holocaust. Finally, in July 1959, Hill & Wang purchased ''Night,'' paying Wiesel an advance of $100. In the first 18 months after its publication in the United States, ''Night'' sold only 1,046 copies. Today it has sold more than ten million copies.
I once heard from Wiesel this funny story. He remembers being asked to lecture about ''Night'' to a Jewish men's club in 1960. He prepared his talk for two months, but on the way to the lecture ''it hit me they must have made a mistake,'' and did not realize the book was a concentration-camp memoir - hardly a popular subject. So Wiesel told the audience his book was a romance set in an earlier century. No one objected, because no one had read or even heard of the true ''Night.''
Elie Wiesel, as so many survivors, was a haunted soul. In Wiesel’s own devastating words on his book, Night:
“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed.
Never shall I forget that smoke.
Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.
Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever.
Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live.
Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.
Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.”
Quite a number of Holocaust survivors took their lives. Wiesel himself has contemplated it. He recalls two instances in the early 1950's, both times standing alone beside the railing of ships at sea. ''I don't swim,'' Wiesel says, ''and I looked into the ocean and felt the attraction, feeling the depth of all that nothingness. It's Freudian - what he called the oceanic feeling. We are tired. I am tired. My imagination's tired. How can I go on speaking? And awakening? And altering? To just lie down, it feels so easy.''
The Rebbe’s Influence
But Wiesel decided instead to embrace life, love and humanity. And, as he himself maintained, this was in no small part as a result of his relationship with the Rebbe. They spent hours together in private conversation and developed an impressive correspondence. He often came to the Rebbe’s public gatherings and consulted the Rebbe.
“My first visit to his court lasted almost an entire night,” writes Elie Wiesel in his Memoirs regarding how he came to Brooklyn, sometime in the early ’60s, in order to make the acquaintance of the Lubavitcher Rebbe.
The Rebbe had read some of my works in French, and asked me to explain why I was angry with G‑d. ‘Because I loved Him too much,’ I replied. ‘And now?’ he asked. ‘Now too. And because I love Him, I am angry with Him.’ The Rebbe maintained: ‘To love G‑d is to accept that you do not understand Him.’
‘Rebbe,’ I asked, ‘how can you believe in G‑d after Auschwitz?’ He looked at me in silence for a long moment, his hands resting on the table. The he replied, in a soft, barely audible voice: In whom should you believe after Auschwitz? In man? If there is any faith left at all, it must be only in G-d.[1]
In 1964, Wiesel published his second novel, The Gates of the Forest, which includes a detailed account of that meeting in the Rebbe’s quarters. The account is grueling, heartbreaking, painfully vulnerable, and at some points just shocking.
In Wiesel’s own account, at one point, when Wiesel accuses the Rebbe of indifference to the pain of Auschwitz, the Rebbe says: “Do you think that I don’t know it? That I have no eyes to see, no ears to hear? That my heart doesn’t revolt?”
In his book of memoirs “All the Rivers Run to the Sea,” the Noble Prize tells the following episode.
At my first visit to the the Lubavitcher Rebbe's court [at 770 Eastern Parkway, in Brooklyn, NY]... I had informed him at the outset that I was a Chasid of Vishnitz, not Lubavitch, and that I had no intention of switching allegiance.
“The important thing is to be a chasid,” he replied. “It matters little whose.”
One year, writes Wiesel, during Simchas Torah, I visited Lubavitch, as was my custom.
“Welcome,” he said. “It's nice of a chasid of Vishnitz to come and greet us in Lubavitch. But is this how they celebrate Simchas Torah in Vishnitz?”
“Rebbe,” I said faintly, “we are not in Vishnitz, but in Lubavitch.”
“Then do as we do in Lubavitch,” he said.
“And what do you do in Lubavitch?"
"In Lubavitch we say L’chayim.”
“In Vishnitz, too.”
“Very well. Then say L’chayim.”
He handed me a glass filled to the brim with vodka.
“Rebbe,” I said, “in Vishnitz a Chasid does not drink alone.”
“Nor in Lubavitch,” the Rebbe replied.
He emptied his glass in one gulp. I followed suit.
“Is one enough in Vishnitz?” the Rebbe asked.
“In Vishnitz,” I said bravely, “one is but a drop in the sea.”
“In Lubavitch as well.”
He handed me a second glass and refilled his own. He said L’chaim, I replied L’chaim, and we emptied our glasses.
“You deserve a brocha (blessing),” he said, his face beaming with happiness. “Name it.”
I wasn't sure what to say.
“Let me bless you so you can begin again.”
“Yes, Rebbe,” I said. “Give me your brocha.”
And the Rebbe blessed Eli Wiesel to begin his life anew. The man who was still tormented by the horrors of “Night” (the name of his first book), where he saw the most horrific sights the human eye could endure, the individual who refused to marry and have children feeling that it is unfair to bring Jewish children into such a cruel and brutal world, ultimately rebuilt his life from the ashes, creating a family, and becoming a spokesman for hope and conscience the world over.
Longest Letter
The longest private letter of the Rebbe was one written to Wiesel, in 1965, discussing how one can believe in G-d after Auschwitz. In it the Rebbe urged Wiesel to stop living in the shadow of death and to blow Hitler a final punch by getting married and building a Jewish family.
“I do not care of your child will be a Vishnizer Chassid or a Lubavitcher, or just a regular Jew,” the Rebbe humorously concluded the letter.
In 1969 he married. The Rebbe sent a beautiful bouquet of flowers to the wedding, which took place in the Ramban’s shul in Jerusalem. In 1972 his wife Marion and he gave birth to their son, named after his father, Elisha.
''When Marion, my wife, told me she was pregnant, my first feeling was fear. What am I doing? The world is not worthy of children. I was frantic. But the next wave was joy. Will it be a boy or a girl? Whose name will it have - my mother's or my father's?
''I must confess, I felt something special when I carried him for the circumcision. The circumcision is a very mystical rite. The rabbi had a very beautiful way of putting it. He said, 'A name has returned.'' ' Wiesel pauses. ''A name has returned. When I was called to read the Torah by name, Eliezer ben-Shlomo, now there was Shlomo ben-Eliezer. For weeks and days and months, I would carry him in my arms. I saw myself when I was a child.
On the day of his son’s bris, he writes, friends sent gifts. “But the most moving gift came from an unexpected place.” It was a beautiful bouquet of flowers sent from the Lubavitcher Rebbe.
The same year, he published his book Souls On Fire, about the early Chassidic masters and their spiritual passion. The Rebbe wrote him a long letter, congratulating him for the fact that he decided to take the ultimate revenge in Hitler, by not only writing about the destruction of European Jewry, but also about the spiritual majesty of Judaism, inspiring young Jews to embrace Torah and Mitzvos.
To Cry Again
One of the deepest moments of their encounters happened when At the end of a long soul-searching session with the Rebbe, Eli told the Rebbe: “You asked me once what I expect of you, and I said I expect nothing. I was mistaken. I do want something from you. Make me able to cry.” Like many survivors, Wiesel could not cry. Wiesel recalls how the death of his father in Buchenwald had traumatized his capacity for tears. The light of his world was extinguished, he writes. “But I did not cry, and this is what causes me the most grief: this inability to cry. The heart had petrified, the fountainhead of tears had dried up.”
So Eli Wiesel pleaded with the Rebbe, “Make me able to cry!”
And the Rebbe’s response? Did the Rebbe put his arms around the broken man and allow him to experience his long-awaited catharsis? Did he come forth with his famous paternal love, and allow Wiesel to weep on his shoulder and mourn for the father lost in Buchenwald?
Again the Rebbe responded in an unexpected manner. Yes, he did encourage Wiesel to find the needed catharsis for his grief. But not in weeping. Because weeping is not an adequate form of catharsis for the colossal suffering of Auschwitz and Buchenwald.
The Rebbe shook his head.
“That’s not enough. I shall teach you to sing,” the Rebbe said.
“No, crying is no use. You must sing.”[2]
And sing he did. Over the next forty years, Eli Wiesel not only cried for the 6 million victims, but also sung their melodies, recounted their dreams, taught their ideals, shared their passions, wrote of their dreams, and ensured their ballad would not go silent.
Making Up with G-d
In an up-ed for the NY Times, published before Rosh Hashanah 1997, Wiesel wrote:
What about my faith in you, Master of the Universe?
I now realize I never lost it, not even over there, during the darkest hours of my life. I don't know why I kept on whispering my daily prayers, and those one reserves for the Sabbath, and for the holidays, but I did recite them, often with my father and, on Rosh ha-Shanah eve, with hundreds of inmates at Auschwitz. Was it because the prayers remained a link to the vanished world of my childhood?
But my faith was no longer pure. How could it be? It was filled with anguish rather than fervor, with perplexity more than piety. In the kingdom of eternal night, on the Days of Awe, which are the Days of Judgment, my traditional prayers were directed to you as well as against you, Master of the Universe. What hurt me more: your absence or your silence?
In my testimony I have written harsh words, burning words about your role in our tragedy. I would not repeat them today. But I felt them then. I felt them in every cell of my being. Why did you allow if not enable the killer day after day, night after night to torment, kill and annihilate tens of thousands of Jewish children? Why were they abandoned by your Creation? These thoughts were in no way destined to diminish the guilt of the guilty. Their established culpability is irrelevant to my ''problem'' with you, Master of the Universe. In my childhood I did not expect much from human beings. But I expected everything from you.
Where were you, God of kindness, in Auschwitz? What was going on in heaven, at the celestial tribunal, while your children were marked for humiliation, isolation and death only because they were Jewish?
These questions have been haunting me for more than five decades. You have vocal defenders, you know. Many theological answers were given me, such as: ''God is God. He alone knows what He is doing. One has no right to question Him or His ways.'' Or: ''Auschwitz was a punishment for European Jewry's sins of assimilation and/or Zionism.'' And: ''Isn't Israel the solution? Without Auschwitz, there would have been no Israel.''
I reject all these answers. Auschwitz must and will forever remain a question mark only: it can be conceived neither with God nor without God. At one point, I began wondering whether I was not unfair with you. After all, Auschwitz was not something that came down ready-made from heaven. It was conceived by men, implemented by men, staffed by men. And their aim was to destroy not only us but you as well. Ought we not to think of your pain, too? Watching your children suffer at the hands of your other children, haven't you also suffered?
As we Jews now enter the High Holidays again, preparing ourselves to pray for a year of peace and happiness for our people and all people, let us make up, Master of the Universe. In spite of everything that happened? Yes, in spite. Let us make up: for the child in me, it is unbearable to be divorced from you so long.
Light and Warmth
Here was the Rebbe embodying the gift of the sun: to give vision, direction, and moral and spiritual guidance to a generation so deeply tormented and confused, for good reason. Light and warmth—this is what the Rebbe gave Elie Wiesel and hundreds of thousands of more people, directly, and indirectly. With his brilliance, genius, mastery of sciences and of course deep faith in G-d and in man, the Rebbe helped people find their way, their soul, their light.
Eli Wiesel once shared this Chassidic tale: “Somewhere,” said Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, “there lives a man who asks a question to which there is no answer; a generation later, in another place, there lives a man who asks another question to which there is no answer either—and he doesn’t know, he cannot know, that his question is actually an answer to the first.”
The Parent
The Rebbe was like rain. The Rebbe was like the sun. But it was Rabbi Eliezer ben Azarya who took it to the next level. The Rebbe is like a father and mother. The rain and sun, as invaluable as they are, constitute forces above us, outside of us. But my father and mother are not outside of me; rather, they constitute my essence. I own their genes, their DNA. A part of their soul live in me. On some level, we are one with our parents, even after we grow up and become independent.
A real Rebbe, says Rabbi Eliezer ben Azarya, is not only a mentor, a source of comfort, light and guidance; a Rebbe is connected to every single Jew. Like a father and mother, his soul is innately bound up with every Jewish soul, feeling them, experiencing them, thinking of them, caring for them, and simply one with them.
The Fold
Rabbi Mordechai Pinchas Teitz (1908–1995) was the well-respected, innovative leader of the Jewish community in Elizabeth, New Jersey, for many decades. Rabbi Pinchas Teitz made twenty-two trips to Russia in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. Even during the height of the Communist empire and the secret police, he managed to secure permission for his visits. He had good contacts in the government, and they trusted him. Nevertheless, he was often able to utilize his visits to secretly smuggle in important Jewish paraphernalia, such as tefillin and prayer books, for the benefit of the oppressed Jews of the USSR.
Although Rabbi Teitz was born, raised and educated in Lithuania and its yeshivot, which rarely associated with Chabad chassidim, it was impossible to be involved in Jewish life in the Soviet Union in those days and not laud the activities of the Chabad chassidim, who had dedicated their lives to the preservation of Torah Judaism there. Thus, many times he merited to bring objects from the Lubavitcher Rebbe to his chassidim in Russia, and vice versa.
One summer, when he was preparing for another trip, a representative of the Rebbe showed up at his house, bringing him a package of prayer books, Bibles and several pairs of tefillin. This was no surprise; he was already used to, and even expected, the arrival of an emissary and the usual package.
But this time the messenger from the Rebbe also took out a small-sized volume of Tanya, the foundational book of Chabad teachings, and handed it to the rabbi. It was the Rebbe’s personal Tanya. He explained that the Rebbe asked that Rabbi Teitz take it and carry it with him while in Russia—but didn’t say whom to give it to.
“I was astonished,” related Rabbi Teitz afterwards. “To cooperate with the Rebbe to deliver basic Jewish necessities to the deprived Jews of Russia was one matter, but to go with a copy of Tanya in my luggage that had the Rebbe’s name inscribed in it? To Russia? It seemed unnecessarily dangerous. The KGB knows very well what a Tanya is and despised the name Schneerson which was in the Tanya. What plausible explanation could I give if it were detected?”
In the end, he decided to take it. If the Rebbe was making such an unusual request of him, he must have a good reason.
On the third day of his stay in Moscow, in the evening, while he was walking back to his hotel from the Great Synagogue after the evening prayer, two young men suddenly approached him as he passed through a dark side street. They took him by the arms and forced him to quickly go into a nearby parked car. The rabbi was taken by surprise and, of course, frightened. Were they the KGB? Was this a kidnapping?
His fears were soon dissipated, however, as his two “snatchers” turned out to be local Chabad chassidim. They apologized for the rough treatment, explaining that this was the only means by which they could possibly bring him to a safe house to talk to them without arousing suspicion, and they needed to discuss urgent matters with him.
Only after they were safely in the house did the two introduce themselves. They said they had investigated and discovered that he could be trusted, and what they wanted of him was that he should deliver a message to the Lubavitcher Rebbe for each of them. They had major life decisions to make, for which they needed the Rebbe’s input, and they couldn’t wait for an official emissary.
The older one had recently found out that the KGB was actively pursuing him. He wanted to know whether the Rebbe thought he should flee Moscow and move to another city, or remain, despite the obvious danger, in order to maintain and further his important educational activities in the Jewish underground, of which the Rebbe was already aware.
The second, younger man wanted the Rebbe’s advice whether he should apply for an emigration visa to Israel. Recently, a number of such requests had been approved. On the other hand, he currently held an excellent position as a top engineer, and as soon as he would submit his application, he would be fired from his job; if the request was refused, he would be left without any means of support. He and his family would starve.
Rabbi Teitz was very moved by the encounter, and especially by the fiery dedication of the two chassidim. He promised to commit to memory their names, their mothers’ names and their questions for the Rebbe, because it would be much too dangerous to write them down and have such a paper in his possession.
After this, the three men relaxed and engaged in conversation, marveling at the differences between their lives. The rabbi happened to mention that soon before his departure from home, the Rebbe had given him a copy of Tanya to keep with him on the trip, but hadn’t explained what should be done with it.
The eyes of the two chassidim opened wide. “Do you mean to say that you have this Tanya from the Rebbe in your possession? Now? Here?” they exclaimed enthusiastically.
Rabbi Teitz silently took the Tanya from his coat pocket and showed it to them. They grabbed it from him and eagerly examined it from all sides and angles. Their increasing excitement was palpable. Clearly, they were overjoyed to be holding a book that less than a week ago had been in the Rebbe’s own holy hands.
While fondling the book, one of them shouted out in amazement. Too excited to speak, he pointed to what their intense scrutiny had uncovered: a page had been crimped by folding down the top corner, as a person sometimes does in place of a bookmark.
They opened to the page and were awestruck by the very first words on the page in the Tanya: “He is extremely pressed for time, and finds it utterly impossible to delay” (Tanya Kunres Acharon, p. 162a, top line).
“That’s it! That’s my answer from the Rebbe!” cried out the older chassid, visibly shaking with emotion. “The Rebbe is telling me to hurry and escape from here.”
Rabbi Teitz, not a Chabadnik, felt this was absurd. You decide a fateful question based on a fold in a page of a book by a man who knows not what is going on?! He remained silent, but felt this was absurd.
The younger chassid quickly picked up the book and eagerly examined it even more closely, hoping to find another crimped page. And there was one! Again they were overwhelmed.
Here is what that second page with a fold read: “They said, we will enter the Land. From where was their faith in G-d’s ability [to bring them into the land] restored?” (Tanya ch. 29, p. 37b).
“That’s the answer for me!” he shouted excitedly. “I should apply to make aliyah to the Holy Land now.”
Again, the American Rabbi felt this was strange.
The two pleaded with Rabbi Teitz to allow them to keep the book. He refused, saying that the Rebbe had instructed him to carry it with him but had said nothing about giving it to anyone.[3]
Rabbi Teitz returned to the US. He paid a visit to the Rebbe and reported of his journey. He did not want to share the Tanya story, as he felt that the Rebbe might be pained himself that these Chassidim took the folds in the pages as a sign based on which to decide life and death decisions.
But at some point, the Rebbe asked him if he had a chance to take the Tanya with him? Rabbi Teitz said yes, and shared with the Rebbe that he met two Chassidim who were excited to see and hold the Tanya.
Then the Rebbe then asked one question which left the Rabbi stunned:
די קנייטשן האבן זיי געזען?
Did they see the folded pages?
A Rebbe is rain; a Rebbe is a sun. And a Rebbe is a father and mother.
An Example to Us
The Rebbe was one of G-d’s gifts to the Jewish world after the horrific concealment of G-d’s face during the Second World War.
Here was a man that received up to 500 letters a day and answered them all; advised concerned parents of unwell children and singles searching for life partners with the same love and attention as he advised presidents and prime ministers on world affairs; had the vision to set up a web of institutions around the globe in order to rebuild Judaism after the war; promoted values and morals for the non-Jewish world; was as comfortable in the sciences as he was in Torah wisdom, and found G‑d in both; healed the sick with his blessings, and answered people’s questions before they even asked them; took the responsibility of the world on his shoulders, but had time for every individual.
For a superhuman to achieve all the above is no big deal. They don’t have to work hard to become heroes. But for a human being of flesh and blood, it is nothing short of amazing. The Rebbe always reminds me of what a human can achieve, and that I can always do more to better the world.
This is our privilege and duty today, 22 years after his physical departure from this world. For each pf us to see ourselves as drops of rain—revealing our own potential, as well as those of the people around us and in pour reach. For us to become like the sun—to bring forth light, clarity, vision, moral focus, direction, and warmth to our world. And to fathers and mothers, to care, to connect, to nurture, to love, and to be present with all our souls, to complete the work which the Rebbe wished to achieve more than anything else: to bring redemption to our world, to see the coming of Moshiach, speedily in our days, may it be now!
[1] Elie Wiesel, Memoirs: All the Rivers Run to the Sea (New York, 1995) pp. 402–3.
[2] Elie Wiesel, Memoirs, p. 200
[3] “To this day,” related Rabbi Teitz to Aharon Dov Halperin, the editor of Kfar Chabad magazine, “whenever I study something from this volume, or even happen to glance upon it, I recall this extraordinary episode and get excited all over again.” Rabbi Teitz warned the editor not to publish the story, so as to not damage the rabbi’s relationships with his valuable contacts in Russia and the government’s trust in him. For over a decade the story was suppressed, but when Rabbi Teitz passed on to his Heavenly award in the final weeks of 1995, it quickly found its way into print. Translated and adapted from V’rabim Heishiv Mei’avon, and Sichat HaShavua #471 by Yerachmiel Tilles.
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Parshas Korach 5776
Rabbi YY Jacobson
- July 7, 2016
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- 1 Tamuz 5776
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Elie Wiesel and the Rebbe
I Shall Teach You How to Sing: The Rain, the Sun, and the Parent
Rabbi YY Jacobson
- July 7, 2016
A Talmudic Story
As we explore in the weekly portion the role of the Jewish leader, and as we commemorate the 22nd yartzeit of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (who passed away on 3 Tamuz 5754, June 12, 1994), let us study a story of the Talmud.
סנהדרין קא, א: ת"ר כשחלה ר' אליעזר נכנסו ארבעה זקנים לבקרו ר' טרפון ור' יהושע ור' אלעזר בן עזריה ור' עקיבא נענה ר' טרפון ואמר טוב אתה לישראל מטיפה של גשמים שטיפה של גשמים בעולם הזה ורבי בעולם הזה ובעולם הבא נענה ר' יהושע ואמר טוב אתה לישראל יותר מגלגל חמה שגלגל חמה בעולם הזה ורבי בעולם הזה ובעולם הבא נענה רבי אלעזר בן עזריה ואמר טוב אתה לישראל יותר מאב ואם שאב ואם בעולם הזה ורבי בעולם הזה ובעולם הבא נענה רבי עקיבא ואמר חביבין יסורין אמר להם סמכוני ואשמעה דברי עקיבא תלמידי שאמר חביבין יסורין.
The Talmud relates:
When Rabbi Eliezer—Rabbi Eliezer ben Hurcanus was one of the most prominent sages, of the 1st and 2nd centuries, disciple of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, colleague of Raban Gamaliel, whose sister he married, is the sixth most frequently mentioned sage in the Mishnah—fell ill, four of the sages, his contemporaries and students, came to visit him.
“You are better for the Jewish people than a drop of rain,” Rabbi Tarfon told Rabi Eliezer. “For a drop of rain is [beneficial only] in this world, while [the Rebbe benefits us by teaching Torah] in this world and the world to come.”
“You are better for Israel than the orb of the sun,” Rabbi Yehoshua said to Rabbi Eliezer. “For the orb of the sun is in this world, whereas [the Rebbe provides light] in this world and the world to come.”
“You are better for Israel than a father and mother, for a father and mother [create life] in this world, whereas [the Rebbe creates life] in this world and the world to come.”
This is a strange story. The first three remarks also seem out of place. They are all sitting by their master who is ill. One students compares him to rain; the second one to the sun; the third one to a father and mother. Why? Was this a eulogy at the funeral?
In truth, each one of these sages was providing his definition of what a Rebbe is, what a leader is. What is his role? What’s his function? What purpose does he serve?
Actualizing Potential
Rabbi Tarfon compared a Rebbe to drops of rain, explaining that Rabbi Eliezer is superior even to rain, because the benefits lasts for both worlds. What is the function of rain? The earth has enormous potential for vegetation and produce, yet without the descending rain, all of its potential would remain dormant. It would just remain dirt, something to step on and trample at. It is the rain that reveals and actualizes the incredible possibilities contained within the soil.
This, says Reb Tarfon, is the contribution of his master Rabbi Eliezer, and of every genuine Rebbe of the Jewish people—serving as droplets of rain for the Jewish people and for the world, showing us the power and potential, the incredible energy, which lay in us, pointing us to a deeper, higher, and nobler self; ensuring that our true selves, our destinies and possibilities, don’t die within us.
Do More
How appropriate a description of the Lubavitcher Rebbe.
Perhaps Rabbi Adin Even Yisroel (Steinsaltz), one of the greatest Jewish scholars and authors living today, put it best in a lecture delivered a numbers of years ago in Boston, on the Rebbe’s yartziet. He shared the following experience:
I once wrote a letter to the Rebbe. I tried to describe what I was doing, tried to explain that one project I'm involved with is enough work to occupy me all day, every day. There was also a second project, which was also enough work to fill my entire day. And then there was a third undertaking which was a full day's work. I told the Rebbe that I find it hard to carry on with them all, and that every day is more difficult than the one before, because there is just so much. So what should my priorities be? What should I cut out? This is the letter I wrote. So he responded -- this is practically the last letter I received from the Rebbe -- the Rebbe's answer was, "continue all these things that you are doing and add more to all of them."
What a strange answer! Seemingly insensitive.
You know the famous story about the farmer who comes to the rabbi complaining about his small house so full of children. It's unbearable. So the rabbi tells him to take a goat into his house, a noisy, smelly, dirty goat. Very soon the farmer comes back to the rabbi. "Every problem I had is worse!" he cries. The rabbi tells him to take the goat out. So he takes the goat out of his house and soon he's back to tell the rabbi what a big wonderful house he now has.
A very old story but what the Rebbe did was similar and yet quite different. When people complained about how hard their work was he would give them more to do. When they complained how terrible that was he would give them even more. He told them to add the goat, and them he'd give them camels to put in their house! That was the way he worked all the time. Whenever anybody complained about their inability to cope or the hard times they endured, he would suggest "take on something more."
How could he overburden people like this? It was not because he was insensitive. It was because he saw in people the potential for infinity. And he dreamt to actualize it.
The Sun
Reb Yehoshua says something more. A Rebbe is like the sun. What is the function of the sun? To confer light and warmth upon our planet. This, says Rabbi Yehoshua, is the purpose of the Rebbe. In a confusing world, one needs vision, direction, the clarity to navigate the winding pathways if life and dark stumbling blocks of one’s journey. Like the glowing sun, the Rebbe offers direction and guidance, and even warmth and passion.
There is, perhaps, no better example for this than the story of Noble Laureate Elie Wiesel, the author of Night, the eloquent “witness” of the Holocaust, who passed away, last Shabbos, on 26 Sivan 5776, July 2, 2016, at the age of 87.
It is a story that needs to be told.
Elie Wiesel
Eliezer Wiesel was born on Sept. 30, 1928, in Sighet, Rumania, a small commercial town on the present-day border of the Soviet Union. He was born on Simchat Torah, when we celebrate our study and relationship with Torah to a family connected to the Vishnitz Chassidic dynasty.
''During the day I studied the Talmud, and at night I ran to the synagogue to weep over the destruction of the Temple,'' he recounted in ''Night.''
Isolated in the Carpathian Mountains, Sighet (which was part of Hungary from 1940 to 1945) almost escaped the cataclysm engulfing Jews elsewhere in Europe; not until Passover week of 1944 did the Nazis and their collaborators deport the town's 10,000 Jews. Wiesel's father and mother and the youngest of his three sisters, Tziporah, died in the concentration camps. His mother and sister were sent to the gas chambers upon arrival. He would speak of the eight words repeated by the Germans without emotion: “Women to the right; men to the left”—eight words that sent millions to their deaths. His father was beaten by an SS guard and died just a short while before liberation. (His two other sisters, Hilda and Batya survived. Batya died eight years ago; Hilda lives in France.)
Wiesel was 16 years old when he was liberated in April 1945.
He has returned to Sighet only once, 20 years after being deported. The town's so-called ''Jews' Street'' had been renamed ''Street of the Deported,'' and it was deserted. In the kitchen of Wiesel's old house, where once hung a photograph of a Chassidic leader, a cross dangled. He went to the family garden and unearthed the bar-mitzvah watch he had buried as the Nazis advanced, only to find it ''covered with dirt and rust, crawling with worms, unrecognizable, revolting.'' The discovery, he has written, was ''the epilogue to my childhood.''
The Book Night
His first book Night, written in the 50s, was rejected by dozens of US publishers. At the time, people were uninterested in the Holocaust. Finally, in July 1959, Hill & Wang purchased ''Night,'' paying Wiesel an advance of $100. In the first 18 months after its publication in the United States, ''Night'' sold only 1,046 copies. Today it has sold more than ten million copies.
I once heard from Wiesel this funny story. He remembers being asked to lecture about ''Night'' to a Jewish men's club in 1960. He prepared his talk for two months, but on the way to the lecture ''it hit me they must have made a mistake,'' and did not realize the book was a concentration-camp memoir - hardly a popular subject. So Wiesel told the audience his book was a romance set in an earlier century. No one objected, because no one had read or even heard of the true ''Night.''
Elie Wiesel, as so many survivors, was a haunted soul. In Wiesel’s own devastating words on his book, Night:
“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed.
Never shall I forget that smoke.
Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.
Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever.
Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live.
Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.
Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.”
Quite a number of Holocaust survivors took their lives. Wiesel himself has contemplated it. He recalls two instances in the early 1950's, both times standing alone beside the railing of ships at sea. ''I don't swim,'' Wiesel says, ''and I looked into the ocean and felt the attraction, feeling the depth of all that nothingness. It's Freudian - what he called the oceanic feeling. We are tired. I am tired. My imagination's tired. How can I go on speaking? And awakening? And altering? To just lie down, it feels so easy.''
The Rebbe’s Influence
But Wiesel decided instead to embrace life, love and humanity. And, as he himself maintained, this was in no small part as a result of his relationship with the Rebbe. They spent hours together in private conversation and developed an impressive correspondence. He often came to the Rebbe’s public gatherings and consulted the Rebbe.
“My first visit to his court lasted almost an entire night,” writes Elie Wiesel in his Memoirs regarding how he came to Brooklyn, sometime in the early ’60s, in order to make the acquaintance of the Lubavitcher Rebbe.
The Rebbe had read some of my works in French, and asked me to explain why I was angry with G‑d. ‘Because I loved Him too much,’ I replied. ‘And now?’ he asked. ‘Now too. And because I love Him, I am angry with Him.’ The Rebbe maintained: ‘To love G‑d is to accept that you do not understand Him.’
‘Rebbe,’ I asked, ‘how can you believe in G‑d after Auschwitz?’ He looked at me in silence for a long moment, his hands resting on the table. The he replied, in a soft, barely audible voice: In whom should you believe after Auschwitz? In man? If there is any faith left at all, it must be only in G-d.[1]
In 1964, Wiesel published his second novel, The Gates of the Forest, which includes a detailed account of that meeting in the Rebbe’s quarters. The account is grueling, heartbreaking, painfully vulnerable, and at some points just shocking.
In Wiesel’s own account, at one point, when Wiesel accuses the Rebbe of indifference to the pain of Auschwitz, the Rebbe says: “Do you think that I don’t know it? That I have no eyes to see, no ears to hear? That my heart doesn’t revolt?”
In his book of memoirs “All the Rivers Run to the Sea,” the Noble Prize tells the following episode.
At my first visit to the the Lubavitcher Rebbe's court [at 770 Eastern Parkway, in Brooklyn, NY]... I had informed him at the outset that I was a Chasid of Vishnitz, not Lubavitch, and that I had no intention of switching allegiance.
“The important thing is to be a chasid,” he replied. “It matters little whose.”
One year, writes Wiesel, during Simchas Torah, I visited Lubavitch, as was my custom.
“Welcome,” he said. “It's nice of a chasid of Vishnitz to come and greet us in Lubavitch. But is this how they celebrate Simchas Torah in Vishnitz?”
“Rebbe,” I said faintly, “we are not in Vishnitz, but in Lubavitch.”
“Then do as we do in Lubavitch,” he said.
“And what do you do in Lubavitch?"
"In Lubavitch we say L’chayim.”
“In Vishnitz, too.”
“Very well. Then say L’chayim.”
He handed me a glass filled to the brim with vodka.
“Rebbe,” I said, “in Vishnitz a Chasid does not drink alone.”
“Nor in Lubavitch,” the Rebbe replied.
He emptied his glass in one gulp. I followed suit.
“Is one enough in Vishnitz?” the Rebbe asked.
“In Vishnitz,” I said bravely, “one is but a drop in the sea.”
“In Lubavitch as well.”
He handed me a second glass and refilled his own. He said L’chaim, I replied L’chaim, and we emptied our glasses.
“You deserve a brocha (blessing),” he said, his face beaming with happiness. “Name it.”
I wasn't sure what to say.
“Let me bless you so you can begin again.”
“Yes, Rebbe,” I said. “Give me your brocha.”
And the Rebbe blessed Eli Wiesel to begin his life anew. The man who was still tormented by the horrors of “Night” (the name of his first book), where he saw the most horrific sights the human eye could endure, the individual who refused to marry and have children feeling that it is unfair to bring Jewish children into such a cruel and brutal world, ultimately rebuilt his life from the ashes, creating a family, and becoming a spokesman for hope and conscience the world over.
Longest Letter
The longest private letter of the Rebbe was one written to Wiesel, in 1965, discussing how one can believe in G-d after Auschwitz. In it the Rebbe urged Wiesel to stop living in the shadow of death and to blow Hitler a final punch by getting married and building a Jewish family.
“I do not care of your child will be a Vishnizer Chassid or a Lubavitcher, or just a regular Jew,” the Rebbe humorously concluded the letter.
In 1969 he married. The Rebbe sent a beautiful bouquet of flowers to the wedding, which took place in the Ramban’s shul in Jerusalem. In 1972 his wife Marion and he gave birth to their son, named after his father, Elisha.
''When Marion, my wife, told me she was pregnant, my first feeling was fear. What am I doing? The world is not worthy of children. I was frantic. But the next wave was joy. Will it be a boy or a girl? Whose name will it have - my mother's or my father's?
''I must confess, I felt something special when I carried him for the circumcision. The circumcision is a very mystical rite. The rabbi had a very beautiful way of putting it. He said, 'A name has returned.'' ' Wiesel pauses. ''A name has returned. When I was called to read the Torah by name, Eliezer ben-Shlomo, now there was Shlomo ben-Eliezer. For weeks and days and months, I would carry him in my arms. I saw myself when I was a child.
On the day of his son’s bris, he writes, friends sent gifts. “But the most moving gift came from an unexpected place.” It was a beautiful bouquet of flowers sent from the Lubavitcher Rebbe.
The same year, he published his book Souls On Fire, about the early Chassidic masters and their spiritual passion. The Rebbe wrote him a long letter, congratulating him for the fact that he decided to take the ultimate revenge in Hitler, by not only writing about the destruction of European Jewry, but also about the spiritual majesty of Judaism, inspiring young Jews to embrace Torah and Mitzvos.
To Cry Again
One of the deepest moments of their encounters happened when At the end of a long soul-searching session with the Rebbe, Eli told the Rebbe: “You asked me once what I expect of you, and I said I expect nothing. I was mistaken. I do want something from you. Make me able to cry.” Like many survivors, Wiesel could not cry. Wiesel recalls how the death of his father in Buchenwald had traumatized his capacity for tears. The light of his world was extinguished, he writes. “But I did not cry, and this is what causes me the most grief: this inability to cry. The heart had petrified, the fountainhead of tears had dried up.”
So Eli Wiesel pleaded with the Rebbe, “Make me able to cry!”
And the Rebbe’s response? Did the Rebbe put his arms around the broken man and allow him to experience his long-awaited catharsis? Did he come forth with his famous paternal love, and allow Wiesel to weep on his shoulder and mourn for the father lost in Buchenwald?
Again the Rebbe responded in an unexpected manner. Yes, he did encourage Wiesel to find the needed catharsis for his grief. But not in weeping. Because weeping is not an adequate form of catharsis for the colossal suffering of Auschwitz and Buchenwald.
The Rebbe shook his head.
“That’s not enough. I shall teach you to sing,” the Rebbe said.
“No, crying is no use. You must sing.”[2]
And sing he did. Over the next forty years, Eli Wiesel not only cried for the 6 million victims, but also sung their melodies, recounted their dreams, taught their ideals, shared their passions, wrote of their dreams, and ensured their ballad would not go silent.
Making Up with G-d
In an up-ed for the NY Times, published before Rosh Hashanah 1997, Wiesel wrote:
What about my faith in you, Master of the Universe?
I now realize I never lost it, not even over there, during the darkest hours of my life. I don't know why I kept on whispering my daily prayers, and those one reserves for the Sabbath, and for the holidays, but I did recite them, often with my father and, on Rosh ha-Shanah eve, with hundreds of inmates at Auschwitz. Was it because the prayers remained a link to the vanished world of my childhood?
But my faith was no longer pure. How could it be? It was filled with anguish rather than fervor, with perplexity more than piety. In the kingdom of eternal night, on the Days of Awe, which are the Days of Judgment, my traditional prayers were directed to you as well as against you, Master of the Universe. What hurt me more: your absence or your silence?
In my testimony I have written harsh words, burning words about your role in our tragedy. I would not repeat them today. But I felt them then. I felt them in every cell of my being. Why did you allow if not enable the killer day after day, night after night to torment, kill and annihilate tens of thousands of Jewish children? Why were they abandoned by your Creation? These thoughts were in no way destined to diminish the guilt of the guilty. Their established culpability is irrelevant to my ''problem'' with you, Master of the Universe. In my childhood I did not expect much from human beings. But I expected everything from you.
Where were you, God of kindness, in Auschwitz? What was going on in heaven, at the celestial tribunal, while your children were marked for humiliation, isolation and death only because they were Jewish?
These questions have been haunting me for more than five decades. You have vocal defenders, you know. Many theological answers were given me, such as: ''God is God. He alone knows what He is doing. One has no right to question Him or His ways.'' Or: ''Auschwitz was a punishment for European Jewry's sins of assimilation and/or Zionism.'' And: ''Isn't Israel the solution? Without Auschwitz, there would have been no Israel.''
I reject all these answers. Auschwitz must and will forever remain a question mark only: it can be conceived neither with God nor without God. At one point, I began wondering whether I was not unfair with you. After all, Auschwitz was not something that came down ready-made from heaven. It was conceived by men, implemented by men, staffed by men. And their aim was to destroy not only us but you as well. Ought we not to think of your pain, too? Watching your children suffer at the hands of your other children, haven't you also suffered?
As we Jews now enter the High Holidays again, preparing ourselves to pray for a year of peace and happiness for our people and all people, let us make up, Master of the Universe. In spite of everything that happened? Yes, in spite. Let us make up: for the child in me, it is unbearable to be divorced from you so long.
Light and Warmth
Here was the Rebbe embodying the gift of the sun: to give vision, direction, and moral and spiritual guidance to a generation so deeply tormented and confused, for good reason. Light and warmth—this is what the Rebbe gave Elie Wiesel and hundreds of thousands of more people, directly, and indirectly. With his brilliance, genius, mastery of sciences and of course deep faith in G-d and in man, the Rebbe helped people find their way, their soul, their light.
Eli Wiesel once shared this Chassidic tale: “Somewhere,” said Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, “there lives a man who asks a question to which there is no answer; a generation later, in another place, there lives a man who asks another question to which there is no answer either—and he doesn’t know, he cannot know, that his question is actually an answer to the first.”
The Parent
The Rebbe was like rain. The Rebbe was like the sun. But it was Rabbi Eliezer ben Azarya who took it to the next level. The Rebbe is like a father and mother. The rain and sun, as invaluable as they are, constitute forces above us, outside of us. But my father and mother are not outside of me; rather, they constitute my essence. I own their genes, their DNA. A part of their soul live in me. On some level, we are one with our parents, even after we grow up and become independent.
A real Rebbe, says Rabbi Eliezer ben Azarya, is not only a mentor, a source of comfort, light and guidance; a Rebbe is connected to every single Jew. Like a father and mother, his soul is innately bound up with every Jewish soul, feeling them, experiencing them, thinking of them, caring for them, and simply one with them.
The Fold
Rabbi Mordechai Pinchas Teitz (1908–1995) was the well-respected, innovative leader of the Jewish community in Elizabeth, New Jersey, for many decades. Rabbi Pinchas Teitz made twenty-two trips to Russia in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. Even during the height of the Communist empire and the secret police, he managed to secure permission for his visits. He had good contacts in the government, and they trusted him. Nevertheless, he was often able to utilize his visits to secretly smuggle in important Jewish paraphernalia, such as tefillin and prayer books, for the benefit of the oppressed Jews of the USSR.
Although Rabbi Teitz was born, raised and educated in Lithuania and its yeshivot, which rarely associated with Chabad chassidim, it was impossible to be involved in Jewish life in the Soviet Union in those days and not laud the activities of the Chabad chassidim, who had dedicated their lives to the preservation of Torah Judaism there. Thus, many times he merited to bring objects from the Lubavitcher Rebbe to his chassidim in Russia, and vice versa.
One summer, when he was preparing for another trip, a representative of the Rebbe showed up at his house, bringing him a package of prayer books, Bibles and several pairs of tefillin. This was no surprise; he was already used to, and even expected, the arrival of an emissary and the usual package.
But this time the messenger from the Rebbe also took out a small-sized volume of Tanya, the foundational book of Chabad teachings, and handed it to the rabbi. It was the Rebbe’s personal Tanya. He explained that the Rebbe asked that Rabbi Teitz take it and carry it with him while in Russia—but didn’t say whom to give it to.
“I was astonished,” related Rabbi Teitz afterwards. “To cooperate with the Rebbe to deliver basic Jewish necessities to the deprived Jews of Russia was one matter, but to go with a copy of Tanya in my luggage that had the Rebbe’s name inscribed in it? To Russia? It seemed unnecessarily dangerous. The KGB knows very well what a Tanya is and despised the name Schneerson which was in the Tanya. What plausible explanation could I give if it were detected?”
In the end, he decided to take it. If the Rebbe was making such an unusual request of him, he must have a good reason.
On the third day of his stay in Moscow, in the evening, while he was walking back to his hotel from the Great Synagogue after the evening prayer, two young men suddenly approached him as he passed through a dark side street. They took him by the arms and forced him to quickly go into a nearby parked car. The rabbi was taken by surprise and, of course, frightened. Were they the KGB? Was this a kidnapping?
His fears were soon dissipated, however, as his two “snatchers” turned out to be local Chabad chassidim. They apologized for the rough treatment, explaining that this was the only means by which they could possibly bring him to a safe house to talk to them without arousing suspicion, and they needed to discuss urgent matters with him.
Only after they were safely in the house did the two introduce themselves. They said they had investigated and discovered that he could be trusted, and what they wanted of him was that he should deliver a message to the Lubavitcher Rebbe for each of them. They had major life decisions to make, for which they needed the Rebbe’s input, and they couldn’t wait for an official emissary.
The older one had recently found out that the KGB was actively pursuing him. He wanted to know whether the Rebbe thought he should flee Moscow and move to another city, or remain, despite the obvious danger, in order to maintain and further his important educational activities in the Jewish underground, of which the Rebbe was already aware.
The second, younger man wanted the Rebbe’s advice whether he should apply for an emigration visa to Israel. Recently, a number of such requests had been approved. On the other hand, he currently held an excellent position as a top engineer, and as soon as he would submit his application, he would be fired from his job; if the request was refused, he would be left without any means of support. He and his family would starve.
Rabbi Teitz was very moved by the encounter, and especially by the fiery dedication of the two chassidim. He promised to commit to memory their names, their mothers’ names and their questions for the Rebbe, because it would be much too dangerous to write them down and have such a paper in his possession.
After this, the three men relaxed and engaged in conversation, marveling at the differences between their lives. The rabbi happened to mention that soon before his departure from home, the Rebbe had given him a copy of Tanya to keep with him on the trip, but hadn’t explained what should be done with it.
The eyes of the two chassidim opened wide. “Do you mean to say that you have this Tanya from the Rebbe in your possession? Now? Here?” they exclaimed enthusiastically.
Rabbi Teitz silently took the Tanya from his coat pocket and showed it to them. They grabbed it from him and eagerly examined it from all sides and angles. Their increasing excitement was palpable. Clearly, they were overjoyed to be holding a book that less than a week ago had been in the Rebbe’s own holy hands.
While fondling the book, one of them shouted out in amazement. Too excited to speak, he pointed to what their intense scrutiny had uncovered: a page had been crimped by folding down the top corner, as a person sometimes does in place of a bookmark.
They opened to the page and were awestruck by the very first words on the page in the Tanya: “He is extremely pressed for time, and finds it utterly impossible to delay” (Tanya Kunres Acharon, p. 162a, top line).
“That’s it! That’s my answer from the Rebbe!” cried out the older chassid, visibly shaking with emotion. “The Rebbe is telling me to hurry and escape from here.”
Rabbi Teitz, not a Chabadnik, felt this was absurd. You decide a fateful question based on a fold in a page of a book by a man who knows not what is going on?! He remained silent, but felt this was absurd.
The younger chassid quickly picked up the book and eagerly examined it even more closely, hoping to find another crimped page. And there was one! Again they were overwhelmed.
Here is what that second page with a fold read: “They said, we will enter the Land. From where was their faith in G-d’s ability [to bring them into the land] restored?” (Tanya ch. 29, p. 37b).
“That’s the answer for me!” he shouted excitedly. “I should apply to make aliyah to the Holy Land now.”
Again, the American Rabbi felt this was strange.
The two pleaded with Rabbi Teitz to allow them to keep the book. He refused, saying that the Rebbe had instructed him to carry it with him but had said nothing about giving it to anyone.[3]
Rabbi Teitz returned to the US. He paid a visit to the Rebbe and reported of his journey. He did not want to share the Tanya story, as he felt that the Rebbe might be pained himself that these Chassidim took the folds in the pages as a sign based on which to decide life and death decisions.
But at some point, the Rebbe asked him if he had a chance to take the Tanya with him? Rabbi Teitz said yes, and shared with the Rebbe that he met two Chassidim who were excited to see and hold the Tanya.
Then the Rebbe then asked one question which left the Rabbi stunned:
די קנייטשן האבן זיי געזען?
Did they see the folded pages?
A Rebbe is rain; a Rebbe is a sun. And a Rebbe is a father and mother.
An Example to Us
The Rebbe was one of G-d’s gifts to the Jewish world after the horrific concealment of G-d’s face during the Second World War.
Here was a man that received up to 500 letters a day and answered them all; advised concerned parents of unwell children and singles searching for life partners with the same love and attention as he advised presidents and prime ministers on world affairs; had the vision to set up a web of institutions around the globe in order to rebuild Judaism after the war; promoted values and morals for the non-Jewish world; was as comfortable in the sciences as he was in Torah wisdom, and found G‑d in both; healed the sick with his blessings, and answered people’s questions before they even asked them; took the responsibility of the world on his shoulders, but had time for every individual.
For a superhuman to achieve all the above is no big deal. They don’t have to work hard to become heroes. But for a human being of flesh and blood, it is nothing short of amazing. The Rebbe always reminds me of what a human can achieve, and that I can always do more to better the world.
This is our privilege and duty today, 22 years after his physical departure from this world. For each pf us to see ourselves as drops of rain—revealing our own potential, as well as those of the people around us and in pour reach. For us to become like the sun—to bring forth light, clarity, vision, moral focus, direction, and warmth to our world. And to fathers and mothers, to care, to connect, to nurture, to love, and to be present with all our souls, to complete the work which the Rebbe wished to achieve more than anything else: to bring redemption to our world, to see the coming of Moshiach, speedily in our days, may it be now!
[1] Elie Wiesel, Memoirs: All the Rivers Run to the Sea (New York, 1995) pp. 402–3.
[2] Elie Wiesel, Memoirs, p. 200
[3] “To this day,” related Rabbi Teitz to Aharon Dov Halperin, the editor of Kfar Chabad magazine, “whenever I study something from this volume, or even happen to glance upon it, I recall this extraordinary episode and get excited all over again.” Rabbi Teitz warned the editor not to publish the story, so as to not damage the rabbi’s relationships with his valuable contacts in Russia and the government’s trust in him. For over a decade the story was suppressed, but when Rabbi Teitz passed on to his Heavenly award in the final weeks of 1995, it quickly found its way into print. Translated and adapted from V’rabim Heishiv Mei’avon, and Sichat HaShavua #471 by Yerachmiel Tilles.
- Comment
Class Summary:
The Talmud relates: When Rabbi Eliezer—Rabbi Eliezer ben Hurcanus was one of the most prominent sages, of the 1st and 2nd centuries, disciple of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, colleague of Raban Gamaliel, whose sister he married, is the sixth most frequently mentioned sage in the Mishnah—fell ill, four of the sages, his contemporaries and students, came to visit him.
“You are better for the Jewish people than a drop of rain,” Rabbi Tarfon told Rabi Eliezer. “For a drop of rain is [beneficial only] in this world, while [the Rebbe benefits us by teaching Torah] in this world and the world to come.”
“You are better for Israel than the orb of the sun,” Rabbi Yehoshua said to Rabbi Eliezer. “For the orb of the sun is in this world, whereas [the Rebbe provides light] in this world and the world to come.”
“You are better for Israel than a father and mother, for a father and mother [create life] in this world, whereas [the Rebbe creates life] in this world and the world to come.”
This is a strange story. The first three remarks also seem out of place. They are all sitting by their master who is ill. One students compares him to rain; the second one to the sun; the third one to a father and mother. Why? Was this a eulogy at the funeral?
In truth, each one of these sages was providing his definition of what a Rebbe is, what a leader is. What is his role? What’s his function? What purpose does he serve? He is like a droplet of rain. He is like the orb of the sun. And he is like a father and mother.
The sermon illustrates these three roles in the life of the Rebbe and his impact on the Jewish world, through three dramatic stories, including the decade-long relationship with Elie Wiesel who passed away last Shabbos. What did the Rebbe say when Elie pleased with him to teach him how to cry again after his well of tears dried up in Buchenwald.
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