Gimmel Tammuz: Absence As Presence

By: Yochanan Gordon 

This year marks 32 years since Gimmel Tammuz 5754. Thirty-two years is not merely a passage of time. It is an entire generation. Today there are shluchim serving communities throughout the world who were born after Gimmel Tammuz and have never known a world in which the Rebbe was physically present. Which raises a difficult question: Should the way we relate to Gimmel Tammuz today be the same as it was in 1994? I remember that day well. It was my thirteenth birthday according to the Gregorian calendar. My parents woke me that Sunday morning with the news that the Rebbe had passed away. The day was already scheduled to be a busy one. My older sister was graduating from elementary school. Instead, the day became defined by a funeral—not just any funeral, but the funeral of the Moshe Rabbeinu of our generation. I remember the sky being dark and overcast. It may even have rained. As a child, I was taught that when it rains, heaven is crying. Looking back, I could not blame heaven for crying that day. Not only did heaven cry. The Jewish people cried as well. We had lost our teacher, our father, our faithful shepherd whose door was open to every Jew. At my bris, the moheldeclared, “Zeh hakatan gadol yiheyeh”—this small child shall become great. Yet on the day I officially entered adulthood, I felt as though I was being introduced to a world defined by the Rebbe’s absence and challenged to discover how that absence would somehow be filled.

Today, 32 years later—the numerical value of the word lev, heart—I wonder whether we have fully absorbed the lesson of the day itself. Gimmel Tammuz is often approached primarily as a day of tragedy. Yet long before 5754, it was already a day associated with liberation, victory, and revelation. The date is perhaps most famously associated with the liberation of the Frierdiker Rebbe from Soviet imprisonment. It was on Gimmel Tammuz that he was informed that his sentence would be commuted and that his release was imminent, setting in motion one of the great miracles of modern Jewish history. Chazal also teach that on the third day of Tammuzthe sun stood still for Yehoshua during the battle against the Emorite kings at Givon, extending the daylight and enabling the Jewish people to complete their victory. These two events appear to share a common theme. Both represent moments in which light remained present beyond its expected limits.

Viewed through that lens, perhaps Gimmel Tammuz 5754 represents a third expression of the same phenomenon. For many Lubavitchers, Gimmel Tammuz evokes profound feelings of loss. That is understandable. The pain was and remains real. But alongside that pain, another reality has emerged. Chabad has experienced extraordinary growth since Gimmel Tammuz. New communities have been established across the globe. Thousands of shluchim and shluchos have dedicated their lives to carrying the Rebbe’s mission forward. Entire generations have grown up inspired by teachings they never heard firsthand and guided by a leader they never met physically.

What this demonstrates is that Chassidim were not paralyzed by the magnitude of the loss. On the contrary, they were propelled by it. The uniqueness of the Rebbe’s leadership was that he spent decades teaching ordinary Chassidim to assume extraordinary responsibility. Not to become Rebbes in title, but to become leaders in function. To initiate. To influence. To teach. To inspire. To build. The Rebbe repeatedly emphasized that Chabad demands effort, initiative, and mesirus nefesh. Looking back, one can see that Gimmel Tammuzcompelled Chassidim to discover capacities within themselves that may otherwise have remained dormant.

This idea finds expression in the Haftorah of Machar Chodesh. When Dovid was absent from Shaul’s table, Yehonasan explained, “V’nifkadeta ki yipakeid moshavecha”—your absence will be noticed because your seat will be empty. Dovid’s absence did not diminish his significance. It revealed it. Sometimes presence conceals what absence reveals. The empty seat became the proof of Dovid’s importance. Perhaps the same can be said about Gimmel Tammuz. If before Gimmel Tammuz the Rebbe’s influence was experienced through his physical presence, then the decades since have demonstrated that his influence transcended physical presence altogether. The Baal Shem Tov taught that spiritual growth unfolds through three stages: hachna’ah, havdalah,and hamtakah—submission, separation, and sweetening. The first years after Gimmel Tammuz were years of hachna’ah. We stood overwhelmed by the magnitude of what had been lost. Then came havdalah. We gradually learned that our relationship with the Rebbe could no longer be defined by physical proximity, dollars for charity, yechidus, or seeing him enter and leave 770. But perhaps after 32 years, it is time to speak about hamtakah. For 32 years Chassidim have built institutions, transformed communities, inspired countless Jews, and carried the Rebbe’s mission to places that could scarcely have been imagined in 1994. The remarkable growth of Chabad in the decades since Gimmel Tammuz is not a story that occurred despite the Rebbe’s absence. It is a story that emerged through it. The sun that stood still over Givon, the light that shone through the liberation of the Frierdiker Rebbe, and the light that continues to illuminate the world through the Rebbe’s shlichus are all expressions of the same truth: there are forms of light that remain even when their source can no longer be seen. None of this diminishes the pain of Gimmel Tammuz. The loss was real then and remains real today. But after 32 years, perhaps the defining question of the day is no longer what was taken from us. Perhaps the defining question is what was entrusted to us. If the first years after Gimmel Tammuz were about mourning the Rebbe’s absence, the decades since have demonstrated something remarkable: his absence became a different form of presence. And perhaps that was the deeper light of Gimmel Tammuz all along. n

Yochanan Gordon can be reached at [email protected]. Read more of Yochanan’s articles at 5TJT.com.