Musings Of A Shliach From Montana
Friday is Yud Tes Kislev, the Chag HaChagim, the Holiday of Holidays. But before I discuss this special day, I want to share with you what happened with Will.
Jews come in all shapes and sizes. We can’t judge any person’s unique Jewish experience and the aftereffects of that experience. We must always focus on the neshamah since we are not G-d and cannot judge others. We are fellow Jews and meant to see our brothers and sisters for who they are at their core, pure and holy, members of Klal Yisrael. When I first chatted with Will a few years ago, he was generous and kind, but somewhat cold and distant. He wanted to lend us some support because he heard nice things about us, but he wasn’t seeking to become more involved in Yiddishkeit because, in our first phone call, he said “Rabbi, my kids aren’t Jewish because I married a non-Jew…”
He understood his reality better than most.
Over the years, I’ve stayed in touch with Will and his family. Always brought them matzah for Pesach, honey cake for Rosh Hashanah, and other holiday treats. They became warmer and warmer, and I think they started to understand the importance of our work for the future of the Jewish people. For the first time this past Friday, he and his wife joined me for a meeting at shul. They walked into the shul, and before I could even say hello, they saw the JEM video of the Rebbe, z’tl, playing on the screen and said, “What’s that playing?” I told him it was a video of the Lubavitcher Rebbe Schneerson and he said, “Schneerson? I visited him when I was about five years old, or maybe eight. He asked his secretary to get a dollar and he gave me one.” This was in the sixties.
I was shocked.
Here’s a Yid who has been out of the loop for decades, but growing up super traditional, he visited the Rebbe. How did I not know this until now? What a story! I knew that he was a descendant of Reb Elimelech of Lizhensk, but this was new and eye-opening. After our meeting, which was about the growth of Chabad in Montana and issues related to Israel, I asked him if he would put on tefillin and right there, two hours before licht bentching (candle lighting), Shamai ben Asher Alter put on tefillin for the first time in about fifty years.
I share this story because this is the essence of the Yud Tes Kislev story. Historically, Jews like Will would have been written off by their Jewish community. They would claim he was a “this” or a “that” and his decisions would have led Klal Yisrael to think they could exist without him. Along came the Baal Shem Tov, and later the Magid of Mezritch, followed by the Alter Rebbe, the Baal HaTanya, who shined the Baal Shem Tov’s light, and revealed that the soul of a Jew is always connected, especially when their disconnect was circumstantial, not maliciously heretical. We are obligated to ensure that they know how Hashem sees them, and that they always feel at home among their Jewish family. When we study Tanya, and all sefarim of penimiyus haTorah, the inner layer of Torah, we see the depth of the soul through the depth of Torah, and at the core there is an unbreakable bond between Father and child, between HaKadosh Baruch Hu and His children.
In this week’s Parashat Vayeishev, my bar mitzvah parashah, we read about Yosef HaTzaddik in the home of Potifar and his immoral wife. She seeks to seduce Yosef into acting depravedly with her, and he’s very close to following her lead. Yet, at the last moment, just before he’s overtaken by temptation, he sees the visage of his father, Yaakov, the image of holiness and purity in his mind, and he’s reminded of who he is and with that memory, he holds off from committing the sin.
In the Sefer Yefeh Nof (authored by Rav Shmuel Yaffe Ashkenazi, born around 1525 in Bursa, Turkey, and is a commentary on Midrash Shmuel) it states that, “Yosef looked in the mirror and saw his face. He remembered how similar his facial features were to his father Yaakov’s, and with that in mind, he decided to honor his father and refrain from committing a sin which would be bad for him and bring dishonor to his family,” The Rebbe, zt’l, adds that Yosef remembered that his father’s beauty was like that of Adam HaRishon, as Yaakov was the one who rectified the sin of Adam, and Yosef didn’t feel like messing that up because he knew how hard his father worked to fix this sin.
Truthfully, one never knows what will awaken the Pintele Yid, the essence of a Jew. I don’t know that a Yid will manage to fulfill all 613 mitzvos during their lifetime, but if they are giving tzedakah to holy causes, laying tefillin, putting up a mezuzah, using the mikvah on time, does that not count? Of course it does! It brings holiness to them, to their families, and to the world. In addition, if their action of holiness doesn’t count, then we’d have to ask ourselves if it counts for us? Because if the single act is a big zero, then doing it many times is not any better, as one thousand times zero is still zero.
Tzedakah in particular is considered in the Gemara, Midrash, and Zohar as the most valuable mitzvah. As the Baal HaTanya explains, when one gives their hard-earned cash, cash that came to him or her through blood, sweat, and tears, it’s giving of their essence to tzedakah and that is of the highest value. In a Maamar on the verse in Psalm 55 “Padah BeShalom Nafshi” taught in 1958 the Rebbe lauds tzedakah as being even greater than tefillah, prayer, in some ways. So, if a Jew isn’t involved in 612 mitzvos but gives tzedakah to holy causes, who are we to minimize the impact of that mitzvah on their soul and their connection to Hashem?
In addition to Pharaoh’s birthday in the parashah, on Monday I celebrated my 43rd birthday. As we traveled to New York for the Chai Lifeline Dinner, I merited to make it to the Rebbe’s Ohel in Queens just before sunset on my birthday. I ponder, at times, what my life would look like if I wasn’t a Chassid of the Rebbe and his shliach to Montana. While I don’t know exactly how that would look, I do know that I am grateful every day to be in the position that I am to serve Klal Yisrael and to see Will and all my fellow Jews through the lens the Rebbe gave me and the entire world.
In the book “Aba” that I was reading over Shabbos, author Ari Samit shares a story about Eliyahu Amikam, who was born in Poland in 1915, moved to Israel in 1935, joined the Haganah, later when with Etezl, even later joining Lechi, becoming one of Israel’s first Airforce pilots, married in 1947, and eventually became a renowned journalist, including at Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. He had a weekly column and was considered fairly right-wing. Among the many columns he wrote was a scathing article about Meir Vilner, who was an avowed Israeli Communist, one of the founders of the Israeli Communist party and a staunch supporter of everything Arab. In 1967, he was the sole member of the Knesset who spoke out against the Six-Day War and was later stabbed by Avraham Ben Moshe, although he, baruch Hashem, recovered.
In his column following the stabbing, Eliyahu wrote that “It was too bad that the blade wasn’t a bit longer and slightly sharper…” Someone like Eliyahu saw Meir as a self-hating Jew, making life hard for his fellow Jews and siding with the enemy. In Eliyahu’s eyes Meir was worthy of losing his life over it.
When Eliyahu arrived in New York about two weeks later, he went to visit the Rebbe to receive lekach honey cake on Hoshanah Rabah. The Rebbe wished him a “Shanah Tovah u’Metukah,” and then said, “This isn’t how we talk about fellow Jews.” When Eliyahu tried to defend himself by saying that Meir Vilner is really bad, the Rebbe said, “Please ask my secretary to give you a copy of my recent farbrengen from the 6th of Tishrei.” At that farbrengen, the Rebbe addressed the Gemara that says, “All Jews are worthy of sitting in the same sukkah on Sukkos.” How can it be, asked the Rebbe, that a Kohen Gadol could sit in a sukkah with a woman married to a non-Jew? In the same sukkah? Fulfilling the mitzvah simultaneously? And he went on to explain that when a Jew does even one mitzvah that’s what fills them entirely. The sins they do are on the outside, superficial, but the mitzvos they do fill them fully. That’s why it says, “Jews are filled with mitzvos like a pomegranate is filled with seeds,” because the few mitzvos that they do fill them fully.
On Motzaei Shabbos I received an email from Gary, a visiting Jew from East Hampton who was in town and wanted to swing by Sunday morning to put on tefillin and see the Chabad Center. Indeed, on Sunday morning we farbrenged together a bit, and he shared with me all the Chabad rabbis he knows around the world, and he got to do his mitzvah in the shul. Can any of us judge the value of that moment of holiness?
Hashem wants the inner spark of every Jew to shine, so sometimes He shakes things up to get that part of us to come to the forefront to reveal itself, but don’t be fooled: the core the Jew is pure and holy. Sadly, Meir Vilner was never told about Eliyahu’s interaction with the Rebbe and that there was a Rebbe in Brooklyn who cared about him and how he was treated in the press after the stabbing.
This Yud Tes Kislev, let’s resolve to make Chassidus great again. Allow it to penetrate our ears, our souls, our lives, and let us gift ourselves the greatest gift of all: seeing our fellow Jews, all of them, with the light of the Baal Shem Tov, the Maggid, and the Baal HaTanya.
Wouldn’t that be super nice?
Rabbi Chaim Bruk is co-CEO of Chabad Lubavitch of Montana and spiritual leader of The Shul of Bozeman. For comments or to partner in our holy work, e-mail rabbi@jewishmontana.com or visit JewishMontana.com/Donate.