Margaret Mead once said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” I would take that idea one step further and say that even one individual can change the world, affecting the trajectory of the world and humanity.
I am currently teaching a six-week course entitled “Decoding the Talmud.” Created by the Jewish Learning Institute (JLI), the course is led by Rabbi Efraim Mintz, who has elevated Torah learning in America to unimaginable heights. (In the Five Towns, you can join these courses at Chabad with Rabbi Wolowik. If you don’t live in the Five Towns and want to join our classes, e-mail me for details.) Their flagship product is their in-depth, text-based courses that cover a wide array of Torah topics, and the current winter course is rock solid. Authored by Rabbi Yochanan Rivkin of Tulane’s Chabad of Louisiana, the course content teaches our students the history of the Mishna and Gemara, how a sugya (Talmudic discussion) is structured and studied, and so much more. Not only do we learn some sugyos together, we teach them the foundation of how our Talmud came to be and its significance in Jewish life.
Our nineteen Bozeman students are enjoying it immensely, learning so much about the system of halacha, and also having the opportunity to ask about the Oral Torah, “Torah Shebaal Peh” in all its intricacies. Which parts of Torah were received at Sinai by Moshe? Which parts are derived through the thirteen principles of halachic extrapolation taught by Rav Yishmael? Which parts are legislated by the sages to ensure that we behave properly and not have too many close calls?
The entire body of Mishnah-Gemara-Talmud evolved because one pragmatic holy man, Rav Yehuda HaNasi (Rabbi Judah the Prince), decided during the Roman occupation in the 2nd century CE to codify and write down the Oral Torah which until that point was transmitted orally. He knew what was at stake and stepped up to the plate to ensure Judaism had a future.
One man singlehandedly ensured Jewish continuity.
In honor of Presidents’ Day, our kids had a day off from school, so we decided to enjoy a Sunday outing at “G-d’s playground,” Yellowstone National Park, and then spend the night in a cabin in Gardiner at the northern entrance of the park. We dropped off our dog Ezzy with a friend in Livingston (the hotel didn’t allow non-service animals) and we headed through a blizzard into Yellowstone for a winter excursion. While most of the park is snowed-in and only accessible by snowmobile, Mammoth to Cooke City is open year-round and it’s a great time for locals to brave the weather and come into a quiet Yellowstone and see incredible wildlife. While in the park, we saw thousands of bison, a coyote (which may have been a wolf), elk, including a massive one with an insanely large rack, a moose, and the mammoth hot springs. It’s so special to just pack up the car and drive ninety minutes into this natural bastion of pristine beauty.
Every time I visit the national parks, my heart fills with gratitude to the individual who made the big move to create national parks and monuments. Here’s the background:
Yellowstone was the first national park, created through the efforts of many good people and inaugurated on March 1, 1872, when President Ulysses S. Grant signed the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act into law. Yet, it was President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt, often called “the conservation president,” who impacted the country well beyond his term in office by doubling the number of sites within the national park system. His biggest accomplishment in this regard was signing the Antiquities Act of June 8, 1906, which enabled him and succeeding Presidents, to proclaim historic landmarks, prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest located on Federal land as national monuments. One man who appreciated the great outdoors and understood how private development could destroy our national treasures acted in defiance of the big corporations and made all the difference. Teddy Roosevelt was beloved in the west, and today we have hundreds of sites across this magnificent country that are national treasures as a result of his devotion to the environment, and Yellowstone is high atop that list.
In this week’s parashah, Mishpatim, we read about the mitzvah of honoring a ger/giyores, a convert to Judaism, and to make sure that we never hurt or abuse them in any way. Converts are super vulnerable, in many cases choosing Judaism on their own without any family support, and we must be extra sensitive, making them feel at home in our beloved community. Interestingly, the Chofetz Chaim quotes a teaching from Rav Avraham Ben Avraham (Count Potocki), who was a Polish ger who was murdered Al Kiddush Hashem for being Jewish (I have written about his incredible story in the past). When the Midrash tells us that Hashem went to all the nations of the world before the giving of the Torah and asked them if they wanted the Torah as a gift and they said no, it was only the majority that said no, yet there was still some in each nation who did want to accept the Torah as they saw its beauty and value. It is the descendants of those who wanted the Torah and didn’t get it, who eventually become gerim, converting to Judaism.
Think about that for a moment!
A gentile, generations earlier, had a positive thought about accepting the Torah, and it created a spark that affected their progeny thousands of years later to choose Am Yisrael as their own.
We don’t always realize how much one person can affect change.
Just this past week, Chavie hosted a beautiful women’s event for Tu B’Shevat, where thirteen local women came together to make Focaccia Garden Art, a fun way to create fashionable bread and learn about the Rosh Hashana for Trees. One of the women in attendance was a local Jewess who has never been to any of our events and was brought along by a woman who is a pillar of our community. She’s never been to Rosh Hashana or Sukkos, Chanukah, or Pesach, but now she has come to celebrate Tu B’Shevat. One truly never knows which event in the holy confines of a shul, a place of Torah and tefillah, can change the Jewish experience and trajectory for a Jewish person seeking a connection.
Recently I received the newest volume of the Rebbe, zt’l’s talks from the winter of 1976. In theMishpatim Farbrengen the Rebbe speaks in pain about the non-halachic so-called “conversions” that are being “accepted” in the aliyah offices of Israel, creating major halachic conundrums with ramifications felt until this very moment. One who reads the Rebbe’s words or listens to his voice during weekday farbrengens can feel his abject pain on this subject. It’s palpable, knowing too well that the damage it will inflict on the wholesomeness of our people is irreversible. One marriage or intermarriage between a Jew who unwittingly marries a gentile can affect generations of Jews and the integrity of our nation.
Just as this is the case in the realm of negativity, so too is it the case in the realm of positivity.
On Shabbos afternoon, while my kids were playing with their friends, I was sitting in my library and popped open Likkutei Dibburim. I came across the Farbrengen of Simchas Torah 1932, in which the previous Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson, zt’l, who was living in Riga, Latvia at the time, having been expelled from Russia, speaks about the Jews that were in the Soviet Union. In his eloquent style he writes the following:
From every letter of Torah and prayer a good angel is created. During the Days of Awe—Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur—some 17 million Jews pray, read Tehillim, study Torah, and do good deeds, and from all these activities angels are created. This sets up a tumult in Heaven, as vast hosts of angels arrive there, a troop of angels from each country, where they were created from the prayers of ardent worshipers as they cried out “Kadosh Atah: You are Holy,” “Uv’Chen Tein Pachdecha: Instill a fear of You upon all that You have made,” “Vesimloch: You shall reign,” “Meloch Al HaOlam Kulo: Reign over the entire world,” “U’netaneh Tokef: We shall express the might of this day” and so on throughout the prayers of the Days of Awe.
Now these exclamations of “You are Holy” and “You shall reign” vary from country to country, according to the situation of each region. Those proceeding from Russia cause a great stir, for they are an outcry of physical suffering and spiritual anguish.
But then comes the time of the joyful angels of Simchas Torah, the angels created by the exultant verses of Atah Hareisa, and now the angels from Russia occupy pride of place. For now, forlorn in his dark house, sits a hungry Jew; his wife and children are famished and broken in spirit; his heart weeps for his lot and for theirs; he almost despairs, G‑d forbid, that things could ever improve. Suddenly he remembers that today is Simchas Torah. A gleaming ray of rollicking memories strikes his whole being like a lightning bolt. His spirits are raised. He runs off to the local beis midrash for Hakafot and leaps into the circle of dancers. “Elokai Haruchos, Hoshiah Na,” he cries out, “G‑d of all spirits, deliver us; examiner of hearts, grant us success; mighty Redeemer, answer us on the day we call!” And he grasps the wooden handle of a nearby Sefer Torah and sings at the top of his lungs: “Sisu Vesimchu B’Simchas Torah—Rejoice and exult on Simchas Torah!”
Men of this kind are envied not only by all the angels of Heaven, but even by the loftiest souls, the souls of tzaddikim, souls connected with all their brethren, souls whose abode is the supernal World of Atzilus; they too envy this self-sacrificing mesiras nefesh, the pure innocence of this simple faith. A Jew with such mesiras nefesh is cherished and held sacred in all the Worlds. Together with such Jews we should now proceed to Hakafot, and it is clear and certain that “thought is potent.”
As I read these powerful words, I thought about how one Russian Jew dancing the night away in secret on Simchas Torah could make such an impact in heaven. One person shows up properly in their relationship with Hashem and the ripple effect that it brings to them and the world around them is undeniable.
Let’s believe in ourselves and our ability to change the world.
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.
