Returning Through Stories

“G-d created His world with a scribe, a book, and a story.”—Sefer Yetzirah

After many years of teaching Torah, Rebbe Nachman of Breslov began telling stories. He famously said that the world tells stories to put people to sleep; his stories were meant to wake people up.

With Shabbos Shuvah upon us and Yom Kippur on its heels, I thought it would be appropriate to retell a few simple Yom Kippur stories from my family’s vault.

They aren’t stories of miracles or great revelations. They are family stories—the sort of memories that are passed from a grandfather to a grandson, repeated around a table, and eventually become part of the fabric of a family. One took place before I was born and was passed down to me by my father. The other is a childhood memory of my own.

But perhaps that is the nature of stories. We remember them first because of what happened. Only later do we begin to understand what they mean.

The Haftorah we read at Minchah on Yom Kippur is the story of Yonah. Of all the passages from the Prophets that our sages could have selected to inspire us to teshuvah in the waning hours of the holiest day of the year, they chose a story.

The Vilna Gaon taught that the story of Yonah is really the story of the soul. Yonah’s flight, his descent into the ship, the raging sea, the belly of the fish, and ultimately his return to fulfill his mission are not merely events that happened to a prophet thousands of years ago. They are our story.

Perhaps that is why stories have such power. An idea can remain outside of us. A story enters almost unnoticed and sometimes waits years before revealing what it was trying to tell us.

Rabbi Yochanan Gordon was my great-grandfather and my namesake. He hailed from the Russian town of Dokshitz before making his way to the United States in the mid-to-late 1930s. Reb Yochanan was an ardent chassid of the Frierdiker Lubavitcher Rebbe and later served as a gabbai in the main shul at 770 Eastern Parkway until his passing in 1969.

He was also a shochet, and for many years was the one who shechted the Rebbe’s kapparos. As a result, he was given another unusual responsibility: administering malkos to the Rebbe on erev Yom Kippur.

For those unfamiliar with the custom, there is an old tradition to receive symbolic lashes on erev Yom Kippur. A person bends forward while another lightly taps his back with a belt, in a triangular pattern, while reciting the verse V’Hu Rachum yechaper avon v’lo yashchis in its entirety three times.

The Rebbe himself was careful to observe this custom.

But that created an obvious question: Who would have the audacity to give the Rebbe malkos?

The Rebbe decided that the person who shechted his kapparos should also administer the malkos.

That person was my great-grandfather.

My father has related that he once accompanied his grandfather on erev Yom Kippur to the Rebbe’s office, where he would give him malkos. My father remembers an acute uneasiness in his grandfather’s demeanor throughout the day. He knew what he would have to do later and was clearly uncomfortable with it.

Rabbi Ephraim Piekarski once related that he walked into 770 on erev Yom Kippur and spotted my great-grandfather near the elevator crying intensely.

He asked him what was wrong.

My zaide took him aside into the main study hall and told him that he had just given the Rebbe malkos.

Obviously, the malkos were merely symbolic and caused no physical pain. But for a chassid as dedicated to the Rebbe as my elter-zaide was, even that was too much to bear.

There is another erev Yom Kippur memory that has stayed with me from my own childhood.

There is a Chabad tradition for the Rebbe to distribute lekach, honey cake, on erev Yom Kippur. The idea is specifically to ask the Rebbe for a piece, to which the Rebbe would respond with a blessing that this should be the only thing you need to ask another person for throughout the coming year.

This was one of the occasions that I remember my father taking us to Crown Heights for.

I can vividly remember being at home beforehand and thinking that because of our family’s connection with the Rebbe, we were going to get some honey cake—as naturally as you might go to a grandparent, relative, or family friend and be given a piece of cake.

It was admittedly a childish thought.

For years, that is all these were to me: family stories.

One was a story about my great-grandfather crying after giving the Rebbe malkos. The other was the memory of a little boy excited to go get honey cake from the Rebbe.

But as I have gotten older, I have begun to realize that there is something much deeper embedded within them.

The first story is a story of yirah. The second is a story of ahavah.

My great-grandfather could barely bring himself to touch the Rebbe with a belt, even symbolically. I, as a child, felt so comfortable with the Rebbe that going to receive lekach felt almost like going to a grandparent for a piece of cake.

Awe and intimacy.

Distance and closeness.

And perhaps that is precisely the paradox of Yom Kippur.

There is no day on the Jewish calendar on which we are more aware of the infinite distance between ourselves and G-d. We confess. We strike our chests. We abstain from eating and drinking. We stand before the King in judgment.

And yet there is no day on which we are closer.

The relationship between a Rebbe and a chassid was never intended to terminate with the Rebbe himself. A Rebbe is not a metzius unto himself. Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai says in the Zohar, Ana simana b’alma—I am merely a sign. In the language of Chassidus, a Rebbe is a memutza hamechaber: an intermediary whose entire purpose is to connect.

I once heard Rabbi Shais Taub describe the relationship by saying, “Hiskashrus is thicker than blood.”

As a child, I understood the first half of that statement. I felt that the Rebbe was family.

It took me much longer to understand the second half.

The closeness a chassid feels to a Rebbe is ultimately meant to awaken the realization of how close a Jew is to Hashem.

Perhaps that is why our sages placed the story of Yonah toward the end of Yom Kippur.

Yonah spends the entire story running away, only to discover that there is nowhere to run. His relationship with Hashem follows him onto the ship, into the raging sea, and down into the belly of the fish. Even his distance is contained within the relationship.

That is teshuvah.

Teshuvah literally means return. But you can only return somewhere that, on some level, you have always belonged.

Sometimes that realization comes through fasting. Sometimes through prayer. Sometimes through tears.

And sometimes it is hidden inside a simple family story, waiting years for us to understand what it was trying to say. 

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