When it occurred to me that the fifth day of Teves was this week I was happy to finally write about something other than the war in Israel. I looked through my recent documents and realized that each article covers a different aspect of the war, if not politically then spiritually. I was looking forward to a week off to write about something completely unrelated.
It reminded me of a thought I once had with regards to the Rebbe’s personal Torah diary, which was found posthumously in a desk drawer, containing notes that he had written for himself on a number of given topics during some of the most unsettling years in Jewish history. If you pay attention to the timeline when these notes were sketched, many of them were written while the Rebbe and the Rebbetzin were escaping war torn Europe, and by reading the entries themselves one could not detect an iota of unsettledness in the Rebbe’s thinking or in the topics that the Rebbe decided to write about. It always amazed me how the Rebbe could remain so settled and serene during such a tumultuous period.
I had contrasted that with the Aish Kodesh written by the Piasezner Rebbe who sadly and tragically perished in the Warsaw ghetto and whose sefer Aish Kodesh bears testimony to the tribulations of that time period in literally every entry. However, the more I continued to collect my thoughts and charted a path in addressing the significance of the fifth day of Teves the more it occurred to me that it is not unrelated to the war in Israel and I would not, in fact, get a week off from writing about the war that seems to not have an end in sight.
The fifth of Teves is the day of didan notzach. It is the day upon which the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York ruled that the Friediker Rebbe’s library belonged to Agudas Chasidei Chabad and was not the Rebbe’s private property subject to inheritance laws which Mr. Barry Gurary, the Rebbe’s grandson, had claimed. In fact, not only is this event related to the current war as we will soon see, it is related to the imprisonment of both the Alter Rebbe and the Mitteler Rebbe, and the theft and illegal sale of these books. Valued in the millions, the theft was itself viewed by the Rebbe as an imprisonment or as Rabbi Shlomo Cunin put it in a video that I came across earlier today, a hostage situation. Notwithstanding the political reasons that led to the Alter Rebbe’s imprisonment, during a visit from the Baal Shem Tov and the Maggid of Mezeritch to his cell, he asked them what had caused this decree that had led to his imprisonment, and they said that it was due to the limitless dissemination of chassidus to the masses. The truth is, it wasn’t the free dissemination of the secrets of Torah itself that led to his imprisonment but the fact that the chassidim were not utilizing the secrets enough in order to warrant its dissemination.
While the Rebbe identified this fiasco as an indictment on Agudas Chasidei Chabad for not being active enough, there was another element at play that was extremely hurtful and that is that it called the Rebbe’s entire leadership into question. You see, Barry Gurary claimed to be an heir to the Friediker Rebbe. In his mind his father was the rightful successor of the Friediker Rebbe and if he decided not to succeed the Rebbe, he was next in line. So he surreptitiously removed many hundreds of volumes from the Friediker Rebbe’s library and sold them to auction houses and collectors for millions of dollars, which ultimately had to be bought back. But this was 1987 and the Rebbe assumed leadership of Chabad in 1951. We are talking about a Rebbe who valued every second and utilized his time to its fullest; it’s impossible to appreciate just how deeply the implications of Gurary’s case regarding the sefarim impacted the Rebbe. It’s interesting to note that the court proceedings played out over the month of Kislev and the days of Yud Kislev and Yud Tes Kislev, which the Rebbe, in sichos, had correlated to the case that was then playing itself out.
The current war between Hamas and Israel began on Simchas Torah and went until the first prisoner exchange 54 days later on the 19th of Kislev. The Alter Rebbe was imprisoned on Simchas Torah for 53 days until the 19th of Kislev. This war is all about the rights of Eretz Yisrael to the Jews. A tzaddik is the embodiment of Eretz Yisrael. The relationship between a Jew and Eretz Yisrael is precisely the relationship between a chossid and his Rebbe. Just like G-d chose the Jews and promised Avraham Avinu the entirety of the land of Israel to his progeny, the Friediker Rebbe agreed to Rebbetzin Chana and Reb Levi Yitzchak Schneerson’s stipulation that the marriage of the Rebbe with his daughter, Chaya Mushka, was contingent upon succession.
Despite the fact that the Rebbe and the chassidim knew with certainty that Gurary had no claim to the sefarim, the fact that he could do what he did meant that there was a certain legitimacy to his claims and that the chassidim were not doing enough with the chassidus that had been revealed to that point. It was a very painful time for the Rebbe and the Rebbetzin. The story is told of a chassid who euphorically wished the Rebbetzin a mazel tov after the ruling was issued and Chabad was vindicated, to which she replied, “In our house this day is not a yom tov; it is in fact very difficult.”
We too have no question with regards to the eternal right of Eretz Yisrael to Klal Yisrael but the contestation of Hamas and those who are seemingly too blind to see through their deceptions needs to give us pause and to figure out why such a decree has befallen us in the first place. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York ruled that the Rebbe belonged to chassidim and we should live to see the day when the world rules that Eretz Yisrael is the eternal and undivided homeland of the Jews.
Yochanan Gordon can be reached at ygordon5t@gmail.com. Read more of Yochanan’s articles at 5TJT.com.