The Road to Crown Heights

The Rebbe looks at the bleachers from his chair, eyeing us long distance. I’m holding sweet Kiddush wine in a paper cup, the kind they give you at the dentist’s to rinse out your mouth. I’m supposed to wait until the Rebbe looks at me, then say “L’chaim” (“To life”) and drink the wine. But I can’t tell whether the Rebbe  is looking at me. Thousands of other eyes parked inside 770, headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, compete with mine to hold the Rebbe’s gaze.

The Rebbe has resumed speaking. Apparently, he’s given up hope of making eye contact with me. I try to prepare myself for another hour of uninterrupted talk in Yiddish, a language I don’t understand, with the exception of  a few words, such as “meshugana,” “schlep” and “oy,” none of which, I assume, figure very prominently in the Rebbe’s Torah talks.

As I peer at the Rebbe, my mind wanders. The Rebbe is wearing a wide-brimmed fedora hat made by an Italian company called “Borsalino.” He wears it with the brim bent down on the sides starting at about the ears and curving down above the eyes like an awning. Most Hasidic men in 770 shape their Borsalinos as the Rebbe does. Some hats, however, have a more straight-out-of-the-box look. I wonder what moves some people to strike out on their own and disregard the Rebbe’s shaped-hat example. Is it rebelliousness, individualism, laziness?

Most of my fellow students at Yeshiva Tiferes Bachurim in Morristown, NJ, for newcomers to Orthodox Judaism, don’t wear such expensive hats, which can only be acquired from the exclusive Borsalino hat dealer in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. I got my hat from the discount hat store up the street from 770. Hey, it’s a hat.

The long farbrengen (gathering) comes to an end. The Rebbe will now give dollar bills to all who man Mitzvah Tanks – mobile Jewish outreach centers – to hand out to those in attendance. The Rebbe distributes dollars to encourage the giving of tzedakah, charity. Typically, a Hasid would keep the dollar the Rebbe gave him and give two of his own to tzedakah.

Then someone in the bleachers makes the surreal announcement that the Rebbe wants to give dollars to the Morristown students to distribute. I walk along the edge of the stage toward the Rebbe, hundreds of eyes on me and my hat.

The Rebbe hands me a stack of fresh dollar bills. As soon as I exit the stage, a 770 student says to me, “Give me the one on the top and the one on the bottom.” I comply. Later one of my Morristown fellows explains to me that the 770 student wanted the dollars the Rebbe had touched, leaving me and those to whom I handed out dollars with the untouched, less holy bills. Another lesson learned.

Crown Heights was obsessed with the Rebbe. It was 1987. The Rebbe had been the leader of Chabad-Lubavitch since 1951, which, in the meantime, had grown into a worldwide movement. The Rebbe was the reason we drove in from Morristown once a month when he would lead an approximately three-hour farbrengen. But some of us had not yet developed a full appreciation of the Rebbe, and other pursuits demanded our attention. One of those was lunch.

On Shabbat, most Crown Heights inhabitants would eat a meagre lunch, or no lunch at all, following the morning prayer service, which ended at 12:45, then prepare their place in 770 for the 1:30 farbrengen. Fortunately, my favorite families – one of the Morristown students would set us up with families in Crown Heights for Shabbat meals – ate a full lunch before heading to the farbrengen.

Shmuel Dechter, a Morristown alumnus and the head of my most frequently visited family, was orderly and practical. So it wasn’t hard to imagine that Shmuel wouldn’t be found among those who ran home like maniacs for semi-lunch then returned in time for the start of the farbrengen.

I would arrive at the Dechter’s door on Mongomery Street after the morning prayer service, where Shmuel would greet me with his vaguely Long Island accent. A Long Beach football player and surfer turned United Lubavitcher Yeshiva fourth grade Bible and Talmud teacher, Shmuel would be wearing his black kapote (Think Prince Albert coat draped over the frame of a committed Jew.) and black hat – a sensible Roche, much nicer than a Crown Heights discount hat but not as pricey as a Borsalino.

In the dining room of the apartment the Dechters rented from the owner of the pharmacy around the corner, Shabbat lunch waited: hot matzoh ball soup; huge, Conehead-size bowls of potato salad and other delectables; and a sticky, brown cholent (Imagine stew on steroids.). D’vora Leah, Shmuel’s wife and the creator of that afternoon’s feast, welcomed me, while the Dechter’s three attractive little children greeted me with disinterest.

Then it would be time for the actual eating. Eating, a Shabbos ritual, has its own eating rituals. Between the fish and meat courses, for instance, Shmuel would make sure everyone’s palate was cleansed with a little vodka, declaring “L’chaim” to the men at the table, who would answer the same, then down their shot glasses. But that left, somewhere in Crown Heights, a Lubavitcher lacking a l’chaim, someone whose knowhow and creativity made an essential contribution to the spirit and delight of our Shabbos. That is why, after the preliminary l’chaim, Shmuel would call to the kitchen: “L’chaim, D’vora Leah!”

The next time the yeshiva traveled to Crown Heights for Shabbat, a month later, I visited a Lubavitcher family I hadn’t dined with before, the Lapines. Chaim Dovid Lapine was born and raised in Texas, but his family moved to my hometown of Kansas City when he was in junior high school.

            Pessa Leah LaPine, Dovid’s wife, joined the Kansas Citians at the dinner table. She hailed from a small Texas town, El Campo, and spoke with a disarming drawl that softened her forthright opinions about Crown Heights. She was clearly frustrated with the community schools her children attended, cautioning, “They come out illiterate in three languages!”

            Her alarm about a dangerous situation in her neighborhood roused her to action. She told us that she kept seeing the same children on her block playing in the street by themselves. The children would be alone for hours. Finally, she called the city’s Child Welfare Administration to come and investigate, which infuriated the parents. She said, in her defense, that given the parent’s neglect, calling the CWA was the least she could have done. Pessa Leah didn’t accept the New York, Big City status quo: She resisted. Pessa Leah was spunky.

Despite the lure of the Dechter’s and Lapine’s Shabbat tables, over time I made seeing the Rebbe my priority. Learning his discourses in the yeshiva, hearing miracle stories about him and seeing his majesty up close convinced me that I could make better use of the limited Shabbat hours in congregation with him and the Hasidim, which required skipping Shabbat lunch with a family.

And then I learned a startling secret: The Rebbe held farbrengens every Shabbat, not just once a  month. Equipped with this knowledge, some of the older and more dedicated Morristown students had been making the trip to Crown Heights each week. I felt a lure to join this band of mysterious travelers, and I did.

 Shabbat suddenly became a 770 thing. I entered the synagogue at 8:30 am and didn’t see sky until sometime after 4:30 when the farbrengen was over.

As the last mourner’s prayer of the Shabbat morning service in 770 ended, I slipped away to the 770 kitchen, toward the front of the synagogue, to eat something before the three-hour farbrengen began. It was now 12:45, 45 minutes to farbrengen. The 770 stewards provided some minimal nourishment for the morning-straight-to-farbrengen crowd. I loitered near the kitchen, the door of which was almost always shut, hoping that a bowl of D’vora Leah Dechter’s potato salad would magically appear. I eyed the tall, bulging, brown paper bags lined up against the wall outside the kitchen, grease spots running up and down. The bags contained kichlach. A kichel, a humble “pastry,” is pretty tasteless in its “deluxe” version; here, plain and sugarless, it was little more than a mouthguard.

            The real prize for the pre-farbrengen crowd was the cholent, which was doled out from the kitchen to a hungry line. Meatless with some potatoes and beans, the 770 cholent featured light brown chunks of something indefinable floating in it. Fortunately, those brown blobs were edible and tasty.

The Rebbe enters the shul from his office on the floor above at approximately 1:30 and walks swiftly to his red velvet upholstered chair on the stage.

“… Ahmain!” The Hasidim respond resoundingly to the Rebbe’s blessing concluding his first discourse. The assembled begin singing: “Eimosai ko-osi mar l'ch'sheyofutzu mayonoshecho chutzo …” (“When will the Messiah come?” [The Messiah responded:] “When your wells of Torah will overflow to the outside ...”)

The Rebbe, dressed in silk kapota and Borsalino, presides over the gathering from behind a long, covered table. Mostly older Hasidim, with their white beards and emotionless faces, sit on the stage to the Rebbe’s right and left and behind him. On the floor below the stage, in rows of wooden benches, sit the married men. On the bleachers, farthest from the stage, in three sections encompassing the Rebbe, we stand, shoulder to shoulder, the students and guests. The two women’s sections, behind tinted glass, constitute the balcony, in front of and in back of the Rebbe.

Kapotas, reserved for married Hasidim, separate the men from the boys, who wear navy blue or dark gray suits. Beards hang like stalactites from most chins, in different shapes, sizes and stages of development.

While the Hasidim sing, the Rebbe once again makes l’chaim by eye contact, moving his head and shoulders as he looks around the room, me included – well, I’m 90 percent sure he was looking at me.

All the while, the Rebbe keeps tabs on the loud singing. Without a pause from making l’chaims, the 86-year-old Rebbe swings his right arm, causing the Hasidim to sing louder, like a man turning up the volume on a radio.

The song comes around to the beginning: “Eimosai ko-osi mar l'ch'sheyofutzu mayonoshecho chutzo.” The words we sing refer to a letter the Baal Shem Tov, the originator of Hasidism, wrote describing his ascent to Moshiach’s chamber in Heaven. There he asks Moshiach when he will come. Moshiach answers: when your (the Baal Shen Tov’s) esoteric wisdom will spread out far and wide – the objective of every Chabad House from Toledo to Taipei.

The Rebbe, sitting squarely in his chair, turns his full attention to the singing. He claps; his hands blur. The song whips around louder and faster: “Eimosai ko-osi mar l'ch'sheyofutzu mayonoshecho chutzo …”

Then, unexpectedly, the Rebbe bolts from his chair and stands before us, singing and clapping with great joy and fury. My eyes take in the Rebbe, who looks like he’s expanding upward. Everyone clamors to see and be with the Rebbe. Those sitting stand. Those standing climb on tables. Everywhere Hasidim bounce on their toes: on bleachers; benches; tables; and the floor, all eyes fixed on the Rebbe.

And then it’s over. The Rebbe sits down again. 770 decompresses.

After the farbrengen I walked over to “1414,” the dining hall at 1414 President St., up the street from 770, where mostly students with nowhere else to go late Shabbat afternoon went to dine.

I sat down with some Morristown guys. Surveying the available food, I asked about the pan of cholent in the kitchen and was told it had been there since last night.

“Don’t eat it,” someone said.

“Is it spoiled?” I asked.

“Rats,” came the reply.

Right then, as if to drive home the point, a fat rat appeared on the window sill.

The baked chicken, which didn’t merit a special warning, was pretty good – greasy, but I liked it that way.

I returned to Morristown with some of the mystery travelers following the end of Shabbat. We rolled onto the yeshiva driveway. It looked different. I had begun to see it objectively, almost more as an outsider than as a participant. In a way, it had become secondary to Crown Heights. I had been studying in Morristown for two-and-a-half years. Certain things, such as ditching Rabbi Greenberg’s Talmud class every morning, told me it might be time to say, “Zei g’zunt” (“Be in good health.”).

I moved to Crown Heights in the spring of 1989. I took up residence in one of the apartments the yeshiva rented in 701 Empire Boulevard for its monthly stays. Feeling lonely in Crown Heights where I hardly knew anyone, it was comforting to see my Morristown friends the last Shabbat of every month.

Now that I lived in Crown Heights, seeing the Rebbe became a more frequent, more familiar occurrence. In the Dollar Line, though, he wouldn’t look at me as he handed me the dollar, focusing, instead, on the next person in line. I wanted to connect with the Rebbe, but he apparently didn’t feel the same about me. Then suddenly, on Shavuot, the holiday commemorating the giving of the Torah, the Rebbe acknowledged me, as G-d had recognized the Jewish people at Mt. Sinai.

After the major holidays, the Rebbe would give a little wine for a blessing to everyone in attendance, continuing a tradition dating back to the first Lubavitcher Rebbe in 1786. Alternating between two lines, the Rebbe, standing, would pour wine from his Kiddush cup into the standard 770 paper cups, then replenish his Kiddush cup from a big pitcher.  The spectators, mostly yeshiva students, would accompany the wine distribution with singing, which the Rebbe would frequently exhort with a swing of his arm. This took hours.

But to earn our wine, we first had to go on a little trip. As the Rebbe’s representatives, we would hike on Simchat Torah, Passover and Shavuot to another Jewish community in Brooklyn – or, for the ambitious and fit, to a community in Queens, Manhattan or the Bronx – to impart some Chabad philosophy and holiday cheer. On the return trip that Shavuot, a downpour tested my spirits. It rained so hard that the ink in my cheap hat began to leak and roll down my face. While I walked on, I mentally reviewed the Rebbe’s discourse that had been given out in 770 in honor of Shavuot. It was a particularly difficult one, and, as rain and hat dye fell, I struggled to understand it.

            I line up to receive wine from the Rebbe, my hat, lower pantlegs and socks still wet. As he pours a bit of wine into my cup, the Rebbe looks at me. I wonder, is the Rebbe acknowledging my review of his discourse in the rain? He must be, I think, as I head down the hill to 701 Empire.

Most of the guys were in the kitchen studying when I got back. Each of us had transferred  our wine from paper cups to little, round, transparent plastic bottles about the size of a thimble. The objective was to mix the wine given by the Rebbe from his Kiddush cup with regular Shabbat Kiddush wine to create “Rebbe Wine.” We all had our little bottles stored in the refrigerator, somehow marked to distinguish one from the other.

Chaim Reichman pulled his head from the fridge and, holding my thimbleful of wine, remarked in wonderment, “Look how much wine the Rebbe gave Moshe!” It was the first time I had noticed.

Chaim, from Philadelphia, was a really intelligent guy, a graduate of Carnegie Mellon in physics.  He was one of the sharpest students in Morristown; more significantly, he took to heart the teachings and living example of the Rebbe. Chaim couldn’t understand why the Rebbe gave me more wine than he gave him.

“The Rebbe is encouraging Moshe to come closer to the Torah,” suggested another student.

I accepted the rather patronizing explanation in silence. The Rebbe, I assured myself, knew the real reason for my “Rebbe Wine” bonanza.

The Rebbe seemed to know a lot about me. He acknowledged me when I did well, expressed displeasure when I did poorly. Then there was the time I thought I had let G-d down; but the Rebbe, apparently seeing things differently, indicated that I was still in the ball game. That assessment capped a week in which he endorsed my religious service, then I went off the reservation.

The week began when an old friend came to visit. Steve Devorah, who grew up in Kansas City and now lived in Orthodox Baltimore, was in town to explore a prospective marriage match. He stayed with me in my new basement apartment, which I shared with a fellow Lubavitcher newbie from Worcester, Mass., splitting the rent of $400.  I took Steve to my favorite Shabbos hosts and to prayer and the farbrengen in 770.  He left me Sunday morning to meet his date at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan.

That Sunday happened to be Rosh Chodesh Elul, the first day of an important month of reflection and action, preceding the High Holy Days. Inspired, and with nothing else to do, I studied Chumash, The Five Books of Moses, there in the apartment. My study of the rational  part of the Torah, usually a struggle to stay awake, that morning filled me with joy and excitement. That evening, after Steve returned to Baltimore, I joined yet another line to receive a dollar from the Rebbe. The Rebbe, acknowledging me with a smile, seemed pleased with my learning revival. I was, I must admit, pleased with myself.

The new spirit stuck with me as the week proceeded. I had plans to see Paul Simon perform for free in Central Park on Thursday. As the day approached, I had misgivings about going to the concert and potentially tarnishing the new feeling. I visited Yashaya Friedman, a recently married friend. I brought Yashaya and his wife, Emunah, some chocolate-covered almonds from the local candy store and that day’s Newsday, which I re-named “Noseday,” to their delight. The Friedmans didn’t know it, but as I visited, I held final arguments in my mind as to whether I would attend the Simon concert. In the end, a classic Talmudic question won the day: How could I miss seeing Paul Simon?

As I 1entered Central Park, I realized that I wasn’t going to get close enough to actually see Paul Simon. His music, which reached my ears weekly, sounded like a band playing in someone’s backyard 10 blocks away.

As I strained to hear a song from Graceland, somebody backed into me and called out dramatically, “Hey, you got ink all over me!” Another person nudged me on my right side. They both disappeared. I grabbed my right, front pocket. My wallet was gone.

I left Central Park and took the subway back to Crown Heights. As I rode the Four Train, my eyes alighted on a pretty girl, a Torah offense. I was really angry with myself now. Why did I go to the concert? I asked myself in vain.

The next night is Shabbat. The evening service ends. The Rebbe looks out from the platform on which he prays and, as Moses before his flock, eyes a sea of Jews. The sea splits as it always does, leaving a path for the Rebbe.

It seemed that the Rebbe always looked at just one person as he made his way through the prayer hall Friday night. It was like some sort of raffle prize without tickets. And it always went to the deserving, such as a former Morristown student I knew, a successful restauranter, generous giver of charity, especially to Chabad, and careful observer of the Mitzvot. He had won the Friday night raffle more than once.

 I stand on one side of the path, not being able to fully banish the thought that I squandered something good I had been given. Then the Rebbe does the last thing I expect him to: he looks at me.

One night the following spring the Rebbe looked at all of us – straight in the eye. I had returned to Crown Heights with an arranged date from Manhattan’s South Street Seaport. As the driver pulled up to Machon Chana seminary to let her off, we saw a number of seminarians on the porch reading Psalms, an activity often reserved for an emergency. We were both alarmed something had happened to the Rebbe. The truth, less dreadful that we imagined, yet somehow more shocking, would reveal itself to us in dozens of renditions, retellings and video subtitles in years to come.

While my date and I were away from Crown Heights, talking seaside over a Coke and a beer, the Rebbe made the shocking statement that he had done all that he could to bring Moshiach and was now handing the job to us. The announcement came at the end of a year-and-a-half in which the Rebbe persistently spoke of Moshiach: his coming; perceiving him; fulfillment of prophecy about his arrival; how current world events heralded his coming. And now he was telling us it was all for naught: The Jewish Nation was still in Exile.

 

 

****

 

            It was the end of winter, the joyful month of Adar, 1992, the month when the Jews, led by Esther and Mordechai, thwarted the evil Haman and his plot to destroy the Jewish people. Actually, it was the first of two Adars, that being a leap year when an extra month is inserted into the calendar to make up the difference between the lunar and solar cycles. The Rebbe had earlier submitted that any evil should be nullified within the 60 days of the two Adars – as one part of an unkosher substance is nullified when it is mixed into 60 parts of a kosher substance. I was coming home from work and stopped off at 770 for the evening prayer service.

After the service, the Rebbe gives out dollars. I’m in a line comprised of yeshiva students and Crown Heights residents. I reach the Rebbe, who rests his arms on a lectern, as his secretary, Rabbi Leibel Groner, slides a constant supply of dollars across the lectern to the Rebbe to keep pace with the line. He hands me a dollar. I snatch it. And then he gives me an unusual look. I can’t place it at first. It’s a look of … sympathy.

I left 770. Outside I overheard people talking about a local tragedy. A Lubavitcher woman had been killed in Crown Heights earlier in the day. The community was marching to the local 71^st police precinct to demand better police protection, then from the police precinct to the house of the victim.

I caught up with the marchers at the precinct station building and walked with them to the house. I saw the murder as a public affair. Angry at this attack on my community, I marched dutifully with my brothers. But then I began picking up tidbits of conversation around me about the murder. I inferred the victim’s identity. I began to beg G-d: “Please, don’t let it be her. Not her. Please, don’t let it be true.” We turned on Lefferts Ave. And then we stopped at the Lapine’s house. Pessa Leah had been murdered by an intruder.

They said she had resisted her assailant, a person with a history of assaulting Hasidic women. She knew, they said, she would have become forbidden to her husband, a Kohen, if she had not resisted.

The next day I returned home from the burial. I sat down on the thin carpet in the basement  I cried for my friend, Pessa Leah Lapine, a Jewish girl from Texas, who fought falsehood and ugliness with honesty, humor and spunk.

At the end of the seven-day Shiva morning period the Rebbe speaks about the death of Pessa Leah. Lapine. No one, the Rebbe included, can comprehend what happened, he says, why G-d let this happen. This death was made even more incomprehensible by the fact that the victim was a young woman, a mother of young children who need and long for their mother.

Pessa Leah publicly sanctified G-d’s name with her death, the Rebbe says, an attainment Yoseph Caro sought but could not achieve. Instead he wrote the Code of Jewish Law, a monumental achievement but not as great as sanctifying G-d’s name.

“The Jewish people have found themselves in Exile,” the Rebbe says, “already for more than 1,900 years, and Moshiach has still not come … We have already completed all of the service of the Period of Exile and all of the Torah initiatives … and still the Redemption hasn’t come in actuality! … And on top of that we add a terrible occurrence: a Jewish woman with small children must give her life to sanctify G-d’s name!”

A little over three weeks later, I was participating in a night learning program in a neighborhood synagogue, headed by Rabbi Mottel Shusterman. To the general  population of Crown Heights, Rabbi Shusterman was known as the Rebbe’s Torah reader for almost 38 years. To the Chabad newcomers participating in the night class, Rabbi Shusterman – whether teaching a Torah law in his thick Yiddish accent or describing what it was like trying to stay ahead of the Communists in Stalinist Soviet Union as part of the Lubavitcher underground – was like a zaide (grandfather).

Someone walked into the shul with a bulletin: The Rebbe had fallen at the Queens gravesite of his predecessor, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn.

“This is not good,” Rabbi Shusterman said, sounding deeply worried.

One of the students pointed out the report was that the Rebbe had only fallen.

“This is not good,” Rabbi Shusterman repeated, shaking his head.

The next day we found out what really happened: The Rebbe had suffered a stroke.

Cown Heights would spend the next two years waiting to see the Rebbe, seeing the Rebbe, then waiting for the next chance to see the Rebbe. The stroke rendered the Rebbe speechless. So, as he had declared a year earlier, now it was up to us. Bereft of the Rebbe’s instruction, Hasidim looked to the Rebbe’s published statements, especially those of the past two years regarding Moshiach, for guidance.

The community fractured over the issue of whether the Rebbe was Moshiach. I remember being in a class taught by a respected Crown Heights mentor and teacher of Hasidic philosophy, who when asked whether the Rebbe, post-stroke, could still be considered Moshiach, answered, “He can’t be Moshiach like this.”

That was not the predominate opinion in Crown Heights, judging from the occasions when the Rebbe and his Hasidim communed in 770. As a curtain was pulled back, the Rebbe would appear on a specially made balcony at the west end of the synagogue.

The throng, looking up at the Rebbe, would sing (in Hebrew): “Long live our master, our teacher and Rebbe, the King Moshiach, forever!”

The Rebbe would respond by waving his left hand, the side the stroke didn’t affect.

Two year passed, and then, devastatingly, the Rebbe suffered a second stroke. Three months later I was in Baltimore for an arranged date on Sunday. I was in a motel room where I had stayed for Shabbat. The phone rang, waking me up. It was the man who had arranged the date.

“Moshe, this is Avi,” he said. “The Rebbe died last night. We’re driving to Crown Heights. You can see her another time.”

I arrived at 770 and waited outside. Finally, they carried out the casket, made from the desk in the Rebbe’s office, out 770 and down the steps to the Eastern Parkway service road. They placed the casket in a car and drove off slowly to allow people to follow along in fulfilment of the Mitzvah to accompany the dead. Sad and angry, I karate kicked a police barricade, splintering it. I looked over at a policeman, who had witnessed my performance. His face said, “These people are crazy.”

I got a ride to the cemetery in Queens. We weren’t allowed inside the gate. But we were all familiar with the gravesite: the Ohel, a roofless, stone, structure where the Rebbe’s predecessor was interred, which Hasidim, especially the Rebbe, had been visiting since the previous Rebbe’s passing in 1950. The Rebbe would be buried next to him. On my way back to the car I passed an unmarried friend from Morristown, who said, “Now I know what I’m going to name my first son (Menachem Mendel, the Rebbe’s name).”

 

***

 

Many years later I was involved in the Chabad-Lubavitch program JNet, in which people are paired up to study Torah on the phone or on Zoom. I had split up with my first study partner. But procrastinator that I am, months – maybe a year – had passed and I had neglected to look for a new one.

One day I was walking down Kingston Ave, passing 770 on the side. All of a sudden, a wiry, manic 770 student I had never seen before rushed up to me and blurted out, “Do JNet!” then ran off. How did someone who had never met me know that I was standing on the sideline where JNet was concerned and picked the perfect time to accost me on Kingston Ave.? There was no earthly explanation: a message so mysterious could have been arranged only by the Rebbe.

I called JNet and got a new partner. He was just what I had been looking for: someone experienced enough to study Hasidic discourses but not too knowledgeable that I couldn’t teach him anything.

My knowledge of the Rebbe tempered my surprise at this act of long-distance (or maybe not-so-long-distance) intervention. This was the same Rebbe, after all, who, at a large gathering, would embrace with his eyes everyone he could reach. He would find you out of thousands, focus his attention on you alone: “To life.” You would respond in kind, uplifted by the exchange, this reminder of who you are.

            You would leave 770. You might not see the Rebbe again for a week or two. But you would carry his picture in your wallet, and he would hold your soul in that internal contact list in his head and in his heart. He’d keep his eye on you from the window. Until you saw him again.

‘One More Year!’: G-d’s Mandate on Rosh Hashanah

Man #1: What are you doing?

Man #2: I’m putting a yard sign in your lawn. I’m running for mayor.

Man #1: Something’s wrong with your yard sign. Why is a piece of cheese cake floating above your face?

Man #2: I did a survey. It turns out that people love cheese cake more than anything else except their spouse – and in some cases more than their spouse. Once I cover this town with yard signs, voters will associate their love of cheesecake with my candidacy. I’ll win in a landslide!

Man #1: Shouldn’t people be voting for you because they like your ideas, your 10-point plan?

Man #2: I have a 10-point plan. See my brochure? Each point is a different color.

Man #1: It’s very colorful … You know, there’s another season happening now besides election season. The High Holidays are just around the corner. G-d is, kind of, running for reelection.

Man #2: Really? I haven’t seen Him out here. What’s He running for? School Board?

Man #1: No, He’s running for king.

Man #2: Why does He have to run for king? You inherit that office by birth. I saw this on Netflix. The king was coughing up blood, then he got real sick and died. His oldest daughter, who was only like 20 or something, became queen automatically. She got a crown fit to her head and her own credit cards and a Mazda.

Man #1: On Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish people must willingly accept G-d’s commands before His Will to be King is revealed for the new year. By renewing our commitment to be His loyal subjects, we crown Him King once again.

Man #2: But a king doesn’t need the love and admiration of the voters to rule. If you’re king and you decree that everybody has to wear earmuffs, even in the summer, and ban split pea soup throughout the kingdom, nobody can impeach you. The electorate just has to take it. Tough beans.

Man: #1: But you’re not describing a king. What you’re talking about is a dictator.

Man #2: Look, I’m not giving a civics class. King’s are fat; dictator’s have mustaches. Otherwise, we’re splitting atoms.

Man #1: You mean hairs.

Man #2: Yeah, hairs to the throne.

Man: #1: A dictator rules without the love of the people. He forces them to do what he wants even if what he’s asking of them is totally disdainful. A king, on the other hand, is loved by his subjects. They want to do what he asks of them. They want to be his subjects, and they want him to be their king. His will is their will.

Man #2: Well, now that you mention it, on that Netflix show the queen was awfully sensitive to how the people thought of her. She was giving these really lousy speeches at first. Then this editor comes around and tells her to stop sounding like a snobby so-and-so and start quoting Led Zeppelin songs in her talks and stuff like that.

Man #1: G-d wants us to serve Him – out of His love for us. He doesn’t want to dominate us like an autocrat. A dictator’s subjects live in fear. They fear the dictator as a dog fears a stick. The king’s subjects also fear him but with a fear based on will and reason better described as “reverence.” When we love the King, and want to serve Him and even know Him, the King responds as our loving sovereign.

Man #2: Well, I guess that’ll work until He runs again. For me that won’t be for another four years.

Man #1: But you have to win this election first.

Man #2: I’m confident. I’ve raised the most money, I’ve done the most polling and I have the best yard signs. Now it’s just a matter of watching the votes come in and moving my favorite knick-knacks into City Hall. What I'm going to have, in the tradition of Abe Lincoln, is a “government of the people, by the people, for the people” – just like it said on Lincoln’s bumper stickers.

Change the World

I waded through the crowd clutching my Tefillin bag, searching for someone to put Tefillin on. The demonstrators were protesting a Mexican restaurant caught selling unsustainable tacos.

“Hey, Rabbi, where’s your sign?” a boy shouted at me.

“Let’s see what your sign says: ‘Sustainability. Renewability. More Hot Sauce.’”

“You look familiar,” the boy said.

“I’m Rabbi Isaac Zilbershtein, the spiritual leader of Congregation Bnei Jacob Yankel here in Laredo, and the director of the Charles and Edna T. Zohar Kabbalah Center of South Laredo.”

“I’m Gary Weinstock, activist and friend of the golden hamster.”

“I see you’re inspired by environmental causes.”

“Not really. I’m just doing this as a favor for a friend who hates tacos. What really gets me going is technology.”

“You think it’s evil?”

“Yes. Like how on Gmail they group emails together. You get an email from your friend Steve, and the the next thing you know you're talking about your rash with his Aunt Ida. Or on Facebook how they try to get you to make friends with some guy you’ve never seen before who reminds you of your cousin Finbar, the one who has the  nasal spray addiction. I want to lead a revolution against such tyranny. I want to change the world.”

“Would you like to change the world right now?” I asked him.

“Do I have to give up tacos?” he said.

“No, just put on these Tefillin.”

“OK, but how’s that going to change the world?”

“Put them on, then I’ll explain.”

I began wrapping the black leather strap around his left arm. Just as he finished saying the Shema prayer, we heard a terrifying crash. We rushed over and found a statue of the inventor of the taco, Juan Ortega Bell, lying on the ground in pieces, toppled by some of the more zealous protesters.

            We were the only ones there. All the other protesters (and rabbis, if there were any) had fled. As I looked down at the face of the taco’s creator, I heard the wail of a police car grow louder and louder. Two policemen wearing sunglasses, one skinny, one burly, burst out of a police car and snapped handcuffs on our wrists.

            Back in the car, the skinny cop said wistfully, “I remember when I was a little boy, I would climb up that statue and rub his nose for extra tacos.”

            The burly cop read us our Miranda rights.

            “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law …”

            “Yes, with my luck,” Gary moaned.

            “Don’t worry, G-d will find a way to lift us out of our predicament,” I assured him.

            “Hey, you never told me how putting on Tefillin can change the world,” he said.

“Before you were born you were given a G-dly Soul and an Animal Soul,” I began. “The G-dly Soul was sent down here to transform the world into a holy place. But the G-dly Soul can’t change the world by simply waving a wand.”

            “Why not? It worked for Harry Potter,” Gary pointed out.

            “You see, the G-dly Soul is housed within the Animal Soul and the body. To do a Mitzvah, like wearing Tefillin, lighting Shabbos Candles or eating Matzah the night of Passover, the G-dly Soul must employ the power of the body. And to harness the body’s power, the G-dly Soul must enlist the Animal Soul, which animates the body.”

            “So what do the body and the animal soul gain from the Mitzvah?”

            “The divinity of the Mitzvah descends on the Animal Soul and the body, as they put on Tefillin or light Shabbos Candles.”

            We arrived at the police station. The burly policeman put us in the same cell, where Gary and I continued our conversation.

            “OK, the Animal Soul and the body are affected when someone does a Mitzvah, but how does that change the world?” Gary asked.

            “The G-dliness introduced into the physical word by the performance of Mitzvahs throughout history will become revealed in the era of Mashiach,” I explained. “Then the material world and its resources, through which all 613 Mitzvahs were accomplished, will be transformed to good and remade into a dwelling place for G-d.”

            Just then a young woman entered the station. She had taken a video of the whole taco desecration: the fall of the statue; the protestors leaving; Gary and I arriving on the scene. She had heard of our arrest and was kind enough to come and testify to our innocence. The policemen, now realizing what had happened, told us we could go free. I called the musical director of my synagogue, Cantor Wasserman, to pick us up.

            Cantor Wasserman dropped Gary off first. Gary started up the walkway to his parents’ house then turned around.

            “Rabbi, I promise I’ll do all 613 Mitzvahs before I see you again,” he declared.

            “Gary,” I said, “I have a saying. Change the world one Mitzvah at a time.”

            Folks, it’s time to say goodbye. I think we all learned something from our little adventure. Gary learned that there’s another way to generate change. I learned that I shouldn’t get excited every time a statue falls. And the police learned that above them is “an eye that sees” (Ethics of the Fathers 2:1). Well, that’s the whole enchilada. I mean, the whole taco.

G-d of Corona

Two men wearing surgical masks are sitting on a bench outside a suburban Walmart. One man sits next to a shopping bag containing a large box of disinfecting wipes, a bottle of Lysol, 48 Ultra Strong Super Mega Rolls of toilet paper and a copy of the CDC’s “Coronavirus Disease (COVID 19) Guidance for Cleaning and Disinfecting Public Spaces, Workplaces, Businesses, Schools, and Homes.” The other man has a bag holding three 63-liter bottles of Mountain Dew, a large pouch of Crispy M&M’s and the current issue of “Guns and Ammo.” They are sitting 4-and-a-half feet apart.

Man #1: Do you know who’s responsible for this virus? The Devil ... Do you want some Mountain Dew?

Man #2: No thanks. I say it’s G-d.

Man #1: What? The deaths, the unemployment, these stupid masks. They’re from G-d? No bad comes from G-d. G-d is Good. That’s why he’s called G-d. The Devil is Evil. That’s why we call him the Devil. And Beelzebub … Well … Can you think of a more evil-sounding name than that?

Man #2: I still say it’s G-d. G-d created the world. He’s responsible.

Man #1: That doesn’t prove anything. Let’s say you’re the owner of Walmart. Someone was trying out some patio furniture at one of your stores, and they fell off and landed on their face and broke their nose. Now is that Joe Walmart’s fault?

Man #2: I think he’d probably lose a lawsuit. It happened in his store.

Man #1: “Probably lose.” Maybe it’s the patio furniture manufacturer’s fault – faulty furniture. Maybe the guy who fell off has done this before in other stores. He could be some kind of professional klutz. See, G-d created the “store,” but that doesn’t mean that everything that happens here is His fault. In most of these cases you’ll find that the Devil was involved.

Man #2: Okay, suppose you build Walmarts. You just finished building the premier Walmart in the United States. One night the whole store – the walls and the ceiling – collapses.

Man #1: And the sinks explode … I mean it’s a better effect.

Man #2: Now you’re responsible. You designed the store. You put it together bolt by bolt, all by yourself. See ya in court!

Man #1: Well, suppose someone slipped me some faulty bolts. Maybe a phantom    tornado flattened the store. Or the Devil himself huffed and puffed and blew the Walmart down. Just because I made the store that doesn’t mean I’m responsible when there’s a calamity.

Man #2: So you’re saying G-d isn’t responsible for the world He made.

Man #1: G-d created the world then left us in charge. Or He at least left some flexibility. Evil, for example, is its own separate branch – like the Congress.

Man #2: All right ... You’re making that Walmart. You want to do it right this time. You make your own bolts. Not only do you make the bolts but you give them existence. You create them from nothing.

Man #1: That’s impossible.

Man #2: Maybe for you, but not for G-d. G-d made the world but not like how you or I make a Walmart. Before He created the world there was no world. Only G-d existed. To create the world he had to make it exist. He made something that wasn’t there.

Man #1: Wait a minute. I’m making a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich. I got my bread, my jar of Skippy and a good-looking banana. Now, if I made this sandwich like G-d made the world, you’re saying I’d have to create all the ingredients out of thin air? Man, that’s tough. That’s not even wholesale.

Man #2: And that’s not all. When someone builds a Walmart, he can walk away once he’s done. A creation constructed from already existing materials can stand on its own. G-d, on the other hand, can’t just leave His Creation.

Man #1: Why not?

Man #2: Because if He did, it would no longer exist. He made it from nothing. He has to keep re-creating the world for it to continue existing. If he takes His “hand” off for one moment, the whole Creation reverts to nothingness.

Man #1: So what does that have to do with Mr. D?

Man #2: Mr. Dalrymple?

Man #1: No, the Devil.

Man #2: Since G-d’s control over the world – as Creator and never-ceasing re-Creator – is total, no creature enjoys true independence. Everything that happens in the world happens because G-d makes it happen. The Devil can’t cook up any evil by himself.

Man #1: Hold on a second. G-d is good. Are you with me on that?

Man #2: Yeah.

Man #1: How does bad come from G-d if He’s good?

Man #2: Whatever G-d does is for the good. The good might not be revealed to us now, but even evil is ultimately for the good. G-d created light and dark. Revelation and concealment. He employed both to create the world and to shape its destiny. In the end, concealment will beget revelation, darkness will become light.

Man #1: Now that we’ve defanged the Devil, what are we going to do about these masks?

Man #2: I’m going to keep my mask on.

Man #1: I’m taking mine off … Want some M&M’s?

Man #2: No thanks.

Letter From Crown Heights: The High Holidays 5780

Rosh Hashanah

            “L’Shana tova tikaseiv v’seichaseim.”

            “L’Shana tova tikaseiv v’seichaseim.”

            We exchanged the traditional Rosh Hashanah night blessing: “May you be written and sealed for a good year.” I said it to whomever I saw as I made my way out of the Frankel Shul – even to the Israeli guy who usually scowled at me.

According to the Torah, G-d writes the contract for the new year that night, at least for some people, such as tzaddikim, the righteous. It’s sort of like winning the World Series after the first game. After the first night of Rosh Hashanah we no longer wish each other to be signed and sealed for a good year because the signing has already begun and is only pending the final seal. Instead we say, “G’mar chassimah tova” (“May you have a good final sealing.”)

I saw my friend, Gavriel Greenberg, and wished him the first night blessing with an outstretched hand. I improvised a follow-up blessing. Not wanting to say something trite to my good friend and sports addict, I said something silly instead: “May all your teams be winners this year.” I got a reply in kind: “Hey, don’t give up on your Chiefs, Moish. I still think they’re going all the way this year.”

On Rosh Hashanah we’re enjoined to keep idle talk to a minimum. Not only were thoughts of touchdown passes now in my head, but I had become Gavriel’s Rosh Hashanah enabler. Just then young Chaim Horowitz, a consummate Yankees fan, passed by Gavriel, well into a full sports monologue. Chaim, who would have been talking incessantly with Gavriel about baseball had this been a regular Shabbos or holiday, just looked at him and shook his head.

Signed, sealed and delivered, or not, the lengthy daytime praying started the next morning at 9:30 … Standing with my shoes together, head bent down and the Rosh Hashanah prayer book close to my face, I started praying the Rosh Hashanah Shemoneh Esrei (Amidah) prayer quietly to myself: “… instill fear of You over all You have made … all the created beings will  prostrate themselves before You, and they all will form a single band to carry out Your will with a perfect heart.”

            It gets me every time. On the day in which we accept G-d as King over us (the Jewish people), we pray that the whole world bow down in awe before Him, revealed in all His splendor. The world the Rosh Hashanah Shemoneh Esrei depicts is no less than the Days of Mashiach.

… The scene shifted. Quiet anticipation, a hush, descended. Attention turned to the center of the shul for the Mitzvah of the Day.

Standing at the bima, the Baal Tekiah (Shofar blower), white tallis wrapped around his medium frame, pronounced Psalm 47 – “… All you nations join hands – sound the shofar to G-d with a cry of joy …” – seven times in his throaty voice with the congregation joining in. Eight more verses were said in unison.

The Baal Tekiah then made two blessings and sounded the Shofar: “tekiah-shevarim-teruah-tekiah  …”

            The Shofar blowing man, Phivel Caplan, blew loud, long and clear, making holy sound in physical space. The Frankel Shul, like the ocean, holds treasures that no one besides its members sees. Phivel is the whale shark of our ocean: a humble guy, serious about Torah law, generous to those in need, with the lung capacity of Louis Armstrong.

Yom Kippur

            Before we began praying Shacharis, the morning service, the rabbi led us in singing “Avinu Malkeinu” (“Our Father, Our King”): “Our Father, our King, we have no King. We have no King but You.” Those words are what Yom Kippur is all about – returning to the essential point, the one nation reuniting with the One G-d.

… Yossie Blumenfeld, the shul caretaker, sitting next to a stack of folded bath towels in a clothes basket, tossed a towel to everybody at our table, like a dutiful gym teacher, for us to bow down on.  In the Temple on Yom Kippur the Jews would prostrate themselves to G-d whenever they heard the Kohen Gadol (High Priest] pronounce the Divine Name. We, too, bowed four times, three when the prayer book described the Temple prostrating and once in the Aleinu prayer.

The prostrating was a two-step process. First, I got down on my knees, landing on the towel I had spread out in front of me; then I bent forward, my forehead touching the floor (without the intervention of a bath towel). To make contact on the floor with my forehead, I had to lift the brim of my hat at the last second.           

            After we finished prostrating, the praying continued throughout the afternoon and into evening: 80 men praying and fasting for 10 hours – in addition to the praying-fasting the night before starting at sundown – with only one break. Like a team of astronauts traveling together in a tight compartment, we remained in the Frankel Shul until our mission – securing atonement for our transgressions – was completed.

            Finally, we could see through the windows it was dark out. According to the clock, Yom Kippur was over. Confident the Heavenly Court had reached a verdict of “Not Guilty,” we danced around the bima singing Napoleon’s March, the tune we used to sing at the conclusion of Yom Kippur in 770 with the Rebbe.

I pictured that scene: The Rebbe has climbed to the top of a step ladder perched on top of a raised platform so people can see him. Dressed in a special white robe for Yom Kippur, called a kittel, covered by a white tallis, the Rebbe sways to the singing, clapping his hands, as the singing builds to a crescendo.

            “Our Father, our King. We have no King. We have no King but You.” May the king, King Mashiach, be revealed now.

Sukkos

            It was 7:00 am, and I was going to bed. I had spent the last six hours reading Psalms out loud – make that all of the 150 psalms in King David’s Book of Psalms. It took me that long because I’m a slow reader, at least of Hebrew. Those tiny marks, called nekudos, which vowelize the Hebrew consonants, slow me down. Actually, I don’t know why I read so slowly. Once when I was in elementary school, my friend Jerry Esrig’s grandfather tested our Hebrew reading speed. Jerry blew me away. I guess I never recovered.

            I had been saying Psalms in the shul, starting at midnight, because that’s what we do on Hoshana Rabbah night. You see, even after Rosh Hashanah, the Ten Days of Repentance and Yom Kippur, there’s still one more day of judgement on the final day of Sukkos – Hoshana Rabbah. I guess a more positive way of looking at it is that G-d keeps giving us chances to repent. (According to one opinion, the final judgement doesn’t come until Chanukah.)

            I set my alarm for 10:30 to make sure I would pray Shacharis, the morning prayer service, before midday – knowing full well there was little chance I’d wake up after three-and-a-half hours of sleep. I woke up at 11:30, grabbed my Lulav and Esrog and rushed to 770, Lubavitch Central.

            Hundreds of Lubavitcher chassidim were standing on the service road in front of 770, outside a big tent erected so that when 770 was filled to capacity the rest of us would have a place to pray. The tent must have been filled to capacity. I immediately found a man trying to start a minyan – a quorum of 10 men, the minimum required for group prayer. I stood there in the street praying, my pocket-size prayer book in my right hand and my Lulav and Esrog in the left. An Israeli yeshiva student came up to me and asked in Hebrew if he could use the Lulav and Esrog. I said, sure, and watched him disappear into the crowd. I was glad to help him but felt uneasy not having my eye on him and my precious mitzvah items.

I prayed on, but the Israeli yeshiva student didn’t return. It started to rain, and the big crowd ran to the tent, squeezing under the roof at the end nearest us. “Great,” I thought, “I’m never going to find him now.” Then another, much bigger, Israeli yeshiva student ran over to me and, laughing, handed me my Lulav holder, without the Lulav inside and no Esrog. I was really mad now: “Where’s the Lulav and Esrog?” He pointed in the direction the other student had run off in. I felt I was being made the butt of somebody’s Hoshana Rabbah joke. I pictured a hundred Israeli yeshiva students passing around my Lulav and Esrog, making blessings, shaking – and laughing their heads off.

Now I would have to go around asking to borrow a Lulav and Esrog when they came up in the praying. A while passed, then the big Israeli student tapped me on the shoulder. He pointed behind him. There in the tent stood a third Israeli yeshivah student praying with my Lulav and Esrog. I approached him. He handed over the goods.

Reunited with my Four Species, I thanked G-d for returning them to me. I decided to return to the Frankel Shul where the atmosphere would be calmer.

The Hoshana Rabbah praying is long. It’s the last chance during this month of fast and festival to beseech G-d to grant us and the Jewish people a year of peace, joy and Mashiach. I finally finished, smacking the Hoshaanos – five willow branches tied together – five times on the floor of the shul to “sweeten the judgement,” the culminating act of the Hoshana Rabbah praying.

I picked up my Lulav and Esrog, their role as mitzvahs over, and walked home. I looked ahead to the remainder of the holiday: no more pleading; no more extended praying. This was not the time for sharp analysis, deep thinking or meditation. Tonight we would dance with the Torah.