One day at a busy airport, the passengers on a commercial airliner are seated, waiting for the cockpit crew to show up so they can get underway. The pilot and co-pilot finally appear in the rear of the plane and begin walking up to the cockpit through the center aisle. Both appear to be blind.
The pilot is using a white cane, bumping into passengers right and left as he stumbles down the aisle, and the co-pilot is using a guide dog. Both have their eyes covered with huge sunglasses. At first, the passengers don't react, thinking that it must be some sort of practical joke. However, after a few minutes, the engines start revving and the airplane starts moving.
The passengers look at each other with some uneasiness, whispering among themselves and looking desperately to the stewardesses for reassurance. Then the airplane starts accelerating rapidly down the runway and people begin panicking. Some passengers are praying, and as the plane gets closer and closer to the end of the runway, the voices are becoming more and more hysterical. Finally, when the airplane has less than 20 feet of runway left, and about to plunge into the water, there is a sudden change in the pitch of the shouts as everyone screams at once, and at the very last moment, the airplane lifts off and is airborne.
Up in the cockpit, the co-pilot breathes a sigh of relief and turns to the pilot: "You know, one of these days the passengers aren't going to scream, and we're gonad go straight into the water and get killed!"
Which Jewish event today attracts most Jews? If you are looking to see in one place the greatest concentration of Jew, where would you search?
Not a Grateful Dead concert or a BLM demonstration, but hands down—it is a gravesite of a Rabbi who lived 1800 years ago, in the second century CE, and is buried in the town of Meron in Israel.
Close to half a million Jews make their way each year on the yartzeit of this Rabbi to his resting place in Meron. The yahrtzeit is today April 30th, 2021. The name of the Rabbi is Shimon Bar Yochai. The author of the Zohar (Shining Light), the classical source of Kabbalah. (Due to the tragedy that happened last night in Meron the police closed down the place for now and thousands of people were forced to go back home).
But there is something strange about this day: It is called “Helulah”—the “wedding” day of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. Never before has a yartzeit ever been described as a “helulah,” a wedding, and for good reason: Death and marriage are two opposites.
The questions are obvious:
How can a yartzeit, a day of passing, be called a “wedding?”
Or a woman who once remarked: “Before I got married I was incomplete; now that I got married I am finished.”
The second question is, from all yartzeits, it was the one of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai which first received the title of Hilula-wedding. Why him?
To understand this, let us preface an enigmatic quote in the Talmud (Eiruvin 54a):
The sage Shmuel said to his student Rabbi Yehudah: "Sharp one! Grab and eat, grab and drink! The world that we are passing through is like a wedding."
Obviously, Shmuel was not training his disciple, Rabbi Yehudah, for a career in gluttony! What then was he telling him? What was the point of this advice?
Shmuel's point was to warn his student not to wait until tomorrow to use his money because a person has no assurance that he will be alive tomorrow to enjoy his money. Life is similar to a wedding which swiftly passes.
“Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.”
You know the anecdote: An old Jew hears that Albert Einstein won the Nobel Prize. Why did he win, the old man asks his friend?
“Professor Einstein invented the theory of relativity. That everything—even time and space—is relative.”
“And for this, you win a Nobel Prize?!” the other Jew retorts. I have known this truth years ago. And I have always proved it simply:
3 strands of hair in a bowl of soup is a heck of a lot; three hairs on a head is NOTHING. Similarly, spending 30 years with a woman you love is like one year. Spending one year with a woman you dislike, is like 30 years!... I don’t need Einstein to teach me that everything is relative.
Indeed, there are many things in life that seem long but are really very short. One of them is life itself…
This is sound advice. But why, to illustrate the brevity of life, with the example of a wedding. There are many other events that pass swiftly.
Clearly, Shmuel is conveying a deeper message to his student than “life is short, live today!” The example of the wedding is essential to the understanding of the message.
What’s a wedding? It is when a woman and man unite to build a life together. By definition, it is a restrictive experience. As long as you are a bachelor you can dance to your own beat. Once married you must dance to two beats—and sometimes they are conflicting beats.
Compromise becomes the name of the game. People are different. Men and women are very different, sometimes opposites. Living together as a husband and wife require each of them to “reconfigure” the database of their psyche, to create space for a new “program” or, a new “hard drive.” This surprise can be a limiting experience.
Yet, on the other extreme, G-d created our world in a way that without the mating of opposite genders, male and female, reproduction is not possible. This is true in the human race, in the animal kingdom, and even in the botanic world. All of us are mortal. Our creations, too, are mortal. There is only one exception: Children. They outlive us and their children outlive them. Your children link you to infinity and eternity.
When you spend an extra 3 hours at the office, building your company, you are investing in something at best temporary. When you spend that time with your children—reading them stories, playing a game with them, bonding with them—you are investing in eternity.
This is the paradox: marriage is a limiting experience. Yet in this very process, we also grow and reach our deepest potentials. If we want to remain free and unrestricted in our lives, we will live as long as we live and then the show is over. By choosing to remain unbound and unlimited, we ensure our finitude. By choosing to become finite we become infinite.
This paradox is not only in marriage; it constitutes the very essence of life. Our marriage to our spouse is really our second marriage. All of us experience the first marriage at the moment of birth—when our souls “marry” our bodies and they “move in” together for life. The soul and the body are two opposite realities: one is physical and concrete; the other is spiritual and sublime. One enjoys material pleasure; the other pines for transcendence. One craves self-gratification; the other yearns for truth.
A farmer once married a princess and she moved on to the farm. He was a nice man and treated her respectfully. The first day he taught her how to milk the cows; the second day—how to feed the mules, the third day—how to clean the horses. He gave her a comfortable bed near the stable, teaching her about the crow of the rooster that will awaken her. Yet his wife was miserable and anxious.
He consulted his father-in-law, the king. “I am trying so hard to satisfy your daughter; to no avail. She is miserable. What I’m I to do?” The king responded: You’re a nice and sincere young man. But you must understand: your wife grew up in royalty; the life of the farm does not speak to her. She needs royalty to satisfy her.
Ditto with life. Our bodies are nice guys. They mean well. Our soul is feeling anxiety and loneliness, so the body tells our souls: wait till you see what’s for breakfast. The body gives the souls the most delicious breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But, alas, we still have a void; the void of a soul yearning for something more. But the soul still feels the void. Because the soul grew up in royalty; the delights of the “fram” will not do the trick. The soul needs transcendence, G-dliness, Torah, Mitzvot.
Samuel Herman (Sammy) Reshevsky (1911-1992) was a famous chess prodigy and later a leading American chess Grandmaster. He was a contender for the World Chess Championship from about the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s; coming equal third in the World Chess Championship 1948 tournament, and equal second in the 1953 Candidates Tournament. He was also an eight-time winner of the U.S. Chess Championship. At the age of six, he would play against as many as 30 players at a time, moving quickly from board to board and could repeat all 30 games afterward, move by move. He was known as Shmuel the wonder child.
Sammy Reshevsky grew up in an observant home, and throughout his life and fame, remained faithful to his Judaism and Torah, refusing to ever play chess on the Sabbath or Holidays. Upon turning 70 and no longer on top of his game, he asked the Rebbe, if he should retire. The Rebbe advised him to continue playing because it was a “Kiddush Hashem”—a proud demonstration of a Jew succeeding without compromising his spiritual ideals and values. Reshevsky complied and shortly afterward, he traveled to Russia and upset the world champion, Vassily Smyslov.
Living in Crown Heights in the 1940s, Sammy prayed in the then tiny synagogue at 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, NY. Once, at a Sabbath gathering, in 1948, the Rebbe, in recognition of his presence, explained the spiritual meaning behind the chess game.
There is one king. All of the other pieces revolve around him and their entire mission is to protect and serve him. G-d is the King, all else was created by Him, given the opportunity to connect to His truth and to serve Him.
The queen represents the feminine manifestation of the divine, known as the “shechinah”. Then there are bishops, rooks, and knights. These are symbolic of the angels—in their three mystical categories we discuss in the daily morning services.
In order for there to be a free choice in the world, there are two teams, the white and the black. One team representing G-dliness; the other team representing everything antithetical
to G-dliness and holiness.
But here is the catch: what happens if the bishop, rook, or knight advances to the other side of the board? Nothing. Yet the pawn, when it fights through the board, arriving at the other side, can be promoted even to the rank of the queen, something that the bishop, rook, or knight can never achieve.
When man perseveres and overcomes the angst and despair of his or her own failings and mortality when we fight the fight to subdue darkness and to reveal the presence of the “king” within our own bodies, our own psyches, and the world around us—the human being surpasses even angels; the pawn is transformed into a queen! The human life reunites with its source above, the queen, the Shechinah, experiencing the deepest intimacy with the King Himself.
Now we will appreciate the marvelous depth of what the sage Shmuel said The world that we are passing through is like a wedding."
A wedding may seem like a limiting experience, yet it is precisely through that you can reach your deepest potentials, and what is more, you can reach beyond your potential and achieve eternity. This world, every moment of our life, is like a wedding—it is a door to infinity. Grab every opportunity to study the Torah, to observe the mitzvot, to serve G-d, because you can’t do any of this in heaven’s paradise.
This is why it was the yartzeit of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai that came to be defined as “hilula,” as a wedding. For he was the one who gave us the gift of Kabbalah, later morphing into Chassidism.
On the surface, Judaism is all about structure—performing fixed laws at certain times, places, in certain ways. Came Kabbalah, and revealed how each of these mitzvot, is on a deeper level, a portal to infinity, to transcend structure and touch the Divine. Rabbi Shimon, in other words, is the one who shows us that life is a “wedding”—an opportunity for infinity.
The Chassidic masters explain that the final day of a righteous person’s earthly life marks the point at which “all his deeds, teachings and work” achieve their culminating perfection and the zenith of their impact upon our lives. So each Lag Baomer, we celebrate Rabbi Shimon’s life and the revelation of the esoteric soul of Torah. We dance with the soul who showed us how life was a wedding, an opportunity to merge paradoxes and thus connect to eternity.
Happy Lag Baomer today may we hear only good news in the future.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Yoseph Geisinsky
Jason Bennett wrote...