It is one of the stranger stories in the Talmud: A harp was hanging above King David's bed. As soon as midnight arrived, a North wind came and blew upon it and it played of itself. He arose immediately and studied the Torah till the break of dawn. After the break of dawn, the wise men of Israel came in to see King David and said to him: Our master, the King, Israel your people require sustenance! They need to live! He said to them: Let them go out and make a living one from the other.
They said to him: A handful cannot satisfy a lion, You need to bring more earth from elsewhere to fill the pit. David said to them: Then go out in troops and attack the enemy for plunder.
This serene, perhaps mystical, scene is rudely intruded by the king suggesting Jews go to battle in order to gain a livelihood! From whimsical alarm clocks and King David’s mystical midnight spiritual service, from a vision of a king of yore being aroused by a harp, delving into Torah for the remainder of the night, we come to waging war for economic gain. Really?
Let’s move to another mysterious text, but one of far more recent vintage. After the Rebbe’s passing on Tamuz 3, 1994—which will be marked by world Jewry this coming Sunday, June 13 —they discovered in a draw in his office three loose-leafs full of Torah writings, letters, and diaries.
One of the diaries is from December 1932. It records a dream that his father-in-law, Rabbi Yoseph Yitzchak the sixth Rebbe shared with him, that his own father came to console him because he was broken-hearted. “My father appeared to me and said, ‘Why are you brokenhearted? In your home, there’s a light that shines in the dark of the night!’
“I woke up, and the moon was shining into the room. But I knew that this wasn’t the light he was referring to. So I went to the house library and found you the Rebbe studying Torah. Then I understood what light burning in the night my father was referring to.
What exactly happened here? Beneath the layers of this story lies a mysterious premise:
The fifth Rebbe comes to console his son, to lift him out of a dark mood. But what was bothering him? Why was he broken-hearted? And how does the “light” burning in his home help the situation?
I will offer one possible explanation.
We ought to recall that just a few years earlier The sixth Rebbe departed from behind the Iron Curtain, where thousands of his Chassidim, strangled behind Stalin’s Soviet Union, suffered terribly. We recall that the elections for the Reichstag, in Germany the Nazis remained the largest party in the legislative assembly, had taken place a month before. A flimsy coalition and Chancellor had been installed, but they wouldn’t last long. Only fifty days later, Hitler would assume the chancellor of Germany, ushering the deepest period of darkness our people have ever known.
Was the Rebbe perhaps heartbroken because of a sense that “darkness” had descended into our world, even if at the time nobody could see clearly the pending catastrophe? Is it possible that the Rebbe, in his heart of hearts, felt the graveness of the future of his beloved people?
In his book The Will to Live On, the great American novelist Herman Wouk relates a shocking historical tidbit. He writes how he once came across a passage in the memoir of Rudolf Hess, the commandant of Auschwitz, that so startled him, he had to write it down:
Eichmann was absolutely convinced that if he could succeed in destroying the biological basis of Jewry in the East by complete extermination, then Jewry as a whole would never recover the blow. The assimilated Jews of the West, including America, would be in no position and would have no desire to make good this enormous loss of blood, and there would therefore be no future generation of Jews worth mentioning.
As Wouk goes on to say, this understanding of the intent and design behind the Final Solution begs the question today: “Has Hitler won the war against the Jews?” The Holocaust, in other words, was meant also as a poisoned bullet whose insidious effects take hold over decades. The Nazis expected to take care of the physical destruction of European Jewry, and the spiritual decay of the remainder of Jewry to take care of the rest. Thus, the cogs of history already turning in 1930s Europe seemed to spell the wholesale destruction – physical and spiritual – of world Jewry. If the Jews of Americans were an intended target of the Holocaust, then what escape was there?
Perhaps it was this deeply melancholic vision of the future of his people, and the future of Judaism and Jewish life, that the sixth Rebbe felt, and it broke his saintly and gigantic heart?
Only a few weeks before the Haman of our times, Hitler would ascend to power, the shepherd of Israel is broken. Jewish life would be transformed forever. Thousands of communities would cease to be overnight. 2000 years of Jewish life in Europe would go up in flames in five years. Six million would be reduced to ashes—and the world would remain silent.
So his father comes to him in a dream and says: Wait! In your own house, a light still shines through the darkness! Despite the tremendous calamity facing our people, and the inconsolable tragedies they would endure, there is still hope, even after the Holocaust. A light still shines.
But what light is this?
In the middle of the night, a Rebbe walks around his home. The Rebbe, Yosef Yitzchak, the man who single-handedly stood up to Stalin and Lenin, the man who built 600 underground Jewish schools in Soviet Russia, and was sentenced to death in 1927 (a decree converted to exile), is now walking around his home, searching for the light.
And he discovers his son-in-law, The Rebbe of our generation in the middle of the night, sitting in the library, immersed in Torah learning. His son-in-law, Young Rabbi Menachem Mendel, a man of 30, sat up all night, alone, learning Torah, delving into the sacred texts and words.
And when a Rebbe saw the sight of this young man sitting and learning, he understood this was the light his father was alluding to.
Indeed, as May 1945 came around, and the enormity of the tragedy and the loss came to light, The Rebbe made it his mission to light up the darkness of G-d’s long apparent absence. What the Rebbe did in the post-war years will one day be told as one of the great acts of reconstruction in the religious history of mankind.
The Shoah destroyed the core of Jewish life: men, women, and children who were the most vibrant, animated elements of the Jewish people. An entire world went up in smoke. The Rebbe, whose 27th yartzeit is commemorated this coming Sunday, on June 13, 2021, – as well as other great Jewish sages and leaders, refused to yield to despair. In the thickest of darkness, they kindled a light.
While others responded to the Holocaust by building memorials, endowing lectureships, convening conferences, and writing books – all extremely important and noble tributes to create memories -- the Rebbe urged every person he could touch to reconstruct Jewish life. He built schools, communities, and yeshivot and encouraged and inspired countless Jewish people to do the same. His message? Our world has been shattered but not destroyed. His mission statement? Hitler brought death and darkness into the world, therefore let us bring life and light.
From a synagogue in Brooklyn, The Rabbe became the spiritual leader to millions of Jews, a man whose counsel was sought by world leaders.
“From the day that I was a child attending a Jewish school,” the Rebbe wrote in 1952 to the Israeli President Yitzchak Ben-Zvi, “and even before, the vision of the future redemption began to take form in my imagination —a redemption of such magnitude and grandeur through which the purpose of suffering, will be understood with a full heart and cognizance.”
That was his mission: not only to bring back light to the darkness but to transform the darkness into light.
The Rebbe launched the first effort I know of in Jewish history to reach every Jewish community and every Jew in the world. As Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks Z”L commented, “If Hitler wanted to hunt down every Jew in hate, the Rebbe wanted to track down every Jew in love.”
Back to our Talmudic story.
Every story in Torah can be appreciated on many levels, the literal as well as the mystical.
This story, too, begins in the dark of the night; at midnight, the furthest point from sunset on one side, and sunrise on the other. As the world sleeps, the Shepherd of Israel, King David, has his harp playing.
The Hebrew word for Harp means the light of G-d. Despite the darkness of the night, in the home of the leader of the Jewish people, a light still shone, a melody still played. The northern wind, which can also be translated as the hidden wind, or hidden spirit blew upon his harp. Despite all of the concealment, there is deep, hidden energy, love, yearning, and spirituality that every Jewish soul possesses. This spirit can ignite the flame of G-d, that is the Jewish soul, as David’s Son, Solomon, says in Proverbs: The soul of man is a candle of G-d.
David, the King of Israel, feels this wind, and his harp—representing the harp of all Jews—began playing the sweetest and holiest melodies. He sat all night, immersed in Torah. Outside, darkness may abound, but inside, the light of the Divine, the light of Torah, burnt brightly. The music never stopped.
It is a parable for Jewish history—even in the middle of our nights, there was a “hidden wind,” a concealed energy, a spirit, that could move our inner harp and ignite its apparent numb chords. Was this not reenacted in the vision of the Rebbe in 1932, weeks before Hitler’s rise to power? Outside, darkness has descended. Insight, a light burning. It was the light of Torah, the light of G-d, the harp of King David playing, as the king immersed in Torah.
The head of a yeshiva in Har Nof in Jerusalem visited the Rebbe in 1975. During their meeting, the Rebbe urged him to get more involved in influencing others outside of his own community—of reaching out to care and help all types of Jews.
As the conversation got more intense and involved, the Rebbe finally turned to him and said:
I have a question. Which is the most important limb after the brain?
“The heart,” he said.
And which is the more important side in Judaism? Right or left?
For sure the right, he said. Joseph is upset when his father places his left hand on the oldest son. The right is associated with more love, closeness, and vigor.
So, asked the Rebbe, why is the heart on the left side of the body?
The rosh yeshiva remains silent.
I will tell you the answer, said the Rebbe. The heart is really to the right, not to the left.
You see, the heart of a person is made to feel, to emphasize with, to connect, to be there for another person, for another Jew. My heart was given to me to feel your pain, your needs, and your concerns. My heart was given to me to experience the soul and the heart of the person standing in front of me. My heart is here for you. And from your vantage point, my heart is on your right!…
My heart is not only about me. It is also about you—and from your perspective, it is on the right!
This sums up so much of the Rebbe’s life, perspective, and mandate to each of us. Do not shut your eyes to the pain of your people. Do not turn a deaf ear to the cry of a child, of a teenager, of a man, woman, or child who can use your love, your help, your gesture, your wisdom, your kindness.
Chodesh Tov and Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Yoseph Geisinsky
Jason Bennett wrote...