"How did you get this big executive job?" asked the secretary. "You've only been here for three months." The young man shrugged modestly and explained, "I ran into my father and he took a liking to me."
The boss always scheduled a weekly staff meeting at four-thirty on Friday afternoons. When an employee got up the nerve to ask why, the boss explained, "I've found that late Friday afternoon is the only time none of you want to argue with me."
There is an obvious anomaly in a verse of our weekly portion Shoftim. “You shall come to the judge who will be in those days,” meaning in the time when are seeking guidance in your dilemmas of Jewish law. The words “who will be in those days” are superfluous and strange. Obviously I will come to the judge who lives during my time. Even if I want to, I can’t really go to the judge who lived a century or millennia ago or who might live in 1000 years from now? Just saying the words “You shall come to the judge” would have sufficed; we would all understand it is referring to the judge living in our day and not in the times of George Washington or Alexander the Great!
The Torah, by adding these four apparently unnecessary words, is addressing a key component in leadership. The leader he must be living in your times! must have his finger on the pulse of the generation, in-touch with the needs, concerns, challenges, and the realities of the times he lives in.
The great Chassidic master, Reb Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, explains with this a fascinating tradition in Judaism. According to Jewish tradition, Elijah the prophet, who will come before Moshiach’s arrival, will bring clarity to all these questions which remained unresolved. But when Moshiach comes, Moses will also return to us. Now, with all due respect to Elijah the prophet, if you have a question in Torah learning and Jewish law, who would you go to—Elijah or Moses?
Imagine you were living in the 1920s or 1950s and you had an unresolved dilemma in the Theory of General Relativity; after all your scrutiny, investigation and thought, you can’t figure out the answer. You are perplexed and confused. You can ask your question from two people: Your high school physics teacher, who is an absolutely great teacher and also a fine man, or you can consult Albert Einstein. Who would you choose? It seems almost bazaar. We have to stand in front of us Moses himself. We have a bunch of questions in Jewish law. We ignore Moses and we go to Elijah?!"
When the Young Israel faced the crisis of losing many children to secularism in the collages in the US, they consulted many leaders. All gave fine advice, but they can do nothing with it. Then the leader of Young Israel consulted the Lubavitcher Rebbe—and a quiet revolution began.
Reb Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev presents an incredible answer. Where was Moses for the last 3000 years? In paradise! In heavenly bliss. In contrast, where was Elijah the prophet over the last few thousand years? According to our tradition, he attends every single Brit of every single Jewish child in the entire world. We even prepare, at every brit, a special chair, the “throne of Elijah the Prophet,” upon which we place the baby before the brit. So every single day, 365 days a year, rain or shine, hot or cold, from Moscow to Los Angeles, from Melbourne to New York, from Jerusalem to Chicago, from London to Paris, Elijah the prophet “hangs out” among Jews living on earth. He knows the latest food menus, and conversations. In addition, at the end of every Passover Seder, Elijah visit every Jewish home, after everybody had already drunk three cups of wine, so now he knows what we are thinking also after we have something to drink…
When it comes to asking a question on Jewish law and life today, you can’t go the greater genius or scholar; you must go to the person who understands the people and their world, the man who is sensitive to the life and the struggles of the person living today. Moses was and remains the greatest teacher of the Jewish people—but Moses spent millennia in paradise. Elijah is in touch with today’s dilemmas and idiosyncrasies. Elijah knows the world of the snapshot, Instagram, facebook, google, and Whatsup. Elijah understands the selfie and knows the advantages of iPhone 8 vs. iPhone 10.
You might ask: The law is the law and it is unchangeable. But the answer is that it is not so. Yes, there are many laws that are unchangeable. But there are many issues that are subject to debate and differing perspectives, and one needs to understand which perspective ought to dominate the Jewish world today. In addition to this: In each generation, you need to know how to present and deliver the truths of Torah in a way that speaks to the soul of the people live in these particular times.
On July 7, 2015, there was a small obituary in the New York Times.
It read like this: Ephraim Sturm. Gentle, gracious, prescient. These were some of the qualities of Ephraim Sturm, [who] as executive Vice President of the National Council of Young Israel brought a turning point in the 1950s for Jewish university students when Rabbi Sturm championed the idea those students could practice their religion without hindrance and be able to obtain kosher food at universities whose respective dining facilities omitted kosher options. We, today, at Cornell University are early beneficiaries of Rabbi Sturm's initiative and will always be appreciative of his assistance and guidance. Richard J. Bornstein,'62, Chair Endowment Board of Trustees of the Center For Jewish Living at Cornell University.
But very few knew what lay behind the story of this obituary. Here is the story, shared by Rabbi Sturm himself, a few years before his death:
I first met the Lubavitchrer Rebbe when I visited him to discuss my mother’s illness. I was not a chasid. But when my mother fell ill, I went to the Rebbe because of everyone among the Orthodox Jewish public already knew – it was in the public domain, so to speak – that to get good advice, to get a compassionate answer to a difficult question, to glimpse a solution to a complex dilemma, you went to the Rebbe, and that the Rebbe’s door was never closed to anyone.
My mother’s doctors could not agree on whether they should operate or not. An operation offered the possibility of a cure, but it carried a risk. Yet doing nothing meant that things would go on as they were, with the inevitable ending.
As a son, I was torn. And my mother, may she rest in peace, couldn’t make the decision. So I went to the Rebbe. I wanted to get his blessing and his advice.
Now, the Rebbe didn’t know me, didn’t know my mother, didn’t know anything about the family. But when I told him my dilemma, he looked at me and I saw tears in his eyes. He reacted as if he was my brother, and I felt as if I was discussing the problem with my brother.
His advice was that they should operate, but that’s not the point of the story. It was his reaction and his sensitivity that struck me. He had a holy look, such an air of compassion about him. I’d like to describe his expression and his intense blue eyes, but my words wouldn’t do justice. I felt an immediate heart connection – as they say, “words that come from the heart, enter the heart” – this was a man of truth, a man of Gād.
Even if he had said nothing to me, I would have gone out with something, just having seen him.
Now, on this visit, I didn’t go representing Young Israel. I said nothing about being the chief executive officer of Young Israel – I was just a Jew asking for his blessing and advice for a personal reason. And for him to show such empathy, such emotion, such care, such concern … that, in itself, was remarkable.
It’s strange how he could relate to every individual, to every community, with the same intensity. I’m sure that decisions made on the world scene by the Rebbe were made by him with the same depth of understanding which he showed to every individual that came to see him about a minor issue, and with the same depth of caring that he showed me.
Which brings me to my second visit with him.
It was the early 1960s, and I had discovered that too many Orthodox men and women who were going to out-of-town colleges were dropping Yiddishkeit and intermarrying. At first, the number was three percent, but this number was going up rapidly, and this alarmed me.
I called together the officers of Young Israel and I said, “We have a problem!” We agonized over it, and we decided to ask a number of Jewish leaders what to do.
I remember that one of them said we have to make sure that there are more Orthodox college professors. Well, that was not in our power. Another said that we have to make sure that the Jewish high schools imbue Yiddishkeit in their students so that they are able to withstand the pressures of college. How could we do that? Another said that we in Young Israel should issue a proclamation that nobody is allowed to go to an out-of-town college. But we did not have that kind of clout.
And then we went to the Rebbe, and he was the most fascinating of them all because he had the ability to speak to the individual but consider the whole. He had the ability to look past the symptoms and go to the heart of the problem.
The Rebbe analyzed for us what was really happening here. He said, “In Berlin, if you were a religious Jew, or if you were a member of any other religion, you had to defend your religion; you had to be able to answer people who challenged you; you had to know the philosophy of your religion in order to defend it. But Americans are not interested in defending religious philosophies. They are more interested in inconsistency. If a person is religious consistently, the average American will respect him.”
“So, let’s look at what consistency means. [And how can you expect the American Jewish student at the campus to hold on consistently to his Judaism and thus earn the respect of his colleagues? If we understand this challenge, we will get to the root of the problem.]
“A religious boy or girl goes to an out-of-town college and says to the parents: ‘Don’t worry, I’ll observe Shabbat and I’ll keep kosher. I’ll have cottage cheese every day for lunch, I’ll have a salad every day for dinner, and I’ll have corn flakes every day for breakfast … I’ll manage for four years.’ Maybe they mean it, maybe they don’t mean it. Let’s assume they mean it. But can they do it?”
“Imagine a young man sitting in a college dining room with his non-Jewish peers,” the Rebbe continued. “How long is he going to put on his Kippah and eat cottage cheese every single day? And what is he going to do when a girl says to him, ‘Take a taste of my lunch, it’s delicious!’ How can he deny her? After a while, the peer group will pressure him – not because they mean to pressure, not because they are opposed to what he is doing, but because that’s just how life is. And in the liberal atmosphere of the college campus, how can he not yield to that pressure?”
And then the Rebbe gave us his advice: “What you have to do is create a program to bring together all the young Jewish men and women in one place at the most vulnerable time. That most vulnerable time is not in the classroom when they are each interested in their own notes or their own marks, but in the non-classroom area. The best thing is to establish kosher ‘dining clubs’ on college campuses.”
This was his practical solution, and this was something we could, and did, do. Young Israel started kosher dining clubs, which were hugely successful. These clubs became places where Jewish men and women could eat, meet and be friends with one another, and be protected from outside influences.
Of all the advice that we were given, the only one that we found practical was the Rebbe’s suggestion. And it worked.
It became a turning point in American Jewish history. Tens of thousands of Jewish students who grew up with Judaism, in wonderful Jewish homes, could go to college for four years out of town, and maintain to some degree or another their Jewish life and feel.
Now, I understood the NY Times obituary…
So let me ask you, what was the difference between the advice of the others and the Rebbe’s advice? They all shared fine ideas: have more religious professors, give more to the kids in high school; don’t send them out of town. All fine and good, but not practical, not doable, and not in touch with the sobering reality of these kids. The Rebbe had his finger on the pulse! He understood and saw what each and every one of those students is enduring. He understood the culture, the ambiance, the schedule, the café culture, the social norms, the social pressure, the openness, and the liberal atmosphere. He did not judge it, condemn it and rant about it. He tuned into the reality of tens of thousands of Jewish boys and girls going off to college and then went on to present what we can do right here, right now, to help these beautiful kids remain connected to their souls, to their heritage, to their faith, and to their people. And this must be true for each of us—because each of us is a “judge,” a leader, mentor, and teacher—for ourselves, our children, our pupils, and all those under our influence. We judge our children and students all the time. We judge our employees, co-workers, and constituents all the time. We judge our spouses all the time…. Who of us is not a “judge?”
As “judges” of our children, we want to represent to them timeless truths and values that will not change with the new fad; honored traditions and proven lifestyles that have withstood the test of time. Yiddishkeit in its full majesty, purity, holiness, and Divinity! Torah and Mitzvot in their full impact and power.
Yet, to be an effective judge according to Torah, I must not be living in a different time! I need to be in-tuned with each of my children, grandchildren, students, friends, and constituents. I need to understand them—their struggles, emotional life, fears, concerns, dilemmas, challenges, doubts, and internal experiences—emotionally, psychologically, intellectually, socially and spiritually. I need to speak to their truth, not only to my truth. I need to speak to their hearts, not only my heart. I need to get off my high horse and look them in the eyes and bond, heart to heart, mind to mind, soul to soul.
Only then can I be an Elijah the prophet who can answer their questions and give respite to their anxiety.
Shabbat Shalom and Chodesh Tov,
Rabbi Yoseph Geisinsky
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