A Taxi was ordered by a Rabbi for Yom Kippur night to take his wife and him to the hospital for a new baby.
The rabbi requested that they send a driver who is not Jewish in his mind the Rabbi did not want another Jew to drive him on Yom Kippur.
They enter the cab and hear over radio the dispatcher saying to the driver: “Did you pick up those anti-Semites already?”
It is a strange Talmudic statement:
This Shabbat is not only called the portion of Devarim but it is called Shabbat Chazon as the Haftarah begins with the words Chazon Yeshayahu and Rav Levi Yitzchak of Barditchev explains that this Shabbat G-d shows us the third Holy Temple that will be built In Jerusalem soon. The Sages said: Every generation in which the Holy Temple, is not rebuilt in its days, is considered as if it was destroyed in its days.
What is the meaning of this? Is this fair to say, that a generation that did not see the rebuilding of the Holy Temple is virtually responsible for its destruction?
It seems discouraging to tell us, that all the previous generations, filled with so many great and righteous souls—they all did not merit redemption, and were actually considered responsible for its destruction. It is our generation, far weaker and lower, which will merit the rebuilding? If they could not do it, how can we?
Let me share insight by the Sefat Emet—and explained at length by the Rebbe.
The Talmud may be teaching us something very profound, giving us a new perspective on Jewish history.
We often view history as disjointed narratives transpiring through numerous generations. Am I really connected to my great grandmother who lived in Russia two centuries ago? I do not know her name, I don’t even have a photo of her, nor do I know anything about her? How about my great grandfather who lived 800 years ago in Spain, or Italy, or France?
Judaism sees history as a single book—each page continues the earlier story, and all the chapters together create a single book. History is not a combination of many “short stories,” but rather it is like a single novel that consists of an aggregated narrative. Not only are we connected to our past; we, in a way, keep them alive; they continue to live and function through us.
Thus, the rebuilding of the Holy Temple and bringing redemption to the world, says the Talmud, will be the result of the accumulation of all of the achievements of the Jewish people from the time of the destruction to this very day. It is not one generation that does the job; each generation contributes to the work of changing the world until the work is completed.
Imagine someone building for many years a supermassive bonfire to cast light and warmth all around; they even pour the kerosene all over the logs, so the fire can catch. He just did not have the match to light the fire. Now I come along and say if he did not manage to light the fire, how can I? But I was given the match. All I need to do is strike the match and the light explodes… My work is not being done in isolation to the previous work; it is a continuum.
The sweat, blood, and tears of the Jewish people over the last two thousand years is cohesive and integrated together like a sum in calculus, or like a vessel that is filled one drop after another, until it is finally full. We are not filling the vessel that previous generations could not feel; we are adding our drop of water.
Every generation of Jews builds the Holy Temple in its days—every generation continues to fill the vessel. Every Jew, every day, builds and constructs part of the Holy Temple.
Each of us, had generations of grandmothers who lit Shabbat candles every Friday before sunset, welcoming the holy day into their home, as warm, loving tears flowed down unto the Shabbat table. Where did all those tears go? Do you think they faded into oblivion?
No! Their tears made their way into the soil of Jewish history, irrigating our souls, giving us the strength to grow and blossom. Every tear of every Jewish mother over 2000 years became the water that was absorbed into our roots and seeds and gave us the strength, resolves, the courage to continue to live and live. Every tear went into that vessel.
When your ancestor left Spain penniless, on the 9th of Av 1492, rather than abandon his faith, it went into that vessel.
When your grandmother, and tens of thousands of other Holocaust survivors, valiantly tried to start all over again and to continue the Jewish story, it went into that vessel.
Do we need a greater proof of this than a story of a Holocaust survivor celebrated her 104th birthday last year at the Western Wall in Jerusalem — and for the occasion posed for a photo surrounded by about 400 of her descendants, including her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren?
Centenarian Shoshana Ovitz survived the Auschwitz concentration camp 75 years ago.
In the camp, she watched as her mother was ripped from her and handed to Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, who performed deadly experiments on prisoners. Her father was also murdered.
After the Holocaust, Shoshana met the man who would later become her husband, Dov Ovitz, who had lost his wife and four daughters in the gas chambers.
The couple searched for surviving relatives together and lived in Austria, before eventually settling in Haifa, where they had two daughters and two sons.
She worked as a seamstress and helped her husband run a store.
Now she has celebrated her 104th birthday and asked for a gift: that all the offspring come together to the Western Wall. She had one request, for all of her descendants to come together at the site of the Holy Temple.
It was not easy. Many of them live outside of Israel. But they came… and they came in the hundreds.
“We do not have an exact number, but there are probably 400 grandchildren and descendants,” Shoshana’s oldest granddaughter, Panini Friedman.
Even the approximately 400 people at last Wednesday’s gathering didn’t cover everyone, said Friedman.
“We’re missing about 10% of them.”
At the celebration, which symbolized a triumph over the Nazis, “everyone was there with tears in their eyes,” Friedman said. Shoshana was on a platform in her wheelchair to cast her eyes on all her descendants.
Ovitz said she believes that she merited a long life due to the great respect she showed her parents prior to their murders.
Now, imagine for a moment what Shoshana looked like on January 27, 1945? Did you ever see the photos of the prisoners liberated by the Soviets? Like an emaciated skeleton, like a shriveled seedling.
How did a shriveled, dry seed birth almost 500 descendants? A seed needs earth and water. Her seed was planted in the sacred soil of Israel. But there was something else: the tears of her mother, grandmother, great grandmother, all the way back to Sarah, nurtured her seed back to life and allowed it to blossom such an incredible tree with so many fruits. The tears of her father, and the six million, irrigated, wetted, and vitalized the seed to grow into a splendid and tall tree among our eternal people.
I looked at her 400 descendants, I cried and I laughed. “Those who sow in tears will harvest in joy,” we say in Psalms 126. Was this verse not said about Shoshanah?
When an Israeli soldier in Lebanon yelled out Shema Yisrael and jumped onto an exploding grenade in order to save the lives of the rest of his unit it certainly went into that vessel.
Every day that every young man risks his life to guard our borders so that we can live in our homeland, walk to the Kotel, and pray in peace, it goes into that vessel.
Every dollar that you put into a charity box goes into that vessel.
Every time you wrap tefillin, study Torah, make a blessing, it goes into the vessel.
It all gets added together until the vessel is full—and the Holy Temple is rebuilt. Redemption comes to the world.
So now, we can, at last, appreciate the powerful words of the Talmud.
What kind of generation is the Talmud referring to when it says that if the Temple was not built in its day, it is like it was destroyed in its day?
Well now that we established that the Temple must be built in every generation; each generation of Jews contributes to the consecutive and ongoing work of healing the world, cleansing it from evil, bringing in Divine light, and rebuilding the space where the Divine presence will dwell on earth; What then does the Talmud mean? Which generation is the one who we say about that the Holy Temple was destroyed in its time?
It is the generation that gives up on this historic mission and chooses instead to no longer care to add whatever it can to all of the good that has already been accumulated before it.
It is the generation that says, “I am not part of this any longer. I am done.” It allows all the love, tears, kisses, and truth to stop in its tracks and now allow the train to reach its ultimate destination—the space of complete redemption.
I was visiting a Jewish patient in S. Francis Hospital some time ago, when I walked into the room of an elderly Jew named Irving, a holocaust survivor, who was obviously quite sick, surrounded by his entire family. I spent some time with him. We talked about the horrors of his youth, and how he managed to continue on living.
He told me it was his mother's words to him on the last night before we were separated. "She sat me down and said to me: Life is like a play. (My mother loved the theater). Every one of us plays a part. Not just us, but our parents and grandparents, they're parents and grandparents, all the way back to Abraham and Sarah. They're all part of this production. Each of us plays a part, And then, when your part is over, you go backstage. You're not gone, you're still there, looking, cheering, helping out in any way you can from behind the scenes."
And then mama grabbed my hand, looked me in the eye, and said: "Yisrolik, I don't know what's going to happen, how long we'll be together, whether I'll survive this. But one thing I ask of you if you survive. Don't give up, play your part. You might feel sad and lonely, but I beg of you- don't give up. Play your role as best you can. Live your life to the fullest. I promise you, you won't be alone. Daddy and me, grandma and grandpa, we will be with you forever, we'll be watching you from backstage. I'm sure you won't let us down and you'll play your part."
It was those words from Mama that got me out of bed on many a difficult morning.
By the time the man finished the story, there wasn't a dry eye in the room.
A few days later the man passed away. At the shiva, the family kept repeating the story about the play. It was clear they took comfort from knowing their father was still there, behind the scenes. Still, there was a profound sense of pain and loss.
And now it is our job to complete the play. Then each of our grandparents will emerge from backstage and take the bow!
As we say in the prayer, all creations will bow to you. We're ready for the final bow in the third holy Temple in Jerusalem very soon.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Yoseph Geisinsky
Tom Peacock wrote...