Dear Alumni Sheyichyu!
Sholom U’Brocho!
Heartfelt wishes to haTomim Sholom Dov Ber ben Miriam for a complete and immediate refuah shleima. May this time of Shabbos Parshas Nitzovim, which we know is the nature of the brocho with which the Eibister bentches the upcoming month of Tishrei and the entire new year, bring with it the brocho to be nitzav ve’oimed and אין ענין יוצא מידי פשוטו, - to be able to stand strongly, steadfastly and healthily on 2 healthy feet!
(If anyone is aware of any mazeltov’s that I omitted please let me know).
Thank you as always for the feedback, it is much appreciated.
The following story, based on the version in To Know And To Care by Rabbi Eli Touger, was recently shared by the son of Rabbi Gutnick a”h with very minor variations:
Rabbi Zalman Serebryanski, a senior chassid from Russia and dean of the Lubavitch Rabbinical College in Melbourne, Australia, once brought a girl to Rabbi Chaim Gutnick. "Please, help this girl convert," he asked.
Rabbi Gutnick listened to the girl's story. She lived in Balaclava, and from her youth had felt a strong attraction to Judaism. Whenever she heard stories of the Holocaust, she was deeply touched. She had been reading and studying about Judaism for a long time, and now wanted to convert.
Rabbi Gutnick was moved by her sincerity. Nevertheless, he did not want to perform the conversion. The girl was still living at home with her non-Jewish parents. Would she be able to practice Judaism in her parents' home? Would her interest continue as she matured into adulthood? Since he could not answer these questions, he decided to let time take its course. If the girl was still interested when she was older, she could convert then.
Rabbi Gutnick's refusal plunged the girl into deep depression, to the extent that she had to be confined to a hospital. The elder Reb Zalman, stirred by the depth of her feelings, continued to visit her from time to time.
After several weeks, he called Rabbi Gutnick, telling him of the girl's condition and asking him whether perhaps he would change his mind because of the strength of her feelings.
Rabbi Gutnick answered that the reasons which had dissuaded him from performing the conversion were still valid. Nevertheless, he promised to write to the Lubavitcher Rebbe describing the situation. If the Rebbe advised him to facilitate her conversion, he would happily comply.
Reb Zalman told the girl that the Rebbe was being consulted, and her condition improved immediately.
Rabbi Gutnick did not receive an immediate reply to his letter. But at a later date, at the end of a reply to another issue, the Rebbe added: "What's happening with the Jewish girl from Balaclava?"
Rabbi Gutnick was surprised. The girl and Reb Zalman had both made it clear that her family was Anglican!
He and Reb Zalman went to confront the girl's mother. At first, she continued to insist that she was Anglican, but as the sincerity of the two rabbis impressed her, she broke down and told her story. She had been raised in an Orthodox Jewish home in England. As a young girl, she had rebelled against her parents and abandoned Jewish life entirely, marrying a gentile and moving to Australia. She had not given Judaism a thought since. She loved her daughter, however, and would not oppose her if she wished to live a Jewish life.
Once the girl's Jewishness was established, Rabbis Serebryanski and Gutnick helped her feel at home in Melbourne's Lubavitch community. She continued to make progress in her Jewish commitment, and today is a teacher in a Lubavitch school.
But Rabbi Gutnick still had a question: How did the Rebbe know she was Jewish? At his next yechidut (audience with the Rebbe) he mustered the chutzpah to ask, saying ‘I know that by chassidim it’s accepted that the Rebbe knows with ruach hakodesh. Still, I would like to know a practical explanation for how the Rebbe knew’.
The Rebbe replied that, at Reb Zalman's urging, the girl had also written him a letter. "Such a letter," the Rebbe declared, "could only have been written by a Jewish girl."
A Jewish neshomo, which is inherently one with Hashem, feels an unquenchable thirst and yearning for its roots. A non-Jew may also come to respect and appreciate the beauty of Yiddishkeit, as the many geirei tzedek throughout our history attest to. However, that is primarily a rational conclusion and a rational decision. Only a Jewish neshomo, which is being drawn with such powerful force to its own roots, will feel an urge to adopt Yiddishkeit that is beyond reason and rationale.
The Rebbe said that the yearning contained in the girl’s letter, a yearning so overpowering that it affected her health, revealed her – to the Rebbe – as a Jewess!
We all possess our inner Jew, our nefesh hoElokis which is chelek Eloka mimaal mamosh. We also possess our resident goy (as we all know the retort of Reb Shmuel Munkes to the Alter Rebbe: “Rebbe mein goy is gresser vi eier goy”), our animalistic soul, the part of us that is נמשל כבהמות נדמו.
And the Jewish part of us is recognizably and identifiably Jewish. It is recognized by its intense and insatiable desire to be Jewish. It wants very badly (to the point of becoming ill over it) to convert. And to convert means to change its non-Jewish counterpart, to change the part of it that’s drawn to behave like a goy. To make it more refined, more eidel, more Jewish.
The Jew within us needs no reason or rationale for this goal. It senses, with its very essence, that it’s very being, its very life, depends on being connected to Elokus (therefore, the absence thereof would affect its health). Just as a child needs no explanation for its bond with its father; - it senses deep down that they are one, so, too, the neshomo, which is בנים אתם 'לה אלקיכם, needs no explanation for its unbreakable bond with its Creator.
The goy within us, however, the guf and NHB and our human nature, cannot possibly have that sense of belonging. Even if he decides to convert, with utmost sincerity, it is a decision arrived at through rational calculations and intellectual evaluation. He is incapable of the intense all-consuming thirst for G-dliness that the Jew can display.
We say in davening: אהללה 'ה, בחיי אזמרה לאלקי בעודי. Chassidus explains that חיי, the very essence of my life, is my nefesh hoElokis, - my G-dly soul, and עודי, the part of me that’s additional and extra, the add-on, refers to the guf and nefesh habehamis.
The neshomo, חיי, sings to and praises the shem Havaya. Havaya is 'הי הוה 'ויהי כאחד, it is the level of Elokus that is above the world and aloof from the world. It is a level that is beyond our grasp, above the scope of our understanding.
But our neshomo is familiar with it. The neshomo sings to that level of Hashem, they are a part of one another, and relate with one another.
The guf, our natural intellect, in contrast, can have no comprehension of that level – that aspect – of G-dliness. אזמרה לאלקי בעודי, the guf, instead, sings to Elokim (which has the same gematria as teva – nature), - it focusses on those aspects of the Eibishter that it can relate with in a logical way, the way He created the world and constantly sustains all that’s in it.
[Consider, as an example, two types of guests that will be visiting 770 for the upcoming Tishrei holidays. There are those who experienced these moments with the Rebbe in the past, - the tekios, the brochos of Erev Yom Kippur, Napoleon’s March, the hakofos etc., whether once, twice or more. They are going to relive these memories. For some the memories are vague and elusive, something they can barely grasp, and for others they are much more vivid and alive. But for all of them there is no need for them to imagine or convince themselves of anything; - there is a memory of something that they personally experienced.
For others, who were never actually there, they are trying to imagine what it was like based on description and depictions and illustrations. They try to conjure up images based on what they do know about the Rebbe, and based on photographs and videos that gave them some glimpse of certain aspects of the experience. But, as creative as one’s imagination may be, and as impressive as those conjured images may turn out, they will never depict the real thing. Anyone who was not actually there, cannot possibly have a sense of what the actual experience can be like, it can’t be grasped by the power of imagination (until, very soon IYH, when we will once again experience it in real life together with the Rebbe). Still, the logical reckoning of what it must have been like even merely from an intellectual perspective is enough to motivate them to yearn for it].
אהללה 'ה בחיי describes the relationship with the Eibishter felt by the internal Jew; - it is one that is unique to the Jew, to the nefesh hoElokis, one that the nefesh habehamis is incapable of experiencing. It identifies its host, therefore, unmistakably as a Jew.
אזמרה לאלקי בעודי is the turning to Hashem of the גוי אשר בקרבך, who learns to appreciate and admire Judaism at his level and according to his understanding.
Most of the time, the Jew within us is not heard from much. Drowned out, as it is, by the much more domineering Gentile, it tends to be overshadowed and overlooked. That overpowering yearning to convert, one that would make our true identity unmistakable, is – therefore – an infrequent occurrence.
On Rosh Hashono, all that changes.
Aseres yemei Teshuva, beginning with Rosh Hashono, is the time of כאן ביחיד, - the time when the yechida shebinefesh, the inner Jew is expressive. Now it is not overshadowed or drowned out; - now it is at the forefront, and all else takes a back seat. This is when we blow shofar, expressing the cry and yearning of our pnimiyus haneshomo, a yearning that identifies us unmistakably as a Jew: Just as in the story, the longing contained in the letter identified the writer – to the Rebbe – as a Jewess, so too, on Rosh Hashono, the longing expressed by the shofar identifies us to the Eibishter as His child (as we know, from the moshol of the Baal Shem Tov, it is the sound of the shofar that confirms our identity as the ben hamelech.
But, we have to remember the nature of the longing. We are begging to convert! Ultimately the hisorerus, the awakening of our etzem haneshomo on Rosh Hashono needs to be channeled in a very specific direction. Our new awareness that all we care about is the Eibishter and being connected with Him and being conscious of His being the essence of all existence וידע כל פעול כי אתה פעלתו ויבין כל יצור כי אתה יצרתו ויאמר כל אשר נשמה באפו 'ה אלקי ישראל מלך ומלכותו בכל משלה, has to translate into greater efforts into converting our NHB, into getting the goy to resides us to start behaving more like a Jew. And each of us needs to find specific and practical ways with which to implement this.
This is what we know, from our Rebbeim, that every Rosh Hashonoh one must accept a new hiddur. The Jew within us is always and has always been Jewish. Our newly realized consciousness of it is to inspire us and motivate us to convert, to change, to find practical ways in which the rest of us follows suit!
Ultimately, by each of us doing our part, we will convert he whole world, and bring about the מלוך על העולם כולו בכבודיך והנשא על כל הארץ ביקריך והופע בהדר גאון עוזיך על כל יושבי תבל ארציך. Just as in the first Rosh Hashono, Odom horishon converted the entire world calling on them all בואו נשתחווה ונכרה נברכה לפני 'ה עושינו, - that they should join him in putting their desires, thoughts and feelings aside and nullifying themselves completely to Hashem, so, too, once again, we will see the final step in the Eibishter being recognized as the melach al kol ho’retz, the completion of the שתמליכוני עליכם, with the coming of Moshiach NOW!
L’chaim! May we all do our part to convert ourselves, our acquaintances, and our surroundings (חלקו בעולם), and may the Ebishter crown our work with success, even before the completion of ח"תשע, and finalize the conversion of the entire world into a dira lo yisborach, with the immediate revelation of Moshiach Tzidkeinu TUMYM!!!
כתיבה וחתימה, טובה א"לכאו מכם ולכל אשר לו בתוך, י"כאחבנ לשנה טובה ומתוקה בטוב הנראה והנגלה, ר"בגו בלימוד התורה ובקיום המצוות ובבני חיי ומזוני, רויחי 'שיה אוצרך הטוב לני תמתח בכל הפירושים והעיקר משיח נאוו!!!
Rabbi Akiva Wagner
