Dear Alumni Sheyichyu!
Sholom U’Brocho!
A very big Mazel tov to Menachem Wagner (from Morristown) and to his entire family on the occasion of his making a siyum on shas this Sunday 6 Iyar! May it be with tremendous hatzlocho, וממנו יראו וכן יעשו!
Mazel tov to Rabbi and Mrs. Mendel Mann on the birth of their son. Mazel tov, as well, to grandparents Rabbi and Rebbetzin Avrohom Man and family. Mazel tov to Rabbi and Mrs. Betzalel Bassman on the birth of their son. Mazel tov to Rabbi and Mrs. Shlomo Bogart on the birth of their son. Mazel tov to Rabbi and Mrs. Dovid Vidrin on the birth of their son. Mazel tov to Rabbi and Mrs. Levi Jacobson on the birth of their son. Mazel tov to Rabbi and Mrs. Menachem Yiftach on the birth of their son. Mazel tov to Rabbi and Mrs. Menachem Vogel on the birth of their daughter. May they bring them up lTOveCHuMAA”T mitoch harchovo, and to be true chayolos! (If anyone is aware of any mazeltov’s that I am missing please let me know).
Thank you very much, as always, for the feedback, it is much appreciated!
The Triske Magid, Rabbi Avrohom Twerski, was one of the sons of R’ Mottel of Chernobyl, and was one of the most prominent chassidishe Rebbes of his time. [At the age of two and a half, he accompanied his father to Liozna for a chasuna, where he heard a maamar from the Alter Rebbe. Years later, he said he remembered the entire maamar word for word].
Now, in those days, any chassidishe Rebbe was presumably not a fresser ... - still, the Triske magid was especially known for eating very little and sleeping very little. He was extreme in this, even in comparison to other tzaddikim.
Once, he met R’ Boruch Mezhibuzer, the grandson of the Baal shem tov. (R’ Boruch considered himself to be in charge of all of the tzaddikim (he used to say וליהוי אנא פקידא בגו צדיקיא, - I should be the one in charge (the פקיד) of all of the tzadikim), and expected them to be answerable to him). R’ Boruch asked the Triske magid “Why do you eat and sleep so little?”
The Triske magid replied: “I don’t eat because I’m too tired to eat, and I don’t sleep because I’m too hungry to sleep”.
R’ Boruch said to him: “If you don’t answer me honestly, vel ich dir aroisreisehn mizeh umiboh [I will pull you out of both worlds]”.
So, the Triske magid related the following:
“Once, when I was a young child, my father (the magid of Chernobyl) woke me up very early in the morning, and told me to get dressed. He took me into the wagon, and we started travelling, until we went into a forest. We continued deep into the forest, until, in a clearing in the middle of the forest, we saw a hut. My father stopped the wagon, and got off. Then, I saw emerge from the house, a man with such a holy countenance, he had the appearance of a malach Hashem Tzvo’ois. My father conversed with him a few moments, and I heard my father tell him ‘men iz noch nisht greit, ess iz noch nisht di tzeit’ [We are not yet ready, it is not time yet]. Then my father got back onto the wagon, and we returned home.
“When I asked my father for an explanation he told me: ‘You know that in every generation there is a person worthy of being Moshiach, and if the generation is worthy, he will take them out of golus. That person, living in the forest, is the Moshiach of our generation. He wanted to know whether he can come and take the Yidden out of golus, but I had to tell him that we’re not yet ready, the time has not yet come’.
“Now, imagine for yourself”, the Triske magid concluded, “if you had been able to see the face of Moshiach, and you would hear your father tell him ‘we’re not yet ready, the time has not yet come’, would you be able to eat, and would you be able to sleep?!!”
The most obvious message from this story, I think, is: How much more is this true about us! We also saw the face of Moshiach. But we heard him say that we ARE ready, and the time HAS come. How much more should we be unable to eat or sleep, because we are fully preoccupied with being mekabel pnei Moshiach Tzidkeinu!
But there is something else about this story. I think any Lubavitcher chosid who hears this story will find it bizarre. Moshiach is living in a hut somewhere in the middle of the forest, like some hermit?! What kind of a Moshiach is that? We are all very accustomed to the notion that the nossi of the generation is the Moshiach of the generation. He’s not hiding out somewhere anonymously. He is busily involved with the people of his generation, readying them for the geulah.
Of course, it can be argued, that the image of Moshiach in the story has its source in gemoro, where Moshiach is described as an unknown pauper, sitting at the gates of Rome. But from the Rebbe’s sichos it is abundantly clear that the Moshiach of the dor is someone who is already active as a teacher and mentor and guide to his generation. He is already helping them liberate themselves from their individual golus, and – by extension – paving the way for them to achieve the collective geulah.
Which is connected to a fundamental difference between two ways of thinking about Moshiach: One way to think about Moshiach, about the era and times of Moshiach, is that that is לעתיד לבא, - that it is the future, the coming days. There is the world we live in now, our current lives, and then there are the days of Moshiach, that will replace it and supplant them.
We can eagerly look forward to that time, and await his coming every day. But – in the first approach - we see it is something far removed from our current world, and completely detached from our current lives.
However, the Rebbe taught us a very different meaning to Moshiach: Moshiach is not detached from the world we live in, the geulah is not removed and apart from the golus. Rather Moshiach reveals the essence of our world, the pnimiyus of the golus. It is the same גולה that we have been living in all these years that will remain with us then. But, with the infusion of the Aleph, the Alufo shel olam, the presence of G-dliness, we will no longer view it as golus, as something negative, but we will see it for what it truly is, - geulah and giluy Elokus.
I think this is at the core of the difference between two ways of approaching the subject of Moshiach now: If Moshiach is the future, even if it is the not-too-distant future, even if his coming is imminent, - still, until he comes we can only await his arrival. We may genuinely yearn for him – for the geulah – and daven for it and beg for it and look forward to it anxiously. But, until the moment of his arrival, we would be confined to our golus.
The Rebbe, however, taught us and directed us to start living with Moshiach now. The golus itself is the stage for the geulah, and the helem vehester itself is the backdrop for Moshiach. When Moshiach reveals their inner essence, then the golus itself is nothing other than geulah.
And this is a process that already started. Because the golus we already have. And the tools and ability to reveal the pnimiyus, the essence, of golus were already given to us. We are not only yearning for an event in the future, but we are already combining that future with our present.
In our avodas Hashem, it means we are involved in the same avodos, - we are learning nigleh and chassidus and davening and serving Hashem. That is what we’ll be doing when Moshiach comes, and that is what Moshiach is all about – שלימות התורה, והמצוות ושם נעשה לפניך כמצות רצוניך. But our avodas Hashem will be pure and ...
