Shimon, as a businessman, faced an extraordinary test. He was a man of faith, a distinguished individual, but now his character was up for a challenge. But then he said to himself, “I can’t go through with this. It’s Yom Tov. I will be going to my Rebbe, the Lechevitcher. The moment he looks into my eyes, he will see what I have done.”
But then a second thought struck him. “I won’t go to my Rebbe. That way, he won’t see anything. But where will I hide?” He considered staying in the shtiebel, his small local synagogue. “No, he thought, my friends will notice something is off. They’ll ask me why I’m not going.” So he decided, “I won’t stay in the shtiebel. I’ll hide under the large shul instead. No one will find me there.”
But deep down, he knew the truth. "My friends will come looking for me. They will grab me and take me to the Rebbe. I can’t escape this. I can’t do it."
Sure enough, when he finally stood before the Lechevitcher Rebbe, the Rebbe gazed into his eyes and said, “You see? What a Rebbe cannot accomplish, friends can.”
This is what it means to be part of a chabura, a fellowship. It means that what great rebbes and rabbis might not be able to accomplish—because ultimately, the struggle is our own, it is our personal battle between the yetzer hara and the yetzer tov—our friends can help us achieve.
The Kuzari speaks about the power of tefillah b’tzibur, prayer with a minyan. Imagine someone’s Shemoneh Esrei looking something like this:
"Baruch Atah Hashem Elokeinu Melech—Wait, did I park on the wrong side of the street? Did I get a ticket? "Elokei Avraham, Elokei Yitzchak, V’Elokei Yaakov—This is so unfair. I never wanted to live in this city. I wanted to move elsewhere years ago!" "Baruch Atah Hashem—Oh! I actually did park on the right side of the street!"
Our Shemoneh Esrei may sometimes lack focus. But the Kuzari explains something incredible: when we daven together as a tzibur, Hashem gathers the best bracha from one person, the best bracha from another, and yet another from someone else, and forms a perfect Shemoneh Esrei, which is then applied to everyone in the congregation.
This principle extends beyond prayer.
When we are part of any chabura, Hashem looks at us and says: "I will take your best day, and your best day, and your best day—and I will weave them together to form a perfect communal effort."
When my father first arrived in America, he told me that he had never seen an elevator before. Coming from a small town, he watched as the doors mysteriously opened and closed on their own. “What is this?” he wondered. Then, he saw a young boy step inside, the doors shut, and moments later, they reopened, and an old man emerged. My father was terrified. He thought, “I’m not stepping into that time machine!”
But Hashem has, in fact, given us a powerful machine, one that can transform us. That machine is the power of tzibbur, of community, of doing things together. All we need to do is step into the machine, press the right buttons, and allow Hashem to refine us, preparing us to receive redemption in our own lives and to welcome the ultimate geulah sheleimah.
