Editor’s Note: In last week’s issue, we published the first part of Sara Yoheved Rigler’s fascinating but sad story of a Jewish Holocaust survivor who instead of going on aliyah to the Land of Israel, wound up in India where ensnared by the Hindu religion he rose to lead an ashram as the world-famous guru – Swami Vijayananda. In last week’s issue, the story revealed an amazing conversation between the Guru and the Hasid – Eliezer Botzer who tried to rescue the Guru’s neshama.
Presents the Guru With a Hebrew Bible
Eliezer pulled out of his backpack a Hebrew Bible and presented it to the guru.
With a wistful smile, the guru told him, “I already have one, and I’ll tell you from where.” Relating the story like a Hasidic tale, he told how, in the 1980s, an Israeli with a dilemma came to him here at the ashram.
The Israeli had been a soldier in the first Lebanon War. Traumatized by the war and the ceaseless specter of more wars in Israel, the non-observant ex-soldier had decided that he wanted to sever all connection with Israel and with Judaism.
Can’t Get Rid of His Jewish Feeling
“He became a Christian, but he was unsatisfied and unsettled. So he came to India and started to practice Hinduism. But here, too, he felt unsatisfied. Coming to Swami Vijayananda, he complained, “Maybe the reason I’m not finding myself in India, and I can’t get rid of this Jewish feeling, is that I still have the Bible they gave me when I was inducted into the Israeli army. Is it proper to throw it away?”
“No,” the guru replied, “don’t throw it away. Give it to me.”
He proceeded to tell the ex-soldier the story of Rabbi Akiva, who, as the Romans were flaying him alive, recited the Shema. When his agonized students asked him how he could perform the mitzvah of Shema while being tortured, Rabbi Akiva replied that all his life he had yearned to get to the place of serving God with his very life.
“I told him,” related the guru, “Do you know the difference between Rabbi Akiva and us? After all we went through [in the Holocaust and the Lebanon War], we asked, ‘My G-d, my G-d, why have you abandoned me?’”
Interpreting Rabbi Akiva’s Intentions
The guru had been relating the story in English, but at this point he quoted the line from Psalm 22 in its original Hebrew. Then he continued in English: “’But Rabbi Akiva,’ I told the Israeli soldier, ‘understood that his suffering was not a punishment, but rather a path to the highest spiritual state of attaining complete unity with G-d.’“
The guru peered at Eliezer and Natti. “I don’t know where he is now, but I think he must have come back to Judaism after what I told him.”
This was Eliezer’s opening. “Maybe it’s time for you, too, to come back. You’re not young. Do you want to be cremated and your ashes thrown into the Ganges? It’s time for you to come back to Judaism.”
The Attendants Become Angry
At that the attendants got agitated and angry. “You’re trying to take our guru away from us,” they accused the Jewish visitors.
Eliezer made one last try. “G-d loves every Jew, and wants every Jew to return to Judaism.”
The attendants had heard enough. Furiously, they evicted the two Hasids.
In April, 2010, Swami Vijayananda died at the ashram in Hardwar.
Every Jew has what is called a pintele Yid, a Jewish soul-spark that can never be snuffed out. No matter how far a Jew strays, no matter how vociferously he repudiates his Jewish roots or how diffidently she ignores her Jewish soul or how many decades have elapsed immersed in a different religion, the Jewish spark is always there, ready to be ignited anew.
However, every Jew also is flanked by “attendants” who assiduously work to keep the pintele Yid from being ignited. Sometimes the attendant is fear, sometimes distraction, sometimes egotism, sometimes complacency.
G-d repeatedly sends messengers into our lives. They come in diverse costumes: sometimes a stranger who utters a portentous, unsettling statement; sometimes a wake-up call in the form of a tragedy or near-tragedy; sometimes a blessing so bountiful it reveals its Source; sometimes an unlikely encounter with a rabbi or a rebbetzin on a plane, or on the street, or in Wal-Mart’s.
Meeting a Jewish Doctor in India from Wales
In a remote town in India in 1968, I met a Jewish doctor from Wales who changed my life. I know a Jew, also a doctor, who lived an utterly un-Jewish life on a Pacific island, and who one day in the mail received an invitation to a medical conference in, of all places, Israel. All such messengers come bearing igniters. But the attendants, with frightened or sneering visages, wave their arms and try to keep us from heeding the messengers. The attendants utter their shrill warnings: “You don’t have time to go to that class.” “Don’t accept that Shabbat invitation or they’ll try to brainwash you.”
Various Excuses to Ignore The Spiritual Wake-Up Call
“You’re too old/established/comfortable to start changing now.” “Your level of Jewish observance is fine; don’t become a fanatic.” “If you start observing mitzvot, you’ll miss out on all the fun in life.” “They’re trying to take you away.”
It takes courage to banish the attendants, to realize that rather than protecting us, they are driving away the Fedex man who is trying to deliver the tidings of a surprise inheritance.
The Jewish spark, the pintele Yid, in each of us, is waiting to burst into flames of joy, love, and fulfillment.
Sara Yoheved Rigler “G-d Winked: Tales & Lessons from My Spiritual Adventures.”
