Timeless Torah

Date: 3rd of Tammuz. Location: Ohel (Where the Rebbe is interred).
Midnight: The Ohel complex of building, tents, and makeshift facilities is teeming with thousands who have come to the Rebbe's gravesite for blessing, spiritual guidance and inspiration. The lines spill over into the street and the wait is close to two hours, plenty of time for reciting Psalms and introspection.
Thirteen years ago, the pundits predicted that the Lubavitcher movement would collapse without its Rebbe. Yet the number of Chabad schools, synagogues, camps, projects, and centers has dramatically increased…and yes, the lines continue to grow longer. What is the Rebbe’s continued appeal? How does he still command allegiance? I am no spokesperson for Chabad, but let me share a personal reflection.
The Rebbe still speaks to me. Indeed, he haunts me, for when I think of him, which is often, I search my conscience, wondering if I have I failed him. Serving as his Shliach (emissary) in Coral Springs is the great honor of my life. Now I worry whether I still bring him honor?
As our generation’s greatest thinker, his bold and spiritually pertinent ideas still excite my imagination. When I watch the kinderlech at the Hebrew Academy, a day school which all the local mayvens predicted could never take hold, and the many baalei t’shuva (returnees) at our Synagogue, the magnitude of the Rebbe's achievements hit me like a lighting bolt. It is then that I remember his emphasis on deed over ideas: Invite a family to Shabbat dinner, affix a mezuzah, kosher a kitchen, or teach a child. True, a great sermon could inspire. But it was catering to their everyday religious needs that would made my Rebbe proud and best ensure the survival of Judaism.
For me, Moses saved the Jews from Egyptian bondage, Elijah from idolatry, and Ezra from losing our identity. In our post-Holocaust age, the Rebbe rescued the world's oldest religion itself from disappearing. And he did it not for recognition, but solely because it was right.
So when a single mother asks me to meet with her rebellious son and I am too busy, I see him standing on his 90-year-old feet, greeting the thousands who came every Sunday for a blessing. I see his 50 years of intense devotion without even one day of vacation. I see him awake all night, receiving the broken-hearted in private audience, and among their faces I see my own, a soon-to-be Bar Mitzvah youngster, granted a meeting with the most influential Rabbi in the world. It is then I am reminded of his central teaching: Never underestimate the power of a single good deed to redeem the world. So you meet the person with the problem, because the Rebbe did, when it was you with the dilemma.
Other religious leaders assumed a defensive posture, erecting walls to safeguard their young from other Jews deemed less observant. The Rebbe tore down the walls. Without judging or labeling anyone, he re-established the link between Torah and a whole generation of secular Jews. The result: tens of thousands returned to the fold. This is what happens when you use religion as a beacon to illuminate a dark work, instead of a stick to browbeat others.
The Rebbe, a titan of virtue, lived entirely for others. And although he was easily the world’s most famous Rabbi, he was a paragon of humility. In this way, he drilled a hole into my conscience where he permanently resides, beckoning me to ever higher heights.
Not just me. That night at the Ohel, I spoke with colleagues, friends, and complete strangers. Each one had a specific lesson learned, a unique story, or a special experience with the Rebbe, or with one of his shluchim. But there was one all-important lecture we all agreed he taught by personal example; the only true way of loving G-d is by loving His children.
He was the only Jewish leader who took the whole of the Jewish people as his constituency, without conditions or qualifications. He wanted every Jew, however remote geographically or spiritually, to know that within our people there was a place of honor for them. How odd that this should be so rare, yet it is.
That is why long before ‘globalization’ was in vogue, the Rebbe sent his emissaries to wherever you would least expect to find a Jewish presence. As the Chief Rabbi of England once commented: I don’t know who will be the first Jew on the moon, but I am sure who will be the second: A Lubavitcher putting tefillin on the first. So he sent us, as unlikely as it sounds, to be the heroes of our communities. We were to be the new face of Judaism; serious, even spiritual, and yet informal, approachable, and savvy. We were to teach what it was to, “Serve God with joy.”
And he did this after the Holocaust, when the Jewish world was demoralized. Some felt then that our only hope was to rebuild a Jewish state. Undaunted, the Rebbe set out to rebuild an entire Jewish people. Though, in his vision, no Jew would be left behind, he began his campaign in the United States, a country that until then had dissolved Jewish identity by the sheer power of its embrace, a land that turned Jews into gentiles in three generations. Others scoffed at what they believed impossible. Not the Rebbe. He utilized modern American culture - Mitzvah campaigns, public menorahs, the use of cable television - to convey a traditional message. Alone among his contemporaries, the Rebbe realized that all Jews concealed a deep yearning for spirituality, and he knew how to address it.
Dawn: The sun is shining and I am leaving the cemetery even as others arrive to take their place in a line that has not diminished. Few men shape the world in death as they did in life. The Rebbe does because he developed thousands of (lesser) leaders in countless cities. We know we are imperfect disciples, but we are an army, striving to be the Chassidim, he thought us capable of being. In that sense he does not command our allegiance. He educated and trained us so well, that we now demand it of ourselves. That was the secret of his success.