“I came to my garden..”

The Rebbe: part four

Baasi Legani

In 1951 after finally formally accepting the “nomination” to be the seventh Rebbe of Lubavitch — the Rebbe delivered the spiritual equivalent of a state of the Union address.

This milestone talk featured many of the principles that would become cornerstones of his leadership and form the backbone of his “administration.”

One of the loftiest ideas was communicated in the opening words.

He began by quoting a passage from Song of Songs.

The Song of Songs which reads like a love story also serves as a metaphor for the mysterious and often complex relationship between the human and the divine.

The passage that the Rebbe quotes revolves around a bride and groom…Baasi legani “ I have come to my garden my sister my bride”

He emphasizes that this “entering into the garden” is not the first time in this place. It seems to be describing a “returning back” to a magical place that that they (g-d) used to inhabit.

The “Maamer” then goes on to quote a Midrash that gives the “background” for an understanding of this metaphor in historical terms.

Right when the world was freshly created The “Shechina” or divine presence was in the world — the “garden.” When Adam and Eve sinned they were banished from the “garden of Eden” This forced a simultaneous slipping away of the Shechina divine presence from there. Upward away from the human space. Or as we call it in Chassidic parlance the place of tachton or the “below” space.”

The stories of Genesis and the patriarchs and matriarchs if read carefully are also the history of the human endeavor to draw an awareness of G-d back into that void.

The first real breakthrough on this front was facilitated by Moses at Sinai when he brought the “Torah” DOWN to the Jewish people.

G-d returning back into the “garden” clothed this time in the sacred letters and words of Torah, is a symbolic reinstating of sacredness back into the tachton human world.

This important breakthrough hinged on the leadership of Moses.

His ability to EVEN IMAGINE the POSSIBILITY of the world being able to host G-dliness once again, was the deciding factor in G-d accepting the invitation.

It was Moses saying “please come back again, we have refurbished the space you were once in and you will really feel comfortable here once more.” The bridge connecting heaven and earth was once again completed and G-dliness once again is able to flow back into the tachton ….

The world became a garden of Eden again only because Moshe was a strong enough leader to imagine it as one.

The Rebbe chose this same verse to frame the spiritual approach to his leadership. He too like Moses, began his tenure in the aftermath of humanities greatest sin, in the catastrophic wake of the pure evil of the holocaust.

Though many of the Jews living in Eastern Europe were impoverished and suffered severe economic hardships, there was a thriving spiritual communal infrastructure that was a veritable paradise — a different sort of “Garden of Eden” one that managed, despite those hardships to foster a sense that G-d was still in our midst.

G-d could still be glimpsed in the devotion of the faithful Jews, awake at the crack of dawn, holy devoted servants of G-d rushing to their simple “Shtiblach” to pray in their modest ramshackle houses of worship.

The Jews were rushing to their gardens!

Basi Legani they sang,

Basi Legani they shouted heavenward — holy madmen dancing their way through the winding cold dark streets of Prague — floating their way along the winding darkened alleyways -bursting into the crooked rickety doorways of their ramshackle shuls ….as if they were entering into the ancient majestic temple In Jerusalem itself and worshiping like the high priest in the holy of holies.

The holocaust changed all that.

Once again the holy Divine presence seemed to vanish from this world. All the survivors could say was where was G-d?

They felt as if G-d was evicted from the garden.. ascending — transported too…by the ashes and the smoke and the tears.

This world once again seemed to have spit g-d out from its midst.

The brave survivors somehow found the strength to rebuild. But they said to themselves, our G-d is incompatible with the world he created. Like those Sci Fi — creations that grow stronger than intended and then turn on their creators.

They echoed the cries of the spies who returned to proclaim their worst fears. “We cannot enter into the Land….for it consumes its inahabitents.”

We can only experience him outside of this world. So they did just that. They created alternative worlds that though still physically still IN this world, were still not OF it.

One dimensional enclaves were created that were within this world only geographically. Though these communities were and still are towering bastions of Religiosity, Torah scholarship, and piety, they might have ovorlooked the most important Mitzvah of all, namely the one in which we are enjoined — “Letaken olam bmalchus Sha — dai, to infuse the world, the entire world with the awareness of the majesty of G-d.”

The Rebbe was a lone voice that proclaimed loudly and boldly. “The holocaust was not the result of a bad world… It was the result of bad people. The world is good. The world is still a garden…lets work together to bring G-d back down into the consciousness of the world!”

While the majority of the Jewish leadership were like the sages in the Talmud, ripping their garments and mourning the departure of G-d from the world as they sadly surveyed the ruins of the destroyed temple that once held six million Jews, the Rebbe was Rabbi Akivah dancing atop those same ruins — also mourning the murdered, but digging deep enough to sing out a Basi lgani as well and proclaim that can still be felt even here — G-d is still h buried beneath these ruins… Let’s dig him out …and sing the song of our people, sing it for ourselves and for the six million who count on us to sing it for them as well.

The Rebbe then made it his life’s mission to prove that we don’t need to climb out of this world to meet G-d just because it seems as if he has disappeared. He is still here. Though the actions of evil men have made the garden look like a ruin we must go right back into the heart of the world and take it back and rebuild.

The Rebbes vision is the only way I can understand what it means when it says in the Talmud, that on the saddest day of the Jewish calander — the ninth day of Av, the Messiah was born!!!!

If we try and find an awareness of G-d only on the outskirts of this world, we will be successful in the short term but ultimately we will feel as if we are worshiping a weak G-d that cannot exist in this world …..one that we will eventually stop worshipping.

If we want to feel the true light of G-d, we have to rekindle his light in precisely those places that it was extinguished.

“Limakom Shehaya Ikro” we need to go back to where the light was kindled originally, if we want it to shine with its most powerfully authentic light.

The Rebbe was the leader of our time who filled us with the courage to believe in the goodness of the world once again.

The Rebbe then acted on this idea.

He pioneered the revolutionary idea of sending emissaries to every corner of the world to establish outposts of goodness, kindness and light, people who would make that their life’s mission.

I know today he looks down from heaven and Peers into every one of these Chabad houses and smiles angelically as he utters the words Basi Legani …I have come to my garden …over and over again as he surveys each one lovingly and longingly.

I have come to my garden in Peru …. I have come to my garden In South America… I have come to my garden in the whole world ……

He instructed those emissaries — Shluchim.. to be much more than Rabbis in Synagogues. He charged them, like Moshe charged his 70 apprentices, with opening up “fronts” of goodness, light and holiness In every corner of the “tachton” — every corner of the globe, to kindle public Menorahs on every street corner of this world till the universal light of goodness shines from WITHIN this world, not outside it.

He too was bent on bringing the Torah back down the mountain, back into the hearts and souls of all of humanity.

On Yud Shevat, the tenth day of Shevat — we don’t have to be Chassidic, or Jewish to be inspired to look at the world with just a drop more mindfulness than usual, giving ourselves permission to celebrate our lives as the garden that it was was meant to be and can be once again.

The Rebbe was teaching an important idea in how to live right. If you want to fix your life you must go back to the places of your greatest brokenness and begin right there. Your original light is still bound up in the pain of that place. If you are searching for true success you will find it buried within your greatest failure. If you are searching for true joy it can only be found by digging deeply into the rubble of your most profound sadness. If you want true redemption then go back and dance a Basi Lgani dance at the place of your greatest exile.

Much love

Rabbi Yossi