Have you ever felt like you get burnt precisely when you seem to be putting your “best” self…

Have you ever felt like you get burnt precisely when you seem to be putting your “best” self forward?

How is it that even when we are shining at our brightest for others, we often remain engulfed in darkness ourselves. Why can’t we warm ourselves around the same fires that we light for everyone else?

Take Moses for example. One gets the distinct feeling that though he was never alone, he was always lonely.

I sensed the same kind of distance from the Rebbe, a gulf that seemed to widen, paradoxically, later in life, even as he moved closer to us. I think he dropped oblique hints to that effect along the way. I sensed it again in studying a “Maamer” titled Atem Nitzavim, a deep Mystical discourse that he taught early on in 1974 on the 25th of Elul, right before Rosh Hashanah.

He differentiates there, between the experience of the people during the giving of the Torah at Sinai, and the unique Mystic vibe of Rosh Hashanah. He does so by examining the dynamic between the people and Moses during both these peak Jewish moments.

Sinai. The surveillance cameras of all material existence get shut down allowing Moses to smuggle the deepest mysteries of heaven past the sleeping defenses of earth. The people, exulting in this novel possibility, one that allows finally, for an integration of the sacred and the prosaic, fail to notice how those same barriers have reassembled themselves around Moses, seemingly part of some prearranged tacit understanding, hammered out quietly in some smoky celestial backroom deal. There is a cost for doing business with heaven, and Moses gladly picked up the tab. Broken barriers don’t just disappear. The chasm that used to separate the people from G-d, now separates them from their beloved leader.

Irony of all Ironies. The moment when Moses descends, bearing the most precious gift of all, the one that should serve to bind him to his flock tighter than ever, marks instead the beginning of the exact opposite, a gradual distancing. That this paradigm is preceded in the very same portion, by the episode describing the decentralization of his authority, facilitated by Yisro his son in law, might help explain why a portion that arguably, could have been named after MOSES, is named instead after YISRO! The transition into a new parliamentary style model of legislation initiated by Yisro, was a preview, an example highlighting the newfound connection with G-d through Torah, and the way it overshadowed the prior model of connection solely through Moses. A portion that is as much about the withdrawing of his presence, as it is about the filling of that void with Torah.

I think the Rebbe might have seen himself in this narrative as well, the way he ended up being barricaded behind his own greatness. He was able to reconnect an entire generation back to a faith that felt so strange to so many, even as he himself became more and more estranged from us all. I think that this loneliness was especially true in the later years, after the Rebbetzin passed away, and there might have been a sense that these barriers would soon separate us permanently from his physical presence as well. I felt that to be especially true in the last years of his life when he, like Moses, was unable to communicate with us verbally at all. All of that holiness locked away inside. Instead during prayer times, a window opens up above a balcony, for a brief glimpse of a silent Rebbe, with so much more to say that will remain forever unsaid.

Still In that same Maamer, the Rebbe describes the upside of this, the way that on Rosh Hashanah this whole dynamic between Moses and the people reverts back to the original relationship paradigm of intimacy. In a Kabbalistic rereading of the opening verse in the portion of Nitzavim “you are all gathered here today — read in Hebrew with more oomph, HAYOM/ THE DAY; a verse that is alluding to Rosh Hashanah, the DAY that man was formed; KULCHEM/all of you. The Rebbe points out how, in that Biblical gathering the barriers between Moses and the people came down again!

I think the best way to understand the many layered dimensions of this complex relationship, is by looking at this through a parenting lens. The sense of sadness that might accompany the realization that our children have the tools to stand on their own feet, the cutting of the umbilical cord, plunges us into an unexpected existential loneliness. The precious Torah of life that we share with our children, replaces their reliance on us, the barriers that we attempt to help them overcome and circumvent, often end up resurfacing as subtle and not so subtle barriers between us and them.

Still, the flip side of that coin can be felt in the profound joy that we have in knowing that they will be ok. In that knowledge the barriers disappear again.

So if the thrust of that paragraph in the Maamer, was the search for the perfect verse in Torah to capture the essential core of a relationship, then it succeeds with the verse of Atem Nizavim, going beyond the limited scope of Matan Torah, allowing for the energy at the depth of relationships, to surface, at their source when they are (Nitzavim) upright, free from the weight that must accompany purposefulness.

Rosh Hashanah is where parents who are hyper focused on “getting” their kids where they need them to be can pause for a moment and remember that sometimes a child needs a hug too.

Rosh Hashanah is when the Jewish people remember that the relationship with Moshe was intact, even after the giving of Torah. This is how we come to G-d for a hug as well, just exactly as we are, in the “fields” in the midst of all the messiness of trying to be what we need to be. On this day we approach G-d as children coming home to “just be” and let go of the storylines and celebrate with “what is.”

I will never forget the intensity of being with the Rebbe on Rosh Hashanah. Being that close to the Bimah, While this saintly Rebbe blew the Shofar, was unforgettable in so many ways. Afterwards he would walk through a narrow corrider that opened up miraculously in a veritable sea of thousands of Chassidim, and walk back up to his seat at the front. At this point he would do what every Shofar blower is instructed to do afterward. Turn around and survey the crowd. For me and thousands of others, that moment was truly extraordinary. In that brief turning around, something turned around in us as well. If we were facing the wrong way existentially, that marked the real beginning of our Teshuvah. That was our “turning point” as well.

We understood well in that moment (and perhaps with a bit of a twist,) what the Alter Rebbe meant when he “said” famously to G-d, “I don’t want your Garden of Eden, nor do I want your World to Come… I just want you!!!”

Wishing you all a happy and healthy new year. May we all be blessed this year with moments of renewal and clarity in all of the important relationships of our lives. Moments that allow us to tear down all the barriers that we put up, even the good ones, that serve the best interests of those relationships.

Shana Tova Much love

Rabbi Yossi