This Victory is one “For the Books!”
This Victory is one “For the Books!”
On the fifth day of the Hebrew month of Tevet in 1987 *Judge Sifton* hands down a legal ruling regarding the personal possesions of the Rebbe. The Rebbe belongs to the Chasidim, the master belongs to the disciple — for a Rebbe the Chasidim are everything. Therefore the books that were removed by another family member and sold on the international market, were not family heirlooms, they were communal “assets” and thus were in effect stolen property.
What does this mean?
A Rebbe whose most valuable personal items belong to the community, means that beyond the obvious of the Rebbe “belonging” to his followers spiritually, there is also nothing in the material world that stands between the two either. So Five Tevet was the Rebbes *19 Kislev*.
If so then the Third day of Tammuz, is our Five Tevet.
The acknowledgement in a secular court, of the deep soulful bond between a Rebbe and Chosid, was an unprecedented registering of Mystical truth, resonating in the human awareness of the world.
The establishing on Hey Tevet of this notion, that personal possesions, things in “space” cannot interfere with a relationship that is played out in the realm of spirit, might merely have been a harbinger for establishing a new paradigm on Gimmel Tammuz, when the Rebbe of Blessed memory passed from this world; namely, that the physical existence of the Rebbe himself, his ultimate physical possesion, could not stand in the way of this bond either.
Today is a good day to to ask ourselves some hard existential questions. What are the commitments in our lives that define us, that drive us, the things that are so profoundly us, that we “belong” to them. Conversely, If the Rebbe allowed for the Rebbe/Chasid relationship to be defined this intensly, could that have been his way of raising the bar when it comes to the options we currently have, after his passing, for reciprocating that devotion? Would this then effectively designate the places in our life where we go “all in” as the other side of our “*Hiskashrus”coin? If we have a difficult time answering some of these questions, is it possible that something valuable, something central to those commitments might have been “stolen” from us along the way, our very soulfulness itself perhaps? How would ignoring this disconnect constitute a “Lebedike Bombe*” a phsycological ticking time bomb desperately needing to be diffused. Today is a good day to “retrieve’ the books, to reconect to our guiding lights and our misplaced higher wisdom.
Didan Notzach Much Love
Rabbi Yossi