Noseh Ha’pachim — Holding Opposites on the Rebbe’s Birthday and the Passover Seder
How the Lubavitcher Rebbe embodied the paradoxical mastery of carrying fierce conviction and boundless tenderness at once
In the hallowed and mysterious arena of the Tzadik, those rare beings endowed with the roaring might of authentic righteousness, The Rebbe stood out. An outlier amongst outliers.
The Rebbe pierced your soul with his gaze, yet his eyes twinkled while lifting your heart with his smile.
Nothing was ever ordinary in the Rebbe’s world. Like Rashbi of the Zohar, the Rebbe spoke frequently about the concept of Noseh Haphachim” (embodiment of opposites) whilst embodying many himself. (I bring the example of birthdays as it was his this week; his followers and many in the wider Jewish and non Jewish world at large continue to mark the Eleventh of Nissan as a day of reflection and prayer—even after his passing.)
The paradox lay in how he solemnised the potential frivolousness of a birthday celebration, seeking to elevate it to a realm of spiritual significance, whilst infusing the solemnity of a Yahrtzeit (anniversary of a Persons passing) with the joyousness of a birthday celebration, thus using the moment to connect soulfully to the Neshama of a loved one.
In just a few hours Shabbos and then Passover begins. We too will be “Noseh Haphacim.”
As we chant “Avadim Hayinu” “we were slaves to Pharoah” we are struck by the hollowness of that statement given the conflicting reality of the hostages that remain enslaved, starved, and tortured by sociopathic terrorists while the world shrugs their shoulders and blames shifts tne victims. The “bitterness” is real.
One prayer that we recite on the night of the Seder “Vehi She-Amda” that might’ve seemed hollow and somewhat disconnected from reality in the recent past, resonates with more personal experience for us, perhaps more so today than any other time since the Holocaust.
“This faith has helped us survive, since not only one has risen up against us to destroy us but G-d has saved us from their hands”
If the Rebbe were here he would urge us to rise (not in apathy but in full solidarity) at least for the Seders above the impossibility of the conflicting realities by identifying a more esoteric aspect of that reality that can encompass its heaviness and lighten it in some way. Perhaps he would encourage us to fully internalise the utter and very real grief of the “Yahrtzeits” of the victims but remember them by doubling down on the Joy that they and their families were robbed of and direct our sadness in a different direction by aiming to restore its lost sweetness back into the cosmos. For
Them. Because it’s what they would have wanted.
He would urge us to cry from one eye only and twinkle with the Joy of a birthday and it promise of renewal—even from the midst of the carnage —from the other.
Much Love,
Good Shabbos and A Zeesen Pesach
Rabbi Yossi