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Rabbi's weekly Blog

i didn't accept the blessing

Friday, October 31, 2025 - 9:51 AM

Last week, I mentioned in my letter that my birthday was coming up, and indeed, it was my birthday last Friday. I received many greetings and well-wishes, and I quite enjoyed them. Only one of them made me respond immediately.

A dear friend of mine, who is also a Kohen, wrote: “Zalman, don’t change stay just the way you are.” He meant it kindly, of course, but I immediately jumped in and said, “I can’t accept that blessing. Please bless me again that I should change, that I should be a different person by next year.”

For years, I’ve been investing my life, my time, my energy, and my resources into changing, into improving, into becoming a different person than I was before and you come to fix me in place? I added a smiling emoji.

He understood right away, of course, and blessed me again as I requested.

You can read this lightly or with a smile, but to tell the truth it really struck a deep chord. To me, the most beautiful compliment in the world is, “Wow, you’ve changed.” Because we’re here to move forward.

Take Avraham Avinu, his first revealed connection with the Creator begins with the words “Lech Lecha” (“Go forth”), which we will read tomorrow in the synagogue in Parashat Lech Lecha. The very first words our first father heard from God were “Lech Lecha” - a primal, ancient, fundamental, existential, steady, and eternal message for every Jew everywhere: before anything else, before one’s order of service, one’s aspirations, and one’s prayers, there must be “Lech Lecha”. Do not stand still.

Here’s how the Rebbe said it on Shabbat Parashat Lech Lecha, 5750 (1989):

The command “Go forth from your land, from your birthplace, and from your father’s house, to the land that I will show you” — the very first command to the very first Jew — expresses the essence and content of the spiritual work of the Jewish people, of every Jew, and of all Jews together.

The Rebbe continued: “Your land” (artzecha) — this refers to one’s natural instincts and innate characteristics with which a person is born. “Your birthplace” (moladetecha) — this refers to the conduct and manners a person acquires in his environment, which differ from place to place and are not always positive (for example, there is a small but noticeable difference in manners and behavior between someone born in Switzerland and someone born in the Holy Land). “Your father’s house” (beit avicha) — this refers to the education and guidance one receives at home.

Each of these three general elements contains much good, but each also leaves room for change, refinement, and improvement, and each person knows this about himself. How do we change and refine them? By being willing to step out of the limitations that each of these aspects imposes upon us.

In my own words: the general lines that define the boundaries of our personality are wonderful, but they also limit us. “To define” comes from the same root as “boundary” and a boundary, by definition, restricts. To break through it, we must overcome our fear of the unknown and stay in constant motion in a state of “Lech Lecha.”

If it’s your birthday today, or any day, really I bless you: “Go forth from your land, from your birthplace, and from your father’s house.”

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Zalman Wishedski

Police police please open

Friday, October 24, 2025 - 3:42 AM

Powerful banging jolted us in our hotel room in central Paris on Monday morning.

“Police police please open,” voices called from behind the door.

It was this past Monday. The night before, I had participated in the Bar Mitzvah celebration of Berel Amar, the son of my dear friend Rabbi Yossi, and now, early in the morning, such frightening knocks. As I washed my hands and called out, “One minute please,” I began to realize that this must be connected to the theft at the Louvre that had taken place less than 24 hours earlier.

Five intimidating police officers stood there. They asked where we were from and what we were doing here, apologized, and likely continued on to their next target. Just before they left, I asked, “Is this because of the Louvre?” They merely smiled silently and walked away.

Despite dozens of visits to Paris, I had never before entered the Louvre, to my embarrassment (or perhaps not). I was not even aware of the existence of the Apollo Gallery, where precious jewels of Napoleon and the Empress are displayed. I knew his name of course, primarily through Chabad history. I also knew that I possess something that once belonged to him and today belongs to us, the Napoleon March.

During the French Russian War in 1812, the Alter Rebbe was deeply involved, primarily on a spiritual level. He wrote and explained then:

“If Bonaparte will be victorious, the glory of Israel will be exalted and the wealth of Israel will increase, but the hearts of Israel will be torn away from their Father in Heaven. And if the Czar Alexander will triumph, the glory of Israel will be humbled and poverty will increase, but the hearts of Israel will delight in closeness and connection with their Father in Heaven.”

The Alter Rebbe saw Napoleon and what he represented as the side of evil in the world, “He is the Satan opposing all that is good, the force of the harsh klipah, the very opposite of kindness and goodness.”

And when Napoleon began crossing the Neman River, which flows from Minsk to the Baltic Sea and thus protects Russia, with his hundreds of thousands of soldiers, they sang a victory march. The Alter Rebbe took that very march in order to triumph over them. As the Rebbe Rayatz related at the Moshiach’s Seudah in 1943:

“When the Alter Rebbe left Liadi because of Napoleon’s war, on Friday of Shabbos Mevarchim Elul 5572, he instructed that the march with which the French army crossed the Russian border from Prussia should be brought to him. When the march was brought and sung before him, he said: ‘This is a song of victory,’ entered into a profound state of devotion, and concluded: ‘In the end, the victory will be ours.’”

These are spiritual matters, for every war is first and foremost a spiritual war that manifests in the physical world. And the Alter Rebbe took Napoleon’s power and transformed that march into a Jewish chassidic march.

This is the very march we sing with fervor at the close of Yom Kippur as we express that we have been victorious in judgment and surely sealed in the Book of Life.

Fortunately for the police officers, I do not understand French and thus I spared them this story. But to myself I thought, they only now took away Napoleon’s physical jewels, but we took his spiritual jewels already 213 years ago.

Today is my birthday, the second of Mar-cheshvan. It seems like the perfect day to be engaged with a march of victory, a march symbolizing the triumph of good over evil. In the personal struggles within me between good and evil, in the constant challenges that stand before me as they do before anyone running an institution of holiness, and most importantly, in the great cosmic battle of good against evil that will soon conclude with the coming of the great and awesome day of Hashem.

And perhaps, who knows, perhaps the fact that yet another piece of Napoleon’s material wealth has been taken has spiritual significance in the continued victory of goodness and kindness.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Zalman Wishedski

pure and luminous simplicity

Friday, October 17, 2025 - 8:30 AM

A very special woman passed away last night, one of those people the world will truly miss.

Mrs. Frimet Silbiger, of blessed memory, was the kind of person you were always happy to meet, no matter your age. She was one of the quiet pillars of Basel, not someone prominent, but a true Yiddishe Mame of the old kind.

Among the members of Basel’s Orthodox Jewish community, such a woman is often described as ‚a chashuve froy - an important woman.‘ But in my Chabad lexicon, she perfectly embodied the highest definition of ‚a poshete froy - a simple Jewish woman‘: pure and luminous simplicity, smooth and clear.

In Chassidus it is known that something completely simple can bear everything, and that’s exactly what I mean. All kinds of people found in her a listening ear and an equal, sincere, and genuine relationship.

We stand now on the eve of „Shabbos Bereishis“, the Shabbos of which the Rebbeim of Chabad said: “As a person positions himself on Shabbos Bereishis, so will he stand the entire year.” And as I think about what I want to focus on this Shabbos Bereishis of the year 5786, I realize that the direction must be simplicity.

As Kohelet said:

> “See, this alone I found: that God made man upright, but they have sought out many calculations.”

> Sometimes one must stop calculating — and simply walk straight.

Rabbi Uriel HaKohen Silbiger, one of the rabbis of Basel and the son of the departed, told a story last night from her childhood that captures who she was - and became the foundation of her life’s path.

She was born in Poland in 1939. When the war broke out, her family was exiled to Siberia and that exile saved their lives. Life in Siberia was not easy. They were confined to a certain village and given only the bare minimum to survive. As citizens of a foreign state, they were forbidden to complain, anyone who expressed dissatisfaction could “disappear” very quickly.

So, whenever a senior official came by and asked how they were, they would answer, “Everything’s fine,” and the adults would warn the children never to complain, it was dangerous.

But one winter, when the official arrived and asked how things were, four-year-old Frimet heard her mother say clearly, “Not good, not good.”

The surprised and angry official asked, “What’s wrong? What happened?”

And she answered, with complete honesty and simplicity:

“Pesach is coming soon, and we have no flour to bake matzos.”

Everyone was terrified. Even the little girl remembered the fear, some may even have been angry at what her mother had done. But the next day, a delivery of flour arrived, and there were matzos for Pesach.

For Frimet, that brave act became a shining, steady pillar of simple and upright Judaism. No overthinking, no complications, the path is clear: walk straight, and G-d will take care of the rest.

Rabbi Uriel Silbiger knows how to tell a story and how to define and clarify a point. With that story, he captured in one moment, for everyone who knew his late mother, who she was: an honest and simple woman, a Yiddishe Mame without sophistication or calculations and all of it with a truly loving smile.

> “See, this alone I found: that God made man upright, but they have sought out many calculations.”

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Zalman Wishedski

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