Rabbi's weekly Blog

Elliot Lasky was just another one of those young people who were searching for themselves at the beginning of the 1970’s in the United States – in a variety of places. He thought he would find answers in music, but even after he had spent the summer of 1972 on a two-month, cross-country tour of the Rolling Stones, he was still searching.

And so, he found himself on one freezing day in the middle of the winter of 1973, standing on the steps of the famous red-brick 770 building in Brooklyn, the world center of Chabad, waiting for the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

At the time he was sporting a beard and shoulder-length hair, and was wearing snakeskin boots, jeans and a leather jacket. He approached the Rebbe, who had just gotten out of his car. Using the Yiddish that he knew from home, he asked the Rebbe: “Excuse me, are you the Lubavitcher Rebbe?” And thus started a fifteen-minute conversation, which he describes as being life-changing.

Elliot cries when he remembers the Rebbe’s eyes. “Our eyes were locked. I have never seen eyes like that.”

“I have a question,” he said to the Rebbe. “Where is G-d?” “Everywhere,” replied the Rebbe. “I know,” said Elliot, “but where?” Again, the Rebbe answered, “Everywhere. In the tree, in a stone, everywhere.” “I know,” repeated Elliot, their eyes still locked, feeling that the physical world around them had ceased to exist. “I know, but where is he?” “In your heart,” answered the Rebbe. “G-d is in your heart.”

“And they will make me a sanctuary, and I will dwell in them,” said Hashem to Bnei Yisrael in this week’s parasha. “In them” – Hashem wishes to dwell inside Bnei Yisrael, in the heart of each and every one of us. How does one do this? How does one build a personal, private Beit Mikdash inside ourselves, in our hearts?

This is what the Rebbe writes in a talk for parashat Terumah: “When a person makes a sanctuary  from his material possessions for Hashem – learns Torah and observes the mitzvot and brings holiness into mundane matters and non-obligatory things – Hashem dwells within him.”

Elliot Lasky stood with the Rebbe in front of a shul and a beit midrash, but when he asked where G-d is, the answer was not “Here, behind you, in the shul.” The answer was: “Everywhere. In the tree and the stone. In everything, and yes, of course, in your heart as well.”

Hashem and the Torah don’t belong only in the beit knesset and the beit midrash. We must find the way to sanctify our daily life – including work and travel, meals and business discussions. It might seem difficult at first, but it is really very simple. When a person believes and knows that G-d is really everywhere, he will know how to sanctify the time and place in which he is operating.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Zalmen Wishedski

The Chinese are in the process of taking over the world market. How do they do it?

A wise person once said that they have simply invented a new way of doing things, which the rest of the world isn’t familiar with: they work during their workhours.

It is very important to work during one’s workhours, of course. But it is no less important to know to stop working after hours, and to allow ourselves to live, as well.

In this week’s parasha we learn the laws of the Hebrew servant. A Hebrew servant is a Jew who has found himself in a financial or personal crisis (such as having been caught stealing), and has had no choice but to be sold or sell himself as a slave in order to return his debt. The sale is for only six years, and when that time is up, he becomes a free person. If that person wishes to remain a servant, it is possible, but on condition that he do something unpleasant: have his ear pierced.

Why is it the ear that is pierced?

Rabban Yochanan ben Zakai said in tractate Kiddushin, “The ear that heard [Hashem saying] on Mount Sinai ‘To me Bnei Yisrael are slaves,’ and went and took upon himself a master, will be pierced.” Hashem says to the Jew: I understand that you had to sell yourself as a slave in order to pay off your debts; it was absolutely necessary, and that’s fine. But why do you still wish to serve a flesh-and-blood master after you have already been freed? Look around and see what you are really worth. Look and see whom you should really subject yourself to: not to a human being, but rather to the Creator of the World.

In our world today there is almost no classical slavery left, but there is definitely modern slavery. When we speak of modern slavery, the reference is usually to the U.N.’s report and to the World Labor Organization that deals mainly with workers in poor African countries, or with migrant workers in the Western world who work many hours for very little payment in order to earn their meagre portions of bread.

The Rebbe says there is another kind of modern slavery, and it is not poor workers who earn very little, but also and maybe mainly, someone who might have a good, respectable and well-paying job. Why is he called a slave, in spite of this? Because he doesn’t recognize the boundary between work and life. I started my message with the Chinese, who definitely work during workhours, and that’s wonderful – that’s the way it should be. But one mustn’t forget that beyond work there is life. Beyond work there are family and children, dreams and wishes. There is spiritual life and there is a holy soul that is suffering thirst in a dry, wasted land.

The Rebbe brings a rather simple way to gauge the situation: the holy day of Shabbat. Shabbat is the day on which we raise ourselves above our material existence, like chassidim say in Yiddish: “one tefach (handbreadth) higher. They set aside the temporal life and turn instead to eternal life. If you find yourself preoccupied with work matters on Shabbat, that means that you are a modern slave.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Zalmen Wishedski