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