In my younger years, perhaps one should say in my youth, before I myself became one of the Rebbe’s shluchim, I was nourished by glowing articles in the movement’s magazine or by stories told by people whose eyes sparkled as they spoke. Even once I had already become a shliach and participated myself in the Kinus Hashluchim, it seemed that the most successful among us were those who had built buildings, raised large sums of money, and had stories written about them.
Later on it seemed that the successful shluchim were those with extensive activities, whose events were beautiful and impressive, above all filled with many participants.
A few more years passed and today I know one thing with absolute clarity: when I speak with a shliach, no matter where he lives, how much he has achieved materially or spiritually, how talented he is in writing or speaking, and it does not matter much how old he is or how many shluchim work with him in the large institution he has built with Hashem’s help, when I speak with shluchim, and I speak personally with a very great many of them, and I ask: “Give me a great moment from your life as a shliach, some defining event or a deeply moving point, something for which you say the entire investment and sacrifice of your life is worthwhile,” it is never a building or an institution, nor is it an activity, and usually not even a successful class. Almost always it is a single personal encounter with one soul, or two, or more, an encounter that made a deep impact and brought about real change.
To me, this is both amazing and moving, and no less importantly, it pretty much defines who we are, the Rebbe’s shluchim, the emissaries of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. We truly transform worlds, and we have photos that garner plenty of likes because we have become quite good at using media for the sake of goodness and kindness. But in the end, deep within us, at the core of our consciousness, at the point of truth, the entire story is the encounter of souls. One after another after another, soul after soul, another man and another woman, another boy and another girl. The aspiration is to be there for each and every one, even though it is neither logical nor realistic. But that too is something the Rebbe embedded within all of us: we are not realistic, not logical, we never claimed to be normal, and when we tried, we did not do it very well. We simply do not have that feature in our system.
And take note of something amazing: the Torah portions we are reading in these weeks all speak about a long and all-encompassing relationship between the Creator of the world and a single human being, one person only. Not yet a nation, not even a tribe, not a family or a team. It is an individual named Avram, into whom the Creator invests infinite energy. And Avram, who becomes Avraham, continues doing the same. He goes one by one and one by one. Apparently that is the secret and the simple truth: an encounter of souls, wherever they may be.
On a personal note, this is my twenty third time attending the Kinus Hashluchim as a shliach. I thought it would no longer be emotional, that it had become routine, and again I was mistaken. Because while the large events may be familiar and predictable, the real story is the one on one encounter of souls. That never repeats itself and is never routine. Every meeting, if one only pauses for a moment and looks directly into the soul, is moving, touching, and impactful.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Zalman Wishedski