When I studied at Oholei Torah Yeshiva in New York in 1996–97, there was a student who made sure to show us, every evening or at least every few days, a short video clip of the Rebbe speaking with extraordinary pathos, pain, intensity, emotion, and seriousness about how every Jew should relate to the fact that the Redemption has still not come and that the Holy Temple has not yet been rebuilt.
The clip was from the farbrengen of Yud-Beis Tammuz 5744 (1984). I only wish I could convey in writing what one experiences when hearing and seeing the Rebbe cry out:
“The request we make every day, ‘May our eyes behold Your return to Zion,’ is not a matter of mourning over an ancient tragedy. Rather, the destruction is something that continues every single day.
As it is explicitly stated in the Jerusalem Talmud: ‘Every generation in whose days the Temple is not rebuilt is considered as though it had destroyed it.’ In other words, although nearly 1,900 years have passed since the destruction of the Temple, nevertheless, since on this very day—Thursday of Parshas Pinchas (the day on which the Rebbe spoke these words in 1984)—the Temple has not been rebuilt, it is as though the Temple was destroyed on this very Thursday of Parshas Pinchas!
Accordingly, after the Jewish people cried out ‘Until when?!’ yesterday, the day before, and on all the days before that, and nevertheless on this day the Temple remains destroyed—it is understood how much greater the cry of ‘Until when?!’ must be today!
And, as mentioned, this is not merely a clever homiletic interpretation. It is a clear ruling in Torah law: every generation in whose days the Temple is not rebuilt is considered as though it destroyed it.
Imagine: if a Jew were standing and watching the Temple being destroyed and burned right now—even if he were a hard person, with a heart of stone—he would turn the world upside down. And regarding this, the Torah—the Torah of Truth and the Torah of Life—tells him: Turn the world upside down today!”
I imagine that every Chabad chassid reading these words can see before his mind’s eye and hear the Rebbe’s cry in Yiddish: “Ker a velt haynt!” — “Turn the world upside down today!”
We stand now on the eve of the Shabbat before the Rebbe’s yahrzeit, the 3rd of Tammuz. I want to learn from the Rebbe, to understand his way of thinking, to see the world through his lenses. In these words of the Rebbe there are two foundational principles that have the power to change a person’s life.
The first is that, in the most profound way, the Rebbe took Torah with absolute seriousness. On the most straightforward level, Torah is *Torat Emet*—the Torah of Truth—and *Torat Chayim*—the Torah of Life. If it is truth, then there are no winks, no exaggerations, no statements made by mistake, and nothing that has become irrelevant. And if it is truly alive, then it is relevant at all times, because something that is alive only occasionally is not truly alive. Truth lives constantly.
Therefore, Torah is both the Torah of Truth and the Torah of Life. If the Jerusalem Talmud teaches that every generation in whose days the Temple is not rebuilt is considered as though it destroyed it, then that is the simple truth. And if so, how can a person remain at ease when the Temple is being destroyed in his own days?
The second point, and to me an extraordinarily essential one, is what might be called a quintessentially Lubavitcher Rebbe approach.
I would have thought that a person who witnesses destruction before his eyes, who experiences devastation—especially when faced with overwhelming forces that have destroyed the Holy Temple—would naturally react with discouragement, despair, a lack of motivation to get out of bed in the morning, perhaps even with a sense of victimhood and resignation. And no one would judge him. After all, we are only human.
But not the Lubavitcher Rebbe.
In the very midst of that cry—and anyone who has seen the video knows how alive and intense his pain was—the Rebbe describes a Jew watching the Temple burn. Yet at that very moment, in the most seemingly natural way, the Jew does not despair and does not collapse. He immediately begins to “turn the world upside down” in order to change the situation.
Whether he has great abilities or small ones, whether he is important in his own eyes or not, whether his actions are large or small—all of that is irrelevant. What matters is that at that moment he understands that there is only one thing to do: use whatever tools he has been given and act immediately to change the situation, to transform the world.
And as the Rebbe cries out from the depths of his heart:
“Ker a velt haynt!” — “Turn the world upside down today!”
The message is clear.
All of us face struggles and challenges, accompanied by various forms of pain. A person who puts on the Rebbe’s glasses will be occupied not with surrendering to the situation, but with asking: How do I continue building? How do I move forward? How do I work to change this reality for the better?
Ker a velt haynt.
And speaking of turning the world upside down with the tools available to us: a Shlucha, Devorah Leah bas Yehudis, the wife of a dear friend of mine, is in need of a complete recovery. We know and have always known that teshuvah, tefillah, and tzedakah have the power to annul a harsh decree.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Zalman Wishedski
