Fall,
1942 – the Germans were at the gates of Moscow in a push east that seemed
unstoppable. Their drive across North
Africa while slowed in Egypt equally showed no signs of being foiled. The fateful battles of El Alamein and
Stalingrad were still yet to come. Jews
were being murdered all across Europe and even Mandatory Palestine was not safe
– the city of Tel Aviv had even been bombed by the Italians and some 130 people
killed.
In
Tel Aviv at that time was the young Rabbi Shalom Noah Berezovsky. A Slonimer chasid of great promise, he had been
the choizer, the one appointed to memorize the teachings given on
Shabbat by the Slonimer Rebbe, so they could be transcribed later. In the mid-1930s the Rebbe had sent his
student to the land of Israel where Rabbi Berezovsky was chosen because of his
talent to head the Chabad yeshiva in Tel Aviv – the only yeshiva in the city at
that time.
As
news of destruction and hopelessness arrived in Tel Aviv, Rabbi Berezovsky
would write (and I owe the scholar Tzipora Weinberg for her translations of these quotations), “all was bleaker than bleak, collapsing under oppressive sorrow
and anguish, overwhelmed by the feeling that you are alive in a world that is
sinking to the depths, everything falling apart. In these days I could find no
peace. Slonim is being destroyed, all those close to me, my parents and
teachers, brothers and friends led to the slaughter, day in and day out. The
entire world is enveloped in pain, and I? Where am I to go? I felt then that I
was enduring my own demise, unable to continue.”
Then, Rabbi Berezovsky made a bold decision, he
quit the prominent position he held, moved to Jerusalem and opened a new
yeshiva dedicated to the teachings of Slonim, his sect. He had five students. “If we cannot save the lives; we must save the spirit; we will
continue to do what they can do no longer, so that their teachings will not
disappear from this earth… This was an effort born of unadulterated emunah [faith], since there was no
possible chance that we could succeed under the circumstances that prevailed at
the time.”
If
Catholicism is a religion of “sacraments,” Protestantism one of “faith,” Islam
of “submission” and Buddhism “serenity,” then Judaism is one of “action.” But just acting cannot be enough. How should one act? And why should one act? The actions must be guided by a story, a cause,
and work towards a purpose, a goal.
And
that in Judaism is the cause to of holiness in world, of bringing God’s will,
our story, into the world through the sanctification of time, of space, and of
our relationships. We do all three
through our reliance on Judaism’s conviction that:
1)
All human beings require a Story, and ours is the Torah – in the
broadest sense – all of God’s Revelation, all of Jewish Wisdom, from Leviticus
to Larry David, capturing what holiness, what our cause, looks like.
2)
That a Story demands Action– for us, yes through the mitzvot specifically, whose
wonder and mystery needn’t reveal any practical benefit to us or worldly
delight other than their merely being the poetic expressions of our story come
to be. But they alone are not even the
limit of our actions. For more broadly
through a Jewish spirit motivating how and why we do in all things we must also
act.
3)
And finally that those Actions and that Story are rooted in the fundamental
necessity that human beings act from a place of gratitude, of wonder and awe,
of respect and love towards their fellow human beings and the world that we
should, at all times, be surprised and shocked to find exists and ourselves
existing in at all. That is our Cause,
our Goal – that is Holiness.
Rabbi
Berezovsky’s case adds one more piece to our lesson as well. The commitment to the Cause – to the Actions
that will invite our Story of Holiness into being – like him, we do not act
predicated on “victory” on “finishing.”
Judaism knows of none. We do a
mitzvah so we can do another mitzvah. We
celebrate Yom Kippur now; we celebrate it next year even better. We are taught that the understanding that
comes from studying a passage 100 times cannot be matched by the understanding
that comes from studying it for the 101st time. Founding
a yeshiva then, when the fate of World Jewry was itself in question, what else
should one do?
Hence
Abraham Joshua Heschel taught us “Judaism requires not a leap of faith but a
leap of action.” No wonder he marched alongside
Martin Luther King and felt his “feet were praying” as he did so. No wonder he spoke against atomic
warfare. Did he believe that his one
voice would turn the tide? Did he think
the world was bound to get better? Perhaps,
I don’t know. But I am certain in
saying he felt that ours is a history and tradition that insists you
speak, you march, you protest, for what is right regardless.
I
pause to mention that this rubric, this plan, is not limited in its application
merely to our religious lives. It
applies to how we approach family, work, politics. It applies to all these because for us as
Jews there should be no distinction between what is religious and what is secular. Could you really run your business in a way
antithetical to Jewish law and ethics?
Could you really operate in a political manner with hatred burning in
your heart for “the other” as you seek to show him how he himself is wrong for
feeling the exact same way? Our call to
bring the Story of Holiness into the world remains our call and our cause throughout
all these.
Now
it is always easy to look backwards and see when the Call of the Cause was
clear and the Need to Act immediate. But
in our own lives, it can be far from obvious.
Rabbi Berezovsky can teach us about this, too. He was known, both before the founding of the
yeshiva and after it, as a very deliberative man and rabbi. He always sought the guidance of great sages
and other rabbis when he was planning to do something, in his rabbinic career
as well as in his personal life. It was,
uniquely in his lifetime, the founding of the yeshiva when he acted boldly and
independently. In this it seems to me we
learn a lesson, but of all my remarks today, which I believe are the truest
things I can say to you at this time, this one observation I will allow may not
be. It seems to me that we should be
like Rabbi Shalom Noah, generally being thoughtful, because much of life does
allow for us to be thoughtful when it comes to acting in accordance with our
cause – but that when we come upon those handful of moments in life when it
really is time to make a bold step, like Rabbi Berezovsky, like Nachson ben
Amminadab at the Red Sea, like Heschel and King, you just do it.
And
if your life has many such moments in it?
Then I hope you know when and how to act if you are given so many
chances to do so? And if you aren’t? Then act you must still, but with calm and
consideration as you add to the beauty of holiness in the world.
About
the Holocaust, Rabbi Berezovsky would write, “this chapter is a mystery
within mysteries; utterly ineffable. Any attempt to approach it, our minds, our
hearts will fail to grasp it- in effect they fall short in want of capacity to decipher
what has befallen us.”
What then happened to Rabbi
Berezovsky? The yeshiva succeeded beyond
all expectations and is now housed in a large and imposing building, sort of
north of Zion Square at the end of Ben Yehuda where it hits Jaffa, past the ORT
College… And Rabbi Berezovsky? His father-in-law was to become the Slonimer
Rebbe and upon his death Rabbi Berezovsky became Slonimer Rebbe in his own
right. And while today, many years after
his death, the Slonimer Chasidim are split into competing B’nei Brak and
Jerusalem sects, outside of their world when one speaks of “The Slonimer Rebbe”
our Rabbi Berezovsky is meant. His
magnum opus, Netivot Shalom, is a favorite of Chassidic thought across
the Jewish world, imbued with a thoughtfulness and openness that speaks even to
the non-religious who seek spiritual enrichment.
But of course, the Slonimer
Rebbe didn’t know he’d be the Slonimer Rebbe or famous across the 21st
century Jewish world or that there would even be a 21st century
Jewish world when he Acted in accordance with our Story of Holiness during his
day. All the more reason his example is
one for us to follow as we face the universal human challenges of life. Let us end with one final passage of his, “At the apex of our deepest loss, there dawns
the moment of our rejuvenation. We are but emissaries for those who came before
us, dedicating ourselves to carry out what they began. Their light will shine
the way for us as we follow in their footsteps.”
G’mar
Chatimah Tovah
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