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Health & Fitness

Why the Jewish People Owe the Rebbe an Answer

What are you waiting for? That was the question left to us by the Rebbe, the kindly, gentle, lovely, brilliant, saintly, and fatherly Rebbe who devoted - nay, sacrificed - himself ENTIRELY to his People.

This is the third of a three-part tribute to the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of saintly memory, whose 19th Yartzeit will take place June 11.

By now, everyone knows of the farthest-flung Chabad Houses in the world: Vietnam, Nepal, Cambodia, India, China. The list goes on and on, and the joyous selflessness of those Shluchim is unmatched anywhere, in any time.

But the Rebbe’s inspiration to spread the light of Yiddishkeit, goodness and righteousness to the farthest corners of existence extended even farther than the farthest point from Lubavitch World Headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway. The Rebbe’s vision was deeper than geography. The Rebbe wanted the light to reach everywhere, not just every place. And sometimes the recesses of the heart of the man right next to you are farther away than Kathmandu.

For even a person who stands in the light itself could resist its influence by simply closing his eyes and the Rebbe wanted to reach that person too. And the focus there is not distance, for he is right here! The focus is depth, to touch deeply the mind and heart of each person, regardless of location or condition.

One spring night in 1991, I was at the Rebbe’s Maariv Minyan with my oldest brother Yossi. It was a regular weeknight, and there were maybe three hundred people there. The short service ended without incident, and no one was surprised when the Rebbe indicated that he wanted to address the assembled, as the Rebbe had begun doing almost regularly even on weeknights. But halfway through the Yiddish address everyone in the room was surprised. Instead of the regular style talk, the Rebbe was speaking on a deeply personal level about his disappointment with the fact that Moshiach had still not arrived and how no one seemed particularly distressed about it. In a voice racked with pain, the Rebbe was basically pleading with the crowd to care, and to feel a real desire for the redemption. 

But then the Rebbe said something which later faded to the background behind the emotional uproar the talk generated. The Rebbe said that after all the good that has been done, it is evident that we are still in exile, “literally but also personally.” Much of the reaction focused on the literal, and not so much on the personal. But the Rebbe wanted both to change. And in fact, they depend on each other. The greatest and deepest impact we can make on the world is the impact we make on our own selves. Those who seek to change the world (and Moshiach is the greatest game-changer of all) but neglect to change themselves are wasting valuable time. The only way for us to finally depart this long, miserable exile is to break out of our own self-imposed imprisonments behind the bars of bad habits, vices, addictions and comfort zones to which we accord sacred, immutable status.

On that night in 1991, the Rebbe was saying to anyone who listen: this is about you. Not about the guy to your right, or to your left, or behind you. Stop looking around trying to see who the world is waiting for; the world is waiting for YOU! DO something about it!

Will you allow the light to influence your behavior? Will you allow the light to illuminate your steps, so that you might go where you are needed? Will you think, speak and act like G-d’s one and only cherished child?

G-d, the whole world, all the generations of our ancestors, all the celestial Angels, and all creatures in existence - await your next move with bated breath.

What are you waiting for? 

That was the question left to us by the Rebbe, the kindly, gentle, lovely, brilliant, saintly, and fatherly Rebbe who devoted - nay, sacrificed - himself ENTIRELY to his People. 

Especially as his 19th Yartzeit approaches, His People owe him an answer.

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