Chaim Miller’s Turning Judaism Outward, a
comprehensive biography of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, has recently appeared. The
Seforim Blog is happy to present this excerpt from pages 98-103
Some truly fascinating insights
into Menachem Mendel’s inner life have surfaced recently in his correspondence
with Rayatz, first published in 2010.73 The Sixth and future Seventh
Rebbes were in very close contact during this period; between 1929 until 1932
alone, Rayatz penned some seventy-two letters to his son-in-law and daughter.
In contrast to Reb Levik’s letters, which were almost exclusively devoted to
Torah thoughts, Rayatz’s communications were extremely personal. We get a
strong sense of what a thoughtful and caring man he was, and how much his relationship
with his new son-in-law meant to him. The few letters of reply from Menachem
Mendel that have been published are also extremely revelatory—a glimpse of the
future Rebbe’s self-perception, his concerns, and his spiritual leanings.
Material like this is extremely rare. In his fifty years of public work the
Seventh Rebbe seldom spoke or wrote about himself.
From the correspondence, we see how
important it was for Rayatz to be intimately connected with the personal lives
of his family. The Sixth Rebbe chronicles his travels and experiences in
detail, along with their emotional ups and downs. He expects Menachem Mendel to
reciprocate and is disappointed when requests to his son-in-law to share his
life experiences are not forthcoming. Menachem Mendel, by his own confession,
lived in the world of thought, and the little details of everyday life were not
important to him. “The reason I have not written,” he writes in the winter of
1930, “which I am sure without my letter you could fathom for yourself, is that
it is difficult for me to find interesting events in my life to tell you. Just
to fill a piece of paper with incidental details, to write a letter for the
sake of writing a letter—why should I steal your time for that?”74
Rayatz is persistent. “I want to
clarify,” he writes back, “that when you will contemplate the truth as it is,
what a deeply personal relationship ought to exist between us, you will always
find something interesting that will extend beyond one page.”75
But Menachem Mendel’s world is the
world of ideas, not of events and feelings. In his next letter, which
represents a fascinating insight into the Seventh Rebbe’s self-image, he
attempts to clarify the matter.
The reason why I have not written
is due to the lack of interesting events to report. There are people for whom
the central, overwhelming focus of their lives is in the world of thought, the
world of ideas, and their main activities—activity being the sign of life—are
focused inwards, to the “world set in their hearts” (Ecc. 3:11),
and not to the outside world surrounding them.
After this introduction, I must say
that, while I do not consider it to be a particular virtue, it seems
that—whether as a result of my natural disposition or outside influences—I am
such a person. For as long as I can remember, there has been a paucity of
interesting events in my life, things that I found personally engaging.76
This, however, does not stop Rayatz
from showering forth his emotions on paper: love and affection, repeated
blessings for children and happy marriage, as well as his frustrations. In a
letter penned after the festival of Shavuot, 1930, Rayatz wishes his
son-in-law that “you and your wife, my precious daughter, should have a
pleasurable life, with love and affection.”77 In a letter to Moussia
on her twenty-ninth birthday, Rayatz writes, “My precious daughter! For
everything in this world there is a limit and end, but the deep love of parents
has no limit,” and he blesses her to have “fine, healthy, bright children.”78
In a letter to Menachem Mendel the following year, Rayatz’s affections continue
to gush forth, “If my thoughts about you went straight onto paper, I mean if
thoughts themselves could write, without the need of an actual hand, I would
already have heaps of letters.”79 In another letter Rayatz signs
off, “I am your father-in-law... who loves you at every moment.”80
Sometimes we find Rayatz expressing
his distress. In the spring of 1930, Rayatz writes of his “deep, great pain...
that you did not merit to see the face of the ‘Holy of Holies’ [Rashab], his
face literally shining with G-dly light, the Divine presence resting on him...
nor to see the Chasidim in Lubavitch, their prayer and worship.... What an
awful shame (chaval chaval) that you did not see all this.”81
To Moussia he shares mixed emotions of visiting the Western Wall in Jerusalem,
“I cried earnestly over the fall of our Lubavitch. I kissed the stones of the
Western Wall with a bittersweet pleasure.”82 More than once, Rayatz
expresses his concerns at the thought of his religious son-in-law walking the
streets in what was becoming an increasingly dangerous city for Jews, “I am
always thinking about how you walk in the city, whether you are taking the
necessary precautions.”83
Rayatz also showed, on one
occasion, a fondness for allegory and riddle which did not seem to engage
Menachem Mendel. In a letter from the summer of 1929, Rayatz concludes, in a
postscript, “Contemplate well the fine pearl which G-d has given you for many
long, good years, physically and spiritually.”84 Receiving no
response, he repeats the following winter, “Regarding the fine gift, the
precious pearl, do you still not understand what I mean? Or did you already
fathom my riddle?”85
Menachem Mendel’s reply is brief:
“Regarding the ‘fine pearl,’ I still do not understand to what this refers.”86
Rayatz has no choice other than to
decipher his own riddle: “The fine pearl which G-d has given you, is my
daughter, your honorable wife. (That was what I implied in my letter, but
you did not discern what I intimated).”87
Rayatz also takes much interest in
his new son-in-law’s daily routine. “Write to me in detail your daily
schedule,” he requests.88 On another occasion, “I would like to know
what you are learning, which tractate? What are you learning in Chasidut? How
much time per day, i.e., in each twenty-four hours? Do you have any fixed study
times? What are they?”89 In a 1932 letter Menachem Mendel reports
that he is currently learning tractate Bava Batra, but that “regarding a
fixed daily schedule, since coming from Russia, I still have not managed this.”
He also confesses to having challenges in his learning, “because of mental
exhaustion, or from feeling distracted.”90
Of particular interest are the
future Rebbe’s spiritual leanings. In a typically unassuming fashion, Menachem
Mendel expresses his yearnings for an arousal to teshuvah (return to
G-d).
The month of Elul is coming
imminently, which is the month of preparation [for the High Holidays] and teshuvah.
What, then, is the way, and what is the advisable method, that will affect me,
so that I can ultimately have a heartfelt sense of yirat Shamayim [fear
of Heaven]—tangibly in the here and now, so that I actually feel the change?91
In response to a request from
Menachem Mendel for a blessing to understand Chasidut, Rayatz conveys his
wishes, “You should be blessed with a genuine grasp of Chasidut, to become one
with it, to study it, to understand it, and to observe it.”92
Menachem Mendel is extremely
grateful, and explains how much Rayatz’s blessing means to him.
The reason why I asked you for a
blessing to understand Chasidut... is simply because I pine for it. I wrote a
request to Your Holiness for this blessing because I believe that if you desire
something from the depths of your heart and being, then, whether it be through
a blessing or through prayer, you will influence on High that all these things
should take effect down here in this world, in me.93
At the end of 1931, Menachem Mendel
posed a question to his father-in-law about the very essence of Chabad
identity. In Berlin, Menachem Mendel had been exposed to the courts of
non-Chabad Rebbes.94 These strands of Chasidut, stemming mainly from
Poland and Galicia, seemed to Menachem Mendel to better capture the spirit of
the movement’s founder Rabbi Israel Ba’al Shem Tov. They did not focus to such
a great extent on the in-depth study of Chasidic wisdom; and just as the Ba’al
Shem Tov had been known as a miracle worker, the Chasidim of these movements
made much emphasis on their own Rebbes’ miraculous powers—something which was
more muted in Chabad.
Menachem Mendel’s penchant for
intellectual honesty could not help him wonder and inquire of his
father-in-law, “At first glance, the path and teachings of Chasidut taught by
the Rebbes of Vohlynia-Poland-Galicia seem closer to the path and teachings of
the Baal Shem Tov’s Chasidut than the teachings of Chabad, especially in the
emphasis on miracle-working.”95
The question prompted a fifteen-page
reply from Rayatz, rich in anecdotal history of the movement, with many
accounts of why miracle-working became unimportant in the Chabad system.96
Menachem Mendel was ecstatic. His preference for a dialogue of ideas rather
than feelings had finally been met, and he found the material gripping.
From the depths of the heart I
thank you for this precious gift. May I be so bold as to make an earnest
suggestion from Your Holiness—if a request is necessary and if it will help. I
am strengthened by the hope that from time to time you will honor and delight
me with letters like this.
I lack a lot of knowledge about the
background of Chasidut and its history.... and so with every fact that I gain
in this area, I rejoice “as if finding a great prize” (Ps.
119:162).97
Still, the issue of miracles
bothered him. In the current day and age, wouldn’t stories that conveyed a
sense of the supernatural be helpful to bring Jews closer to Judaism?
Intellectual arguments alone did not seem to be sufficient—especially in
Germany.
I cannot restrain myself from
requesting additional explanation about a subject that has puzzled me for a
long time. Again and again, I hear people say that “In Chabad, we have no
interest in miracles,” etc. I found a similar sentiment expressed in
your letter....
This might have been appropriate
for the early Chasidim; they certainly had no need of such stories, for their
hearts and minds were pure. But nowadays, the pressures of the times etc.,
have diminished people’s spiritual sensitivities, and they are engulfed by
material concerns. They perceive everything in a very materialistic way, and
their souls are desensitized to the sublime and the lofty.
It seems difficult to fix this
through ideas alone... On the other hand, miracles, and stories of the wonders
performed by tzadikim inspire people to rid themselves from the focus on
material matters. They will jar even a lowly soul, or someone who has
spiritually fallen.98
No response from Rayatz to this
request is printed, but in these lines we can already discern the Seventh
Rebbe’s creativity and sensitivity to the needs of a spiritually numbed
generation. If the old approach no longer works, Menachem Mendel argued, then
we need to re-examine it. It was this bold willingness to introduce new pedagogic
methods suitable for the contemporary
milieu that would make the Seventh generation of Chabad under his leadership so
hugely influential.
73 Igrot Rayatz vol. 15 (New
York: Kehot, 2010).
74 Letter of 18th Shevat 5690, ibid. p. 74.
75 Letter of 6th Adar 5690, ibid. p. 77.
76 Letter of 2nd Nisan 5690, ibid. p. 78.
77 Ibid. p. 88.
78 Letter of 25th Adar 5690, ibid. p. 83.
79 Letter of 23rd Adar 5961, ibid. p. 103.
80 Letter of Erev Chag
Ha-Sukkot 5690, ibid. p. 66.
81 Ibid. p. 81. See also p. 105,
82 Letter to Moussia, 5th Elul 5689, ibid. p.
60.
83 Letter of Erev Chanukah 5690, ibid. p. 71.
84 Letter to Menachem Mendel, 5th Elul 5689, ibid. p.
59.
85 Letter of 26th Tevet 5690, ibid. p. 74.
86 Letter of 18th Shevat 5690, ibid.
87 Letter of 25th Adar 5690, ibid. p. 82. Emphasis added.
88 Letter of Erev Chanukah 5690, ibid. p. 70.
89 Letter of 9th Tevet 5691, ibid. p. 101.
90 Letter of 11th Shevat 5692, ibid. pp. 114-5
91 Letter of 26th Menachem Av, 5689, ibid. pp.
63-4. Rayatz’s reply is ibid. pp. 62-3.
92 Letter of 24th Kislev 5691, ibid p. 101.
93 Letter of 4th Shevat 5691, ibid.
94 We have seen, at the very least, he had visited the
Chortkov Rebbe, the Belzer Rebbe and prayed in the synagogue of the Dombrova
Rebbe.
95 Menachem Mendel’s letter of request is not printed,
but the question is repeated by Rayatz at the introduction to his response (see
following note).
96 The full response is printed in Igrot Rayatz vol. 2, pp.
361-377, and was initially publicized just a few years after Menachem Mendel
received it, in the Chabad journal Hatamim (vol. 2, pp. 150-159). It appears in English
translation in Shimon Neubort (trans.), Branches of the Chassidic Menorah vol. 1 (New York: Sichot in English, 1998), pp. 137-162.
97 Letter of 2nd Shevat 5692, Igrot Rayatz vol. 15, p.
112. In English, Neubort p. 163. See also Reshimot installment
138.
98 Igrot Rayatz, ibid.
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