2 weeks ago

Rabbi Tuvia Bolton: Moshiach & Torah Unite Jews

In this week’s Torah reading we find 51 commandments and one of them is: Love your neighbor as yourself (19:18).
Perhaps the holiest and wisest scholar of all time, Rabbi Akiva, said that this is the main principle of the Torah. And the holy book ‘Tanya’ written by Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi explains (chapter 32) what Torah has to do with Love.
The purpose of learning Torah is to ‘raise’ the soul to its source where we are ‘Sons’ of G-d; one person with one soul. Hence the Torah bring us to Love the other as OURSELVES, because we really ARE one person.
But this seemingly is not true. Simple observation shows that The Torah itself divides the Jews into many types and levels of observance and appreciation of G-d: Some are more intellectual, others emotional, yet others more practical and each is subdivided to accommodate to each type of Jew.

So how can the Torah bring unity and brotherly love?

The answer to this question can be found one of the great followers of the Baal Shem Tov, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Braditchev who was renowned for his unbounded love and affection for even the most sinful and repulsive of Jews.
He explained that this attitude came from a short explanation he heard from the Besh’t on a saying in Pirkei Avot (Chapters of the Founders 2:2)
‘All Torah that isn’t accompanied by work won’t last.’
The Besh’t explained; ‘work’ here means the difficult task of loving every Jew. And Torah scholarship without brotherly Love, won’t last.”
Rabbi Levi Yitzchak understood that just as when one opens a business (work) he advertises to awaken buyers. So too with the ‘work’ of brotherly love; one must advertise love to encourage others to respond with love of their own i.e. ‘buy’.

To understand this, here is a story that I heard in the name of Rabbi Elimelch Hertzel years ago

Rabbi Hertzel spent one Passover in the Israeli city of Meron. He was sitting in the synagogue there (built around the grave of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai) when a respectable looking, bearded, orthodox Jew approached him, shook his hand and asked, “You’re a Lubavitcher, right? Do you have any connection to the people who advertise miracle stories of the Rebbe in the Chabad papers?” (There are several weekly publications by various Chabad organizations in Israel). I have a story I want to advertise.”
When he answered that he didn’t have any connections with Chabad publications, but would be happy to hear a good story, the man sat next to him and continued.
“It’s a fresh story about my sister of blessed memory that began years ago but ended just last week. Maybe you can find someone to publish it. It’s like this:
“My sister’s name was Ariela Ditza Daniel, her family name was Daniel. She was married with several children. Years ago she began to feel ill. Headaches, and weak. She didn’t think it was serious but just to make sure she went to doctors.
They all gave her different pills and advice, but it just kept getting worse. So she went to the hospital to make serious tests and there they discovered that she had such a terrible disease and at best she had a few months to live.
“Needless to say, we were all broken and being she had a large family it was a double, triple tragedy!
“What could we do? We prayed, gave charity, asked everyone we knew to say Psalms and hoped for the best … but every day she got worse and worse until she was bedridden.
“One of her good friends decided to take things into her own hands and, without telling anyone, flew to New York to get a blessing from the Lubavitcher Rebbe. I don’t know where she got the idea… we aren’t Chassidim of the Rebbe and neither was she, but she did it.
“She arrived in Brooklyn, went to 770 Eastern Parkway where the Rebbe is and started asking Chassidim how she could see him. Someone told her that soon the Rebbe would come out of his office to pray the afternoon prayer in the synagogue and if she stood near his door she could ask him for a blessing when he came out.
“So she stood there by the door getting more and more nervous and sure enough after about a half-hour it opened and the Rebbe came out. But, as much as she wanted to say something, she got so stunned or amazed that she couldn’t talk. She was speechless. But the Rebbe stopped, turned to her and said,
“‘I know you are here for Ariela Ditza bat (the daughter of) Sarah (or whatever her mother’s name was). You can tell her that she will have a partial recovery and a relatively long life.’ The Rebbe actually said my sister’s name!!
“In any case he gave her a blessing for a safe journey back to Israel and continued to the afternoon prayers.
“Well, I guess she didn’t want to tell my sister over the phone so she took the next return flight and came straight to my sister lying on her sickbed in my house, to tell her what she had done and to give her the good news.
“I was there and saw the whole thing. She told my sister the entire story; how she flew to the Rebbe in Brooklyn, got tongue-tied and how the Rebbe said Ariela Ditza and blessed her before she could say a word.
Then, when she finished giving over her message to my sister, she fainted! After a few minutes she came to and was okay.
“And my sister? Well, it was just like the Rebbe said! She got better and lived for, not just a few more months like the doctors said, but for twenty-three more happy years. And just last week she passed away at the age of fifty-four! I guess that’s ‘relatively’ old compared to what the doctors said.
“And, maybe it’s not important, but the date she passed away was last week on the eleventh day of Nisan… the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s birthday!”

Perhaps this answers our question about the Torah bringing unity and division.

We see in our story that there are many types of Jews each with different names, challenges and courses in life. But the Rebbe unites them all.
So too, the Torah. It causes division and arguments but it also is the source of unity, just as every cell of the human body is different but all are unified into a single body.
So too when Moses brought the Jews to Sinai to receive the Torah they became like ONE person (Rashi on Ex.18:2)
This will be finally accomplished by Moshiach. He will unite all the Jews by bringing each Jew to feel that every other Jew is unique and indispensable for the unity of all Jews: like ONE person.

And it is in our ability to bring Moshiach even one moment sooner, and not much is lacking.
We are standing on the merits of thousands of years of Jewish prayers, self-sacrifice, faith and suffering.
Now it could be that just one more good deed, word or even thought can bring …. Moshiach NOW!!

Rabbi Tuvia Bolton
Yeshiva Ohr Tmimim
Kfar Chabad, Israel

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