When the Rebbe repeated this episode during the Simchas Torah farbrengen of 5723 (1962), he concluded, “Still, a pogrom is a pogrom!”

This story lends perspective to what we’re experiencing right now: An intense vacillation between the knowledge that everything is from Hashem, and yet, “A pogrom is a pogrom!”

On Simchas Torah, we conclude reading the Torah and immediately start again from the beginning. The last letter of the Torah is a lamed and the first letter is a beis. The Kli Yakar explains: Hashem’s name has three distinct letters, yud, hei and vov. Add a lamed or beis to any of these three letters and you’ll get a complete word:

No other letters in the Aleph Beis will yield a word when combined with every one of the three letters of Hashem’s name.

Hashem says, בי, everything is dependent on Me, and we recognize this and respond, בו, בה, everything is dependent on Him. (Kabbalah explains that Hashem is referred to both as a masculine and a feminine entity.) Then Hashem says, לי, everything belongs to Me, and we recognize this and respond, לו, לה; it’s all His.

Is it by chance that the recent horrific attacks happened as Yidden worldwide read the ending and the beginning of the Torah?

In no way can we explain why things are happening the way they are, but knowing that it’s all from Hashem should be a comfort.

When the Rebbe started a campaign that every Yid—man, woman and child— should purchase a letter in a sefer Torah, the Rebbe said that when Yidden unite through Torah we become like one person with one heart.

If we feel heartache about what’s going on in Eretz Yisroel, this is because part of our heart is in Eretz Yisroel, in the hearts of our brothers and sisters who are suffering there.

During the same talk when the Rebbe shared the episode about the pogroms, the Rebbe also explained some of the pesukim we read during hakafos. One of them is, “There is none like You among the godly, O Lord, neither is there any like Your works.” אין כמוך באלוקים ה’ ואין כמעשיך.

Yidden.

A pogrom is a pogrom! We are Hashem’s children and we should not have to know our uniqueness only from what is written in our holy seforim, we should experience our greatness in a very real and tangible way!