The Vacuum of Survival

A TELLING STORY:
Prayer
A child’s discovery of his father
Three Days, Three Words
The telegram that saved a village

And they said one to another: “...Let us build for ourselves a city and a tower whose top shall reach the skies, and we shall make for ourselves a name, lest we be scattered over the face of the entire earth.”

...And G-d descended... and scattered them from there across the face of the earth, and they stopped building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel (confusion), for there G-d confused the language of the world. It was from there that G-d dispersed them over the face of the entire earth.

What was their sin? Their motives for building a city with a tower “whose top shall reach the skies” are quite understandable. Mankind was only just reconstructing itself after the Flood which had wiped out the entire human race save for Noah and his family. If fledgling humanity was to survive, unity and cooperation were of critical importance. So they set out to build a common city to knit them into a single community. At its heart they planned a tower which would be visible for miles, a landmark to beckon to those who had strayed from the city and a monument to inspire commitment to their common goal - survival. All they wanted was to “make for ourselves a name” - to ensure the continuity of the human race. And yet, their project deteriorated into a rejection of all that humanity stands for, into an open rebellion against their Creator and purpose. The result: the breakup of man-kind into clans and factions, and the onset of close to four thousand years of misunderstanding, xenophobia and bloodletting across the divisions of language and culture. Where did they go wrong?

But precisely that was their error: they saw survival as an end in its own right. “Let us make a name for ourselves,” they said, let us ensure that human life take root once again on this planet so that there will be future generations who will read of us in their history books. But why survive? For what purpose should humanity continue to inhabit the earth? What is the content of the name and legacy they are laboring to preserve? Of this they said, thought, and did nothing. To them, life itself was an ideal, survival itself a virtue.

This was the beginning of the end. For nature, whether physical or human, makes it extremely difficult to maintain a vacuum; unless a soul or cause is filled with positive content, corruption will ultimately begin to seep in. A hollow name and shrine soon becomes a tower of Babel.

Never has the lesson of the Tower of Babel been more pertinent to our people than it is today. We, too, are a generation struggling to recoup after a Holocaust of destruction which threatened to erase us from the face of the earth. Reconstruction and survival are uppermost in our minds, and together, with the Almighty's help, we are succeeding. At a time like this, it is extremely important not to repeat the error of the builders of Babel. Rebuild we must, but the objective must be more than a more enduring name, a greater city, a taller tower. If we are to survive, we must give import to our survival. We must fill our name with value, our city with significance, and crown the tower of our resurgence with the higher purpose to which we were created.

To a child, this is obvious fact. He or she is the center and focus of all. Father and mother and the rest of the universe exist merely to cater to his needs.

The adverse results of such an attitude are self-evident; indeed, weeding out the negative in man's base instincts is what education is all about. But the egocentric instinct that the child exemplifies has a positive side as well. A child has no problem dealing with an insignificance of self in face of humanity's billions and the vastness of the universe. He is utterly convinced that his existence has meaning and his deeds have consequence.

This is the child in ourselves that we must learn to cultivate and exploit: the conviction that our every thought and deed is of real, even global, significance.

Maimonides suggests that we view the world as a giant balance-scale. “A person should always see himself as equally balanced,” he writes, “half good and half evil. Likewise, he should see the entire world as half good and half evil... So that with a single good deed he will tip the scales for himself, and for the entire world, to the side of merit.”[1]

We know that a sneeze in New Jersey can cause a thunderstorm in China. Can we say the same of the social universe? Can a single act, word or thought on your part resound in billions of lives?

Prayer

The following is an excerpt from the diary of the previous Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn (1880-1950), in which he recounts an incident from his early childhood.

...I then remembered how as a small child, still studying with the late Reb Yekutiel the melamed, I would run to the synagogue to listen to father[2] pray, and how heavy my heart was: why doesn't father pray briskly, as the entire congregation does, as my uncles do? I once asked why this is so and my uncle Raza[3] told me that father cannot pronounce the Hebrew words easily, and I agonized greatly over this.

I enter the synagogue. Not a soul is to be found, only father is standing, his face to the wall, praying. He is beseeching G-d, he is appealing for mercy. But I do not understand: why is he supplicating more than all other worshippers? Why does he need G-d’s mercy more than other people?

Suddenly, father begins to sob. My heart sinks within me: father is crying! Not a soul in the house of G-d, and father is crying. I bend an ear and I hear him say, “Shema Yisroel...,” and sob, “Hashem Elokeinu...,” and sob. He then falls silent. And then again, in a mighty voice emerging from the depths of his heart, “Hashem echad!” in a flood of tears and a terrifying voice.

This time I could no longer contain myself. I went to my mother (may she live long) and wept: Why does father pray longer than all the other worshipers? My uncle Raza says that father has difficulty pronouncing the words. Why cannot father recite Hebrew at a proper speed? And today I saw that father is crying, come with me, my mother, I will show you that father is crying...!

“What can I do?” responded my mother. “Can I have him sent to cheder? Go to your grandmother and ask her, perhaps she can do something about this.”

I rushed to take the advice of my mother and went to my grandmother (of blessed memory), the saintly Rebbetzin, and posed to her my innocent question. My grandmother said to me: “Your father is a great chassid and tzaddik.[4] With each and every word he utters, he first thinks of the meaning of the word that he is saying.”

I remember how at that moment she calmed me, and how from then on my attitude toward my father changed; for I knew that father is apart from and above other men. With his every move I saw that father is father. Father awakes in the morning and dons the tefillin and reads the Shema. Then, he goes to serve his mother tea (I also wish to do so but they prevent me by saying that I will be hurt by the boiling water).

Father washes his hands before meals not like other people. Other people pour water over their hands only twice, but father takes the pitcher with his right hand, then hands it over to his left hand, and pours three times in succession over his right hand; then he takes another pitcher of water and, using the towel to hold it in his right hand, pours three times over his left.

Every day, before the afternoon minchah prayers, father again goes to serve a cup of tea to his mother and sits there for about an hour. Everyone speaks, speaks with gusto, but father is mostly silent. Sometimes he speaks, speaking softly.

Three Days, Three Words

Editor’s note: The following is a free translation of a story that appeared in the Israeli newspaper Yediot Achronot on Iyar 4, 5717 (May 5, 1957). We have left the article basically as it was written, wishing to convey the “outsider’s” perspective of the Israeli reporter and his impression of the people and the events he describes.

On the eve of Independence Day last year, as the bonfires were being raised on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, the lights were burning also in Tzafrir (Kfar Chabad),[5] the Chabad-Lubavitcher village in the Lod Valley.

For four days, since the evening of Rosh Chodesh Iyar, the village had been in deep mourning and grievous anguish, the likes of which the Lubavitcher chassidim had not known in many years. On that black and bitter night, a band of fedayeen[6] entered the village. They made their way to the synagogue of the local agricultural school, where the school’s young students were in the midst of the evening maariv prayers, and raked the room with fire from their Karl-Gustav rifles. They reaped a cruel blood-harvest: five children and one teacher were killed and another ten children wounded; their pure, holy blood soaking the siddurim that fell from their hands and splattering the synagogue’s white-washed walls.

The village chassidim, brawny, broad-shouldered Russian Jews with thick black beards and bushy brows, stood dumbfounded before the terrible scene that met their eyes. A pogrom in Israel! A pogrom in Chabad! they whispered, and bit their lips in rage. The women stood there too, hefty, handsome Russian matrons, wringing their hands and murmuring to themselves in Russian and Hebrew, their eyes emitting an endless stream of tears.

This was not a common scene for the Lubavitchers. These chassidim, who had survived the pogroms in Czar Nikolai’s Russia and whom the Red Army could not intimidate, who had been banished to the frozen plains of Siberia, whose backs decades in Stalin’s prisons and camps could not bow, now stood stooped and despairing. Now, that the blow had hit home in the heart of the Jewish state.

In the center of the village stood Rabbi Avraham Maayor who had been a high-ranking officer in the Russian Army. Avraham Maayar, of whom legend told that he calmly stood and sang chassidic melodies as a band of soldiers beat him with the butts of their rifles, now stood crying out at the heavens: “Master of the Universe, Why?! How have the children sinned?!”

Despair and dejection pervaded the village, and began to eat away at its foundations. There were some who saw what happened as a sign that their dream of a peaceful life in the Holy Land was premature. Perhaps we should disband, seek refuge in safer havens? The village was slowly dying.

But it was clear to all that before any decisive move would be made, the Rebbe had to be consulted. Nothing would be done without his knowledge and consent. All awaited the telegram from “there,” from New York, but the telegram was inexplicably not forthcoming. Four days had passed since the terror had struck. A lengthy telegram had immediately been dispatched informing the Rebbe of all the details of the tragedy, and an answer was expected that very night. But the Rebbe was silent. What happened, many wondered, why doesn’t he respond? Has he not a word of comfort for his stricken followers?

A telegram from the Rebbe, it should be clarified, is an integral part of Chabad-Chassidic life across the globe. Every problem, every decision pertaining to the communal or private life of the Lubavitcher chassid is referred to the Rebbe’s headquarters in Brooklyn, and whatever the reply, that is what is done. And the answer is always forthcoming, whether by regular post, express mail, or emergency telegram—depending upon the urgency of the matter—and always short, succinct, and to the point.

Why, then, is the Rebbe’s answer on such a fateful matter tarrying? The village elders had no explanation, and, as the hours and days went by, the question continued to plague their tormented souls, and their anguish and despair weighed increasingly heavier on their hearts.

And then, four days after the tragedy, the telegram arrived. The news spread throughout the village: A telegram from the Rebbe! The telegram has arrived! The entire village, men, women and children, assembled in the village square to hear the Rebbe’s reply.

And the Rebbe was characteristically succinct. The telegram contained a single sentence—three Hebrew words—but these three words sufficed to save the village from disintegration and its inhabitants from despair. Behemshech habinyan tinacheimu, wrote the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. “By your continued building will you be comforted.”

The chassidim of Kfar Chabad now had a firm grasp on their future: they knew what they had to do. They must build! The Rebbe said to build! And that by their continued building they will be comforted! That very night the village elders held a meeting to discuss how the Rebbe’s directive might be implemented. After a short discussion, a decision was reached: a vocational school will be built where children from disadvantaged backgrounds will be taught the printing trade. On the very spot where the blood was spilled, the building will be raised.

The next morning, all residents of the village gathered at the empty lot adjoining the agricultural school and began clearing and leveling the land in preparation for the building. The joy was back in their eyes.

In the weeks that followed, letters arriving from relatives and friends in New York described what had transpired there in those four endless days in which the village had awaited the Rebbe’s reply.

For the entire month of Nissan, the month of the redemption, it is the Rebbe’s custom to devote himself entirely to the service of the Creator, reducing his contact with his chassidim to a minimum. Rare is the individual who is granted an audience with the Rebbe in this period, and all but the most urgent correspondence is postponed until the close of the auspicious month.

When the month of Nissan ends, a festive farbrengen (chassidic gathering) is held at the Rebbe’s headquarters on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, marking the Rebbe’s resumption of his involvement with his thousands of followers across the globe. The Rebbe speaks for hours, his talks interspersed with bouts of song and l’chaims, often until the wee hours of the morning.

That year, the farbrengen marking the close of Nissan was also held. The tragic news from the Holy Land had arrived in New York moments before the farbrengen was scheduled to begin, but the Rebbe’s secretaries decided to withhold the news from him until after the gathering. But what his assistants did not tell him, his heart seems to have told him. That night, the Rebbe spoke of Jewish self-sacrifice and martyrdom al kiddush Hashem (for the sanctification of G-d’s name), about the rebuilding of the Holy Land, and the redemption of Israel. Tears flowed from his eyes as he spoke. All night he spoke and wept, sang and wept, and wept still more.

Why is the Rebbe weeping? Only a few of those present could guess—those who knew about the telegram from Kfar Chabad.

The farbrengen ended. The chassidim dispersed to their homes, and the Rebbe retired to his room. With great trepidation, two of the Rebbe’s closest chassidim knocked on the Rebbe’s door and handed him the telegram from Israel. The Rebbe sank into his chair. He locked his door and did not open it for three days. After three days of utter seclusion, he called his secretary and dictated his reply: Behemshech habinyan tinacheimu. By your continued building you will be comforted.

The chassidim of Kfar Chabad have fulfilled their Rebbe’s request. Without the aid of philanthropists or foundations, they have raised 50,000 Israeli pounds, and today, one year after the tragedy, the new building of the vocational school is completed.

Tomorrow, as the citizens of Israel celebrate their eighth Independence Day, the chassidim of Kfar Chabad will hold a farbrengen and relate, again and again, the story of the three-word telegram that saved the village.

[1] Mishneh Torah, Laws of Repentance, 3:4.

[2] Rabbi Shalom DovBer Schneersohn (1860-1920), fifth Rebbe of Chabad-Lubavitch.

[3] Rabbi Zalman Aaron, Rabbi Shalom DovBer’s older brother.

[4] Pious and righteous man.

[5]. At the time this article was written, the official name of Kfar Chabad was “Tzafrir.”

[6]. The fedayeen were bands of Arab terrorists who crossed into Israel from Egypt and Jordan and were responsible for many killings of Israeli civilians during the 1950s.