RADZYN, POLAND 1933

Transcription

RADZYN, POLAND 1933

RADZYN, POLAND 1933
The thousands of eyes staring at the Rebbe would not dare assume that he felt uneasy, but his appearance certainly suggested it.
whichever tune the moment called for.
child, opening his mouth to speak then stopping himself once more.
Not quite next to the Rebbe, but closer than many of the chassidim standing on bleachers
surrounding the giant table at whose head the Rebbe sat, Moishe extended his head to try and
catch the inaudible starts and stops emanating from the mouth of his holy teacher.
Stretching the fabric of his new bekesheh, yearning, almost desperately, to hear just a single
word, Moishe felt the embarrassing beginnings of resentment. In brief pangs of anxiety that
exposed the extent to which he could strengthen his faith, he found himself wondering who this
Rebbe was to have him travel so long, and so far, to sit at a silent tisch.
©
"There were once children," the Rebbe started, "playing a game of hide and seek. A group would hide,
and one would seek."
Moishe now relaxed, and he regained his joyful countenance.
"There is something very sad," the Rebbe continued, "about a hidden child who cannot be found."
"But," the Rebbe said more quietly than before, "there is something much sadder."
The room was still. Its very existence hinged on the next utterance.
"One day soon," he slowly said, "there will be children who are hiding. And, nobody will be searching for them.”
“You know what? I dont believe in the same god that you don’t believe in.”
- Reb Levi Ytizchak of Berditchev
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The iron key slipped neatly out of its lock and into the blanketed embrace of Yoely's tallis, where
it would rest until the sun came down and the men of Radzyn were prepared to enter shul for
Shabbos.
Today, however, he stood outside the shul and could not identify the spirit behind what he saw
before him. Typically, erev Shabbos connected the highest and lowest of Radzyn together in the
market. The holy yidden would scrape the bottoms of their pockets for the few zloty they saved
right, almost like there was an imbalance in its rhythm.
"Where is Mottel?" he whimpered.
“The passion for the unlimited, could not be conditioned by a regard for proportion and measure.”
- Abraham Joshua Heschel, on the Ashkenazic Jew
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The room grew slowly brighter, and as the sunlight crept in it became easier to distinguish the
black letters on the fading white pages. The Rebbe of Radzyn had been up for quite some time.
In fact he had hardly slept. In between short naps that were simply necessities of a physical
existence, he held his face close to his sefer and nodded.
found it.
The yidden of Radzyn were so holy. Each one of them kept Shabbos, and each of them ate
kosher, but there was something amiss and the holy Rebbe felt it. There was a pain, a void, an
incompleteness, that kept him up that night and forced him into his beis midrash to repair it.
You see, when you and me feel something like this, we complain to the world that we can’t fall
As he wearily drifted back into this world from another short slumber, he found himself gazing
he was drawn to it nonetheless.
In Radzyn, just like everywhere else, people saw strange things all the time. But, unlike
everywhere else, the people of this shtetl knew how to see. Not everybody understood immediately what they were looking at, but in Radzyn, at least they knew when they were looking at
something that mattered.
The Rebbe continued to inspect the pitcher and noticed it was full, all the way to the top. So full,
soul that inspired this thought.
"At the expense of what did this pitcher get so full?" he wondered. "Is there another pitcher
somewhere that has gone empty?"
“A sick person can eat abundantly and still not receive any nourishment”
- The Baal Shem Tov
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The knife slid smoothly out of the golden butter, and Issur savored the sound of the toast
crunching beneath it as he prepared his breakfast.
shtetl that could,
most likely owed their good fortune to a job they were able to get working for Issur. This
morning, as most residents scurried around and traded their coins for a taste of Shabbos, Issur
washed netillas yadayim, made hamotsi on his bread, and cleared his mind of everything but the
thought of all the money he was making in the market at that very moment.
Issur sat in his chair, and looked out of the window by his table. In it, he could see a weak
a perspective that allowed him to count his own blessings. In quiet moments like this one, he
next.
As his eyes darted around the lavish table, desperate for something new, they were quickly
Issur uncovered his face to see splinters of shattered glass amidst impaled pastries, which now
bled jelly onto each other. The orange juice swayed rhythmically inside its pitcher, sending waves
of pulp cascading over the sides and onto the table beneath it.
Appearing through the broken window stood a chassid
through deliberately, and now stood inside.
Issur’s shock turned to anger about this man’s utter lack of consideration for personal property,
but soon turned to curiosity once he recognized who the intruder was. Every action taken in
his gabbai to deliver message; the challenge was seeing clearly enough to decipher it.
“The Rebbe needs to see you right away,” the chassid said, drawing authority from his position as
the Rebbe’s gabbai.
No matter which side of Issur’s former window you lived, this was not a request that could be
ignored. But, it would appear, it could be challenged.
“The chutzpah-” Issur started.
“Please,” the gabbai
much to leave unattended.”
“Ignoring someone means, “In my book you don’t exist.” If you love someone but
in their book you don’t exist, that really hurts.”
- Reb Shlomo Carlebach
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The orderly line belied the people waiting in it. Erev Shabbos was always a busy time outside the
Rebbe's study, but this morning was unordinary.
Mottel extended his head around the old man in front of him to calculate how long he'd have to
wait. Ahead of him, payyis dangled and swayed with the men who read tehillim in preparation for
their consultation.
What, he wondered, could be more important than what he had to discuss? Was there anybody
as plagued by misfortune as he was?
Mottel shuddered at the thought, and his impatience was momentarily abated by his shame. If
he was to be granted yichud with his holy master, he knew he must approach it humbly. In the
short meeting, he’d be obligated to express why he needed money to buy food for Shabbos
more than any of the other worthy souls of Radzyn needed it, and present the reason for why
he’d taken such extreme measures that morning to try and earn it on his own. Mottel was
nervous, as his mind balked at confronting what he already knew in the deepest parts of where
small, and confused.
Realizing his wait was no more than an opportunity to prepare, Mottel reached for his book of
Psalms and tried to focus his mind away from his nerves and towards the task at hand.
Suddenly, he felt a sharp jab in his side from the Rebbe's gabbai, who was escorting a man to the
front of the line. As the convoy made its way past, the groans were audible.
Every day was a process for Mottel. A process of waking up big, and being made smaller with
every passing moment of not having what he wanted, of not achieving what he imagined he was
Rebbe's door, a door so accessible to a man with so much more than he had, Mottel never felt
smaller.
tehillim
word, they would all pour out of him.
"Please," he begged. "Please, just a little koach."
cramped room, he wasn't sure if it was coming from above or below.
"Mottel?" he heard, suddenly. "Where is Mottel? The Rebbe needs to see him right now!"
“From the phsycial, we can perceive the spiritual. ”
- The Toldos Yaa’kov Yosef
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It was midday, and the Rebbe requested that the drapes on his windows be drawn.
Only a few candles were lit, and it occurred to Mottel that the illumination of the room was of a
tzaddik know?
"In every household," the Rebbe began, "there is a mother, there is a father, there are sons, and
there are daughters. Sometimes, even, there is a dog."
"Each one has a special job to do, that only they can do. That only they were meant to do. So too,
stopped himself. "It's so important," he continued, "it's so important."
"Issur," he said, "do you know what's more precious than having something you need? Not
having the things you don't need yet."
The Rebbe knew when to be soft and when to be harsh, and locked his gaze until the richest
"Mottelleh," the Rebbe said, "what happened to your music this morning? We weren't the same
without it. Please, play us a song." All the men in the room knew that this wasn't a request.
he does best for his Rebbe. If this were yesterday, and he weren't yet worried about buying
some challah for dinner, he would have played the happiest song he could remember. But,
standing in front of the man he respected most in this world, and next to the one he envied
most, he could not feel anything but ineptitude for once again possessing the violin he had sold
to emanate from his soul onto the strings of his beloved instrument.
Being uncomfortable with your Creator is one thing, but being uncomfortable with yourself is
another. When the Rebbe heard this song, his heart felt its own pain, its own loss, and felt
worthy of the rewards it would receive for enduring it.
When Issur heard the song, he also felt his own worth, and began to clap sinisterly.
"If only,” he said, “you could eat a song for Shabbos dinner!"
"Oy, Mottelleh," Issur murmured.
“Oy, Mottelleh," the Rebbe murmured.
and followed each individual string with his eyes, across a bed of splintered wood, glue, and
“That” said the Rebbe, “my sweet Mottelleh, is something you cannot do”
“Do you know how precious every instrument is? Every instrument, with or without music, every
moment, every object that allows us to connect with something holy inside of ourselves.”
paused. “They cannot protect you.”
Mottel now looked up, his eyes red and distant. Issur, too, dared not look away from his Rebbe
in this moment.
They each had the same question, and it was not necessary to ask it.
“Protect us against what?” the Rebbe said, looking at both of his chassidim. “We should be
blessed to never know the answer.”
“He slept for a very long time. The servant tried to awaken him, but to no avail.
Later, he awoke, and asked the servant, ‘Where in the world am I?’ And he told
him what had happened.”’
- Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, ‘The Lost Princess’
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house, Mottel could feel it through the soles of his worn black shoes. Suddenly, he could feel
everything. Things were moving more slowly, the sun was brighter, and the voices coming from
before they closed up for Shabbos.
“This,” he muttered, “is not a good thing.”
Radzyn was imminent.
vacation, a gift. It was the few moments he allowed himself between hearing a knock, and
measure up to his obligations, and revelling in that last moment of certainty before payment
was due.
“I need you to know,” the gabbai said, “that the Rebbe wants you to leave, but also to return.”
gabbai’s face that he had never noticed before.
“Zey Gezunt.”
home, opened his front door, and placed the items on the kitchen table in front of his wife. The
moment of certainty had ended.
sefarim, and his
Rifka was standing by the stove, unpacking her unpleasant surprise. She turned around when
she felt him return, and with the very last bit of himself he raised his broken eyes to meet her’s.
She simply looked, for as long as he needed her to.
Mottel endured the bumps as he approached the mysteries in the forest beyond Radzyn, and
emerge, he parked his carriage on the side of the dirt road, to force a weak prayer, and maybe
say a kiddush
bag he was given by the gabbai.
black line that was drawn from Radzyn to Bratslov. Beside it, a note:
Carefully, he spilled the contents of the bag onto a blanket in front of him. Although, in this very
What he would eat for dinner, however, he did not yet know.

RADZYN, POLAND 1933

Transcription

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