Ode to Immortality | Reflection on 3 Tammuz, 25 Years

A Reflection on the 3rd of Tammuz - 25 Years since the Rebbe's Passing | Ode to Immortality Transcript: This Saturday, the 6th of July 2019 marks and commemorated the 25 anniversary of Gimmel Tammuz, the 3rd of the Hebrew month of Tammuz. The day the sun stood still in its tracks. This Gimmel Tammuz is 25 years since the passing of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and 25 years is a hell of a long time. The Rebbe was a radical mystic. The Rebbe was a man who carried the pain of the world on his forehead, and radiated the joy of the cosmos through his smile. A man whose every step oozed courage and inspired conviction. Like Moses standing on top of Mount Sinai. The Rebbe spoke with 3000 years of wisdom. I still saw him still reflected in my father’s eyes, engulfed in flames, dancing in a ring of fire, clutching a burning scroll of black fire on white fire. There are those that say the Rebbe was larger than life, a common descriptor for people whose lives we're at a loss to describe from the vantage point of our puny egoic existences, the Rebbe, my guess is, would say no, in his warm Russian accent, you only don't yet know, you have no idea, how large life is. People say as well that the Rebbe was the Messiah, a controversial claim no doubt. But the Rebbe was more than that. The Rebbe was one who made it his lifelong mission to ignite the messianic flame in every soul on this godforsaken planet. To blow the few remaining ashes of Auschwitz into a blaze that would burn so bright, so bright it would rudely awaken the slumbering messiah in the collective heart of humanity. The Rebbe was the Messiah whisperer, the one who entreats; wake up, wake up, arise from the ashes, shake off the dust, the time of your redemption has come The Rebbe was no doubt a man of action, one who inspired and demanded action by example. Action that sanctifies the mundane, that brings meaning, life, beauty and poetry into the ordinary, with one arm raising live to celestial highs and the other tearing down the heavens to plant it in quotidian, in the terrestrial, in the everyday. But the Rebbe was more than that, the Rebbe was a child, a child with curly hair who had a vision of this world transformed into a beautiful garden. And what set the Rebbe apart was that he kept that vision locked perpetually in his gaze, you could see it in his eyes. And the Rebbe marched toward that vision every day, and pulled us in, in his gravitational wave, towards that vision. At times it feels that we failed him, we failed to see that vision that that child saw. A child who just wanted for the rest of the world to see how beautiful it could become, so easily, if they only believed it could. The Rebbe was crushed, because we couldn’t share that vision of his. The Rebbe’s lifelong mission, his single minded obsession was to get us to open our eyes, tzum effen de eygen, as the Rebbe would say, to see the world through that child’s eyes. Even on those days when I find it hard to call myself the Rebbe’s chosid, I’m still the Rebbe’s child, and as his child I share his eyes. And although 25 years marks the passing of the Rebbe, the Rebbe is certainly not dead, because ideas cannot die, and a life that is lived as the embodiment of an idea, an idea that brings life to those that hear it, scoffs death entirely. Because immortal truths do not die. 25 years is way too long and it’s time for us to take action, to see the world the way that the Rebbe say it, to see ourselves the way the Rebbe saw us, as Godly, to see the world around us, the people around us as beautiful and Divine, and then we will see the Rebbe’s eyes again. #ProjectUnity