Weekly Chasidic Story #735 (s5772-14 / 30 Kislev 5772)

The Lubavitcher Rebbe and Zorba the Greek

"It's clear," the Lubavitcher Rebbe said to me," that you have taken good care of your mind and of your body. But what have you done to take care of your soul?"

Connection: Current events - the author of "Zorba the Greek" (!)

 

The Lubavitcher Rebbe and Zorba the Greek
By Gordon Zacks


In 1969, I was the Chairman of the Young Leadership Cabinet of the national United Jewish Appeal. As such, I was invited to deliver the keynote address to the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds Annual Conference, being held that year in November in Boston. The theme was "Youth Looks at the Future of the American Jewish Community." I spent six months preparing for this talk. Usually, I speak extemporaneously with at most a one-page outline. This time -- because of its importance -- I elected to read the entire speech.

In it, I thanked my parents' generation for supporting the creation of the state of Israel and rescuing survivors from the Holocaust. In its aftermath, two million Jews had been delivered through their efforts from lands of oppression and resettled to lands of freedom. Nonetheless, I pointed out that we faced a disaster in the field of Jewish education. We ran the risk of losing more Jews through assimilation than we had saved through affirmation. We needed to address the failure of our Jewish educational system to inspire many young Jews to continue to be Jewish. I recommended that we create a national Jewish research and development venture capital fund to invest risk capital in innovative approaches to make Jewish education relevant to young people and to create an Institute for Jewish Life that would manage the process

To fund this Institute, I proposed that the Jewish community endow the Institute with $100 million of State of Israel bonds for a period of ten years. The purchasers would receive a tax deduction. At the end of ten years, they would get their principal back. The Institute would get the use of the interest. Annually it would provide about $6 million in revenue. We would have ten years in which to evaluate the results. If the concept didn't produce worthwhile results, that would be the end of the Institute. Ultimately the idea was adopted in an abbreviated form with funding of $3.5 million. In this truncated version, it failed in its mission and was eventually closed. Still, it stimulated a lot of discussion about Jewish education, and placed it right behind rescue as a priority for the American Jewish community.

In December 1969, I received a call from a man named Leibel Alevsky. He was a rabbi with the Lubavitch movement in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. He said the Lubavitcher Rebbe wanted to meet me. Given the tone of the phone call, I thought I was being invited for a royal audience. I immediately said yes to a date in January, but I didn't even know who the Rebbe was! My rabbi gave me some background and urged me to go ahead with the meeting. On the appointed day in January, Alevsky and I were finishing dinner in his home at 11:15 at night. We got a call that the Rebbe would see me now. I walked with Alevsky to a modest building to find 300 people -- from around the world --each waiting at the Rebbe's headquarters, the Chabad Center, in the middle of the night for an audience with the Rebbe!

Later I learned that the Rebbe held these audiences three times each week, lasting from sundown often until the middle of the night.

I went in alone to see the Rebbe. In his office, illuminated by a single ceiling light, books were stacked from the floor to the ceiling. He was a slight man with translucent skin and absolutely clear whites of his eyes -- the sclera encircling his sparkling blue irises, his beard outlining an impish grin. The Rebbe was sixty-seven at the time. He looked at me in such a penetrating way that I felt like I was being x-rayed.

"Mr. Zacks, I have read your speech," he began, "and it's clear you have taken good care of your mind. I can look at you, and it's clear you have taken good care of your body. What have you done to take care of your soul?"

No small talk about how I was or if I had a pleasant trip. I was stunned.

"The Jewish house is on fire," he continued. "We have an emergency, and this is not the time to experiment with new ways to put out the fire. Instead, you call the proven and tested fire department. We are that fire department. We -- the Lubavitchers -- don't have drugs or intermarriage problems with our children or kids opting out of Judaism. Our tradition works, and our children are being educated. We have a worldwide outreach program that contacts and impacts non-observant Jews and saves souls. Give us the $100 million, and we will spend it to correct the problems that you are concerned about."

"Rebbe," I asked after pausing for a moment; "there are millions of Jews whose houses are on fire. Most of them are Jews who will not call you, either because they have lost your number or they won't accept the lifestyle compromises you expect. They're still worthy of saving in their own way, and they are entitled to a quality Jewish education that makes Judaism relevant to their lives. That's why we need this Institute."

"Do you believe in revelation, Mr. Zacks?" he asked me next.

"I believe in G-d and I believe he inspires... but I don't believe he writes," I answered.

"You mean, Mr. Zacks, that there is this vast structure G-d has created of plants, animals, food chains, stars, and planets. And, that the only creature in all of creation that doesn't understand how to fit in and live their life purposefully is the human?"

I told him yes.

"What about the complexity of the human body? What about the jewel of the human cell? How does the body ingest food and renew itself with absolute consistency?"

I had no answer.

"And, how can you account for the brain and the mind? How do they steer this remarkable system in a purposeful and precise way? And, what about how we fit into the earth's ecosystem, where we inhale the oxygen that plants so wonderfully manufacture for us? Could this all be accidental?"

I could only shrug my shoulders, but my respect for him deepened by the moment.

"And, beyond what happens on earth. What about all the heavenly bodies in the sky that seem to follow such a perfect order and don't collide with each other? Is man the only creature on the planet earth without guidelines for living its life? Should man ignore the Torah given to us by G-d as a roadmap to guide us? This is the missing link which connects us to the complexity of Nature!"

So it went. Comment after comment. More times than not, I could not begin to answer his points.

He quoted the book (which became a famous film) Zorba the Greek to me during our conversation. "Do you remember the young man talking with Zorba on the beach, when Zorba asks what the purpose of life is? The young fellow admits he doesn't know. And Zorba comments, 'Well, all those high-brow books you read -- what good are they? Why do you read them?' Zorba's friend says he doesn't know. Zorba can see his friend doesn't have an answer to the most fundamental question. That's the trouble with you. 'A man's head is like a grocer,' Zorba says, 'it keeps accounts... The head's a careful little shopkeeper; it never risks all it has, always keeps something in reserve. It never breaks the string.' Wise men and grocers weigh everything. They can never cut the cord and be free.

Your problem, Mr. Zacks, is that you are trying to find G-d's map through your head. You are unlikely to find it that way. You have to experience before you can truly feel and then be free to learn. Let me send a teacher to live with you for a year and teach you how to be Jewish. You will unleash a whole new dimension to your life. If you really want to change the world, change yourself! It's like dropping a stone into a pool of water and watching the concentric circles radiate to the shore. You will influence all the people around you, and they will influence others in turn. That's how you bring about improvement in the world."

"Rebbe, I'm not ready to do that," I told him. I remained firm despite the incredibly woven tapestry of the universe he presented to me.

"What do you have to lose?" he asked, "One year of your life? What if I'm right? It could gain you an eternity if I'm right, but only cost you one year if I'm wrong."

"I'll think about it," I said as we wrapped up our hour-and-a-half conversation. The normal audience with the Rebbe was thirty seconds to a minute. Three hundred people were still waiting to come in at one in the morning.

***

The Rebbe wrote me letters encouraging me to devote myself to Jewish education. Over a series of years, I received five letters from him saying that he wanted to send his representative to me to spend a year teaching me how to be Jewish. I responded to each of them and declined.

Beginning in 1986, the Rebbe had a receiving line on Sunday in which he passed out a dollar bill to be given by the recipient as tzedaka to charity. His reasoning: "When two people meet, something good should result for a third." People waited in line for as long as four hours to be greeted by him and receive his blessing and the dollar bill. The Rebbe was eighty-four when he started doing this. An older woman in the line asked him how he could manage to perform this demanding task. "Every soul is a diamond," he answered. "Can one grow tired of counting diamonds?"

In 1987, my youngest daughter, Kim, had just returned from Israel and she wanted to participate in the custom of Sunday Dollars. I said fine I would take her. I neither called nor told anyone who I was when we arrived. I stood in line with her. It had been seventeen years since I had seen the Rebbe and ten years since he wrote me his last letter. When it was our turn to speak with the Rebbe, he looked at me and asked "What are you doing for Jewish education?" His eyes had the same penetrating look that had bored into me seventeen years earlier and asked, "What are you doing to take care of your soul, Mr. Zacks?" It was as though I had just walked back into his office. In truth, hundreds of thousands of people had filed past him over those years.

"You are amazing!" I exclaimed to him.

"What has that to do with saving Jewish lives? What are you doing for Jewish education?" he retorted.
***

The Rebbe may have been the most charismatic man I ever met. He had an incredible aura to him, partly because he was such a combination of charisma and pragmatism. He radiated compassion, love, and respect for others. I sensed this in my first meeting with him. You could literally feel his warmth and love in addition to the power of his vast intellect.

Once he established the Chabad Center at 770 Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights, I don't think he ever left it. Yet he was totally wired into the events of the world. Every Israeli prime minister and Israeli chief of staff found his way to the Rebbe's doorstep when they came to the United States.

The most amazing thing? The Rebbe had no power in the sense that a police commissioner, a general, or a tax collector does. It wasn't his title that gave the Rebbe authority. He had no one enforcing his decisions. He took people the way they were. What he did have was the authority of his holiness, his presence and his profound grasp of bringing the principles of the Torah to life in himself and in others, which caused others to connect to him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Source: Excerpted from Mr. Gordon Zacks' book Defining Moments, published by Beaufort Books, as received from our friend and occasional guest teacher at Ascent, Rabbi Yosef Y Jacobson, and edited by Yerachmiel Tilles.

Connection: Current events - the author of "Zorba the Greek"!
You might think this eulogistic type of memoir would be more appropriate for Third of Tammuz, and indeed such was my original intention. But a few days ago I read a report of an ugly "Protocols of Zion" type remark by the author of Zorba the Greek. Well it is too late Mr. Kazantzakis - the Rebbe pre-empted you and elevated Zorba over 40 years ago!


Biographical note:
Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe (11 Nissan 1902 - 3 Tammuz 1994), became the seventh Rebbe of the Chabad dynasty after his father-in-law, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, passed away in Brooklyn on 10 Shvat 1950. He is widely acknowledged as the greatest Jewish leader of the second half of the 20th century. Although a dominant scholar in both the revealed and hidden aspects of Torah and fluent in many languages and scientific subjects, the Rebbe is best known for his extraordinary love and concern for every Jew on the planet. His emissaries around the globe dedicated to strengthening Judaism number in the thousands. Hundreds of volumes of his teachings have been printed, as well as dozens of English renditions.

~~~~~~~~~~~


Yerachmiel Tilles is co-founder and associate director of Ascent-of-Safed, and chief editor of this website (and of KabbalaOnline.org). He has hundreds of published stories to his credit, and many have been translated into other languages. He tells them live at Ascent nearly every Saturday night.

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