How could Abraham—whom our Sages state anticipated the commandments of the Torah and observed them—violate the law that forbade his son from marrying a woman without seeing her first? Why did he send his servant to execute the marriage by proxy?
Rabbi Yeshaya Horowitz served as rav of the Chabad community in Tzfas for fifteen years and then thirty years as the rabbi of Winnipeg and western Canada. He was a rav and Chassid, a gaon and mekushar, a model of a Chassidic rav.
I decided to tell her about the terrible experience I went through last year and my overall difficulty in having more children. “I want to have at least one more child,” I cried to her, “but I’m emotionally broken. I’ve lost all hope.” It was specifically my conversation with this Chabad woman, of all people, who herself was suffering from a terminal illness, that finally helped me to lift this heavy burden off my chest. She listened attentively and with great understanding, and then she said, “Have you written yet to the Lubavitcher Rebbe?”
In every generation there is “one who is fit to be the redeemer.” Of course, it is logical to presume that this person is nasi ha’dor, leader of the generation.
At first glance it seems that the month of Cheshvan is a month that symbolizes exile. There are no official Jewish holidays and the darkness of winter begins to become apparent. Its Halachic name is “Mar-Cheshvan,” which means the bitter month of Cheshvan. Yet, in Chazal and Chassidus, we are taught that, on the contrary, the month of Cheshvan is kept bare of all holidays, so that it can be filled with the great light and holiday of Geula!
For many years, the NKVD kept R’ Gavriel under surveillance. They waited for the day that he would fall into their hands, and that day finally arrived. For many months he was interrogated. Following a wondrous dream of the Rebbe, he was released. * The story of the Chassid, R’ Shlomo Zelkind Kapilkov, known as R’ Gavriel Kagan.
The Jerusalem Talmud (Avoda Zara 2:1) states: “The world cannot have fewer than 30 tzaddikim-righteous people like our father Abraham.” The Babylonian Talmud (Tractate Sukka 45b) seems to have a divergent view concerning the number of righteous people that are needed for the world to exist: “There are no less than 36 righteous people in the world who receive the countenance of the Divine Presence each day.” We must try to understand and reconcile the divergent views of the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds concerning the number of righteous people in whose merit the world stands. And how do the numbers 30 and 36 relate to the verses that are cited to support each view?
In Sderot, the city identified with Kassam rockets and sirens, an entire tourism industry has been quietly developing. The shliach, R’ Moshe Zev Pizem, welcomes the thousands of young people who visit the city every year from all over the world. Many of them are exposed, for the first time in their lives, to a Jewish perspective, to the Rebbe and Chabad, and to emuna
Why are more people than ever in Beitar participating in Chabad events? How can an adventurer half way up a mountain continue to to learn Tanya every day? Find out this and more in these delightful stories!
From the life of R’ Yehoshua Shneur Zalman Serebryanski a”h.
Another installment about the special shlichus performed by R’ Zalman Chanin and R’ Laibel Zajac, to print the Tanya in the Peter and Paul Fortress. * Part 4
We have a prime minister who is an excellent public speaker in perfect English. He knows how to explain better than anyone else why his government will attack Iran if America sits with its hands folded. However, America is sitting with its hands folded, but the government doesn’t move. We have a charismatic industry and trade minister who makes excellent speeches before ardent right-wing audiences. Instead of people of action who will change national policy, we’ve got a collection of charismatic speakers who know how to talk the talk. But when it comes to walking the walk, they forget to practice what they preach.
In citing this Midrash – that Mordechai in his generation was on par with Moshe in his generation – the Rebbe Rayatz rules that this statement applies to himself: the Rebbe is the revealed Raaya Mehemna, the Faithful Shepherd, of all the people of the generation.
October 22, 2013