THE “BLACK FLAME” BATTLING THE DARKNESS FROM WITHIN

I was a young boy when I was privileged to be exposed to the “world of Chabad.” In the initial moments (an outsider wouldn’t understand this), the Rebbe in all his power approaches each one and responds to his requests, especially that hidden, emotional, personal request that cries out in a still unheard voice, “to become a Lubavitcher!”

At that time, I met a bachur who from the perspective of a seeker I saw as a typical Lubavitcher, who smiles, believes, understands, disseminates, and is mekushar. Who is utterly devoted to one essential point – Rebbe, Rebbe, Rebbe (until then, I had mostly met Lubavitchers whose world was intellect, understanding, explaining …). It was my friend, Tzvi Ventura, who said to me, “If you want to be a real Lubavitcher, you must meet two people: the mashpia, R’ Mendel Futerfas of Kfar Chabad, so you see what hiskashrus and Ahavas Yisroel are, and the shliach, R’ Motty Gal of Ramat Gan, so you learn how to stop being afraid of the world.”

In the heart of Rechov Bialik in Ramat Gan, I found myself one evening at a weekly shiur in Chassidus (volume 3 of Hemshech 5672). It was given by a smiling Jew who had three or four miskarvim around him. It was the type of shiur that I was wholly unfamiliar with. He did not teach, did not define, did not analyze. He illuminated.

The topic was the analogy of a lit candle and the two lights around it. The one closer to the wick is the “black flame” and the one closer to the light, the “white flame.” The black flame (Ohr Ochma), said Motty, is us, people in the dark, who operate with tools of darkness, in the language of darkness. This type of light does not illuminate the darkness; it captivates it and utilizes it to illuminate. This is the chiddush of the Baal Shem Tov.

Motty too, did not explain and cajole; he captivated Jews by revealing their souls within the darkness.

Only many years after that fascinating shiur did I realize that this is the story of Motty himself. He was one of those people that divine providence places as a foot soldier, whose job it is to scrape away the klipos and darkness. A soldier in the army of light broadcasters whose job it is to break thirteen breaches in the curtain that separates and covers the G-dly light, preventing it from reaching Malchus of Malchus, Malchus of Asiya as it exists in the corporeal world.

He was one of those people who was ready to pay the steep price in constant manning his position in a winding, dangerous place, between heaven and earth, with characteristic “sabra” tenacity, without fear, and to reveal G-d there.

(I once asked him after a shiur, “Motty, who taught you Chassidus like this? How do you take Hemshech Samech-Vav—his favorite—and turn it into something so clear and understandable?” He replied in his oh so Israeli lingo, “The script of the explanation of Samech-Vav was written for me by R’ Sholom Feldman of Kfar Chabad. I am just the producer.”)

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You can’t write about Motty without writing about the love of his life (as he put it) – the Rebbe Melech HaMoshiach shlita. Among the many grandiose plans he had, plans that express more than anything his character to the nth degree (every month Motty had a new plan with which he was sure the world would be conquered … ), was the dream of making the Rebbe accessible to the entire world, and mainly: to the place of darkness itself.

For this purpose, he spent years looking for a talented producer who would take on the task. One night, he called me and asked me to go with him to a meeting. We arrived at a studio in Tel Aviv and in a room that was particularly unsympathetic from a spiritual perspective, sat a “heavy duty Israeli” who, according to Motty, was “the best chance to bring the Rebbe to the world.” The hours I spent with them taught me once again about his incredible ability to grasp the inner depth of the person he was speaking to while simultaneously creating a common language with him.

They did not speak in professional terms but in a spiritual-creative language about the hero of the film – “the man the world has been waiting for, for 6000 years.” The biographical details that I provided about the Rebbe were translated by Motty into a language which was unique to him.

“Picture the biblical image of Shimshon grasping the two pillars of the building and shaking them. That is what happened there in Berlin-Paris …”

The Rebbe’s childhood in Yekaterinoslav did not come up. Motty explained to the producer that a meeting wasn’t enough for that; he had to enter the house that the Rebbe grew up in and “smell the walls.” How? Go to Russia? No, was the answer. We will sit and learn Likkutei Levi Yitzchok together so we can go back in time to R’ Levi Yitzchok’s Shabbos table, his wife Rebbetzin Chana, his oldest son and his brothers, and feel the forces that sprouted Moshiach in his childhood.

The film did not end up happening but the “heavy duty Israeli,” became an instant maven in a number of fundamental concepts in Chassidus and the Rebbe.

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To end on a personal note – one time, in a personal and emotionally charged moment which only those who knew Motty can understand, he asked me, “What am I to you?”

I was taken aback by his openness and could not answer.

Today, I dare to say in sorrow and humility, “Motty, for many neshamos you were a ‘black flame’ from the essential light of the Rebbe MH”M shlita.”