Page 5 - The Jewish Voice - September '22

The Jewish Voice, Page 5

From the rabbis

High Holy Days Offer anger at life that didn’t unfold the way we envisioned it in he was arrested by the
The stone is the negative emotions we harbor. It is our
KGB for his crimes in
Opportunities for Strength our youth; it is our disappointment with our children who spreading Judaism. The
failed to provide us the future we always dreamed of; it is communists exiled him to
By Rabbi Alon Levkovitz our fury at friends who didn’t live up to our lofty standards of the remote eastern Asian
The 19th-century rabbi, loyalty and support or our envy of their success, and the rock city of Almaty in order
Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter, is blaming God for allowing the world to be so far removed to render him unable to
offers an astonishing from perfection. influence other Jews away
insight into the mysteries The High Holy Days give us the opportunity to identify from the Marxist paradise
of the human psyche in his the forces that pull the stone down and make it unmovable, that left no room for faith.
commentary on the prelude and when we muster the strength to begin to move the stone, Here he lived his final years
to the romantic meeting God, just like He did for Jacob, will push it with us, until the in great suffering, poverty,
between Jacob and Rachel. lifegiving water of the well is fully exposed and we are able and hunger until he calmly
On his escape from his to quench our spiritual thirst. returned his soul to his
brother, Esau, Jacob stopped Rabbi Alon Levkovitz is spiritual leader at Temple Beth maker in 1944. Rabbi L evi Yitzchak
by the local well, and to his dismay he sees the local Am in Jupiter. I was able to experience Schneerson
shepherds standing idly instead of watering their flock. a sense of his isolation
When he asked the reason for their bizarre behavior, they Your Problems Are Your as we walked through a winding path to his resting
pointed at a big stone covering the well. They couldn’t place through Christian burial plots adorned with giant
move the stone until more shepherds arrived, they told him. Purpose gargoyles, life-size rock statues, and communist symbols
Despite their claim, Jacob tried and ultimately succeeded engraved on many graves. It broke my heart to think that
in removing the huge rock all by himself. By Rabbi Dovid Vigler this giant of a man, the father of the most influential
Rabbi Alter reads the story metaphorically. The concept I recently returned from rabbi in modern history, was relegated to such unbearable
of a well, a source of life in the midst of a barren field, exists a spiritually invigorating circumstances.
in all aspects of the universe. Everything and everyone trip to the most remote Reb Levik’s spiritual greatness lives on this day as
contains a life-giving element that sustains it. Even that location I have ever visited. countless stories of miraculous salvation unfold for many
which appears to be as deserted as a field has such a hidden On August 15 at midnight, who trek to visit his tomb with heartfelt prayers for his
place, a well, within it. I boarded a charter flight Divine intercession. For the duration of our 36-hour visit,
As for humans, the well represents the source of from Miami to Almaty, I was deeply disturbed and often overcome with emotion
what enables life and makes it worth living. The boulder Kazakhstan, with 200 as to why G-d would have sent such a saintly soul to suffer
symbolizes what obscures our vision and obstructs our Florida Chabad rabbis. We in such dire circumstances.
access to the spring of life. Life is God’s most cherished flew 20 hours each way in As I sat writing this article on the long plane ride
gift to which we must show eternal gratitude, but too often order to hold this year’s home, I was enlightened with the answer in the week’s
the stone muddles our reality and, instead of life, we feel annual rabbinic convention at the site of the resting Torah portion. The Torah is our gift from G-d, and the
despair. While the shepherds succumbed to the boulder, place of the Rebbe’s saintly father, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak weekly portion is our compass. Our sages tell us that we
Jacob used his mental and physical strength to overcome Scheerson. can always find the answers we seek in the Torah portion
the obstacle. Nestled just three hours from the border of Western of the week.
So often we are like the shepherds. We stand at the mouth China and Afghanistan, Almaty is a city of striking beauty The parshah tells of the lowest moment our People have
of the well, knowing what’s inside and how much we can at the foot of the Himalayan mountain range. The Rebbe’s ever fallen. Having just received the Ten Commandments
benefit from it, but we perceive the stone to be too heavy father (born 1878) was the charismatic and influential on two Divinely-produced tablets on Mount Sinai, the Jews
for us to lift and keep waiting for the right time (that may spiritual leader of the large industrial city of Yekatrinoslav
never arrive). (known as Dnieprepotrovsk today), Ukraine, before From the Rabbis on page 6

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