Parshas Bereishis

Hi Kinderlach!
Oy Vey! Do you realise what I just realised? It is almost the end of Chodesh Tishrei! No more farbrengens, no more bumping into long-lost friends while walking up the street, no more davening Shachris in 770, no more telling Mrs Getzel that I’m going on Kingston to pick a few things up and getting lost in Kehos reading a new sefer for a few hours. Yup, Tishrei is coming to an end. It is back to those good old lush cornfields of Iowa, where the only surprises I get are when I forget that my ainkel, zol gezunt zein, came over to play and loves to put lego in my woolly slippers. Back having to be a world-famous Seeing Professor, shliach, parnossah earner, and Mrs Getzel’s main house help all rolled into one (I’ll let you figure out which is the hardest job!). Back to only having one minyan for Shachris, and sometimes only half a minyan for mincha and maariv. Back to farbrengens where we need to decide starting times and finishing times before we even sit down.
You see, as I am sure you will all agree, Tishrei is a really special time. It is chock-a-block full of Yomim Tovim, Yomei Depagra, farbrengens and mivtzoim. And of course Tishrei follows on from Elul which is a very busy month too. In fact the Frierdiker Rebbe used to say that in Lubavitch, already from Shabbos Mevorchim Elul you could smell in the air that something special was happening. But now it is all coming to an end, and we need to do something about it. As a famous chosid once said, ‘don’t let your Cheshvan get you down’ (actually, I just made that up myself, but hey, I’m a famous chosid! I write a column for the world famous ‘Connections’ newsletter that is read by thousands of kinderlach – and listened to by hundreds of Mommies and Tatties too - every week!)
As I am a Chassidic Seeing Professor with a bag packed full of lenses for every occasion, I decided that I’d better look through my bag and see if I have anything that could help me out. The first lens that came to hand was my ever reliable COL. In case you’ve forgotten - it has been quite a time since that lens came by to say hello – that is my Chassidic Outlook Lens. Happy as I could be at the thought of the end of Tishrei speeding towards me, I had a look through the lens to see what I could see. Slowly but surely the picture starting getting clearer. I started humming a niggun to myself, and then I realised, that it had actually been a few hours since I had sung anything at all (which, as Mrs Getzel will tell you, is very unusual).
And I realised, that as a chossid, I needed to make sure that I would be saying goodbye to Tishrei with a big simcha, as big, if not bigger than, the day I finally said goodbye to my barmitzvah hat and proudly put on my new one that Mrs Getzel had gotten me for our 25th wedding anniversary. Sure it was a good-bye that was a bit sad, but it was also a thank you for all the good times we’d had together. And I had all the memories of what a great hat it had been. Like the memory about the time it blew off my head when I was doing mivtzoim in the mall, and helped me put on another two tefillin and give out another three NeSheK kits to the people who helped me chase it round the mall.
Of course! I thought to myself. This is what saying goodbye to Chodesh Tishrei is all about! We have to make sure that we take Tishrei with us into Cheshvan, and then Kislev, and Teves. All those special times have to be packed into our bags and suitcases and we need to use them for the whole year. Like if we are feeling low mid-Teves because our class in the Online School is having a test and we want to pick a fight with our little brother or sister, then we can remember what we heard by the Simchas Torah farbrengen about how achdus will bring Moshiach! And then Tishrei will stay with us all through the year. Now that’s a happy thought!

Dr. Getzel

 

This Shabbos is שבת מברכים חודש חשון

’ויברא אלקים את התנינים הגדולים‘
‘And ה‘ created the great sea monsters’

The רמב“ן points out that every time ה‘ created something during the ששת ימי בראשית , the תורה tells us afterwards “ויהי כן ”, that it actually did happen. But when ה‘ created the ‘great sea monsters’ it does not say the wordsויהי כן  - that it happened. The רמב“ן says this is a hint to the סעודת המשיח . We know that the תנינים הגדולים  that were created on the fifth day of מעשה בראשית , are the Leviason. ה‘ only let the male leviason live, and the female leviason was preserved and kept for the          סעודת המשיח . Since this סעודה has not yet happened, the תורה did not tell us ויהי כן , that this happened.

 

 

The שבת after שמחת תורה is שבת בראשית - "שבת of Beginning" - the first שבת of the annual תורה reading cycle, on which the תורה section of בראשית ("In the Beginning") is read.

The אלטער רבי said: ‘מיר דארף לעבן מיט דער צייט ’ - ‘We must live with the times’. He meant that every week, we have to look into that week’s פרשה to find a הוראה for ourselves, a lesson in how we can improve and change ourselves.

When the אלטער רבי first told his חסידים to ‘live with the times,’ they were very surprised. They were sure that the אלטער רבי was not telling them that they needed to change the way they keep תורה and מצוות to take account of the winds of change that were blowing across Russia, but what was he saying?

The אלטער רבי ’s brother, ר‘ יהודה לייב , explained that the אלטער רבי had meant that the חסידים need to ‘live’ with the פרשת השבוע .

On שבת בראשית we start leining the תורה from the beginning again. The theme of this week is very clear. It is one of beginning and renewal, as we begin yet another cycle of תורה life. The רביים would say:                             ‘אזוי ווי מען שטעלט זיך אוועק שבת בראשית, אזוי פירט זיך א גאנץ יאהר ’ -                    "As one sets oneself up on שבת בראשית , so the rest of the year goes."   

   

Over 150 years ago, in תר“ג (1843), ר‘ ישראל of Ruzhin heard news that the Russian government, then led by the nasty anti-Semitic Czar Nicholas, was planning to buy a plot of land next to the כותל המערבי to build a large church and monastery.  The Ruzhiner was very upset. ‘They want to block the way to the כותל המערבי with their טומא !’ he cried. ‘They will not be able to do it! We will not allow them!’

ר‘ ישראל sent one of his חסידים called ר‘ ניסן Beck to ארץ ישראל . Following his Rebbe’s advice, he managed to find the owners of the land that the Russians wanted to buy. It took him a few days, and lots of arguments and bribing, but ר‘ ניסן managed to buy the whole piece of land. Just a couple of days after the sale had been officially completed, an order came from Czar Nicholas to the Russian consul in ירושלים instructing him to finish buying the land, but it was too late.

It is said that when the Czar found out that the plot of land had been ‘snatched’ from his hands by the Holy Ruzhiner he became extremely angry and cried out, ‘He always stands in my way!’ But it was too late, nothing could be done and the Czar had no choice but to buy a different piece of land outside the walls of the Old City of ירושלים . To this day that area is known as the ‘Russian Quarter.’

ר‘ ניסן straightaway hired workers to clear up the land he had bought, and wanted to get straight to work on building a שול there, but he quickly ran into difficulties. Underneath the land was the burial place of an Arab Sheik, and it was necessary to move the grave somewhere else. ר‘ ניסן quietly went along his way, and managed to get permission from a Moslem religious judge to do whatever was necessary. The whole process should have gone off quietly, but the day that the work was supposed to have started, one of the neighbors realized what was happening and made a big noise about it.

‘How can you let such a thing happen?’ he demanded from the other Muslim neighbors. ‘It is a disgrace to the memory of our Sheik’ he shouted. As the hours passed, more and more people heard what was happening and came to protest. As more people came, the neighbor shouted louder and louder, and convinced everyone there that they must join him in stopping this new שול . Soon the entire mob was marching on the courtroom of the judge. The judge, who was scared by the big crowd, quickly changed his mind and insisted that he had never said that the grave of the Sheik could be moved.

ר‘ ניסן was not one to give up easily. Besides, he knew that he was a שליח of his Rebbe, the Holy Ruzhiner, and he had to succeed. ר‘ ניסן waited until the Arabs had calmed down and were getting back to their day to day life, and then he went to the Grand Sheik of the main mosque in ירושלים to beg his help. That Friday, when all the local Muslims went to the mosque to pray, they got a big surprise.

‘The old Sheik appeared to me in a dream,’ the Grand Sheik said. “‘What do you have against me?’ He asked me. ‘Because people used me to stop the Jews from building their synagogue, I was called before the Patriarch Ibrahim (אברהם אבינו ) in גן עדן . He told me off and said, “Why do the children of your nation stop the children of my nation from building a שול in the Holy City of ירושלים . Be careful or you will be severely punished!” ‘Now,’ the old Sheik finished off, ‘instead of holding back the children of אברהם , יצחק and יעקב , you should help them, and this will help me in the other world.’

The Arabs all became very excited, and they quickly went themselves to the judge to tell him that they had made a mistake. Some of them even went to ר‘ ניסן and helped him lay the foundations. Building in the Old City was not very easy though, and it seemed that the more effort that R’ Nissan put into building the שול , the more problems he came across.

One night the Ruzhiner had a dream. In his dream he saw the פסוק in מלכים when ה‘ told דוד המלך that he would not be the one to build the בית המקדש , but that his son – שלמה המלך – would. After this dream, the Ruzhiner sent a letter to ר‘ ניסן telling him to stop building the שול . The שול , called the תפארת ישראל after ר‘ ישראל of Ruzhin, was finally finished by his son, ר‘ אברהם יעקב of Sadigura, in תרל“ב (1872). It stood for just seventy six years until the Arabs destroyed it in תש“ח (1948).

(Adapted from ‘The House of Rizhin’)

We'd love to hear your feedback! Send us your comments, ideas and suggestions to: connections@shluchim.org
 

Click here for a printable version of Connections in PDF format