The Rebbe’s Birthday And What It Means To You

I want to share my special day with you, because it is your special day too. We are celebrating the Rebbe’s 120th birthday. I hope you will use the opportunity (as I wrote in my Friday email) to do an extra mitzvah in his honor.

Below is a post Tzivie shared:

This is the picture on my dinning room wall. Today pictures, memes and messages of the Rebbe are going viral. The world is celebrating his 120th birthday and his impact and influence are felt far and wide (even though it has been 28 years since his passing). One meme I saw had these words attributed to him, “Everyone can- and must- be a leader.”

It made me think of something else I would attribute to the Rebbe. I never heard him say it in these words, but it’s what he lived and projected: “Every person can- and must- be a therapeutic presence in the world.”

In the world of mental health, the patient- therapist relationship was always seen as a key part in the patient’s healing. As they understand it, many mental/emotional health issues arise from attachment wounds (a break in those early bonds with our primary caregivers; from the extreme of outright abuse or neglect to the more benign form of a parent figure not being attuned to the child’s emotional needs) and the “attachment- minded” therapists recognizes that as a first step in healing, the patient must feel emotionally safe and connected. The patient will progress towards wholeness when he or she senses that in the therapist there is a compassionate and empathetic witness to their pain and brokenness.

Every living person experienced their first attachment wound when their soul descended from its comfort zone in heaven and entered its corporeal body, very much detached from its serene, delightful and spiritual existence. The body and its needs, our instincts and desires, slowly drove a wedge between the soul and its primary caregiver- G-d. And then adverse experiences and hurt caused even further misalignment from our pure and divine core. To the extent that we have formed an identity that is sometimes completely at odds with that spark of infinity inside of us. (Ego, aggression, selfishness, jealousy and greed, to name a few…Hardly the make up of a divine soul; very much the make-up of a person misaligned from his truest self and just trying to get by.)

In Jewish tradition, we are taught to seek connection with a righteous person, a Tzaddik (the Book of Tanya, Chapter 2 elaborates on this) who can help us heal from that first attachment wound. This is what the Rebbe was to each of us. He was the healer, who held up a mirror to us and reminded us of we are at our core: an ambassador of G-d to our particular plot of the universe, to bring light and hope, goodness and healing.

Life and its experiences comes with the risk of losing sight of our true purpose and its pleasure. We get caught up in the distractions, the short sighted goals and the instant gratifications. We get mired in our complexes and our low sense of self worth. We get stuck in broken patterns of behavior that stunt our growth and slow our progress in actualizing our potential.

The Rebbe was the Tzaddik, the righteous man with the saintly soul who saw in each one of us the pure soul we were born with, and he reminded us, highlighted for us, and empowered us to be our best selves. He saw exactly what we are made of and exactly who we could be. He was also the compassionate and empathetic witness to our struggle. He healed our first attachment wound, consistently reconnecting us with our G-dly source, as often as we needed it. And then he asked each one of us to be that therapeutic presence in the world, for the next person in need.

You and I are tasked with holding up a mirror to every person we come in contact with- to remind them of who they are at their core. We are the Rebbe’s foot soldiers to spread healing and wholeness until we reconnect every soul with its G-dly source.

That picture hangs on our dining room wall because the Rebbe’s gaze reminds me of who I am and that I can -and must- be that reminder for someone else.