Good afternoon, and a gutten Chodesh Kislev to each of you. Over the past month and a half, every single one of us have been tasked to navigate a vast array of feelings, emotions and tests of faith, the likes of which most of us have never experienced before. The task...
By revealing the P’nimius haTorah, Rabi Shimon made us fully aware that we need only to look within ourselves to find a roaring fire, a G-dly soul, thirsty for true meaning and a burning desire for the Divine. Lag Ba’omer is a day on which we can fan those inner flames until they become an enduring source of warmth and light, able, then, to ignite and illuminate the way for others as well. And that is something to celebrate.
Banim Atem LaMakom – We are all Hashem’s Children. This special tefillah reinforces this powerful idea, and is a timely reminder of the awesome relationship and responsibility that we share with our Father in heaven.
Music has always been at the heart of Chassidic life and practice. But perhaps even more so than even Modzitz, there may not be another chassidus whose essence revolves around music more so than it does in Chabad. Many of us know that there are hundreds of Lubavitch niggunim – many of us can even sing a healthy handful of them with relative ease. But what many do not know is that the rescue and preservation of the music of Lubavitch can be directly attributed to Rav Yosef Yitzchak, zt’l.
The words in our selichos and our prayers for forgiveness this time of year are certainly very powerful. We may even recite them with profound feelings of remorse. However, and it might be just me, but when we return to the world outside of shul, we may forget the anguish we just felt for having behaved improperly. Therefore, the navi Hoshea (14:3) gives us the remedy, and cautions us in this week’s haftorah – קְחוּ עִמָּכֶם דְּבָרִים וְשׁוּבוּ אֶל ה׳ – That we must take these words with us – even after we have left shul – and work to transform our sincere tefillos into genuine actions of repentance.