Morning Services
8:30 AM | Sunday, June 13
Unfazed: Lessons of Resilience and Self Empowerment
from the life & teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe OBM
7:00 PM | Monday, June 14
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Shabbat Times
Friday, June 11, 2021
Light Shabbat Candles at 8:10 PM
Saturday, June 12, 2021
Shabbat ends at 9:20 PM
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Torah Reading
Parshat Korach
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Kiddush sponsored by the Torah Center-Chabad in honor of
the Rebbe's 27th Yahrtzeit.
If you would like to dedicate a Kiddush in honor of the occasion of a birthday,
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Special Prayer on a Special Day |
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Dear Friend,
This Sunday, June 13, marks the 27th Yartzeit of the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory. Over the coming days, thousands of people will be visiting the Ohel - the Rebbe's grave for prayer, as is customary when we commemorate the Yartzeit of a righteous person.
It would be an honor to include you (and your family), in my prayers at the Ohel. Please e-mail me at rabbiblock@torahcenterchabad.org with your name and your mother's name (preferably the Hebrew or Yiddish names), and those of anyone else you would like me to mention. If there's a specific need you would like me to pray for, please mention it as well.
May all our prayers be fulfilled.
On the anniversary of his passing (June 13), let's celebrate the Rebbe's vision. Let's honor his life's mission to bring goodness and kindness into this world. Let's do one more mitzvah, one more good deed, to make this world a better place.
Throughout his life, the Rebbe exemplified an unconditional love for all and campaigned for inclusion, and recognized the power invested in the soul of every person without qualifiers. It was this inspiration that brought about the founding of the Friendship Circle.
The Rebbe would frequently encourage that even the loftiest of thoughts must be translated into actual deed.
Please join us on this special day in learning something additional, reciting an additional prayer, and giving some extra charity. Let us also try and apply some of Rebbe's care and selfless dedication to our own interaction with family, friends, and total strangers. There can be no more fitting tribute to the Rebbe than millions of good deeds, mitzvot, performed on his day.
May G-d help us that in the merit of our collective acts of goodness we quickly greet our righteous Moshiach, at which time we will be reunited with the Rebbe and all our loved ones.
Sincerely,
Rabbi Levi Block
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3 Tammuz 1994: Transmission |
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“How is it that the Redemption has not yet been attained? That despite all that has transpired and all that has been done, Moshiach has still not come?
"What more can I do? I have done all I can to bring the world to truly demand and clamor for the Redemption…. The only thing that remains for me to do is to give over the matter to you. Do all that is in your power to achieve this thing—a most sublime and transcendent light that needs to be brought down into our world with pragmatic tools….
“I have done all I can. I give it over to you. Do all that you can to bring the righteous redeemer, immediately!
“I have done my part. From this point on, all is in your hands.”
The Rebbe spoke these words at the close of an address he delivered on Thursday evening, April 11, 1991. Spoken in an anguished voice and couched in uncharacteristically personal terms, the words deeply shocked the Chassidim present in the Rebbe’s synagogue and reverberated throughout the global Chabad-Lubavitch community.
No abatement was seen in the Rebbe’s activities following this talk. On the contrary: although approaching his 90th birthday, he accelerated. Every Shabbat there was another public gathering, and sometimes several more during the week. Every Sunday, the Rebbe stood for hours, greeting visitors with blessings and advice—and a dollar to give to charity. His campaign to bring the world to an awareness of the imminence of the Age of Moshiach continued and intensified.
But a suspenseful expectation hung in the air. The Rebbe had implied that the torch that had been passed from leader to leader, from prophet to sage since Abraham—that torch had now been passed by the Rebbe to each and every one of us.
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The 25th of Adar I, 5752 (February 29, 1992) was a Shabbat like many others for the Rebbe’s Chassidim residing in Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York.
Because it was Shabbat Mevarchim (the Shabbat preceding the start of a new month in the Jewish Calendar) they joined the Rebbe in his synagogue at 8:30 am to recite the book of Psalms, as is the Lubavitch custom. This was followed by the usual Shabbat morning service. Following the service, some rushed home for a quickly-eaten Shabbat meal. Within the hour they were back, joining those who had remained in the synagogue. By 1:30 p.m., the time that the Rebbe's weekly Shabbat farbrengen (gathering) was scheduled to begin, several thousand Chassidim crowded the large room at 770 Eastern Parkway.
Shortly thereafter, the Rebbe entered. For the next three hours he spoke, expounding on a variety of Torah subjects. In brief intermissions between his talks, the Chassidim sang and raised small plastic cups of wine to say lechaim to the Rebbe.
In one of his talks, the Rebbe spoke about the Torah reading of the day, Vayakhel (Exodus 35-38), and that of the following week, Pikudei (Exodus 38-40). But why, asked the Rebbe, does Vayakhel, which means “community”, come before Pikudei, which expresses the concept of “individuality”? Don't we first need to develop and perfect the individual, before hoping to making healthy communities out of them?
But this, said the Rebbe, is the Torah's very point: Make communities, even before you have perfect individuals. People are not Lego pieces or machine parts, which must be fully formed individually before they can be assembled together in a constructive way. People are souls, with the potential for perfection already implicit within them. And nothing brings out a soul's potential as much as interacting and uniting with other souls. Imperfect individuals, brought together in love and fellowship, make perfect communities.
The farbrengen having ended, those who had not yet done so went home for the Shabbat meal; they, too, had to hurry, as the short winter day was already drawing to a close. As soon as Shabbat was over, a group of scholars (called chozrim, or "repeaters") gathered to recall and write down the Rebbe's words (it being Shabbat, no electronic recording devices were employed at the farbrengen). Within 24 hours, the Rebbe's words were transcribed, translated into half a dozen languages, and faxed to hundreds of Chabad-Lubavitch centers around the world. The Rebbe's Chassidim now had "material" to study, disseminate and implement until next Shabbat's farbrengen, if the Rebbe did not deliver a weekday address before then (as he often would).
But on Monday afternoon (March 2, 1992), while praying at the gravesite of his father-in-law and predecessor, the Rebbe suffered a stroke that paralyzed his right side and, most devastatingly, robbed him of the ability to speak. There was no farbrengen on the following Shabbat, nor on the Shabbat after that.
Two years and three months later, the Rebbe passed away in the early morning hours of the 3rd of the Hebrew month of Tammuz, in the year 5754 from creation (June, 12 1994), orphaning a generation.
The Rebbe's disciples are still waiting for the next farbrengen. In the meantime, they're making communities.
Tanya on the Passing of a Tzaddik
The Zohar states that “When the tzaddik departs, he is to be found in all worlds, more than during his lifetime.” Now this needs to be understood. For, granted that he is to be found increasingly in the supernal worlds, because he ascends to there; but how is he found more in this world?
"... As is known, the life of a tzaddik is not a physical life but a spiritual life, consisting wholly of faith, awe, and love of G‑d... While the tzaddik was alive on earth, these three attributes were contained in their physical vessel and garment [ —the body] on the plane of physical space... his disciples received but a reflection of these attributes, a ray radiating beyond this vessel by means of his holy utterances and thoughts... But after his passing... whoever is close to him can receive a [far loftier dimension] of these three attributes, since they are no longer confined within a [material] vessel, nor bounded by physical space..."
Tanya, Iggeret HaKodesh 27; frequently quoted by the Rebbe in the months following the passing of his father-in-law and predecessor in 1950
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Gimmel Tammuz
by Yanki Tauber
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I remember hearing the news early Sunday morning (Israeli Time) and rushing to the airport. I remember arriving at the cemetery hours after the funeral, in midst of the throng still pouring in, as it would through the night and the days and nights to follow, from all over the world.
We (my wife, my 20-month-old daughter and myself) came with the clothes on our back, thinking we'd be taking the return charter flight to Tel-Aviv that very night. We stayed seven days, most of which I spent holed up in an office at 770 Eastern Parkway working on a special issue of Week In Review, a weekly digest of the Rebbe's teachings which I edited at the time. I remember observing with growing amazement what was happening — and what was not happening — in the Chabad-Lubavitch community.
Just about everything imaginable was happening — except for the natural, predictable thing which everyone expected to happen.
There was shock and incredulity. There was grief and agony. There was passionate disagreement and fervent expectation and many, many unanswered and unanswerable questions.
But there was not despair. There was not paralysis. Every one of the Rebbe's emissaries, disciples and followers was saying to him or herself, "what should I be doing now?" And doing it.
I remember thinking: The Rebbe, who has redefined virtually every aspect of life, has also redefined death.
Such was the Rebbe's way. He would, for example, consider the concept "work". With sure and lucid steps, drawing on the wisdom of Torah and the truth of everyday experience, he would show that work equals creativity, creativity equals human partnership with the Creator, and human partnership with the Creator is the raison d'être of human life.
This truth, of course, was stated thousands of years ago by the Scriptural verse, "Man is born to toil." But that statement, which had always struck us as a melancholy if inescapable fact of life, became, in the Rebbe's hands, the key to understanding what makes us tick and to achieving meaningfulness and fulfillment in our daily labors.
He did the same with "marriage," "love," "rain" and "rockets". He would take a natural phenomenon, a cultural curiosity, an everyday activity, and by the time he had finished analyzing and applying it, it was something altogether different. No — it was the very same thing it always was, but in the clarity of his insight its essence was exposed, revealing how scant and shallow was our previous conception.
In one of his talks, the Rebbe quoted the Talmudic dictum that "Sleep is one sixtieth of death." Well, said the Rebbe, if sleep is a form of death, then death is a form of sleep. Sleep is not a termination or even an interruption of life — it is a time of foment, the means by which body and soul recoup their energies for a fresh and refreshed onslaught upon the coming day. So is death. Death, said the Rebbe, is a "descent for the sake of ascent," a retraction of the arrow of life so that it can be impelled by the bow of vacuity with redoubled force.
How? When? Why? The unanswered questions remain unanswered. But we know what we need to do. And we're doing it. You can go see for yourself — if you reside on planet earth, chances are that you are within driving distance of a Chabad-Lubavitch center.
The Rebbe has trained us well.
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