09 Jul WHERE OTHERS SAW THE END, HE SAW THE BEGINNING IN TRIBUTE TO THE LUBAVITCHER REBBE, FOR HIS 30TH YARTZEIT

Stop Pounding
Rabbi Sam Wolfson
was giving his
speech to the Jewish
Federation about the
“Tragedy of Jewish
Assimilation.”
Toward the end of his long speech, the
Rabbi clapped his hands… waited 10
seconds… and clapped his hands again.
The Audience looked puzzled. The Rabbi
then explained that every time he clapped
his hands, some Jew married a non-Jew.
Immediately, Morris jumped up from his
seat in the audience and shouted, “Nu… So
Stop With Your Clapping!”
A Blossoming Staff
It is a baffling story. The portion of Korach
tells of the “Test of the Staffs” conducted
when people contested Aaron’s appointment
to the High Priesthood. G-d instructs Moses
to take a staff from each tribe, each inscribed
with the name of the tribe’s leader; Aaron’s
name was written on the Levite Tribe’s
staff. The sticks were placed overnight in
the Holy of Holies in the Sanctuary. When
they were removed the following morning,
the entire nation beheld that Aaron’s staff
had blossomed overnight and bore fruit,
demonstrating that Aaron was G-d’s choice
for High Priest.
In the words of the Torah (Numbers 16):
“And on the following day, Moses came to
the Tent of Testimony, and behold, Aaron’s
staff for the house of Levi had blossomed!
It gave forth blossoms, sprouted buds, and
produced ripe almonds. Moses took out all
the staffs from before the Lord, to the
children of Israel; they saw, and they took,
each man his staff.”
What was the meaning of this strange
miracle? G-d could have chosen many
ways to demonstrate the authenticity of
Aaron’s position.
What is more, three previous incidents
have already proven this very truth: the
swallowing of Korach and his fellow rebels
who staged a revolt against Moses and
Aaron; the burning of the 250 leaders who
led the mutiny; and the epidemic that spread
among those who accused Moses and
Aaron of killing the nation. If these three
miracles did not suffice, what would a
fourth one possibly achieve? What, then,
was the point and message of the blossoming
stick?
One answer I heard from my teacher was

this: The blossoming of the staff was meant
not so much to prove who the high priest is
(that was already established by three
previous earth-shattering events), but rather
to demonstrate what it takes to be chosen as
a high priest of G-d, and to explain why it
was Aaron was chosen to this position.
What are the qualifications required to be a
leader?
From Death to Life
Before being severed from the tree, this
staff grew, produced leaves, and was full of
vitality. But now, severed from its roots, it
has become dry and lifeless.
The primary quality of a Kohen Gadol, of
a High Priest, of a man of G-d, is his or her
ability to transform lifeless sticks into
living orchards. The real leader is the
person who sees the possibility for growth
and life, whereas others see stagnation and
lifelessness. The Jewish leader perceives
even in a dead stick the potential for
rejuvenation.
Let There Be Life
How relevant this story is to our
generation.
Following the greatest tragedy ever to
have struck our people, the Holocaust, the
Jewish world appeared like a lifeless staff.
Mounds and mounds of ashes, the only
remains of the six million, left a nation
devastated to its core. An entire world went
up in smoke.
What happened next will one day be told
as one of the great acts of reconstruction in
the history of mankind. Holocaust survivors
and refugees set about rebuilding on new
soil the world they had seen go up in the
smoke of Auschwitz and Treblinka.
One of the remarkable individuals who
spearheaded this revival was the
Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem
Mendel Schneerson (1902-1994), whose
30th yartzeit is this coming Tuesday, the
third of Tammuz, July 9. The Rebbe, and
other great Jewish sages and leaders from
many diverse communities, refused to yield
to despair. While others responded to the
Holocaust by building memorials,
endowing lectureships, convening
conferences, and writing books – all vital
and noble tributes to create memories of a
tree which once lived but was now dead —
the Rebbe urged every person he could
touch to bring the stick back to life: to
marry and have lots of children, to rebuild
Jewish life in every possible way. He built
schools, communities, synagogues, Jewish

centers, summer camps, and yeshivas, and
encouraged and inspired countless Jews to
do the same. He opened his heart to an
orphaned generation, imbuing it with hope,
vision, and determination. He became the
most well-known address for scores of
activists, rabbis, philanthropists, leaders,
influential people, laymen and women from
all walks of life – giving them the
confidence to reconstruct a shattered
universe. He sent out emissaries to virtually
every Jewish community in the world to
help rekindle the Jewish smile when a vast
river of tears threatened to obliterate it.
The Lubavitcher Rebbe urged his beloved
people to use the horrors of destruction as
an impetus to generate the greatest Jewish

renaissance and to create “re-Jew-
venation.” He gazed at a dead staff and saw

in it the potential for new life.
His new home, the United States, was a
country that until then had dissolved Jewish
identity. It was, as they used to say in those
days, a “treifene medinah,” a non-kosher
land. Yet the Rebbe saw the possibility of
using American culture as a medium for
new forms of Jewish activity, using modern
means to spread Yiddishkeit. The Rebbe
realized that the secularity of the modern
world concealed a deep yearning for
spirituality, and he knew how to address it.
Where others saw the crisis of a dead staff,
he saw an opportunity for a new wave of
renewal and redemption.
Who was the Rebbe? One way to answer
this question is this: He has that unique
ability to see crisis as opportunity. Where
others saw the end, he saw the beginning.
Where others saw disintegration, he saw
the potential for birthing. It remains one of
the most empowering messages for each of
us as an individual, and all of us as a
collective.
The Phoenix
Rabbi Yehudah Krinsky, one of the
Rebbe’s secretaries, related the following
episode.
“It was around 1973, when the widow of
Jacques Lifschitz, the renowned sculptor,
had come for a private audience with the
Lubavitcher Rebbe, shortly after her
husband’s sudden passing.
“In the course of her meeting with the
Rebbe, she mentioned that when her
husband died, he was nearing completion
of a massive sculpture of a phoenix in the
abstract, a work commissioned by Hadassah
Women’s Organization for the Hadassah
Hospital on Mt. Scopus, in Jerusalem.

“As an artist and sculptor in her own right,
she said that she would have liked to
complete her husband’s work, but, she told
the Rebbe, she had been advised by Jewish
leaders that the phoenix is a non-Jewish
symbol. It could never be placed in
Jerusalem!
“I was standing near the door to the
Rebbe’s office that night, when he called
for me and asked that I bring him the book
of Job, from his bookshelf, which I did.
“The Rebbe turned to Chapter 29, verse
18, “I shall multiply my days like the Chol.”
“And then the Rebbe proceeded to explain
to Mrs. Lifschitz the Midrashic commentary
on this verse which describes the Chol as a
bird that lives for a thousand years, then
dies, and is later resurrected from its ashes.
Clearly then, a Jewish symbol.”
“Mrs. Lifschitz was absolutely delighted.
The project was completed soon thereafter.”
In his own way, the Rebbe had brought
new hope to this broken widow. And in the
recurring theme of his life, he did the same
for the spirit of the Jewish people, which he
raised from the ashes of the Holocaust to a
new, invigorated life. He attempted to
reenact the “miracle of the blossoming
staff” every day of his life with every
person he came in contact with.
To Expel or Not to Expel?
Rabbi Berel Baumgarten (d. in 1978) was
a Jewish educator in an orthodox religious
yeshiva in Brooklyn, NY, before relocating
to Buenos Aires. He once wrote a letter to
the Rebbe asking for advice. Each Shabbos
afternoon, when he would meet up with his
students for a study session, one student
would walk into the room smelling of
cigarette smoke. Clearly, he was smoking
on the Shabbos. “His influence may cause

his religious class-mates to also cease
keeping the Shabbos,” Rabbi Baumgarten
was concerned. “Must I expel him from the
school, even without clear evidence that he
is violating the Shabbos?”
The Rebbe’s answer was no more than a
scholarly reference: “See Avos Derabi
Noson chapter 12.” That’s it.
Avos Derabi Noson is a Talmudic tractate,
an addendum to the Ethics of the Fathers,
composed in the 4th century CE by a
Talmudic sage known as Reb Nasan
Habavli (hence the name Avos Derabi
Noson.) I was curious to understand the
Rebbe’s response. Rabbi Baumgarten was
looking for practical advice, and the Rebbe
was sending him to an ancient text…
I opened an Avos Derabi Noson to that
particular chapter and found a story about
Aaron, our very own High Priest of Israel.
Aaron, the sages relate, brought back
many Jews from a life of sin to a life of
purity. He was the first one in Jewish history
to make “baalei teshuvah,” to inspire Jews
to re-embrace their heritage, faith, and
inner spiritual mission. But, unlike today,

during Aaron’s times to be a sinner you had
to be a real no-goodnik. Because the Jews
of his generation have seen G-d in His full
glory; and to rebel against the Torah way of
life was a sign of true betrayal and
carelessness.
How then did Aaron do it? He would greet
each person warmly. Even a grand sinner
would be greeted by Aaron with tremendous
grace and love. Aaron would embrace these
so-called “Jewish sinners” with endless
warmth and respect. The following day
when this person would crave to sin, he
would ask himself: How will I be able to
look Aaron in the eyes after I commit such
a serious sin? I am too ashamed. He holds
me in such high moral esteem. How can I
deceive him and let him down? And this
person would abstain from immoral
behavior.
He Gave Them Dignity
We come here full circle: Aaron was a
leader, a High Priest, because even his staff

blossomed. He never gave up on the dried-
out sticks. He never looked at someone and

said, “This person is a lost cause; he is
completely cut off from his tree of any

possibility of growth.
He is dry, brittle, and
lifeless.” For Aaron,
even dry sticks would
blossom and produce
fruit.
This is the story
related in Avos Derabi
Noson. This was the
story the Lubavitcher
Rebbe wanted Rabbi
Berel Baumgarten to
study and internalize.
Should I expel the
child from school was
his question; he is,
Jewishly speaking, a
dried-out and one tough stick!
The response of an Aaron is this: Love
him even more. Embrace him with every
fiber of your being, open your heart to him,
cherish him, and shower him with warmth
and affection. Appreciate him, respect him
and let him feel that you really care for him.
See in him or her that which he or she may
not be able to see in themselves at the
moment. View him as a great human being,

and you know what? He will become just
that.
*) The nucleus of this idea was presented
by the Lubavitcher Rebbe to a group of
young Jewish girls—the graduates of Beis
Rivkah High School and counselors of
Camp Emunah in the Catskill Mountains,
in NY, on Thursday, Parshas Korach, 28
Sivan, 5743, June 9, 1983. Credit to the late
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks for his masterful
elaboration.