From the Pulpit: A culture of creating leaders

Rabbi Menachem M. Blum

By Rabbi Menachem M. Blum
Ottawa Torah Centre Chabad

From the Caribbean to Mexico, from Florida to Europe, Ottawa vacationers attended Chanukah celebrations organized by Chabad and some brought back regards from my colleagues, Chabad rabbis posted around the globe. Their feedback was the same across the board, “It is so amazing to see young couples move to these far-out places away from their family and form their community and create a Jewish oasis in real deserts.”

My mentor, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, is the inspiration that fueled the Chabad outreach revolution. His teachings continue to motivate thousands of his emissaries around the world to dedicate their lives to enhancing Jewish life wherever they are. This month, I participated in the commemoration of the 70th anniversary since he assumed the leadership of the Chabad movement.

In his opening address in 1951, he said in Yiddish: “Leig zich nisht arayn kein feigelach in busem,” literally, “Don’t put birds in your bosom.” This Yiddish saying refers to someone who fools himself by putting a bird in his pocket, thinking that this will make him fly.

This is how the Rebbe empowered thousands of his followers to go out and create Jewish communities in places where kosher food or synagogues are often non-existent. He made it clear that while having a spiritual leader for guidance and inspiration is important, in order to see real progress, we need to work on it on our own and achieve it from within. His message was, “I am here to inspire and guide you, but I won’t do everything for you.” His attitude was that his followers are required to find their power and strength on their own and light their fire from within. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the former chief rabbi of Great Britain, expressed it beautifully: “Other Jewish leaders that I’ve met created followers, the Lubavitcher Rebbe created leaders. It was he who encouraged me and ordered me to enter the rabbinate.”

This is the standard that the Rebbe set for Chabad and how he built his Jewish outreach machine. The financial and programmatic responsibility rests entirely on the shoulders of the local Chabad rabbi and rebbetzin. The couples don’t receive any seed money or capital funding from Chabad headquarters. Each chapter is independent and has to develop its own financial support from their local communities, which ensures that it establishes roots and truly becomes part and parcel of its local community. Although every chapter is directed by the Rebbe’s teaching and his guiding principle of loving every human being unconditionally, each chapter sets its direction as to what to spend most of its energy on. Whether their focus should be on youth programming, serving the elderly, education or on social programs and services.

In describing the Rebbe’s impact on world Jewry for the last 70 years, Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz writes: “The Rebbe changed the direction in which Jewish history was moving. If you told a Jew after the Holocaust that his son or daughter would be more God fearing, that the next generation would be more religious than the previous generation, that person would react in disbelief. The crisis after the Holocaust was so deep that the general feeling was that religion had ended, a matter of a year or 10, until Judaism became a distant past. The Rebbe inspired his followers to embark on a worldwide mission to travel to all corners of the earth to open Jewish educational and social centres and engage Jews of all ages in Jewish life and today we are seeing the results.”

From the Pulpit: Brisket lessons for the New Year

Rabbi Menachem Blum

By Rabbi Menachem Blum

Ottawa Torah Centre Chabad

I write these lines a few days before Rosh Hashanah, as Jews around the world prepare to greet the New Year. This is a period for introspection when we dedicate some time to cheshbon hanefesh (soul accounting). Taking stock of our actions of the past year to decide where we have improved and where improvement is still needed. Which unwanted habits have to be discarded and which good practices and mitzvot have to be kept and built upon.

Very much like the first step practiced in preparing a brisket for smoking. This is something I recently learned while organizing Ottawa’s first Kosher BBQ Cook-Off. Some fat has to be trimmed off the brisket and some fat has to be kept. Trimming it too much will make it too dry and trimming it too little will make it taste too fatty. The first step in preparing for the New Year is to think deeply and honestly as to what we want to keep and what we want to discard.

As with every other New Year celebration, the second step is to take on good resolutions. To add another mitzvah and good practice in the upcoming year which will add spice and flavour to our life. Every one of the seven teams who participated in the Kosher BBQ Cook-Off applied their own spices and rubs to their brisket before starting the smoking process. Each one of us can find one more mitzvah that we can add and incorporate into our lives to give it a little more meaningful flavour.

Then, there is the science of smoking the brisket that I learned about. The heat temperature has to be stable and water has to be used to help keep moisture in the smoker. This mixture of heat and water is symbolic of two elements needed to achieve success in our New Year’s endeavours. Our approach in life must have two opposing forces. Heat, which is the by-product of fire, and its polar opposite, water. On the one hand, we must be like fire, which always reaches upward, expressing our yearning to reach a higher place. We must strive to go from strength to strength and constantly rise higher. On the other hand, we must be like the calm water, which flows downward, which symbolizes the idea of being present in every moment of our lives.

Finally, I learned that after the brisket comes off the smoker, it is wrapped up to rest, so that it maintains its heat and holds its moisture. While we are excited about the New Year and our new resolutions, we all know too well that many resolutions don’t last very long. We need to wrap ourselves up with the recognition that the purpose for which we were created, is to serve our Creator and make the world a better place to live in. Maintaining this awareness through the year will ensure that even after the inspiration of the High Holidays wanes, our warm enthusiasm, passion and excitement, to make this year the best ever, will be sustained.

May you and yours be inscribed and sealed for a Happy and Sweet New Year. Shana Tova!