THINK:
This week marks seventy five years since the passing of the Rebbe’s father, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson. R’ Levik, as he was humbly known, was a defacto leader of the Chasidic underground in the Soviet Union during Stalin’s Great Terror. Ultimately, he was arrested by the NKVD, the precursors to the KGB, and exiled to the remote village Chi’ili in Kazakhstan.
As his body, physically broken through torture and exile, began to succumb to the disease that would ultimately take his life, he penned by all accounts an astounding letter. A Kabbalist with a propensity to look for the deeper unifying forces behind all things, R’ Levik explored the details of his arrest - the dates, cities and even his own name - and plumbed them for a spiritual explanation for his suffering. (In the 1970s his insights on the Zohar, written on the margins of his books with ink prepared by his wife Rebbetzin Chana, were smuggled out of the Soviet Union)
There’s a profound lesson here for all of us. We can look at the mundane rhythms of the world and see banality and concealment, or we can look for the underlying forces behind it all. Nature itself, in its constant act of renewal, conceals the G-dly forces that will it into existence, but we have the ability to look for that unifying goodness behind it all.
When our weltanschauung is driven by this understanding, than we can truly become transcendent agents of change - seeking to reveal the innate G-dliness in a proactive way.
DO:
Grab your seat for First Friday Society on September 6th, when we’ll explore the mystical month of Elul.
Last chance to vote for our Jewish meetup at SXSW 2020
READ:
From Woodstock to Jerusalem: A short account of a long trip
Maybe it’s time to learn a little Chasidic philosophy in the Valley? Silicon Valley’s Crisis of Conscience and where Big Tech goes to ask deep questions
A daring tale during the collapse of the Soviet Union, The KGB’s Belated Apology for the Persecution and Death of the Rebbe’s Father
One more look at a week heavy in Soviet links, a look at the Soviet Purge of the Anti-Fascist Yiddish Poets on the infamous night of the murdered poets The Exiled Rabbi and the Executed Poet: A Soviet Jewish Story