Last November, after Muslim terrorists killed the directors of the Chabad House in Mumbai, India and other Jews, I attended a memorial service for them at Chabad of Stamford, Connecticut. There, I had a unique spiritual experience – and I mean that in the real sense of “unique,” something completely new in my life.
I wrote about the service before. It featured a video tribute to Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg. It praised their hospitality in welcoming everyone to the Chabad House, and their Jewish learning. During that mournful but forward-looking night, somebody compared Gavriel and Rivka to Abraham and Sarah, the first Hebrews, who welcomed angels and others into their household.
At that moment, something momentous clicked in my soul. Perhaps the speaker made this explicit point: Gavriel and Rivka weren’t just like Abraham and Sarah – somehow they actually became Abraham and Sarah. Somehow, 4,000 years of history vanished and I saw the Patriarch and Matriarch.
What happened then – so long ago after Abraham heard the command “Lech Lecha” (get thee out) and left Ur of the Chaldees – assumed an electrifying immediacy in my life. I felt a direct connection to my faith that I had never known before. A line ran from Abraham to the Holtzbergs to me.
The thoughts inspired me to rent a movie I had seen before and liked a lot: Déjà Vu with Denzel Washington as investigator Doug Carlin, unraveling an explosion on a ferry in New Orleans. What's the connection? You might ask, “How is Chabad like a Denzel Washington action movie?” I’ll explain.
Washington uncovers a secret (of course) government research project called “Snow White” that enables viewers to peer into the past for short periods of time. The more he hears about the project, the more he wonders about the true nature of what he sees, and eventually he discovers Snow White can function like a time machine. This dialogue especially grabbed me:
Technician: “Basically we’re folding space in a higher dimension to create an instantaneous link between two distant points.”
Article comments
1 - Ruvy
Yashar kóaH!! kol hakavód l'khá!!
You make excellent points that every Jew (or Child of Israel) would do well to remember. The mere fact that Abraham and Sarah lived four thousand years ago does not make them any less relevant or close to us today! In fact, all things considered, they are more relevant. We Children of Israel, all of us, need to make our homes guesthouses for our brethren, and places for the Children of Noah to study and learn civilization.
"Bringing light to the nations" is not merely a matter of inventing a better cellphone or coming up with a way to use stem cells that will cure disease and yet not need aborted fetuses. It is not merely a matter of developing insulin for injection or developing a polio vaccine. It is bringing the pure light of the Laws of Noah to them as well, and to do that, we ourselves need to develop the requisite holiness. And Habá"d is an excellent tool for developing that holiness, even if one does not swallow all of their ideas.