Noam: Hey everyone, welcome to Wondering Jews with Mijal and Noam.
Mijal: I’m Mijal.
Noam: And I’m Noam and this podcast is our way of trying to unpack those really big questions being asked by Jewish people, by non-Jewish people, by everyone about Israel, about Judaism, about the Jewish experience, always with the goal of leaving every episode in a better place than where we started from. We absolutely don’t have it all figured out, but we love working through it all with you, our fellow Wondering Jews.
As we say each week, really appreciate and enjoy hearing from you, so please email us at wanderingjews@unpacked.media.
Okay, I wanna actually get directly into the episode today and I wanna apologize for my audio for the tech issues that we’ve had. Listen, I speak for myself, but I am guessing I speak for many, people when I say that the world feels topsy turvy right now. There’s division, there’s misinformation, there’s disinformation. There’s shouting, very little listening.
And what Mijal and I wondered is if we could examine different approaches, tried and tested approaches to lowering the temperature, to rising above the noise, to reconnecting with our fellow human beings, so to speak. It’s in times like these where it feels more relevant to understand what it looks like to build a world grounded in love, in spirit, in positive action. So I like to describe it this way, to my Shabbos table, my proverbial Shabbos table, I’m having Mijal, my guest always. But today we’re wondering about, drumroll, please, Chabad. Not just the movement, but its worldview and its relevance today. So that’s what we’re going to be talking about today.
Rabbi Jacobson: Beautiful.
Noam: So I wanna leave this for our esteemed guest, Rabbi Y.Y. Jacobson, to really say a lot more about what Chabad really is. I’ll just say that it was founded over 250 years ago, Rabbi Schneer Zalman of Liadi, who was a student of Rav Dov Be’er of Mezrich, who was a student of the Baal Shem Tov, which is all part of the story of Hasidut and Hasidus.
And it’s an acronym, Chabad is Chochma, Bina, and Daat, wisdom, understanding, and knowledge. But it’s about so much more than that.
So our guest, Rabbi Y.Y. Jacobson, is one of the most renowned Jewish speakers in the world. Today, he’s known for his powerful blend of Torah wisdom, emotional insight, and deep compassion. And I’m so excited to have Rabbi Y.Y. Jacobson at the Shabbat table together with us.
Rabbi Jacobson: Thank you, it’s an honor, an honor. And a privilege. And I appreciate the invitation and I look forward to the gefilte fish, the chicken soup, the kugel and the chollent, whatever you offer.
Noam: That is not what Mijal–
Rabbi Jacobson: I’ll… If there’s any leftovers, send them to me.
Mijal: It’s so great to be in conversation with you. I’ll just say I’ve watched so many of your videos on social media and I admire so much your ability to capture very deep truths in a way that is so engaging and attractive to so many people. And I’m excited for you to tell us about it.
Rabbi Jacobson: That means a lot and I appreciate it. Thank you. I just try to be a channel.
Noam: Right. So speaking of that channel, let me ask you, Rabbi Jacobson, for someone who’s never encountered Chabad, which seems like impossible.
Rabbi Jacobson: Mars Mars those living on Mars about outside Mars
Noam: How would you explain? I don’t know, when I went to Masada and I got to the top of Masada and there was a Chabad, Rebbe, a Shalik at the top of Masada, I was like, is, all right, this is it, man. We’ve arrived. If you were explaining Chabad in one to two sentences or in a way that younger people don’t know much about Chabad, what is it? What is Chabad?
Rabbi Jacobson: So one or two sentences, I would say that Chabad is a Jewish movement that has sprung up a few hundred years ago in the Jewish world. And I would say its main focus is really to be able to share with ourselves and the entire world the vision for why the world was created, which is to be able to reveal the oneness, the infinite love that connects us all, to each other horizontally and vertically to our Creator. And it’s the effort to communicate that with passion, with decisiveness, with tremendous love, but with also a very profound sense of authenticity to be loyal to the spiritual mission of humanity and the Jewish people on this planet. That’s my sentence.
Noam: Beautiful. So I’m not in my house right now. Big shout out to Becky and Craig Lustman, who I ran to a different area, not my studio, because my Wi-Fi was out. But in my house, I have three pictures of three rabbis. There’s Rav Kook, Rabbi Soloveitchik, and the Lubavitcher Rebbe. And every single time someone comes to my house, it’s not from a deeply Jewish background, let’s say. And even if they are, they might be like, I don’t know who those two rabbis are, but that rabbi, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, I recognize him. Could you say…Why? What about him? What did he do that makes it the case that people who might not know so much about so many rabbis, they’d know the Lubavitcher Rebbe?
Rabbi Jacobson: It’s a great question. The Lubavitcher Rebbe, his uniqueness was, first of all, he was an extraordinary individual in terms of his genius, his mastery of all aspects of Judaism, of Torah, but also of secular wisdom, number one. Number two, he was a true spiritual mystic. He was a real man of God.
I grew up under his feet. I never met a person with such a small ego and literally self-effacing in a way that most people can’t even imagine and fathom, just to mention one thing. He didn’t change his shoes for 30 years, 50 years that he was the leader of the Lubavitch movement. I don’t think he took off one day. So it was a person who really saw himself simply as a conduit for God’s work in this world.
The real power of the Lubavitch Rebbe though was, I think, you know, he became the Lubavitcher Rebbe in 1950. That’s five years after Auschwitz, after the Holocaust. And his ability to be able to reframe Jewish history and give the Jewish people a sense of healing and hope, not to be defined as victims of such terrible atrocities and calamities, but give the Jewish people a vision toward creating a world of redemption and goodness. This resonated with millions of Jews and millions of non-Jews. His ability to be able to turn Judaism outward, instead of being in a defensive mode, rather articulating to the Jewish people that the vision of the Creator at Sinai is not only relevant, but it’s more relevant than ever. It inculcated in the Jewish people a new sense of healing and pride and dignity on a very spiritual and emotional level that was so refreshing because the world, the Jewish world was so desperate. It was so broken.
It was so fractured and for good reason. There were the ashes of six million Jews, including one and a half million children. Where do we go from here? How do we rebuild this? Can we recreate hope in such, such darkness?
The former British late chief rabbi, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks once said something very, very powerful. He said this at the 30 day anniversary of the Rebbe’s passing in 1994. And it stuck with me. I heard this speech at the time. And he said that what the Rebbe did was really, he took the vision of Hitler and he transformed it.
What was Hitler’s vision? There’s no such a thing as a small Jew. There’s no such a thing as a Jew who’s too secular to be hunted down in hate. Every Jew matters. We will catch every Jew and destroy him or her.
And the Rebbe said we have to do exactly the same thing in the positive. Hunt down every Jew in love like every Jew was once hunted down in hate. And he really believed that and he embodied it and he raised a generation of students and disciples and pupils that would embody that legacy, that would embody that vision. There’s no Jew too small, remote, too secular to say, eh he or she is not worth our efforts. Just dismiss them. Let’s move on.
For the Rebbe, every single person really mattered, Jew and non-Jew. He saw every person as an embodiment of a divine image, and every person was an indispensable note in a cosmic symphony. Indispensable for him really meant indispensable. It wasn’t cliché.
Mijal: Rabbi, can I ask you a question? I was very privileged to learn under Rabbi Sacks, to hear Rabbi Sacks speak about how his entire life and trajectory changed because of one encounter with the Rebbe. But I wanted to ask you, you know, can you share with us maybe a story, about what it was like to engage with the Rebbe, like a story that we might not be familiar with.
Rabbi Jacobson: Yeah, sure. I’ll share maybe, you know, something that I saw myself and I still carry it with me because I was right there. This takes us back to March 1992. I was traveling to Israel. It was a Sunday. The Lubavitcher Rebbe would stand an entire day and distribute dollars and blessings to thousands and thousands and thousands of people who would come from all over the world for counsel, for blessings. It was the famous dollar distribution every single Sunday.
The Rebbe at that time was almost 90 years old. He was 89 years old, just a few weeks from being 90. And he stood there literally all day, not eating, not drinking, on his feet, meeting not 10 people, not 30 people, not 100 people, thousands and thousands and thousands of people, men, women, children, from all walks in life and backgrounds. Everybody came. This one needed a blessing. This one needed advice. Everybody got a few seconds and they passed by. There was a long line.
I grew up in Crown Heights where the Rebbe lives. I didn’t go every Sunday because I didn’t want to bother him, but I was traveling to Israel that night for a wedding of a cousin. So I decided to go for the dollars. And when I was there, I already stayed around in order to be able to just watch the scene. And it was really fascinating.
Anyway, it was already close to maybe 6 p.m. The Rebbe has been standing on his feet for six or seven hours straight, direct, nonstop, nonstop. Super, I mean, it was extraordinary to watch.
Then I got into the line to go get my dollar and in front of me, maybe two people in front of me, I saw a father holding on to a little girl. And she seemed to me to be around five years old, maybe six, maybe four. Obviously she did not come from a Chabad family or even a very observant Jewish family. And very little, adorable cute little girl. It was literally right in front of me. I saw this with my own eyes. And she came by the Rebbe and he gave her a dollar and he gave her father a dollar and he would always tell everybody, bracha v’hatzacha, which is blessing and success. And then out of the blue, nobody expected this. She looked him straight in the eyes and she said these words with an accent. said, Rebbe of Lubavitch, I love you. Rebbe of Lubavitch, I love you.
And to be honest, I could see some of the men in the room didn’t feel so comfortable it felt a little awkward, like, you know, what’s the Rebbe supposed to do? What’s supposed to say? It’s not the common thing a girl or even a boy would say to, you know, the Lubavitch Rebbe, I love you. I looked at the Rebbe and I saw his face break out in such a radiant, beautiful smile from ear to ear.
I’ve seen the Rebbe smile many times. And his smile really filled the entire room with electricity, with holy electricity. But that smile, I don’t think I ever saw. It was such a, such a big smile. And he looked at her and he said with simplicity and genuineness, said, thank you. He also had an accent. He was born in Ukraine. Thank you very much. And then as she was about to move on with her father holding her in his hands, he took another dollar and he gave it to her in her hand. And he said, this is for your love.
And then it was my turn and his face grew serious, the smile was gone. And his secretary told him, I told the secretary that I was going to the land of Israel that night. And the Rebbe gave me a dollar, his blessings and success. He gave me a second dollar and he said, this you should give, this you should give for charity when you come to the Holy Land.
The story stayed with me especially because the next day the Rebbe went to pray at the resting place at the grave site of his father-in-law, of his predecessor, the sixth Lubavitch, the Rebbe, passed away in 1950. He’s buried in Queens and the Rebbe would go there twice a week and pray there all day. Most of the letters he received he would read at the resting place and pray to God for what people asked for. Thousands and thousands of letters and he would leave them there. He would tear them up and leave them there. And over there, the next day, literally, the Rebbe suffered a stroke in the evening. This was one day after the story and he never recovered from that stroke. This was the 27th day of Adar 1, 1992.
And two years later, the same day, Rebbe suffered a second stroke, literally the same day. And then a few months later, in June 94, he passed away. So really the last words I heard from the Rebbe right before he told me to give it for charity in the Holy Land was, is for your love. And for me, this just captured the depth and the authenticity of Rebbe.
Here was a little girl. She was not a CEO, she was not a prime minister, she wasn’t a journalist or an essayist, a very influential person. She was literally a little girl who just said, I love you. And with such an open heart and with such authenticity, he cherished it, he appreciated it. And then he didn’t only say thank you, which would be about himself. He gave her a dollar and he said, you know, this is for your love. Like, I wanna give you something for your love. And I think this was really the Rebbe’s uniqueness.
Every person he encountered, he had one agenda and the agenda was to ignite the infinite fountain of love, of compassion, of truthfulness and of confidence that is embedded in their soul and allow them to shine.
A little sequel to the story, this just happened a few months ago. I’m driving in my car and I get a call from a friend who’s living, a friend of mine who moved to Germany. And he says, you know, I have a little surprise for you. And he puts me on the phone with a woman.
Okay, now this woman is in her late 30s. And she said, I saw on TikTok or on Instagram, a video where you tell the story of the Rebbe telling this little girl, this is for your love. And I happened to be that little girl. And she tells me that she didn’t know anybody knew the story. She remembered the story. In fact, that event caused the entire family to come back to Judaism. That moment with the Rebbe.
Mijal: Wow.
Rabbi Jacobson: She didn’t know that anybody knew this story. It was just a little story in the family. I happened to see it. And it was just a very, very, very special moving moment. And the reason was because the Rebbe just had that ability. I think he didn’t have an ego. So he was a conduit and he allowed people to meet themselves by meeting him.
You know, those are the greatest people. There are people when you meet them, you come out of the meeting and you’re like, wow, this is a wise man or a wise woman. This is a great man. The Rebbe’s greatness was when you finished meeting him, you came out and you said, wow, I am great. Those are the true great people. They don’t show you that they’re great. They show you that you’re great. They become mirrors for you to be able to see who you are.
For the Rebbe, there was no such a thing as mediocrity. There was no moment that was small. There was no person that was small. And there was no event that was small. For him, if it was part of God’s ecosystem, it had infinite value and significance. The moment you look at your life and you feel that you’re not in a world of mediocrity anymore, you matter infinitely.
Your work matters infinitely, your actions matter infinitely, and your circumstances are meaningful. It changes everything. Suddenly you’re not a small person. There was a poet who once said, most people live lives of quiet desperation. I think it was Thoreau, for the Rebbe, that was intolerable. Don’t be quiet and don’t be desperate.
Mijal: Yeah.
Noam I mean, there are amazing stories in terms of like, when I was reading Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz’s biography, Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and he talked about when he was doing so many different things, he said to the Rebbe, like, I can’t do anything more. What do I do? And there’s a famous Hasidic story that like when somebody was very busy in their house, had so much going on, the idea was bring more into your house and then eventually take some things out and then you’ll see that you have time. So the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s idea was, when he spoke to Rabbi Steinsaltz, he said to him, don’t do less, bring the goat in, meaning do more, do more, accomplish more. If you feel like you’re doing so much, do more. That seems to be this big concept that emerges from the Rebbe from Lubavitch.
Now, my question to you is something that Mijal and I talk about a lot. We talk a lot about the challenges that young Jewish people and all Jewish people face today, whether it’s in terms of antisemitism or feeling their Jewish identity or whatever. But sometimes I think, what would the great rabbis, what would the great leaders who are no longer amongst the living, what would they say at this moment? What guidance can, can Chabad, can the Lubavitch Rebbe bring to this moment that helps us think about antisemitism, helps us think about Jewish identity today?
Rabbi Jacobson: It’s a very powerful question. So after making a disclaimer that of course I can’t speak for the Rebbe exactly what he would say, but I do, you know, following him for many years being a disciple, I also had the privilege of being one of the oral scribes who transcribe his talk.
Noam: That is low-key. It’s called a chozer?
Rabbi Jacobson: Yeah, chozer means in Hebrew a reviewer. The Rebbe would speak for many many hours on Shabbat and holidays and of course according to the Torah tradition we do not allow any recording devices. So there was no microphone, there was no tape recorder, this is even before the days of mp3s and everything had to be memorized and you’re talking about talks that can extend for three, four, five, six, seven, eight hours. You’re not talking about a five-minute sermon or even a 20-minute sermon.
And these were profound, profound, intricate addresses that were extremely scholarly and thought-provoking and stimulating and really genius, pure, pure genius. And so there was a group that would memorize and transcribe it.
So I’m just, I know that’s a very interesting topic, but I just want to get to your question. We’re living in a very, very critical, critical moment in history. This is not a time to duck. It’s not a time to sit on my couch and just watch television or watch a clip of this reporter, that reporter. It’s not a time to surrender and play small league.
This is the time when the Jewish people have been tested to the core. Jewish consciousness has been stimulated in unprecedented ways, both in positive ways and negative ways.
October 7th has been the worst day in Jewish history since the Holocaust in terms of atrocities, the cruelty, the barbarity, the amount of deaths and then captive, the hostages taken and the revival that happened afterwards on one level and also the explosion of Jew hatred and venomous antisemitism around the world, even in our most elite academic institutions, that we prided ourselves, that our children managed to get into these institutions, Harvard, Columbia, etc. Really, Rebbe would say this is a time for every single Jewish young man and woman to realize that we are all mobilized.
Like I can’t be neutral. For many years we just thought I can be an American Jew and just be a bystander, know, and enjoy some, enjoy some falafel and maybe some bagel and lox and be a cultural Jew and enjoy some things of Judaism, but really blessed the fact that we can completely assimilate and be integrated into the larger society. What we have seen in the last two years is that a Jew is a Jew is a Jew is a Jew. That either I become truly, truly immersed in what it means to be a Jew.
And I think today is a tremendous, tremendous wake up call for all of us to be able to appreciate the fact that the world sees the Jew as such a central being on our planet. You know, millions of people have been murdered around the world in the last few years, but there’s only demonstrations about Israel. What is that?
That is because the Jewish people were chosen to change the landscape of planet Earth, not more and not less. And I think until we don’t understand as Jews who we are, what our potency is, what our spiritual power is, we fail to learn about the most important aspect of ourselves, which is our Jewish soul. And I think it’s a very, very special, special time, because whenever you live in such moments when things are crystallized in such a powerful way, it’s a tremendous opportunity to be able to meet your deepest soul.
So I would encourage every young Jew, go on that journey. Don’t remain neutral. Don’t remain objective. Don’t remain detached. Challenge yourself in ways that you never challenged yourself emotionally, psychologically, spiritually.
What does it mean to be a Jew? What does Judaism say about life? Why are they obsessed with the Jewish people? Why are they obsessed with Israel? Who are we? What do we represent? What is our voice? And this shouldn’t only be a global reflection. I think it should be a very, very personal reflection because the growth that can happen at such moments is really unprecedented.
Mijal: Rabbi, that’s such a powerful reflection really focusing on the Jewish soul and Jewish power. I’m curious if what you would say the Rebbe would advise regarding how to fight antisemitism around the world. When we started off, when Noam asked you to describe Chabad, your description, the way that I heard it, was actually quite universal. It was about bringing a certain goodness in relation to the world at hand. And I think part of the challenge that many of us have now and you also just indicated that you see the same things, is that we look at the world and there’s a certain sense of disappointment sometimes. Some people are feeling despair or fear and I’m curious to hear what would the Rebbe say is the way for Jews to, yeah, like in addition to focusing on like not being detached and the Jewish soul, what is Chabad’s answer to antisemitism?
Rabbi Jacobson: Yeah, I think the Rebbe’s focus on antisemitism was at three levels. Number one, the Rebbe would always say this, the world respects Jews who respect themselves, their God, their tradition, their history, their Torah, their faith. Israel was celebrated most in its history after the victory of the Six Day War, when it understood the calling of history and it returned to the biblical homeland of Israel. And when the Jews are not embarrassed to tell the world who we really are, who we really are, why we are in Israel. The more Jews are anchored in their own faith, history and tradition, the less the world is confused about Jews and the more they respect us. That’s number one.
Number two, the Rebbe understood very, very deeply and very, powerfully that when Jews are truly Jewish, when Jews are not embarrassed with who they are as Jews, it also influences the whole world in a positive way. The world looks to the Jewish people for moral leadership and guidance. When we provide that moral leadership and guidance, it helps the entire world. Our job is to be beacons of moral clarity and light to the whole world. Instead, so often we are self-hating, we are so ambivalent, we are so ashamed of ourselves, and it doesn’t help our cause. know, Jews are like the miners’ canaries of history. When miners have to go down to a mine to mine for coal, they sent canary birds first to see if there are noxious fumes. If there are noxious fumes, the canary birds die and then everybody knows there’s poison, don’t go down. If the canary birds come back from the mines healthy and well, you know that it’s safe. The canaries are sensitive, so they right away pick up the poison.
In history, we are the miners’ canaries, meaning we attract the poison first. How do you know if a place is poisonous and disgusting? See how they treat Jews. If they hate Jews, they attack Jews, you know that there is poison there and ultimately good people are gonna die. So antisemitism is really a litmus test for any society, how the society is doing. If they hate Jews, it begins with Jews, doesn’t end with Jews.
Jewish people have to understand who we are. We were chosen to be leaders. And the more we do that, the more the world respects us.
Noam: Rabbi, two last questions that I want to get your closing thoughts. Two questions, misconceptions about Chabad. If I may, and I apologize if this comes off in a way that’s not intended, but two questions that I have about Chabad that I think a lot of people wonder.
One is, the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s and Chabad’s relationship to Israel. Would Chabad identify as Zionist? I remember learning a lot. I study Zionism pretty seriously. And I remember that the Chabad rabbis prior to the Lubavitcher Rebbe had a bit of an uncomfortable relationship to Zionism and I’m wondering how you would identify the Lubavitcher Rabbi and Chabad’s relationship to Zionism in Israel today.
And then my second question, another perhaps misconception, is the question about Mashiach.
Mijal: Messiah.
Noam: One of the things that I’ve heard from friends in the past is that, and I want to know how you react to this misconception, that most of Chabad really does believe that Lubavitcher Rebbe is still the Messiah, whether physically or spiritually. And when I once went to 770 and I hung out with a bunch of the young guys there, one of the guys actually said to me is like, the Rebbe is not just alive spiritually, he’s actually alive physically. Like he actually is alive physically. And I was wondering, that a fringe opinion? Is it not just the physical, the spiritual one also?
So those are the two questions that I have about Chabad that our listeners I think would be very interested in. What is Chabad and the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s relationship to Zionism in Israel? And what is the Chabad and Lubavitcher Rebbe’s relationship to whether or not the Lubavitcher Rebbe is the Messiah.
Rabbi Jacobson: Beautiful questions, thank you. So in terms of the first question, I would say as follows. The relationship between Chabad and Zionism is problematic for one reason, and that is the Rebbe felt, that the focus of Zionism to immerse itself in a secular ideology divorced from the Torah view of Israel and the Jewish people undermines the security of Israel.
Meaning the Rebbe’s problem with Zionism was that he felt that Zionism undermines Zionism. Zionism undermines Zionism. Why? Very simple. The moment you say that the state of Israel was founded in 1948, the Rebbe felt you are undermining the security and the potency of Israel.
The Rebbe said, don’t turn Yom Haatzmaut, your Independence Day, is not the fifth day Iyar, when Ben-Gurion turned Israel into a state, even though it’s a great miracle. Your real Yom HaTzmaot is Shavuot. It’s the day we stood at Sinai 3,337 years ago. Thousands of years before there was an Islamic religion, before there was a Muhammad. Thousands of years ago. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, King David, King Solomon, Moses, Joshua. That is when Israel was given to the Jewish people.
The Rebbe felt that when Zionism is divorced from Torah and from Jewish faith and history, It undermines the argument and the morality of Israel. And he felt that this directly undermined the entire IDF, the entire Israeli government, Jewish students in universities all around the world who felt embarrassed by Israel.
What happened to Israel? What was the tragedy that caused October 7th? It was, according to the Rebbe, the inner insecurity of so many Jews that they don’t feel morally justified with what happened in the Six Day War. They’re always apologizing for their existence. So the Rebbe felt that Zionism, when it’s divorced from the true connection of Judaism, the Jewish people that goes back 4,000 years, it actually undermines the security and the viability of Israel.
He wrote this to Ben-Gurion in 1959. He wrote him a long letter and he wrote to Ben-Gurion that the moment you divorce Israel is just a secular endeavor. We will have a generation of Jews who are embarrassed by their Judaism and they will ultimately undermine the security of Israel. So that’s number one.
In terms of supporting the soldiers, in terms of supporting the Yishuvim, the settlements, in terms of supporting the holiness and the Jewish people in Israel, I don’t think you’ll have a stronger supporter than the Lubavitch Rebbe. It will be very, very hard to find somebody who supported Israel, the Jewish people, the security of Israel, encouraging every Jew in Israel like the Rebbe. So this is a very, very subtle and very, very important distinction that needs to be made.
And the Rebbe also felt that there were many mistakes that were made. He felt that when you don’t raise Jewish kids in Israel with a good Jewish education, with a Torah education, you can create a society of people who call themselves Israeli, but they’re embarrassed as Jews. I remember after October 7th, there were many, I was reading posts of Jewish Israeli artists, writers, poets who said, you know, we were always embarrassed with our Judaism. We were proud of our Israeliness. Today we see you can’t distinguish between the two. It’s an illusion, it’s an illusion. This is a tragedy because a lot of the founding fathers of secular Zionism, they had very big issues with Judaism. They wanted to replace Judaism with nationalism and the Rebbe felt that would be one of the greatest historic mistakes. He always felt that way as his predecessors felt. So that’s some of this very sensitive issue. That’s in terms of your first question.
In terms of your second question, I think it’s, listen, to say that the mainstream of Chabad believes that the Rebbe is physically alive is ludicrous. mean, the Rebbe passed away, unfortunately, in 94, and he’s buried in Queens. The spiritual presence of the Rebbe, the soul of the Rebbe, like the soul of every person, especially of a tzadik, is certainly present and manifested.
The real focus of the Messiah, of the Mashiach, and Chabad, I think, must always be understood in the words of the Rebbe himself that I heard myself. And the main campaign, the main focus of the Rebbe was that we’re living at a time when the world is seeking healing, healing on every level, individually, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, physically, and collectively. This world is searching for redemptive consciousness. And the Rebbe wanted every person to feel responsible, to be an ambassador of love, light, hope, healing and redemptive consciousness. As the Rebbe would say, every person is a Mashiach. Every person has a little Mashiach in them. When everybody reveals the Messiah inside of them, together we’ll have the collective Messiah.
I think it’s very aggravating when that primary mission statement becomes eclipsed by focusing on one detail or another detail. And I think it’s very, very important to remain loyal to his greatest calling and his greatest calling was everybody can bring redemption one step closer by revealing the infinite light of the Messiah that exists in their own heart. If somebody wants to believe that the Lubavitcher Rebbe could still be the potential Mashiach and it motivates them to live with redemptive consciousness, so be it. But let’s not get distracted by the real mission and the real opportunity.
It’s very easy to call this one or that one Messiah. You know what’s a real challenge? Call yourself Messiah by becoming a true ambassador of redemption. That’s much harder. It’s easy for me to say this Rebbe, that Rebbe, that one is Messiah, big deal. And now I’ll go back to eat potato chips and be obnoxious and dysfunctional. It’s much harder for me to say, you know what? I am the Messiah. You are the Messiah. You are the Messiah. Maybe not for everybody, but for me, for my soul, for my house, for my family, for my community, I can be an agent of healing and love.
Mijal: You know, Rabbi, we hear from our audience and we have so much diversity, religious diversity, political diversity, people that would, you know, affiliate with one concept more than other. What I love about what you’re offering us is that for many of us, most of us, like I’m not Chabad, for example, but this message that you’re offering about what it means to listen to the words that encourages us to think about our agency and how we can be part of the solution, how we can be part of bringing healing to the world. It’s part of what I love about what Chabad really does, which is that it offers this message to everybody. And it’s a message that is just so universal and so urgently needed. And I’m grateful for the way that you brought to us the stories of the Rebbe to inspire us to take this very seriously right now.
Rabbi Jacobson: Sure, thank you, my honor. I just try to be a channel for the wisdom that I heard from the Rebbe. The Rebbe was just a channel for the infinite wisdom of the Divine in the world and that’s really what it’s all about. You know, the moment we can go away from the places of ego and insecurity and insecurity is another form of ego the Rebbe would always teach. You know, there’s ego that comes across as arrogance and there’s ego that comes across as fear and insecurity. Well, we could step out of that and become channels. Then we become agents of infinite, infinite power and potential. And that’s really where our glory, where our glory lies. And that’s the power of every single one of us.
Noam: Yeah, Rabbi YY Jacobson. Thank you so much for joining us on Wondering Jews.
Mijal: Thank you
Rabbi Jacobson: Thank you for the privilege.
Noam: Thank you.
“Wondering Jews is a production of Unpacked, a brand of OpenDor Media. Today’s episode was hosted by me, Noam Weissman.
And me, Mijal Bitton.
The team for this episode includes Rob Perra, Rivky Stern, Ari Schlacht and Ryan Rabinowitz. As always, we’d love to hear what this conversation sparked for you. If you have disagreements, if you have agreements, if you have thoughts that we did not consider, shoot us a note, be in touch with us, email us at WonderingJews at Unpacked.media.
Again, WonderingJews at Unpacked.media. And of course, find us on social at WonderingJews. Thanks so much, Mijal.
See you next week.