The Eyes of the Rebbe

Something beyond my comprehension has brought me to Crown Heights. Seven-Seventy. The Rebbe. The Messiah. Each step I take each day brings more depth of understanding of who he must have been. For you see, I never met the Rebbe. The other wholly remarkable thing about my presence in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, is that it was not he who drew me to him. Yet I am in Crown Heights. I am not a Lubavitcher either, which also makes my presence in his community odd. I am going to try to understand what exactly brought me to this place, and maybe I will learn something along the way.

My name is Daniel Rosenthal. I am a Jewish male, single, almost twenty-six years old. At this writing, I am employed in an area of Manhattan called TriBeCa. Every day, outside my bedroom window, I gaze out at the Heart of America from perhaps the heart of the Lubavitcher world. At times, no, every morning and every evening, I feel the enormous weight of this world around me. As soon as I step out on the street or exit the train station in front of 770, I feel a gate closing me in. This sensation contrasts dramatically with my daily ride on the trains. My work world, and every other neighborhood I have traveled through during my short stay in Crown Heights, seems so open to me.

I have somehow ended up in a modern-day Jewish ghetto with no real walls. Yet I know there are walls in Crown Heights. The walls are the followers of the Rebbe. Their long black overcoats, white shirts, black dress pants, black hats and beards surround me, suffocating me with Judaism. No, don't worry; I know there is a greater world beyond my human walls. I know that there is a vast variety of ways of living as a human, as a Jew, as a man, beyond what I find in Crown Heights. Yet it is here that I reside, and it is here that I found my greatest trial.

The trial is not with my Black neighbors, who make up the vast majority of the neighborhood. Their gaze and their woes I cannot begin to understand. I cannot enter their gated community. No, my trial is with myself. My river has washed me, coughing and gasping for breath, onto the shores of perhaps the most open of all the Orthodox Jewish movements. As inwardly I scream and spit for help, outwardly I shove off any attempt to save me. Why? Mainly because I actually do not feel any need to be "saved." I just want to learn to swim.

Once inside 770, I am swept aside in a torrent of Kaddish. It seems that everybody is screaming it. Ten to fifteen men are bleating their replies. And where is their leader? "King Moshiach, Forever and Ever," proclaims a banner on one wall. Amid the roar of prayer there is also the never-ending Talmud study, which washes over me like a mysterious breeze filled with foreign smells and sounds. Rows upon rows of XY chromosomes of different ages, all shifting through musty books with crushed pages, their titles barely recognizable from years of use.

And the books. Anyone wanting to research Chassidic Jewry could probably do no better than this vast array of books, each one gathered and examined the way a squirrel gathers food for the long, cold winter, for food it is to the followers of the Rebbe. Each one gnawing at the pages, hoping beyond hope to connect to something, to something, to something.

MINCHA! MINCHA! MINCHA! BANG! BANG! BANG! on the shtenders. The XY chromosomes run to various spots, face east and begin to pray. Before prayer, a group in the middle begins to clap and sing, building a joyous feeling that pervades their little group. In fifteen minutes it is over.

I get kicked out of the eddies. I am like a rock in their river, creating rapids; they flow around me, rubbing against me slowly, slowly, slowly, imperceptibly eroding my will into theirs. I run out coughing, spitting, grasping for air. I have to get out of here!

"Have you put on tefillin today? Where are you from?" comes a voice from behind a beard. And those eyes! How they scare me so! My mind races. I am in their world. I haven't put on tefillin today. "Get your hands off me, it is none of your business, who are you?" my mind screams. Panic sets in. Sweat on my palms. "Where are you from?" Help me! The droning in the room surrounds me: suits, hats and beards, arms flying, shuckling, cornering me. "Is your mother Jewish? Put on tefillin." NO NO NO NO! I push them away, flailing my torch to beat off the undead Lubavitcher Jew. Back, back to the Chassidic masters! BACK, I SAY! I find my way to the street.

In many moments I want to be them. I want to view their world from the inside. I want to submit to a dead rabbi. He is everywhere now. Before, you had to actually visit the Rebbe. Now you can carry him around, your very own picture of him. Hey, it is for tzedakah, and it is not idol worship, I am assured. When I actually spoke to people about him, they shifted between speaking of him in the past and the present tense.

It is an extraordinary glimpse I have been given into a group of people. That is why I generally keep my mouth closed when someone opens up about him. And they all want to. They miss him so terribly. It is evident in the words they choose. It is in these earth-shattering, heavy moments that I feel the great pain that pervades Crown Heights. Really, all of world Jewry took a loss when he died. People temporarily leave their loved ones for a few weeks to come be near him. They come to Crown Heights to be near someone who has died. Some come to learn with him in actuality, at least in their minds' actuality.

And what did I learn from him, in my mind? I love, yes, I do love Chabad Chassidism. I know that is a hard statement considering what I wrote above. I know now, after years of hanging around Orthodox Judaism, that I have no need to be in a hurry, and that G-d most certainly has a sense of humor. Also, deep within me, I know, I know that it is Mincha, and that I am always welcome to join.

Love,
Daniel Rosenthal