A Spiritual Moment

It’s past midnight. I’m alone in a cemetery in Queens. I’m not literally alone; hundreds of people come and go all night. But I’m alone with my reflections, trying to compose my note to place on the Rebbe’s grave.

I ask myself, “Why am I here?” Because I am a Hasid? But what is a Hasid? I know the familiar definitions: piety, kindness, religious fervor, disciple of a Rebbe, but I need something more this night. I need to get in touch with what makes a Hasid.

A picture comes to mind. I’m 12 years old, living in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, rooting for the Yankees to win the World Series, betting on center fielder number seven (Mickey Mantle) to make it happen. It’s Wednesday afternoon. I wander into 770 Eastern Parkway, home base for Chabad Hasidim. An energy draws me there. A small minyan is saying Mincha prayers. I see Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe. He has square shoulders and a large forehead. He wears a large brimmed hat and his broad shoulders stretch the cloth of his kapota. This much-revered leader of an international movement, a prodigious scholar and mystic, then bows.

He was saying the Modim in the Amidah and he bowed. This picture haunts me all these years. He bowed with his head and shoulders only. It was dignified, elegant, and something more. Unschooled in such matters, I naturally did not understand the significance of the act, but it moved me like an inside-the-park home run in the House that Ruth Built.

Later I realized that I was stunned by the Rebbe’s unabashed humility. Humility, I learned, is a great virtue—a spiritual quality, not so much in those who have no alternative but to be humble, but in those gifted, powerful people who bow their heads reverently to that which is greater than they. I had seen a bigger-than-life hero, and discovered his awe of something to which he bowed his head. What humbles such a man?

I understood—no, I felt—what Almighty means and God became real to me. A heady experience for a 12-year-old. These memories don’t satisfy me. The image continues to haunt me. One day while counseling a very unhappy couple, I heard myself saying to the husband, “It’s not about you. It’s about the family.”

The ability to admit that my life is not about me, for me that is true humility. Yes, we are humbled by the Grand Canyon or the number one billion. But true humility is more than an admission of smallness. It is the realization that reality exists independently of me; I cannot control it by my will. I must live with it, submit to it. This I saw in the Rebbe's bow. From the communists and the Nazis to the new world, he never faltered. Because it is “not about me.” One does what must be done.

I still am not satisfied. I see myself at age 16 speaking to a group of teenagers about the importance of Mitzvot. “They are not only good deeds; they are God’s will.” I say the words but miss the significance. Martin, a 17-year-old asks, “When did God begin to want these Mitzvot?” Five decades later, I ponder Martin’s question. When did God begin to want? At Mount Sinai? With Adam and Eve? When did He consider all that He had made and realize that some of it pleased Him and some did not? God wants. All creation began with His wanting a world that would please Him. His will is the oxygen of existence. It is eternal, ineluctably moving the world toward Divine perfection, and we are asked to freely participate in making His will familiar to His creation. The Rebbe, it now seems clear to me, was bowing to God’s will, to the desire, the very urgency of God’s wants.

Five decades later, I think I understand that as a 12-year-old I was awed by, but not comfortable with, the Rebbe’s humility; it disturbed me. We are intelligent beings who can make things happen. Why be intimidated by what is greater when you have your own greatness? What use are our human endowments if we merely submit and surrender to the “Big All?” I realize now that the Rebbe was not bowing in submission to an ineffable Being. It was not surrender to fate or destiny, but rather an unconditional dedication to satisfy the divine hunger; not to be good or holy, but to do right by God’s vision of His world. We are His people because we bow to His plan, not His power or size. His plan, not ours.

His desire, His plan, His need for tikkun olam becomes our mission. This humility of purpose should produce a Hasid who is obedient, not meek; affectionate yet unsentimental; tolerant yet not permissive; an advocate without being dogmatic; pious yet not officious; proud, not haughty; a pursuer of dreams yet not a dreamer; principled yet not judgmental; funny but not frivolous.

I still struggle, and it still smarts when I fall short of these virtues. But to fail is not an option. With this thought in mind I am ready to write my note to place on the Rebbe’s grave.—Rabbi Manis Friedman