Rabbi Mendy Herson's Blog

I met new local friends last Friday night. Afterward, they told me they believed our meeting was ‘bashert'.
I agreed.
Have you ever heard of 'bashert'? It’s a Yiddish word which means ‘destiny’, or ‘it was meant to be’.
Many people use it to encapsulate the idea of a soul mate, as in “looking for my bashert”.  But the concept goes far beyond match-making. It’s about life.
Do you believe that the challenges you face, the people you meet and even your mistakes are random? That life is an orchestra without a maestro?
Or do you believe that G-d has a plan for you? That the Divine has placed each of us here with a destiny, and that every moment of every day is the unfolding of that Grand Plan?
In other words: Does life have inherent meaning? Or is it intrinsically meaningless, and we just occasionally fool ourselves by attaching subjective meaning to random events?
The 'bashert mindset’ is faith in Divine Planning. Believing in bashert is believing that all aspects of my life have meaning. It’s also the faith that my job is to find – and actualize – the productive purpose that G-d has buried in the event I’m facing.
So, when you're faced with a nasty customer or obnoxious boss, when life at home presents you with a stressful dilemma, the 'bashert mindset’ counsels "Take a breath and choose wisely; this is all part of your Divinely- destined journey. Make this next step a step forward."
What does this means for two people who ‘serendipitously’ meet? It means that they should guide the meeting to a productive place, making it an encounter that furthers their own respective journeys, and hopefully benefits the larger community.
The meeting may appear random, but when you believe in 'bashert' there's no such thing.

Bashert is the belief that G-d gives you a life full of opportunities for growth.

It’s also the belief that opportunities are only half the equation. We are co-Creators in this life we’re given.

G-d gives us the opportunities.

The rest steps are up to us.

Don Isaac Abarbanel was one of the greatest statesmen in European Jewish history. Born in 1437, his family fled the massacre of Jews at Castille, and settled in Lisbon, where Isaac was born. A brilliant young man, Isaac became Treasurer to King Alfonso V.

Despite his prestige, Don Isaac eventually had to flee Portugal. He settled in Spain, where he became a senior financial advisor to Queen Isabella. Then came the Spanish Inquisition of 1492. He once again picked up his wanderer’s staff, joining his expelled brethren in exile.

I grew up reading about Don Isaac and others like him.

I, an American boy feeling safe and respected in my own country, struggled to understand how Don Isaac’s world tolerated such irrational injustice.

“It was a different world and a different time,” I said to myself. “Thank G-d for the USA."

My Holocaust readings brought the question chronologically closer. How could the world have stood by and watched such murderous insanity?

“It was a different world and a different time,” I said to myself. “Thank G-d for the USA."

In 1989-90, I spent months teaching Jews in the former Soviet Union. I found the anti-Semitism so tragically irrational that it was almost comical. The “Jews and the Capitalists” were being excoriated in one part of the country at the very same time that “Jews and the Communists” were being lambasted elsewhere in the very same country.

“This is a different world,” I said to myself. “Thank G-d for the USA."

In the past week, there have been violent demonstrations against Israel and Jews in Berlin and Paris. The Don Isaac Abarbanel Synagogue in Paris was attacked by a mob protesting Israel’s response to Hamas lobbying thousands of rockets at non-combatant Israeli citizens while hiding among their own civilians. Is this sane? Would they tolerate that attacks in their own cities?

Sadly, Don Isaac has no rest from history’s eerie and irrational echo. But, tragically, it’s not just Don Isaac. And it’s not just Europe.

According to news reports, Jews were vocal participants in Manhattan’s anti-Israel demonstrations; some of our own brethren are swept up in the insanity. Right here in the USA. In our time.

We don’t have to be passive victims of history. We live in a great and free country. We can guide our history to a saner place.

Educate yourself. Speak up.

Future generations are relying on you.

My sixteen-year old daughter left for Israel this week, together with a group of 50 other girls her age. Tourism doesn’t usually thrive when missiles are falling, yet not a single girl cancelled the trip.

My wife Malkie and I, the other girls' parents (and local Federation Directors who flew there this week), know that ‘playing it absolutely safe,’ and decreasing Israel’s tourism, would be handing a victory to the terrorists.

Every once in a while, we get an opportunity to stare our values in the face and ask “how much does this mean to me?” We need to be ready with an answer.

Today marks eighty-seven years since the Previous Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok Schneersohn, was freed from Communist captivity.

When the Marxists  took power in Russia, they were homicidally brutal in their passionate drive to destroy Judaism. In conventional thinking, the Previous Rebbe (Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn), a world-renowned Rabbi running a network of religious institutions, had a lot to fear. But his thinking was principled, not conventional. He stood for G-dliness, and he would not back down in the face of Man.

The Rebbe was incarcerated in the feared Spalerno prison, beaten and sentenced to death. His response was to stand tall and demand his religious rights. He never handed his captors the gift of his fear.

When the authorities eventually commuted his death sentence, and sent him from prison to relative freedom in exile, the government reserved a train-ride which would have him travelling on Shabbat. He refused to leave that hellhole until he could be guaranteed a trip that protected his religious values. He would not bend.

When he was finally released, the Rebbe spoke publicly at the train station. Ignoring the Communist operatives in the crowd, he publicly declared, “These oppressors can only exercise power over our bodies, never over our souls! The imprisonments and torture are temporary; our values are timeless. Stand tall and keep strengthening your religious observance!”

The Rebbe stood for principle, even in the face of life-and-death adversity. Today is the day he persevered.  So it’s the perfect time to ask ourselves: “What do I stand for, for if I bend under pressure, was I ever really standing?”

Stand tall. The Rebbe did. We can too.