New Year's in November?

What is Chabad? To many, it’s a movement which sends enthusiastic young people throughout the planet to spread love and Jewish values. That’s true.

But the word ‘Chabad’ itself is actually an acronym for three Hebrew words (Chochmah, Binah and Daas) which represent a program for achieving the Chassidic goal of a meaningful life.

Chassidism (through its founder Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov, known as the ‘Besht’) brought the Jewish world a picture of how life should be lived. Then, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi (the Besht’s disciple’s disciple), created Chabad to present a path, a program, for achieving the Chassidic life-objective.

The Previous Rebbe (our Rebbe’s father in law) described Chabad’s contribution to Jewish life with a metaphor: “Pearls can be found in the seabed. Coal, which sheds light and warmth, is found deep within the earth……. The prevalent system is that the miner beneath the earth’s surface needs someone aboveground giving directions; at the same time, everyone needs their own conduit aboveground for their oxygen to breathe….”.

The Rebbe once offered a thorough analysis of this metaphor, and I’d like to highlight a few points:

1.       To discover and actualize our best self (Chabad’s goal), we need to explore deep beneath the surface of our psyches, attitudes and very lives.

2.       Over time, we’ve grown less connected to our souls and operate at a surface level. Chabad’s ‘program’ helps us find warmth and ‘light’, i.e. enthusiasm and joy, in our Judaism and daily lives.

3.    When you introduce light and warmth to a furnished room, you’re not actually adding anything tangible to the room. You’re simply infusing the existing room with a glow. Chabad didn’t add a new ‘section’ of Torah scholarship; it brought enthusiasm and vibrancy to the Torah we’ve had for thousands of years.

3.       Through immersion in Chassidism, we go beyond our basic religious profile and ‘adorn’ our souls with Divine ‘pearls’.

4.       We need guidance from a selfless spiritual master, someone who has an ‘aerial view’ of our lives.

5.       At the same time, we’re each responsible for ourselves, and can’t live a wholesome life based on someone else’s inspiration. We need to dig deep to find personal meaning in life.

Tonight is the 19th of Kislev, known as the Rosh Hashana for Chabad Chassidism (click here for explanation). Take a moment to contemplate this gift – our gift - and have a wonderful New Year!