After seventy years of Soviet repression, a Jewish boy in Moscow showed why the Chassidim kept digging for the living spring inside every Jew.
This week I attended the Kinus Hashluchim, the International Conference of Chabad Rabbis. One of the speakers at the banquet was Rabbi Alex Kaller, a Chabad rabbi in Florida. Alex has quite a story, and there’s a fascinating history behind it.
Chanukah Live
In 1989, a one-of-a-kind event called “Chanukah Live” took place for the first time. It was a revolutionary idea at the time. A satellite broadcast would connect Jews all over the world so they could light the Chanukah menorah together with the Rebbe.
The locations included the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Australia, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Hong Kong, London, and more. The cameras went from one location to the next. At each stop, there was a crowd of participants, and when their turn came, they lit the Chanukah candles. Everyone was taking part in the same event.
At the center of it all was 770, Chabad’s world headquarters in Brooklyn where thousands of Chassidim were gathered for the Menorah Lighting with the Rebbe. The screen showed all the participating locations and the Rebbe and the crowd watched the menorahs being lit all over the world.
It was moving to see the excitement the evening generated, and everyone around the world was delighted to see the Rebbe. It was amazing to see him encouraging their singing at the Eiffel Tower and in places like Australia, Jerusalem, and Hong Kong. But one location was different from all the others. Moscow.
To understand what made the lighting in Moscow so extraordinary, we have to go back a little in the history of Russian Jewry.
In 1917, the Bolshevik Revolution took place. The new Communist government declared war on religion. In its view, there was no place for faith in G-d, no place for a Creator, and no place for any public expression of religion. It wanted to build a society where religion would disappear altogether.
Most religious Jews simply fled Russia at the start of the revolution. But the Previous Rebbe, who became Rebbe in 1920, was not willing to abandon millions of Jews to their fate. He decided to stay. He put his life on the line so the Jews who remained in Russia could continue living as Jews. He built an underground network of Chassidim. They opened Jewish schools, set up mikvaos, found Mohelim to perform Brisin and Shochtim to provide Kosher meat, and sent teachers to teach children Torah. They made it possible for Jews to observe mitzvos under the hardest conditions imaginable.
The cost was terrible. Chassidim were arrested, interrogated, and sent to prisons and labor camps. Some were executed. More than a hundred Chassidim paid with their lives for keeping Judaism alive.
Still, they kept going. They knew that if they stopped, there would be nobody to carry on. Back then, the Soviet Union was a superpower. Nobody imagined that its government would one day crumble. The fight went on from the 1920s into the 1990s. All those years, the Rebbe never forgot them for a moment. He devoted an enormous part of his life to the Jews of Russia. He sent emissaries, looked after the Chassidim behind the Iron Curtain, took an interest in every detail, and did everything he could to strengthen Jewish life there.
Then, in the late 1980s, things began to change. Gorbachev’s policies of glasnost and perestroika gradually opened the gates of the Soviet Union. The Communist government began to crumble, and the whole world watched as an empire that had seemed invincible started to collapse.
And then, in Moscow in 1990, television cameras broadcast a scene to the whole world that would have been unimaginable just a few years earlier. A Jewish boy named Alex Kaller stood up and said the blessings over the Chanukah candles in front of thousands of people. The Rebbe stood at 770 and watched him on the screen. I remember how much Nachas that gave the Rebbe.
The Communist government had waged war on religion in general and on the “Schneersons” in particular. That’s what the authorities in Russia called Chabad Chassidim, after the Rebbe’s family name. They knew that the Chabad Rebbes had been fighting them with all their strength for seventy years.
And after all those years, there was the Rebbe in New York, watching a boy light Chanukah candles with unmistakable Jewish pride in Moscow, in full view of the world.
That boy, Alex Kaller, grew up in a home with very little connection to Judaism. But he eventually became fully observant, came to the United States and even became a Shliach of the Rebbe. He went to Miami and began working with Russian-speaking Jews. He started building Jewish programs there and went on to establish a major center for the Russian-speaking community. Today the center has a building of about 40,000 square feet, at the cost of $11 million, and he runs extensive Jewish programs for Miami’s Russian-speaking Jewish community.
Now, in Chabad, everyone in his age bracket has a story with the Rebbe. Everyone had the opportunity to receive a dollar, or a blessing, or some other interaction. Additionally, most people have a picture. In every Chabad home, you will find pictures of the parents or grandparents receiving a dollar or having some sort of interaction with the Rebbe. But Alex, understandably, had nothing of the sort.
But there was that one encounter—that time that he had lit the menorah in Moscow, while the Rebbe had watched it in New York.
There was no doubt that the Rebbe had seen him, and when he spoke at the banquet, he shared that he had always been looking for a photo of the Rebbe of that moment. Was there a photo in which you could see him, and the Rebbe, in the same frame? Despite many searches, he never came up with anything.
Then, one year, as he finished lighting the menorah on the eighth night of Chanukah—exacly thirty years to the moment—his wife showed him her phone. “Is this the picture you’ve been looking for?” The photo finally turned up. You can see the Rebbe standing there, looking at the screen. And there on the screen is Alex, lighting the Chanukah candles.
He ended his speech with a very Chassidic line. “I never had the privilege of seeing the Rebbe. But that Chanukah night, the Rebbe saw me. And because the Rebbe saw me, I’m standing here before you today.”
Digging the Wells
In this week’s Torah portion, Toldos, we read about the wells our forefather Yitzchok dug. Yitzchok arrives in Gerar. He hadn’t necessarily planned on going there. A famine forced him to leave the place where he’d been living and go to Gerar, which is also in the Land of Israel. One of the first things he does there is dig wells.
In those days, water was one of the most valuable resources. If you had water, you were a big shot. Think of what oil means today. Whoever controlled the water effectively controlled the whole region.
Our forefather Avraham had already dug wells, and Yitzchok followed in his footsteps. But the Philistines had stopped up Avraham’s wells and filled them with dirt. Why would they do that? Rashi says they feared invading bands. Wells would give outsiders a reason to come and seize them, threatening the Philistines’ control of the region.
Yitzchok kept digging. But the shepherds of Gerar picked a fight with him too. “The water is ours,” they said. He called the first well Esek, meaning “quarrel,” because they had fought with him over the water. He went and dug another well. They fought over that one too, so he called it Sitnah, a name that speaks of hostility and trouble. Yitzchok dug yet another well. This time the Philistines backed off. He named it Rechovos. “Ki atah hirchiv Hashem lanu ufarinu ba’aretz,” he said. “Now G-d has made room for us, and we’ll flourish in the land.”
Why does the Torah tell us about the wells Yitzchok dug? What are we supposed to learn from that story thousands of years later?
The Rebbe explains that Yitzchok’s task was to dig wells. When you dig a well, you bring up water that’s already there beneath the ground. You don’t pour in fresh water from somewhere else. There’s a living spring right where you’re standing. Dirt, mud, and stones are covering it, and when you clear them away, the water comes to the surface.
Yitzchok kept going through the dirt and stones that covered the water. He also kept going when people tried to stop him from digging.
By any ordinary calculation, Yitzchok had every reason to be intimidated. Avimelech sat on the throne. He could stop Yitzchok’s people from digging wells for a holy purpose, and he took the wells they’d worked so hard to dig. Yitzchok knew what he was there to do. His job was to uncover living water, and he gave himself to that work completely.
The Rebbe draws a lesson for us. We have to reach out even to people who, from the outside, seem to have nothing but stones and mud covering their spring. We have to reach out even to people who seem hostile to G-d, who outwardly appear to break Torah’s laws deliberately, even out of spite. Keep digging and clear away what’s covering the spring until you reach the living water deep inside them and bring it to the surface. (Likkutei Sichos, vol. 1, p. 29. Toras Menachem, vol. 12, p. 79.)
The Chabad Chassidim in Russia followed in Yitzchok’s footsteps. For seventy years, they dug wells. The authorities shut down one Jewish school, and the Chassidim opened another somewhere else. The authorities shut down a mikvah, and the Chassidim opened another in a secret location. They filled in the wells, and the Chassidim dug new ones. For seventy years, there was plenty of Esek and plenty of Sitnah. But in 1989 they reached Rechovos. G-d had made room for them, and they flourished in the land.
And that’s the work of every Jew. Keep digging until you uncover the living water within you.
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