From the Rabbi’s Desk
Rabbi Manes Kogan
Chukat
I am sure many of you met in their lives special people. Some of you can refer to your parents as special people, or to a specific teacher, or to a friend. Maybe some of you were lucky enough to meet through your lives people who were even more than special, people we can give the adjective of "righteous" or "holy". The words "righteous" and "holy" are more difficult to define, since the first association many of us have with these words is heroic figures, far from our experience.
In the last five years of my life I trued to open myself to those experiences with special people, and although I was not exposed personally to anybody of the people other call "saints" or "holy", I met with people who had such experiences.
A person I knew told me about Rabbi Yossel Krantz, of blessed memory, who used to be the Chabbad Rabbi in Richmond, that he emanated an "aura" that he could see around his head. Other people speak about brief encounters with holy people who changed their lives.
In more traditional circles, Hassidic among others, religious leaders will be ascribed "holy features", the ability to perform miracles, to read the future, in other words: to affect reality in a tangible way.
In our Torah portion we read:
"The Children of Israel, the whole assembly, arrived at the Wilderness of Zin in the first month and the people settled in Kadesh. Miriam died there and she was buried there, and there was no water for the assembly, and they gathered against Moses and Aaron" (Numbers 20: 1-2)
And RaSHI explains:
"There was no water for the assembly" – From here [we derive] that all forty years they had the well in Miriam’s merit
After 40 years of wanderings, Miriam dies and the entire community realizes that there is no more water. They are able to make the connection between the miraculous well they had for forty years and the physical presence of Miriam, the prophetess, the righteous sister of Moses and Aaron.
The ability a righteous person has to affect his or her environment is not new to Jewish sources. The Torah tells us that God blessed Pothifar on account of Joseph’s presence. The Midrash tells us that as soon as Jacob stepped on Haran, the well was blessed with fresh waters. When Moses was born, according to our Rabbis, the house was filled with light.
The Talmud, the medieval sources and the Hassidic tales are full of wonderful stories of holy Rabbis, whose mere presence was a source of blessings.
I, as the Rabbi of this congregation, would like to tell you that I believe in the existence of these people. I believed they existed in the past and I believe they exist today, nearby. I did not experience, personally, any supernatural phenomena, people call miracles. However, special people, who don’t consider themselves special at all, touched me my life.
Even the skeptic among us will agree that there are people whose presence is a source of blessings for those who surround them. There are people whose optimism is contagious, whose smile comes from their soul, who speak to us with quiet voice of wisdom. There are people, whose mere presence can cheer us up.
Among the special people, they are a few who can have the same effect on entire communities and even less among them, who can transform even the physical reality, like Miriam the righteous did in the wilderness.
However, you don’t need to be perfect to be special, to become a leader, to transform reality or to bring blessings to others. Miriam herself was not perfect, neither were Aaron and Moses, who in this same portion will be faced with their own limitations. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were not perfect, neither our Sages nor the Hassidic leaders of previous generations. However, all of them were more than special and all of them were a source of blessings.
Our soul can be elevated to heights we never knew before, through the physical presence and influence of special, righteous people. On the other side, destructive and negative people can also damage our soul, and their company can bring us down.
The Torah teaches us there are special people, whose inspiring presence can elevate us and change our lives, and that we too, have the potential of becoming a source of blessings for others.
Shabbat Shalom!