Yud Shevat

On Yud She­vat, 5710 (1950), the Frierdiker Rebbe passed away. Soon af­ter, R. Zal­man wrote our Rebbe a long let­ter ac­cept­ing the Rebbe as his suc­ces­sor, though the Rebbe would not ac­cept the man­tle of lead­er­ship un­til a year later.

Sev­eral months af­ter the Frierdiker Rebbe’s pass­ing, R. Zal­man writes to the Rebbe, “ Nu… we need to up­date the hon­orific ti­tles… ” mean­ing to re­place the wishes for health with a men­tion of his right­eous mem­ory. Then R. Zal­man added, “Al­though my grand­fa­ther R. Mordechai Yoel of Homil, when he would talk about the Tzemach Tzedek – even years af­ter his pass­ing – would say ‘the Rebbe, may he be well, ’ and then he would catch his mis­take and add ‘in Gan Eden. ’”

In his re­sponse, the Rebbe ad­dresses this point, “You write that you are afraid to say ‘may he be healthy’ [about the Frierdiker Rebbe af­ter his pass­ing] since it is not cus­tom­ary to do so. What’s the fear? It is ex­plained in [Tanya] Epis­tle Twenty-Eight, that the life of a tzad­dik is faith, love, and fear. In that case [in a spir­i­tual sense] he is very healthy. ”

The Rebbe Shlita de­scribed, in the name of the chas­sidim, how the Rebbe Ray­atz was deeply shaken when his grand­mother, Reb­bet­zin Rivkah, passed away on Yud She­vat in 5674 (1914).

My brother Chaim Baruch - who was there on motzaei Shab­bos (Yud She­vat fell on erev Shab­bos that year), and saw and heard the Rebbe daven Maariv - de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion to me. The cry­ing was be­yond de­scrip­tion.

The un­der­ly­ing rea­son, it was said, was that the Rebbe had taken the re­spon­si­bil­ity upon him­self. She had re­quested that he con­tact his fa­ther (the Rebbe Rashab ), who was in Men­ton at the time, yet he was very pro­tec­tive of his fa­ther’s time and en­ergy. I heard that Lieber­man, the renowned physi­cian, was sum­moned from Vitebsk and had said there was no dan­ger. And when the re­port of Yud She­vat, 5710 (1950),³³ ar­rived I said that then we could have some idea of the Rebbe’s over­whelm­ing sense of loss in 5674. It is also worth not­ing that on the 13 th of She­vat, 5702 (1942), when the Rebbe Ray­atz’s mother Reb­bet­zin Shterna Sarah passed away in New York, the Rebbe Ray­atz was trav­el­ing, un­able to be there.

33. I.e., the Previous Rebbe’s passing. ↩