Sweat and All

A young child was looking for his father.

It was years ago, during Shavuos, right outside 770.

A humble corner on Eastern Parkway was packed with people, strollers, and running children. Shul was out, and everyone was waiting to watch the Rebbe leave.

It was a hot day. Sweat trickled down the foreheads of eager onlookers.

But, while everyone was looking for the Rebbe, one young child was lost in a sea of black. He too wanted to see the Rebbe, and his mother had encouraged him to brave the swarms with his father. But now, his father had dissolved into the black mass, nowhere to be found.

All of a sudden, the Chassidim started singing. The crowd got tighter.

Just then, among the rush, the child caught a glimpse of his father. He quickly grabbed onto his kapote. He wasn't going to lose him this time. Now content, but still feeling harried, he used his father's black jacket to wipe the sweat from his forehead.

When he looked up, he saw someone far older than his father. He saw someone that, along with him, hundreds had their eyes on.

The young child had just wiped his sweat on the Rebbe's kapote.

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The young child's mother, who had been watching the Rebbe, was humiliated when she noticed her child. In a letter, she poured out her elaborate request for the Rebbe's forgiveness.

But the Rebbe did not accept her apology.

In a letter, he responded:

"If you only knew the great (spiritual) pleasure that gave me. If only it was this way with the adults ("Ein leshaer godel hanachas ruach, v'halvai hoyo mein ze bagedolim")."

Holding the letter in her hand, right then and there, she was privy to the depths of just how much the Rebbe wanted to be everyone's Tatty.

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The Rebbe's response was a protest to our notions of him as an untouchable holy figure.
A child wiping sweat on his kapote was worth so much to the Rebbe - and certainly more than all the distant veneration.

The Rebbe refused to stay in everyone's mind, stuck in their frame of reverence.

He was constantly saying, "Get closer."

He was saying, "If I'm not a father, than what am I?"

In the Rebbe's simple response lies the whole of our relationship to G-d.

G-d is constantly asking us to bring him closer into our lives, our hearts. Blood, sweat, and tears - he wants it all. Why? Because He wants us.

Just like the Rebbe is more of a Rebbe when we wipe our sweat on him, so too with Hashem...

... you can never get too close.

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So, it was years ago, Shavuos time, right outside of 770.

A young child was lost in a sea of black, searching for his father.

Instead, he found the Rebbe.

But still, it was his father he found.

-from livefromthehilltops.blogspot.com