NOTE!

A Great Artist.

Once there was a great and wise king who loved roosters. He was so inspired by their majestic fierceness, their flashing colors, their every graceful move, that he commissioned hundreds of artists to draw him giant paintings of roosters to hang on the wall of his palatial throne room. But to his dismay, none of the portraits were to his liking. He invited greater artists, and then even greater ones, but was left unsatisfied.

So he sent invitations to three of the greatest artists in the world along with fine presents and promises of fame and fortune. Each would receive fifty thousand gold pieces in addition to a fine house with servants and all their needs for one year, and at the end of that time the king would pay one million gold pieces for any picture that found favor in his eyes. The year passed swiftly and word of the three pictures spread throughout the kingdom.

The day of the unveiling arrived. A massive stadium, built especially for the occasion by the king's orders, was packed with thousands of noisy people. On the stage were the three huge canvases each covered with its own ornate curtain.

The crowd fell silent as the first artist approached his canvas, hesitated a moment, took hold of the cord that opened the curtain, and turned to face the king. The king nodded, and the artist, without even turning around, triumphantly pulled the cord and a hum went out from the crowd. It was a masterpiece.

The king rose from his royal seat, walked to the picture, examined it from near and from afar, and announced. "It is truly a work of genius, but... it is not exactly what I want".

The crowd was abuzz as the king returned to his seat and motioned for the second artist to approach. The same scene repeated itself: silence, tension, the victorious pull of the cord. This time when the painting was uncovered, shouts of ‘Bravo!' were heard. But the king, although he admitted that the picture was exquisite, was still not satisfied.

Finally the third artist approached and stood by his picture. Again the king nodded. But the artist, before he pulled the cord, made a request. "Your Majesty, I humbly ask that you make no judgment of my work until fifteen minutes after it is unveiled." An unusual request, but the king nodded in agreement. The artist pulled the cord and revealed -- the crowd gasped -- an empty canvas!

"What is the meaning of this?!" shouted the king, but remembering his promise he fell silent. The artist, meanwhile, had paid no attention to the King's outburst. He was concentrating on the empty canvas before him, palette in one hand and brush in the other. Suddenly he began to paint.

The colors flowed from his very being, the lines danced, changing like fire, like a rushing river, like a field of wheat, like the eyes of a child, of a king.

And then, after ten minutes the picture was finished and the artist turned to face the king.

Everyone was so silent you could hear only the wind; everyone was frozen as though hypnotized.

Then someone broke the spell and began clapping, then another and another, until the crowd was like thunder, on their feet whistling, clapping and shouting "Bravo! Bravo!" The king rose from his seat with open arms, walked to the artist and embraced him with tears in his eyes. "This is what I have been seeking!" The other two artists raised his arms in victory and were weeping with emotion.

Birds of Paradise.

Many wonderful things were said in praise of the Jewish people by our own holy prophets and sages. Yet, every morning, we begin our prayers with the words of the evil prophet Balaam, a man who would have cursed the nation for gold and silver, had G-d only allowed. Some explanation is needed. And so, we have this story, which I heard from my teacher, RabbiElimelech Zwiebel:

In another dimension of time, in a world beyond ours, is a forest filled with magnificent creatures. Of all the creatures there, the birds are the most spectacular, and of all the birds, the tzidikel bird is more beautiful than them all. And of all the tzidikel birds, one stands out with dazzling beauty, beyond anything words can describe.

Every morning in this splendorous forest, the creatures gather before sunrise about the tree of the tzidikel bird. As the sun reaches the tops of the trees, its rays shine down through the canopy and the tzidikel opens its wings in full glory. A panorama of colors glisten and sparkle in its feathers, dancing in the sunlight like so many magical stars and fairies to entertain the bird's delighted audience. Each morning is a more glorious spectacle than the day before. Each morning all the creatures ahhh and ooh in wonder.

All this occurred every day within that dimension of time, until, one year, a new bird came to the forest. Soon enough, the creatures began to gather at the roost of this new bird each morning, leaving the tzidikel all but alone.

"Is she then more glorious than I?" demanded the tzidikel of her few remaining faithful. "How could this be? There are no colors left in the universe that I do not possess!"

"But she," her faithful muttered, their heads hanging from shame, "she has no colors. She is black."

The fury of the tzidikel knew no bounds. She was the perfection of the art of beauty, and if black was to be beautiful, then there was no beauty at all. In rage, she tore herself from her branch and flew to see her rival.

There stood the creatures of the forest in silent wonder. Perhaps it was the oils of the black bird's feathers that refracted the light of the sun as a prism into so many rainbows. Perhaps it was the mystery of her absolute blackness, or the contrast she held against the bright morning sky. All that could be said is that it was an intangible beauty, not of something that could be painted, or described or known in any way. It was beauty as indefinable as black is dark.

"Is she then more glorious than I?!" screamed the tzidikel from her perch above the crowd.

"We cannot tell," the animals explained, trembling. "For it is no longer dawn."

"Very well then," cried the tzidikel. "We will have a contest at dawn! But who will be the judge?"

No creature dared volunteer for such a task. And neither could the two birds themselves come to a consensus. So it was decided that the two would appear at dawn at a position known only to them and the first creature to appear would adjudicate their contest.

All night they prepared their feathers and rehearsed their movements, all night at their secret post in the forest. And as the sun began to rise, they ruffled their feathers and then with a dramatic swoosh spread them wide in the most glorious scene ever to come to the most glorious of forests. Yet there was no witness to that scene, none but the two birds themselves.

Until, from behind the bushes below, a sound was heard that almost toppled the tzidikel from her tree in horror. It was the grunt of a wild boar.

Covered in mud and smelling of its own excrement, the boar appeared, and yes, even he was delighted with the beauty that encountered him. And the two birds, surrendered to the fate of their contest, both spread their feathers and turned elegantly, displaying their pride to the pig below.

He grunted, he snorted, he coughed. He asked for a replay again and again. And after an hour or so, he finally set forth his verdict: The black bird was the most beautiful of them all.

"If so," cried the tzidikel, "my beauty is not beauty. There is no place left for me." And she flew away from the forest, never to be heard of again.

The tzidikel is the light G-d brings into His creation. Through miracles, through tzaddikim, through righteous acts that have no tint of personal motives. The black bird is the darkness. But when the darkness is turned to beauty, it is a beauty so great that light is dim and impotent before it.

As for the pig, it is this lowly world, the world of action, which the Creator Himself has declared the final judge of truth and beauty.

Life After Death

Man has had an abiding faith in a world beyond the grave. The conviction in a life after death, improvable but unshakeable, has been cherished since the beginning of thinking man's life on earth. It makes its appearance in religious literature not as fiat, commanded irrevocably by an absolute God, but rather arises plant-like, growing and developing naturally in the soul. It then sprouts forth through sublime prayer and sacred hymn. Only later does it become extrapolated in complicated metaphysical speculation. The after-life has not been "thought up"; it is not a rational construction of a religious philosophy imposed on believing man. It has sprung from within the hearts of masses of men, a sort of consensus Pentium, inside out, a hope beyond and above the rational, a longing for the warm sun of eternity. The after-life is not a theory to be proven logically or demonstrated by rational analysis. It is axiomatic. It is to the soul what oxygen is to the lungs. There is little meaning to life, to God, to man's constant strivings, to all of his achievements, unless there is a world beyond the grave. The Bible, so vitally concerned with the actions of man in this world, and agonizing over his day-to-day morals, is relatively silent about the world-to-come. But, precisely, this very silence is a tribute to the awesome concept, taken for granted like the oxygen in the atmosphere. No elaborate apologia, no complex abstractions are necessary. The Bible, which records the sacred dialogue between God and man, surely must be founded on the soul's eternal existence. It was not a matter of debate, as it became later in history when whole movements interpreted scripture with slavish literalism and could not find the after-life crystallized in letters and words, or later, when philosophers began to apply the yardstick of rationalism to man's every hope and idea and sought empirical proof for this conviction of the soul. It was a fundamental creed, always present, though rarely articulated. If the soul is immortal then death cannot be considered a final act. If the life of the soul is to be continued, then death, however bitter, is deprived of its treacherous power of casting mourners into a lifetime of agonizing hopelessness over an irretrievable loss. Terrible though it is, death is a threshold to a new world-the "world-to-come."

Rocks and Diamonds.

It was a wintry Friday night in Brooklyn. A roomful of Jewish college kids in the 60's, challenging the young rabbi chairing the roundtable: How can you believe in G-d when science has proven...? Why keep kosher in an age of government inspection and refrigeration? Isn't it racist to speak of the chosen people? The rabbi was doing his best.

Sitting in the audience was an elderly rabbi, long black coat, elegant white beard. He rose to speak.

"The questions you are asking are good questions, but for this you don't need to come to Chabad. Anyone who has learned Torah can tell you these answers. But you came to Chabad; now let me tell you why you came."

Everyone there was surprised he could speak English; the rabbi with the immaculate black coat and long white beard began his story.

A little boy was walking with his father down a steep hill in the heat of the day. They saw a man coming up the hill towards them, sweating, with a heavy sack on his shoulders weighing him down. When the man reached them the little boy asked what he had in his sack, why he was going up the hill, why he was working so hard.

The man told the little boy that his oven had broken and he had to come down to the valley to get more stones to build himself an oven.

Why not get more stones, asked the little boy, and build a bigger oven that will keep you warmer and you can have more food -- there must be more stones still in the valley?

Oh, you little boy, said the man, you don't yet know what it means to have to work, how hard it is to schlep. He put his free hand on the little boy's shoulder. When you'll be big like me you'll be happy with a little oven too.

The little boy and his father continued down the hill.

They saw another man coming up the hill towards them. Same size man, same size sack, but this man didn't seem so weighed down.

What have you in the sack, the little boy wanted to know, is it stones, are you going to build yourself a small oven?

Oh no, the man smiled broadly, no oven building for me! See, I was down in the valley digging for turnips and I hit a treasure. Diamonds! Rubies! Pearls! I have two daughters, two weddings to make, I'm going to open a store and stop peddling from town to town, build myself a house with wooden floors and...

Why not get more diamonds, interrupted the boy, there must be more left in the valley?

Son, said the old man putting his free hand on the little boy's shoulder, believe me, I searched the valley clean. I don't think there is another diamond down there.

The little boy and his father continued down the hill.

You see, said the little boy's father, when you're carrying diamonds they're never too heavy. The first guy may have had diamonds too, but he didn't know what they were.

The old rabbi with the long white beard looked at the college kids.

"You see what the father was telling the boy? A mitzvah is a diamond. Every mitzvah that we do is a precious, precious thing. This is why you come to Chabad; not just to learn a mitzvah but to learn that it is a diamond. When you know they are diamonds then most of your questions will be answered."

I heard this story on a wintry Friday night in Brooklyn. A roomful of Jewish college kids in the early 80's, challenging the rabbi chairing the roundtable. The questions had shifted with the times: why do we need mitzvahs when we can meditate instead?

A man got up and told this story that he had heard twenty years earlier on a cold wintry night a few blocks from where they were now. He told the story well and ended with the words, "It's been twenty years since Rabbi Kazarnovsky stood up that night to tell that story. I could tell you dozens of experiences I've had since then, but to you it would be meaningless."

I jolted. It was just four weeks since my grandfather died. Rabbi Kazarnovsky was my grandfather.

I type the story with pride and awe. Pride because he was my grandfather; awed because he was my grandfather.

Passion, demands the parshah. You can't be Jewish out of a sense of duty. An observant Jew? an unsatisfying label. Like an obedient child, a dutiful husband, a law-abiding citizen, an "observant Jew" accepts obligations - yet keeps on trudging. I know we're the Chosen People, moans Tevye, but isn't it time you chose someone else?

Duty and diligence are not calculated to inspire, they're heavy rocks. But when duty and diligence are born of passion they are tough as steel and as brilliant diamonds. A heavy load? Maybe, on the scales: but not on my back.

"You have to be a rabbi," a friend told me when I was seventeen, "it's expected of you, it's even in your genes." A duty, he was saying. And I thank a rabbi with an immaculate, long, black coat and an elegant, long, white beard, for showing me it's a diamond.