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Previous Events - Gimmel Tammuz 2005
The Rebbe lived life by drawing from the truth of torah wisdom everyday to show the world that work equals creativity, creativity equals human partnership with the Creator, and human partnership with the Creator is the raison d'être of human life. This truth, of course, was stated thousands of years ago by the Scriptural verse, "Man is born to toil." But that statement, which had always struck us as a melancholy if inescapable fact of life, became, in the Rebbe's hands, the key to understanding what makes us tick - to achieving meaningfulness and fulfilment in our daily labours. He did the same with "marriage," "love," "rain" and "rockets". He would take a natural phenomenon, a cultural curiosity, an everyday activity, and by applying the clarity of his insight, he exposed its essence, revealing how scant and shallow our previous conceptions had been. In the early morning hours of the 3rd of Tammuz, 5754 (June 12, 1994), the soul of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (b. 1902), ascended on high. Chabad WA So on Saturday night, which was the Yartzeit of the Rebbe, the Chabad community of Perth WA honoured the Rebbe’s life through a multimedia extravaganza. Rabbi White took his audience on a journey into the life of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, while Rebbetzin White kept taste buds tingling with her smorgasbord of home made nosh. The tourists explored the sights and sounds of an extraordinary life and its affect on thousands of people around the world. They visited hundreds of Chabad institutions, attended a Chabad Women’s Convention, marched in a lag – Ba’omer parade, listened in to some of the Rebbe’s most evocative statements - LIVE, and shared intimate meetings with the Rebbe along side those fortunate to have received personal blessings. The voyage was eye opening, emotionally stirring and viscerally real. The community was evidently treated with an opportunity to be inspired by a formidable Jewish leader of our times, to practically apply torah Mitzvot and a positive attitude in today’s and tomorrow’s world. Happiness on a yartzeit? In one of his talks, the Rebbe quoted the Talmudic dictum that "Sleep is one sixtieth of death." Well, said the Rebbe, if sleep is a form of death, then death is a form of sleep. Sleep is not a termination or even an interruption of life -- it is a time of foment, the means by which body and soul recoup their energies for a fresh and refreshed onslaught upon the coming day. So is death. Death, said the Rebbe, is a "descent for the sake of ascent," a retraction of the arrow of life so that it can be impelled by the bow of vacuity with redoubled force. We are all apart of something larger than ourselves. Many questions remain unanswered, but we know what we need to do - Take Action People imagine that since G-d is not physical, therefore He must be in heaven. But the heavens--and all things spiritual--are just as much creations as the earth. G-d is not found due to the capacity of a place, but by His desire to be there. And what He desires most is to be found in the work of our hands, fixing up His world. In the heavens is G-d's light. In the work of our hands dwells G-d Himself, the source of all light. It is incumbent upon us, to take action today, by spiritualizing the material and materializing the physical. The Rebbe taught that this potential lies in YOUR hands! |
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