Rabbi's Blog

 In honor of Gimmel Tammuz- The Rebbe’s 32nd Yartzeit

Dear Friends, 

A friend involved in developing a program to combat antisemitism recently shared a fascinating exchange with a potential donor. After hearing the vision and strategy, the donor paused and asked:

“Can you sell hope?”

At first glance, it sounds like a cynical question. But perhaps it is actually the defining question of our time.

Because hope today has become a rare commodity.

We live in an age saturated with anxiety. The headlines are relentless. Israel is once again being pressured into concessions and withdrawals while the world conveniently ignores the forces sworn to its destruction. Iran signs agreements while openly threatening annihilation. Jewish students walk onto college campuses wondering whether they will be harassed for simply existing.

This week, a woman came to speak with me in tears about her college-aged son who is considering “converting out” of Judaism simply to avoid antisemitism.

Think about that.

A Jewish child in America wondering whether it is safer not to be Jewish.

And yet, perhaps this is precisely why “selling hope” may be one of the most important businesses in the world.

That, in many ways, was the Rebbe’s business.

Gimmel Tammuz is not merely a Yahrtzeit - date marking the passing of the Rebbe - it is a reminder of the astonishing power of one person to inject hope into an exhausted world.

The Rebbe inherited a post-Holocaust Jewish people shattered by trauma and threatened by unprecedented assimilation. Most experts and sociologists predicted Jewish decline in America. Judaism, they argued, could not survive the freedoms and distractions of the modern world.

But the Previous Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, declared defiantly: “America is not different.” Torah could flourish here no less than in Europe.

And the Rebbe took that hope and transformed it into a movement.

He looked at Jews who had little background, little observance, and sometimes little interest, and saw infinite potential. He sent Shluchim/emissaries across the globe not merely to teach Judaism, but to restore dignity, purpose, joy and confidence to the Jewish soul.

The Rebbe also refused to give up on humanity itself.

As America approaches its 250th anniversary, perhaps the greatest hope for this country lies not in technological progress or political victories, but in rediscovering the moral foundations upon which it was built: that human beings are created by a Creator and endowed with inherent dignity because they carry the Divine image.

I recently watched a law enforcement official being interviewed about the phenomenon of “teenage takeovers” erupting in cities across the country. He blamed social media.

But social media is not the root cause. It merely accelerates imitation.

The deeper problem is the spiritual vacuum created when society removes G-d from the public conversation. The Rebbe repeatedly warned that when children are taught they are cosmic accidents, biological beings rather than sacred beings, the inevitable result is a collapse of boundaries, dignity, and self-worth.

Without G-d, morality becomes negotiable. Without a soul, identity becomes fragile. Without purpose, chaos rushes in to fill the void.

This idea is deeply connected to this week’s Parsha, Korach. Korach did not deny holiness. On the contrary, his rallying cry was: “Ki kol ha’eidah kulam kedoshim” — the entire congregation is holy.

But therein lay the danger.

Korach believed that if everyone is holy, then no one should lead, no one should rise higher, and no one should carry unique responsibility. In the name of equality, he undermined the very concept of visionary leadership.

Yet Judaism teaches the opposite. Precisely because every Jew is holy, because every human life is sacred, leadership matters even more. True leaders do not diminish the people; they reveal the greatness within the people. Moshe did not stand above the nation — he stood for the nation.

That was the Rebbe’s model of leadership. The Rebbe saw holiness in every Jew, and greatness in every human being and understood that people need leaders who can awaken hope when others surrender to fear, who can see possibility when others see decline, and who can remind a confused generation of its Divine mission.

In moments when the Jewish people feel exhausted, isolated, or overwhelmed, the Rebbe reminds us to refuse to surrender to despair. He reminds us that G-d believes in us even when stopped we stop believing in ourselves.

He taught us all to be purveyors of hope. In the long arch of history, we are no strangers to struggles and setbacks. But no setback can prevent the needle of redemption from moving forward on Mitzvah at a time.

Good Shabbos and Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Ruvi New

One of the most fascinating explanations offered by the Rambam for the forty-year journey through the desert appears in the Moreh Nevuchim (The Guide for the Perplexed). The generation that left Egypt, he explains, could not immediately enter and conquer the Land of Israel because they still carried the psychological imprint of slavery. They had lived for centuries under oppression, dependency, and fear. Freedom had been granted to them physically, but internally they still thought like slaves.

The desert years were therefore not a punishment alone. They were a process of transformation.

A new generation had to emerge — one born in freedom, raised under the Clouds of Glory, nourished by manna from heaven, and educated with a mindset of destiny rather than survival. Only such a generation could cross the Jordan and possess the land with confidence and courage.

This idea speaks powerfully to our own moment in Jewish history.

For decades, much of Israel’s public diplomacy has been trapped in a defensive posture — apologizing for our presence in our own homeland, endlessly responding to accusations, and often repeating narratives that were never ours to begin with. We became so accustomed to the false “Palestinian narrative” that at times we ourselves helped perpetuate it, speaking about Judea and Samaria as though our claim there were somehow secondary or negotiable.

But something is changing.

A new generation of Israeli leadership is emerging — leaders who are no longer speaking the language of exile, hesitation, or apology. Recently, Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan met with members of Congress in Washington, openly and unapologetically asserting the Jewish people’s obligation to ensure the security of citizens and the historic and Biblical right to the entirety of the Land of Israel, including Judea and Samaria. There is something refreshingly historic about Jews speaking with the confidence of ownership rather than the anxiety of permission.

 
Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan with U.S. Congressman Marlin Stutzman (R-In)

And predictably, the backlash follows.

Case in point: this week, reports emerged that countries such as France were moving to ban Israeli Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich from entering the country. The old world order is deeply uncomfortable with Jews who refuse to speak like guests in their own land.

Perhaps this too is part of the lesson of the spies.

The spies said about the inhabitants of the Land: “We were like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and so we were in their eyes.”

The Kotzker Rebbe famously noted that once the Jews saw themselves as grasshoppers, that perception itself shaped how others saw them. When we view ourselves as weak, apologetic, uncertain, and dependent on the approval of the nations, we invite the world to see us that way as well.

But when Jews stand with confidence, clarity, and conviction in the justice of our cause to be able to live in peace and security, and the eternity of our connection to the land, the perception changes.

The generation that entered Israel under Yehoshua did not think like slaves escaping Egypt. They thought like a people returning home. Redemption required not only leaving Egypt geographically, but leaving Egypt psychologically.

So too today.

The effort to preserve and strengthen the Jewish presence in the Land of Israel demands more than military strength or political strategy. It requires a redemptive mindset — the courage to stop seeing ourselves through the fearful eyes of exile and to begin seeing ourselves through the eyes of Torah, history, and destiny.

It may take the world some getting used to. But eventually, truth has a way of catching on.

Good Shabbos and Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Ruvi New