Daf Yomi Kiddushin 72
The students of the holy Baal Shem Tov had just sat down for
dinner when he let out a deep sigh.
“What’s the matter, Rebbe?” they asked him.
“The Ohr HaChaim HaKadosh, Rabbi Haim Ibn Attar just passed
away,” replied the Besht.
“Rebbe, are you a prophet?
He lived in Jerusalem! How could
you possibly know that here in Russia?”
Explained the Baal Shem Tov, “In every generation there is a
special individual who is spiritually imbued with the esoteric kavanos (meanings) of the ritual
handwashing before the meal. Up until
now, the Ohr HaChaim was that individual.
Just now, when I washed my hands, I was suddenly Divinely inspired. At that moment, I realized that Rabbi Haim
must have passed on to the World of Truth.
When Rabbi Akiva died,
Rebbe was born. When Rebbe died, Rav
Yehuda was born. When Rav Yehuda died,
Rava was born. When Rava died, Rav Ashi
was born, which teaches you that a righteous person does not leave this world
until another righteous person is created like him.
As the verse in
Koheles states, “The sun rises and the sun sets.” Before Eli’s sun set, Shmuel
the Ramathite’s sun rose.
How often do we hear the refrain, ‘We don’t have leaders
anymore’? People always look back
nostalgically at yesteryear and long for a bygone era when everything was so
perfect and rosy. But of course that’s
not true. Things were never
perfect. It’s just easier to look
backwards than forwards. Our Gemara demonstrates
that, in his abundant mercy, the Almighty has provided us with never-ending
leadership. Even before the sun has set,
another has already risen!
Our Sages teach that there’s a Moshiach in every generation.
If the generation is worthy, Moshiach
will reveal himself to that generation.
If not, a new Moshiach is born to the next generation. Does that mean
that when the first Moshiach dies, another then comes into the world? But how could Moshiach be a baby?
If you look closely at the words of the Gemara, it doesn’t
state that ‘a righteous person does not leave this world until another
righteous person is born.’ No, it says, ‘until another righteous person
is created.’ Just like in the story of the Ohr HaChaim and
the Besht, when the former passed on, the latter then became the holiest man of
the generation. At that moment, he wasn’t
born; he was created.
Rabbi Motty Berger offers an analogy concerning the world’s
number one cardiologist who dies. The
next day, a reporter asks his editor: Who is the world’s foremost
cardiologist? The editor responds that
he just died. But that wasn’t the
question. Now that he died, whoever was previously
the number two in the world, has automatically become the number one. In other words, when one generation’s
Moshiach passes, another immediately takes his place.
Why do people lament the dearth of leadership in ‘our’
generation? Because it is much easier to
pretend that all the leaders are gone.
With no leadership, you can do whatever you want to do. When the cat’s away, the mice play. A true individual recognizes that leadership
never dies; the baton is simply passed to the next leader. Sometimes that baton-passing is clear; other
times, we must make the effort to seek out the new leaders of the next generation. Either way, the Gemara assures us that the sun
never sets before it rises again.
