On a Mission

Be Wholehearted with the L-rd, your G-d. 

In his book, Nine and a Half Mystics, reform Rabbi Herbert Weiner recalls a private audience he had with the Lubavitcher Rebbe, in the mid-1950s. In an effort to understand the Chabad movement, he asked a few questions.

He writes: I pressed my question from another angle and told him that I sensed a desire in Chabad to oversimplify, to strip ideas of their complexity merely for the sake of a superficial clarity. As a matter of fact, I blurted out, all his Hasidim seemed to have one thing in common: a sort of open and naive look in their eyes that a sympathetic observer might call t'mimut (purity) but that might less kindly be interpreted as emptiness or simple-mindedness, the absence of inner struggle

I found myself taken aback by my own boldness, but the Rebbe showed no resentment. He leaned forward. "What you see missing from their eyes is a kera!"

"A what?" I asked.

"Yes, a kera," he repeated quietly, "a split." The Rebbe hesitated for a moment. "I hope you will not take offense, but something tells me you don't sleep well at night, and this is not good for 'length of days.' Perhaps if you had been raised wholly in one world or in another, it might be different. But this split is what comes from trying to live in two worlds."

One meaning of "Be wholehearted with the L-rd, your G-d" is that when you live with a mission, with a clear objective, a clear purpose, you do not need to fight your evil inclination. 

To be wholehearted can mean to be focused, purposeful and mindful.d then it will be easier to be with the L-rd, your G-d.

What is your G-dly mission? What world do you choose to live in? What do you do to sleep well at night? 

Have a great shabbos.

Rabbi Kushi Schusterman

P.S. Services are back on :) see you Shabbos Morning at 10:00 am.