Our Heart Skipped a Beat4 min read

It was late Purim afternoon in Yerushalayim. Our lively, uplifting seuda winding down, we were getting ready to dance our way into Shabbos preparations. A minute before bentching, I glanced at my phone, and I felt a shock ripple through my being. I couldn’t believe the words I was reading. Maran Sar HaTorah, Rav Chaim Kanievsky, had left the world.

“Eivel Gadol La’Yehudim.”

I stood frozen, stunned, unsure whether to let the others know or to keep the news to myself. Suddenly sobered, I walked to a corner and allowed the tears to flow.

“V’nahapoch hu.”

From the very pinnacle of joy to the darkest depth of sadness. Once more, a celebration of holiness marred by the flight of its embodied sparks. On a day bursting with illumination, the light of the world had dimmed.

“V’ha’ir Shushan navocha.”

There is so much to say about Rav Chaim’s life, his personality, his greatness, his leadership, and, above all, his absolute devotion to and mastery of the entire Torah for nearly 90 consecutive years. In the coming days and weeks, I am sure our publications and news sources will be filled with tributes, stories, and articles to dissect what this loss means for our generation.

But in the current moment, so many of us are grappling with the tragically familiar sensation of emotional and spiritual dissonance. How are we to handle the instantaneous shift from joy to mourning? How is it possible to take the joy of Purim with us when we are so suddenly thrust into the cold, dark, reality of a world without the flame of Torah constantly flickering at Rav Chaim’s storied desk? What message is Hashem trying to send us?

These are difficult, painful questions, questions certainly too weighty for a simple person like myself to try and resolve. But in His great Mercy, Hashem placed in my heart a thought that has personally been giving me chizzuk, and I would like to share it in the hope it may do the same for you.

The ultimate triumph of the Purim story makes it so easy to forget the first half of the Megillah. The decree, the terror, and the despair we read about are almost immediately washed away, completely overshadowed by the remarkable turn of events that unfold in the most satisfying of ways. Before we know it (in less than a half-hour, it seems!), Haman is vanquished, his plan dismantled, and the Jewish people lifted to the dizzying heights of celebration and eternal victory.

But the tzaddikim teach that this victory against Haman, the malevolent energy of Amalek, was a direct result of the spiritual strategy employed by Mordechai and Esther. Amalek’s objective is to push the world deeper into the fragmentated realm of corporeality, fostering the discord and disunity that result from the ego – a greater commitment to the physical body and its individualism than to the realm of the spirit, the collective soul which binds us together as one; “Yeishno am echad, mefuzar umeforad…”  In response, Mordechai sought to counteract this force by cultivating unity, gathering Jews together and thereby helping them to lift their eyes as one toward something that transcended their personal ambitions and interests, toward an elevated realm that descended to unify them from above; “Lech kenos es kol haYehudim”.

The unfortunate truth is that, with rare exception, it often takes a tragedy to shake us out of our reverie – the tidy boxes of individual concern within which we live our lives, wrapped up in our own interests, in the struggle of daily living. The loss of our gedolim is one such tragedy. It makes no difference who you are, where you live, what you wear, or the nature or level of your religious affiliation. Yesterday, the heart of the Jewish nation skipped a beat, and we were all shaken, as one. From the yeshiva bochur to the taxi driver, from the morah to the politician, from the Ashkenazi to the Sephardi, the Litvak to the Chossid, we froze when we heard the news, a shudder passed through us all – erupting from the deepest chambers of what we share, what we hold essentially dear, the Jewishness that runs through our national veins in the form of the spiritual lifeblood that is our holy Torah. Close to a million people are expected to attend the levaya, which will be one of the largest in Israel’s history. In the throes of a series of global crises and instability which bear Amalek’s evil stamp, our holy nation is once more being called together.

Amidst the great pain of our loss, this perspective has given me some comfort. Perhaps we haven’t been mercilessly dragged out of Purim and shoved back into the darkness, the megillah and its joyous glow a thing of the distant past. Perhaps, instead, we are watching as the megillah is rolled a few columns backward, Hashem giving us an opportunity to experience the transcendent unity about which we have read, to relive Mordechai’s gathering in the face of our generation’s decrees and attain the elevated awareness this togetherness helps us foster of who we truly are, and what truly matters in the life of a Jew.

A tzaddik and gadol of this caliber doesn’t leave the world in silence. The very ascension of such a collective soul embodies his final directive: “Lech kenos es kol haYehudim.” Mordechai’s cry echoes forth from the empty chair at 23 Rechov Rashbam, filling the void in our hearts with a sense of opportunity in the throes of our challenge, urging us to come together again, to come together, at long last, in a Purim’dike way of netzach – an eternal togetherness. To link arms and look beyond our differences toward those ideals we share: our love of Torah, of Hashem, of righteousness, of the gentle holiness and shining elevation Rav Chaim represented. And to allow that essential unity to become solidified in our journey away from the small things that divide us and toward the light beyond, the light within us all.

In the merit of this unity and our increased personal commitment to walk, together, in the footsteps of Rav Chaim zt”l, may we merit to read further in the megillah of our generation, experiencing the speedy eradication of evil, the nullification of all harsh decrees, and the transformation of all our pain into the most elevated joy with the immediate arrival of Moshiach and the return of all the tzaddikim we have lost.

“Kein tiyheh lanu.”