Op-Ed: My Personal Gimmel Tammuz Memories and Experiences

by Shoshanna Silcove

Thursday, May 12, 1994
Lubavitch World Headquarters
Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New York

About a dozen of us gathered around a large table in the classroom of the seminary that catered to adult women who had returned to their Jewish roots. This was a class for returnees to Judaism who had journeyed from secularism to Torah observance. Most of us were now married and well established members in good standing in the religious community. The Rabbi sat patiently at the head of the table and waited for us to settle into our seats so he could begin his lecture.

Suddenly, a late comer arrived looking distressed and frazzled. It was Naomi (not her real name), one of the pillars of the community. All eyes were on her as she noisily clamored to drop her handbag and sit down. Everyone noticed she had been crying.

” I just got off the hotline,” Naomi announced loudly to no one in particular, and without taking a breathe she continued, “and I am so worried. The Rebbe’s condition is worsening…what if, what if…G-d forbid….”, gasping for air her voice trailed off as she slumped with drooping shoulders into her chair.

These were the days before the internet and mobile phones. The hotline was a telephone number with recorded updates of the Rebbe’s health status. It was set up shortly after the Rebbe’s stroke almost two years prior. It was available for anyone to call anytime 24/6 for free and listen to the Rebbe’s aides give over a short report of the Rebbe’s current medical condition.

From the day the Rebbe’s stroke silenced him, it was as if time had stopped for his Chassidim. Our entire life’s focus centred on our Rebbe’s health condition. We all increased and intensified our efforts in our religious observances and, in carrying out the Rebbe’s projects in the hopes that in the merit of our holy work G-d would heal the Rebbe. His health condition was never far from our thoughts, and no matter what was going on in our personal lives, our intent in our prayers and religious practice was that he should be healed.

The Rebbe had imbued a Messianic fervor in us, and the feeling among Chassidim was that the decline in his health must be a temporary, albeit painful stage, that would soon be ushering in the Final Redemption. We told ourselves and each other that the only possible outcome to the Rebbe’s illness would be the revelation of Moshiach, and we were certain it was imminent, or at least we acted like we were confident in that expectation. No one would dare utter a word about the alternative outcome, which was unthinkable for us then.

Nevertheless, it was getting harder to deny the Rebbe’s health had greatly deteriorated to the point of him becoming incurable according to natural means. Only a miracle could save his physical life. We were living in denial of that fact but, also with a deep abiding devotion and faith in the Rebbe’s leadership, his teachings, and in his holiness. None of us were prepared for what would happen a mere few weeks later on Gimmel Tamuz.

Naomi’s fears were shared by us all, except she was the only one who had the temerity to express them. As we all awkwardly squirmed and averted our gaze from each other to hide our anxiety, the Rabbi began to speak and said something that would be an epiphany for me. “No one should be worried about the Rebbe’s health. Anyone who worries about the Rebbe’s health is not truly a chosid. The Rebbe is not like a normal human being, he is the Leader of the Generation, a Tzadik (Righteous person), a prophet, and he is a godly being. While it may seem to our physical eyes that he is sick, this is not the reality at all. We are being fooled and deceived by unholy forces. We need to work on ourselves spiritually to come to a greater understanding and, then we will know that what we are seeing is not an illness at all, but what we are seeing is that the Rebbe is actually transforming into becoming the Moshiach.”

With the Rabbi’s words, the other women’s facial expressions suddenly changed from worried to calm. Even Naomi, as distressed as she was, breathed a sigh of relief. However, I felt my anxiety level rise as my mind became preoccupied with a flurry of unspoken doubts and questions.

The Rabbi’s depiction of the Rebbe’s condition confused me as none of it made any sense based on Torah. While up until now I had respected and admired this Rabbi’s learning and Chassidic credentials, I felt as if I had just entered a cult. This went against everything I had been taught up until that point of what Chassidus teaches about what a Rebbe is. A Rebbe, to my understanding, is a human being, a special one, even one with supernatural mystical powers of prophecy and miracle making, but a human being of flesh and blood nonetheless. Nowhere in my studies had I learned differently, and it was at this point on that day that I realised that I could not be counted among those who held by this misguided strain of thinking that much of Lubavitch had embraced. The harsh reality was that the Rebbe was in extremely ill health, and no amount of wishful thinking or intellectual contortions and distortions of Chassidic concepts would change that fact.

All this deeply disturbed me, so I made an appointment with another learned and prominent Rabbi whom I perceived to be quite grounded in reality. We sat in his office on Eastern Parkway where I emotionally blurted out how perturbed I was by this cultish thinking. I told him that I felt that denying the Rebbe’s illness was not only against Chassidic teachings, but also a denial of our Rebbe’s great physical pain, and wasn’t that uncompassionate?

To my astonishment I found myself uttering the words that we were all thinking but dared not say,
” Rabbi, what if the Rebbe passes away?” As soon as I heard these words leave my lips my tears flowed freely as if the dam broke. He waited for me to finish my crying spurt and a few moments more until he spoke.

“None of us want for the Rebbe to G-d forbid pass away. And we are praying everyday that the Rebbe has a complete and full recovery, as we also pray that Moshiach comes. However, we cannot pretend that this is not a possibility that the Rebbe could pass away before that happens. After all, the previous Rebbeim all passed away, and, as much as we hope and pray it doesn’t happen, we must prepare ourselves with the possible eventuality that our Rebbe could also.”

Finally, we were no longer ignoring the elephant in the room. Later on, after the Rebbe’s passing, it would become clear to me how indebted and grateful I would be to this Rabbi for being authentic with me, for not pretending, and for preparing me for the great loss that we would all soon experience. It was this Rabbi’s honest and caring words that would put me in good stead to emotionally deal with the grief of Gimmel Tamuz. When it happened, I was not in the same terrible state of shock of those who were in denial and never imagined that it was possible that our Rebbe could pass away,

Gimmel Tammuz 1994
Motzei Shabbes
Early hours of the morning

It was the middle of the night and I was awakened by the phone. As I sleepily put the the receiver to my ear I heard my friend Mindy (not her real name) on the other end. She sounded strange, almost other worldly and trance like as she said, “Shoshanna, I want to ask you if I am hearing what I think I am hearing.” She conferenced me into the Rebbe’s health hotline and I heard a male voice saying, ‘ Baruch Dayan Emes’ and the Shema prayer repeatedly on a recorded loop.

Immediately I knew what this meant and felt my eyes moisten. Mindy then conferenced us into a phone call with a respected Rebbetzin. With all three of us on the phone we listened to the hotline recording. Mindy asked the Rebbetzin to tell us if we heard it correctly, if it was really saying what we thought it was saying but did not want to accept. “Yes, it is true,” she said sadly, ” the Rebbe’s holy soul has left his holy body.” Mindy and I started to wail, ‘No! No! Noooo!””

I woke my husband and told him the terrible news. In his groggy state he told me that I must be mistaken, that it could not be true. I felt restless and I couldn’t stay in my apartment any longer, so I threw on some clothes and ventured out into the streets of Crown Heights.

It must have been about two or three in the morning. The streets were starting to come alive with a few Chassidim gathering and meandering out of their homes as the news was just becoming known. I made my way in a daze down Kingston Avenue towards 770, the Rebbe’s shule. A woman came towards me with a tambourine in her hand. She was smiling as she tried to hand me the tambourine which I refused. ” Don’t worry!” she cried out, ‘the Rebbe will get up any minute now!” I remained unconvinced.

As I arrived at 770 I saw some young men singing and dancing in the street. Their faces beamed with joyous anticipation, as for them this event could only mean one thing– that the Rebbe would appear as Moshiach momentarily. In my intense sorrow and grief I envied them.

I sat down on the steps of 770. It was a warm summer night and for some reason I could not bring myself to enter the Rebbe’s shule. I opened a book of Psalms and cried and prayed. Weeks later I would discover that the press was there filming, and a snippet with me saying Psalms on the steps of 770 appeared on national television. I had not even noticed the press there at the time.

Gimmel Tammuz
The day of the Rebbe’s funeral

It was an extremely hot day. Crown Heights was quickly filling up with hundreds of people from all over New York and other places. The biggest concentration of crowds was around 770. Most people were crying bitterly, but some were singing and dancing. A group of young men were singing and dancing right in front of 770. One of the Rabbis of the Crown Heights Rabbinical Court loudly admonished them for disrespecting the Rebbe by their inappropriate expressions of joy, but they ignored him and continued.

A line formed going towards the front room of 770 where the Rebbe’s holy body wrapped in his tallis was placed. Around him were a minyan of grieving Rabbis, shirts torn, faces ashen, praying through their tears, candles burning. People stood in line awaiting their turn to stop at the doorway where they could see the Rebbe to either say goodbye, ask for forgiveness, or say whatever was in their hearts. When my turn came I was astonished to see how frail the Rebbe seemed under the tallis. Yet, wrapped in the tallis he appeared in my mind’s eye like a glowing angel. Was this really my beloved Rebbe? Could it be that this was the greatest leader of world Jewry of the twentieth century lying still? It all seemed so surreal.

At the time my husband was manager of the Merkos book store across the street from 770. We decided instead of jostling with the crowd and getting pushed around in the heat, we would go up to the second floor of the Merkos offices and watch the funeral from the window. There we stood with our four year old son watching in disbelief as the Rebbe’s coffin was being transported over the crowd. We followed the procession in our car to the Ohel where the Rebbe would be buried next to his father-in-law the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe.

The displays and cries of grief at the Rebbe’s burial were beyond description. ” Stand Rebbe! Stand!,” one chosid could be heard yelling, ” this is your last chance!”, he bellowed out just before the Rebbe’s coffin was lowered into the ground.

I was embroiled in deep and astounding grief for a long time to come. Not that I had not endured losses in my life, unfortunately I had had several losses from a young age. Yet somehow this was different and far more profoundly felt. As I sat in 770 unable to control my tears, I could hear some other Chassidim happily chirping that the Rebbe was still alive, or that he was still actually really here physically, or that the Rebbe would be coming back any moment now, and that we must be joyous. These Jews were still in denial, and I found their resistance to the grieving process to be highly offensive. Didn’t the Rebbe deserve to be grieved? After all this great and righteous hero had given of himself to us, how could we disrespect him and go on merrily as if we did not feel the void of his loss in our lives?

The aftermath of the Rebbe’s passing were heady days indeed. As Chabad muddled its way through the grieving process and grappled with a new reality, there would be great divisions within our ranks. There would also be healing, and the Rebbe’s holy work would live on and thrive. It has been thirty years now since we have not had the merit to hear the Rebbe’s words from his holy mouth, and twenty eight years since his passing. None of us could have ever imagined that it would take this long for the Moshiach to come. Nevertheless, we remain faithful Chassidim, and as such we keep waiting and working to bring Moshiach when we will see our great and holy Rebbe once again. Ad Mosai!