This late December Shabbos, with students away on break, we had opportunity to spend a quiet getaway family Shabbos in Crown Heights with Raizy’s parents and 5/8 of our kids (the other 3 at the Jewish Girls Winter Retreat upstate).

On Shabbos morning my son Moshe and I went to daven Shacharis in the Rebbe’s Room (his office and study from his arrival in USA in 1941 throughout his years of leadership). Memories of past visits to this special room and its associations floated through my mind. My Rebbe’s Room experiences do not date back to Yechidus (private discussion) with the Rebbe as do those of my father’s generation but they are cherished memories nonetheless, here are four such memories.

1) MARCHESHES

As a youngster and as a yeshiva student we would pass by the Rebbe’s room several times a year. The Rebbe would stand in his open doorway to give us each sweet honeycake for a sweet new year and also to recieve our Panim letters with our prayers for a good year.

These were fleeting moments. A quick couple of seconds at the most. The primary frame of focus was the Rebbe himself of course but the fact that it was at the open doorway of his inner sanctum made it extra special and somehow more inner focused.

One year in my mid-teen yeshiva years I happened to come across a sophisticated piece of Talmudic commentary in a book of responsa and commentary titled: “Marcheshes” written by a highly regarded pre-war Rabbi in Vilna (later killed by the Nazis). To be honest, I no longer remember the topic or what led me to come across it but I do remember that I enjoyed it.

Not long afterward I passed by the Rebbe’s Room. I should have been focused on the Rebbe and our very brief interaction but something caught my eye in the stack of books (yes, there were often stacks of books in the background, in addition to the books on the bookshelf). I saw (don’t know how I saw this in that split second interval) the Marcheshes book atop one of the stacks!

I kind of had this exciting feeling that in some way, I was sharing in the same learning as the Rebbe, he was interested in something of that same book at the same time I was. It may be difficult to convey the excitement involved but it was special.

2) FATHER’S EMOTIONAL EXIT

Sometime after the Rebbe’s passing (it wasn’t immediately thereafter) arrangements were made for families to enter the Rebbe’s Room. For many of us, it was our first time. Although I had been there as a one year old boy with my parents, I was then in my early twenties, a year before my marriage, so it was like my first time.

The room was empty but not bare, everything was left as in the Rebbe’s lifetime. Most memorable was our exit. My father began to weep uncontrollably. He’s generally not the most emotional type. He couldn’t even catch himself.

I asked him why he was crying (in retrospect a silly question) and between sobs he managed to get out that he doesn’t remember this room this way, and a cryptic reference to the conclusion of tractate Makkos about foxen in the Holy of Holies.

His generation remembers going in to see and speak to the Rebbe there individually. They have vivid personal memories of being with the Rebbe in that room – the empty chair feels much emptier (or perhaps it feels fuller)…

3) A BABY NAMING

After Passover of 5757 our first child was born at Maimonides Hospital in the Boro Park section of Brooklyn. My wife had tested positive for Strep B but her doctor didnt think antibiotics was necessary in labor (this was at the start of testing for Strep B in pregnancy), so our baby daughter contracted it in the birth canal. She was fine at birth but turned blue at her first feeding. She was rushed to the NICU, they took all kinds of tests to rule things out before coming to the diagnosis. They had to warn us of all possible outcomes and possibilities. All this happened on a Friday.

There were plenty of nearby neighborhood synagogues where we could have named her that Shabbat morning but (especially with the medical uncertainty and accompanying emotion of new parents) I set out for Crown Heights. This was in May, the season for May showers and it was pouring rain. It was a long and lonely walk filled with mixed emotions of joy and worry. I finally arrived at 770, soaked to the bone. I rushed into the Rebbe’s Room, just before the Torah reading. As I told the Gabbai the Mishebayrach and naming of our daughter, my eyes were drenched – from the rain and the tears.

I stopped off at my in-laws on the way back to the hospital to share with them the name of their first granddaughter, and then rushed off to the hospital to be with my wife and to hear the latest updates from the medical team. As things turned out, she was fighting pneumonia from the Strep B but was quite the fighter so it all turned out fine. She came home in perfect condition a week later. Not all the babies we were together with in the NICU fared the same positive results, so we were very grateful for our blessings.

This memory of the Rebbe’s Room is associated with the birth of our first daughter and the angst and concern – and relief – over her wellbeing.

4) CHAZAK!

Over 18 years have passed since that baby naming, and we’ve been to the Rebbe’s Room many more times since. We don’t go there every time we are in NY for a Shabbos, but now and then, and it is always a potent place of prayer with a strong sense of closeness and connection.

This Shabbos morning I went here with my son Moshe to pray. It was less crowded than other times we’ve been. We prayed along with the Minyan and heard the Torah reading of Vayechi, the last Torah portion in the book of Breishis (Genesis). The declaration at the end was especially meaningful: “Chazak, Chazak, Vnischazek!” (Let us be strong, let us be strong and let us be strengthened!)

It recalled a banner we’ve been painting with the boys in my son’s class – about the Rebbe’s teachings on the opening words and closing words of this Torah portion. Torah closes the book of Breishis with what seems to be a downer: “And they placed Joseph in a coffin in Egypt”. But the Rebbe turns that around (as is his way) to be an uplifting statement of closeness, connection and accessibility. Like his mother Rachel, Joseph is buried close to his people to be a comfort to them, and so that his burial there be a reassurance (his final words to them are the promise of “Pakod Pakaditi”) and hope.