This is My G-d, and the G-d of My Fathers

In my early teens I listened to an extensive tape series (on cassette tapes) of Rabbi Yoel Kahn (a legendary, brilliant and articulate Chassidic teacher) on Tanya (classic text of Chassidic thought written by the first Chabad Rebbe). The series (or a similar set) was introduced by a Rabbi Yosel Weinberg (a well-known Chabad fundraiser and globe-trotter who also gave a weekly Tanya class on the NYC radio waves) with the following teaching of the Shaloh (Isaac HaLevi Horowitz, of the 1600’s, famous for his kabbalistical and inspirational works) from the Song at the Sea.

The verse in “Az Yashir” (Song at the Sea): “This is my G-d and I will glorify him, the G-d of my fathers and I will uplift him.”

The Shaloh comments on this verse using a play on words with the Hebrew word for glorify which is “Vianvayhu” to read instead as “Ani v’Hu” which means He and I. If this is My G-d, then we have a close relationship, it’s I and Thou (as Buber would say). But if its only the G-d of my fathers, but not my own, something I do only because my father did it before me, as tradition and habit, but not personally fulfilling, then it is uplifted – out of reach, out of touch, too distant.

This is the introductory teaching (not from the Tanya) that Rabbi Weinberg uses to open the Tanya tape series. I always wondered about that. Yes, it is a wonderful teaching. But why this thought among thousands of others, that may be more applicable or directly relevant to Tanya.

Fast forward to this Passover in 2014, approx 25 years since I heard that tape.  My father-in-law, Rabbi Galperin showed me in a book this very same teaching of the Shaloh in the talk by the Freidiker Rebbe (Previous Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn) in Poland, in the year 1937 (it was also in earlier years of the Friediker Rebbe’s sichos). I did a quick calculation, realizing that this Rabbi Weinberg was then a yeshiva student at the Chabad Yeshiva in Poland (together with my grandfather R’ Moshe Rubin and Raizy’s grandfather R’ Hirshel Fox). I realized that he probably have heard this teaching of the Shaloh at that farbrengen in 1937 and it must have touched a chord in him, it resonated with him, so deeply that in the 1970’s or early 1980’s when this tape series was recorded this was the message that he shared.

Such is the lasting power of a single teaching, a perspective-changer, a paradigm shift, a lesson that lasts a lifetime. A short thought that you hear but once, but keep with you forever.