by Stuart T.
Some years back when visiting in France, I was staying at a friend who attends Beth Loubavitch in Orteaux, a Chabad House in Paris. An interesting thing happened. The Rabbi would pause every little bit during his lecture, and my friend with whom I was visiting was sitting near the Rabbi translated aloud that segment of the speech into English. This went on for quite some time, over a half-hour, maybe 45 minutes or so. There were about 40-50 people present, and most everyone else seemed to be local French, so I wondered who they were translating this for? Were there other English speakers in the crowd?
After the talk I went over to my friend and asked who they were translating for. “For you!” my friend said. They doubled the length of the speech and prolonged the whole affair, translating the whole talk just for me! For one person.
And they added a joke (a truism):
What do you call someone who speaks 3 languages? Tri-lingual. And how about someone who speaks 2 languages? That person is bi-lingual. So what do you call someone who speaks only one language? An American!
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I (Mendel) really liked this story because it reflects the Rebbe’s vision of “each and every Jew” the verse inscribed on our Aron Kodesh and the underlying love and appreciation of each and every individual person, not just crowds and numbers.