Itzchak EvanShayish – MEETING THE REBBE AND SAYING GOODBYE
“Who’s Shlomo?” I asked…
It was the early winter of 1974. I was learning Torah at Shma Israel, the cauldron whose Rabbis birthed Or Sameach and Aish HaTorah. Every Erev Shabbat, it was our great joy to walk unafraid from Geula, through Damascus Gate to the Kotel to daven. We had just finished Maariv and the French guy beside me “Let’s not go back to the yeshiva right away, Shlomo is coming.”
“Who’s Shlomo” I asked.
“You’ll see, just wait here with me.”
“OK”
At least two hours later, the Kotel area was pretty empty as everybody rushed home to eat their Shabbos meal. This French guy and I were still sitting waiting for Shlomo.
And then, in the distance, from the direction of the shuk, I heard singing. I couldn’t see anything but I knew that a group of people were approaching the Kotel, singing. They came downstairs into the plaza area and made a circle. In the middle of that circle was Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach. Looking pretty cool, he opened a small gemorrah and starting teaching. I was touched and intrigued by his hip American Yiddish English. And then he said “Ok chevre, let’s go doven.”
The group, me in tow, went to the centre of the Kotel beside the mechitza, everybody found their spot and Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach began to doven. By Lecha Dodi, it was clear(er) to me who Shlomo was. He became for me, at that moment, Reb Shlomo.
And from that moment, he was an important and joyful part of my life. He taught so much of the Torah of the heart. He would invariably show up at least a few times a year in whatever city I was living in. And Shlomo Shabbats and weddings on the moshav were an integral part of our ’80s life in Israel. When I ‘officialy’ became a Rabbi, he became even more central to me as I turned to him for advice and guidance. From 1990 to 1992, he came to Vancouver every June and served as the Av Beit Din for the mikveh/giur of people I had been learning with and preparing during that year.
His visits were a yearly highlight for many of us there. The deep mornings in the mikveh would often continue into a joyous chuppah or two in the afternoon for those married, freshly covenanted, who never had a real Jewish wedding. In the evening, our best musicians would back him as he did a concert for the larger community. We danced and then fabrenged long into the night.
During that time, we talked about the process of my receiving Semicha from him. He assigned me the ‘softer’ parts of the Shulchan Aruch, hilchot tzedakah, kibbud av ve’em and so forth. He asked to read what I said on Shabbos and especially on Kol Nidre.
And then we came to the last day I ever saw him.
It was June 1992. Before he came for his yearly visit, I asked him he could book a free day after the mikveh/chuppa/concert day. I arranged that we could have a 24 hours hanging out alone on a rich friend’s waterfront estate on nearby Galiano Island, a 40 minute ferry ride away. A little R & R for the Rebbe and a chance for me to ask lots of questions about being a rabbi. It was a wonderful time and I now wish I had recorded the conversation.
In the morning of the next day I asked him if was time to receive semicha from him. He thought about it a little and said: “Yes, but let’s do it in New York next time you’re there. We’ll make a whole simcha out of it.”
I said: “Sounds great, but I haven’t been in New York for many years and I don’t know when I’ll really get there. Perhaps we could do it right here?” He walked off to think about this, returned shortly and said: “OK let’s do it now, but when you do come to New York we can still do a simcha with the chevre.”
We had his letterhead since we needed it for the giur documents. We went to sit down on a bench perched on an outcropping overlooking the water. I asked him if we could learn a little Rav Kook together first. The Torah of Rav Kook was my strongest (beside the Chumash) Torah learning interest since the summer I981 when I had a mystical experience reading my first few lines from a recently received Kook Book (by way of Rabbi B.Z. Bokser’s translation.) By this time, I was exploring his original Hebrew writings and brought a volume of Orot HaKodesh to the picnic table. We opened up a page at random and our eyes went to a piece called “Sheyur Koach HaYetzira: The (Im)measurability of the Power of Creativity”. (O.K. 1:176)
We began to read. (One of the treats of returning to Jerusalem has been learning with Rachel Ebner, ad mea ve’esreem shana. whose extraordinary translations of Rav Kook have inspired and taught me for some time. I thank her for letting me use her translation of this piece):
“The more a person sees in his spiritually elevated state, the more he finds that he needs no limitation at all on his imaginative picturing.
On the contrary, let his artistic power illustrate all that he can.
And even if he imagines greatness and glory in every possible way,he will still not reach the measure of a drop of the ocean of all that there is to magnify and exalt.
And no matter how much joy fills him from his unbounded visioning, when the laughter of good imagining accompanies it, he will still not reach one part in infinite magnitudes of ten thousands of the true delight that saturates all existence, which is all a revealed express of a higher ‘shashooa-playfulness’, and the Eden-delight of the Rock of all infinite eternity.”
What a sweet Torah…no limits at all to your highest imagination, express your creativity in the most total way you can. With good humor.
I felt blessed to be learning this piece with Reb Shlomo. He certainly showed us what light is revealed when some one expresses their creativity to the max. He was a master at creating unbounded visions and enjoyable experiences in which we ‘shashooaad’-played delightfully in the presence of the infinite eternity. And he was very funny.
We spoke about this piece a little further, and then he asked me to leave him alone. I left him as he sat at the bench overlooking the water, writing my semicha. By the time he finished it was time to take him back to the ferry so he could get to his next flight. As I drove him to the ferry, he read out to me and explained/elaborated what he wrote. We reached the ferry just as it was ready to leave. As we stepped out of the car, he handed me the two sheets of my semicha. We hugged and I waived goodbye to him as he walked on to the ferry.
And that was last time I ever saw him.
Two years later, I was having the saddest day of my life, and then found out the next morning that Shlomo died on that very same day. My tears compounded.
I pray that all of us who were so touched by the fruits of his creativity and holy playfulness continue to unboundedly envision and create the reality of all humankind delighting together will all life in the infinite eternity.
