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The first day of the month (Rosh Chodesh) marks the return of the Rebbe—Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory—to public life after suffering a major heart attack just thirty-eight days earlier. During the celebrations of the evening of Shemini Atzeret in the year 1977 (5738), while dancing with the Torahs in the main synagogue, the Rebbe’s face suddenly turned pale. As he sat back in his chair, the chassidim knew that something was very wrong, and the synagogue was quickly cleared. Yet the Rebbe stoically completed the last dance together with his brother-in-law Rabbi Shmaryahu Gurary. Dr. Ira Weiss, who flew in from Chicago to treat the Rebbe, testified that “on a scale of ten, he had the full ten heart attack . . . it involved such extensive damage that in anyone’s normal medical experience one would worry about the possibility of survival.”
Knowing that the Rebbe’s life might be in danger, and that he was surely suffering intense physical pain, the chassidim had cause for deep anguish and anxiety. Yet the Rebbe instructed that the celebration must continue, and that the joy must be unconstrained. One chassid who was present later recalled, “The fact that the Rebbe was unwell penetrated us to the very core. To begin with, we sang, ‘The Rebbe should be healthy.’ Then the words changed to ‘The Rebbe is healthy.’ We somehow knew, axiomatically, that our faithful joy would make it so. On Rosh Chodesh Kislev, when we once again saw the Rebbe, we celebrated because we were united again with our own essence. And that was the celebration. Such a thing doesn’t come through any kind of specific preparation. It comes from the very foundation of what it means to be a chassid, knowing that the Rebbe is your essence.”
Strikingly, in a talk broadcast from his room following the festival’s conclusion, the Rebbe too spoke of how his bond with the chassidim was actually intensified through their enforced separation. “For a certain reason,” the Rebbe began, “we speak after the festival’s conclusion, which allows us to use media to communicate what we say even in faraway places, physically far, but obviously spiritually close, which is the main thing among Jews, being that their soul is primary and their body secondary. . . . Thereby there is formed a tie, a bond, a unity, among all those who hear this speech . . .”
These words are particularly resonant today, when we again find ourselves physically separated from the Rebbe. But knowing that our very souls are bound with the Rebbe’s, we know that his spiritual life—his faith, his awe and love of G‑d—are as accessible to us as ever before. On the contrary, as the Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi explains in Tanya, “having departed from the world, the tzaddik is more present in all worlds than he was in his lifetime . . . since his soul is no longer constrained by a physical vessel or by physical space.”
Rosh Chodesh Kislev marked the beginning of sixteen additional years of life and leadership for the Rebbe. During this period he revealed ever deeper Torah secrets, and inspired many thousands of people to transform themselves and the world for good. But Rosh Chodesh Kislev wasn’t just a point in the past. Rosh Chodesh Kislev continues to be celebrated as the moment that chassidim collectively recognize just how deep the bond with the Rebbe goes. Transcending any physical or temporal dimension, the Rebbe and his teachings continue to provide our essential soul connection, the bedrock of our faith, of our awe and love of G‑d.