Yechezkel is one of my favorite books. It is about believing redemption is always possible. Its about keeping hope alive even after a massive loss.
Yechezkel Taub was the Yabloner Rebbe. He assumed the mantle of Grand Rebbe in his twenties and was the leader of thousands of wealthy Chassidim in Europe in the mid 1920s. Religious Zionists convinced him that the Yabloner Chassidim should move to Palestine.
The plan was to move in stages. First, he raised millions of dollars from his followers and purchased land in Palestine legally and moved a few hundred families to set up houses and agriculture. The new development
was called Kfar Chassidim.
Things did not go well for Kfar Chassidim from the start. The new arrivals had little to no farming experience and contracted malaria. Many people could not farm or build because they were elderly. They started to run low on funding from Europe and a flood ruined all the fields that year.
With his Chassidim starving, the Rebbe had no choice but to sell the land he purchased to feed his people. Now he had no land and no money. Many people in Europe and Palestine were angry with him. He was in millions of dollars of debt, then World War Two happened.
The Yabloner Rebbe went to America to raise money for his people in Kfar Chassidim, but he was not very successful. He was in galus, exile, in America like his namesake Yechezkel the prophet.
Things went from bad to worse for the Yabloner. The Holocaust shook his faith to the core. He was low. Down, depressed, spiritually dead. He shaved his beard, took off his yarmulke and started eating non-kosher. He stopped observing shabbat and holidays and changed his name to George. He was spiritually dead.
George moved to Los Angeles and with his experience in building started a successful real estate company. He became a millionaire and over leveraged himself in an apartment building, got ripped off and became bankrupt. He returned to college in his seventies. It's never too late, can these bones live again? In fact, the Rebbe got his master’s degree in psychology writing about his life story.
Now to a different Yechezkel. Can these bones live again ? The valley of the dry bones is the climax of the book of Yechezkel and his wacky trippy visions. Down and out, the Jews lost their Temple. They were exiled, depressed. They thought it was over. They thought they could never go back. This vision is the message of the book, these bones can live again! Keep hope alive! Yechezkel’s message is that redemption is always possible. He helped raise the spirits of the Jews in exile that they could one day return.
After getting a master’s in his seventies, George was approached by one of the few people in the world who knew in his younger years he was the Yabloner Rebbe. The friend tried to convince George to return to Israel. He was scared as he had left on bad terms, but made the trip. George thought about the time before the war, when he was known as Yabloner Rebbe, and was attacked by a mob after not being able to repay the debt he had borrowed to bring his Chassidim to Palestine.
George returned to Kfar Hassidim, just as Yechezkel returned to Jerusalem in a vision. He felt trepidation about returning. He didn’t know what to expect as he had left decades before on bad terms.
To his utter surprise, upon his arrival, hundreds of people lined to shake his hand and say thank you. Thank you for saving our lives. George met with hundreds of people who were only alive because of him. They brought in dozens and dozens of children and who were alive and smiling because of him. Then they brought in the grandchildren who he was responsible for saving.
At gathering George, now an old man, stated “I never thought about the fact that I saved your lives. Only about all the lives that were lost. I never thought about what I gave you. Only about what I took away from you. But now it’s all become clear.”
“Kadosh, Kadosh Kadosh! Holy Holy Holy! is God… the whole world is filled with his glory” Yechezkel 3:12
George decided that he was going to become religious again. He regrew his beard. Put on his yarmulke and in his eighties reassumed the role of Rebbe in Kfar Chassidim! He passed away a few years later and was buried as the Rebbe in Kfar Hasidim.
“Even if a sharp sword rests upon a person’s neck, he should not prevent himself from praying for mercy.”
Talmud Bavli Berachot 10A
Keep hope alive.
-Dan