Dear Friends,
As a rabbi, I have the privilege of standing with people at life’s most sacred moments, bar and bat mitzvahs, baby namings, and weddings. In fact, this Sunday, with God’s help, I will celebrate both an upsherin, the first haircut of a three-year-old boy, and a wedding. Moments of joy. Moments of promise. Moments when the world feels whole.
And then there are the other moments. Moments filled with heartbreak, funerals, and questions that have no easy answers. Moments when the phone rings and the news is unbearable. When a family sits across from you searching for words that do not exist. Moments when the heart feels shattered.
In those moments, you almost find yourself asking, are there even words? What are we supposed to do? How are we meant to respond?
This week’s Torah portion, Mishpatim, offers a stunning insight:
“If oppress you will oppress him, for if cry he will cry out to Me, hear will I hear his cry.”
The Kotzker Rebbe asked: Why the repetition of oppress and cry? He explained that the deepest pain of the widow and orphan is not only their suffering. It is the agony of believing that no one hears them. The Torah commands us: If you hear a cry, you must cry out as well. A solitary cry must never remain alone.
We all know that feeling. When you are going through something difficult, the pain is not only the challenge itself. The worst part is feeling that no one understands you. That you are alone inside it. The Torah is telling us that no human being is meant to suffer in isolation. If there is a cry, we answer it. If there is pain, we cry together. We stand together. We affirm that no voice disappears into silence.
Elie Wiesel once recounted a harrowing moment from a Nazi death march.
One freezing night, as prisoners trudged through the snow, a young boy collapsed. The SS guards barked threats, but the child could no longer move.
Though barely able to stand, Elie bent down and lifted the boy onto his back. The child, barely conscious, whispered, “Why are you helping me? You will die too.”
Elie answered simply: “Because if I stop caring, then I am already dead.”
Then something miraculous happened. Another prisoner stepped forward to help carry the boy. Then another. Soon, a chain of starving, broken men bore the child together.
By morning, the boy was still alive. And those who had carried him, though weak and suffering, had also survived.
We do not choose our suffering. But we choose our response. We choose to cry out. We choose to carry each other forward.
And as we approach the month of Adar, a month defined by increasing in joy, that same principle carries over into our celebrations. Just as no cry should ever be alone, no simcha should be either. To truly increase in joy means to step into another person’s happiness and make it our own. To rejoice fully when someone else is blessed. That too is to carry each other.
And you see that so beautifully in the Chabad of Naples family. The way people show up for each other in times of need. The way we celebrate each other’s simchas with genuine warmth and open hearts.
So let us celebrate together. Join us for our upcoming Purim Paint and Sip, a special Women’s Circle evening as we welcome a talented artist for what promises to be an uplifting and meaningful program. And of course, do not miss our Grand Purim Party. In sorrow we stand together. In joy we celebrate together.
Shabbat Shalom!
Rabbi Fishel & Ettie Zaklos