“Where are you for yontif?”
“So, are you hosting any meals?”
“Are you having bochurim or girls?”
Think about it. The first inquiry a friend makes during Tishrei is about your plans involving hachnasas orchim.
Whether you yourself are a guest, or you’re hosting a meal, or you’re inviting someone to stay in your home, it is almost unheard of for anyone to emerge from the month of Tishrei without having hosted someone or having been a guest in some capacity.
Since this is the case, hachnasas orchim thus offers prime opportunity for refinement. Everything from the sheets to the dessert can be elevated by the mere fact that they improve the experience of the guest. As we know from Chassidus, a neshama has the power to convert the mundane to the sacred.
Head over to 1349 President Street for the ultimate masterclass in fine-tuned hachnasas orchim (no entry fee, lunch included). Avraham Avinu’s Tent is open for business – the business of caring for strangers. Reb Moshe Rubashkin can be seen welcoming the Rebbe’s orchim as guests in his home, fielding requests for linens and reports of a leak all the way to the basement, while conducting a meeting regarding the campaign he’s running right now.
If you want to know the essence of a man who turns his home inside out to host hundreds of visitors, providing every meal (featuring gourmet food) and every room free of charge, building a mega-Sukkah that has become a local Tishrei icon…look no further than the bar of soap he’s handing to the bochur who just arrived.
That bar of soap takes the massive scale of this operation and shrinks it to the minutiae of another Yid’s personal hygiene. When someone overseeing a project of this magnitude notices that his guests have arrived without soap or a toothbrush (as is so often the case when traveling), and this host arranges for hundreds of such items to be delivered to his home for distribution to guests: this is the Rebbe’s vision in vivo.
We know that the chitzonius of a person should reflect the ruchnius – so the care for the guf should reflect our reverence for the neshama, right? To brush the teeth is to nurture the soul. This mitzvah is not usually adopted by a host, but someone who cares for the whole entire Yid can’t help himself. Every detail of the welfare of a fellow Jew becomes a personal concern for such a host…which is why you’ll also see him sitting late into night, listening intently as a guest shares his story or personal challenge. (Rest up for this hachnasas orchim masterclass, because it runs 20 hours per day.)
The Rebbe lived simultaneously for the mass leadership of Klal Yisroel and for improving the finest details in the life of a single Yid. The Rebbe showed us how to have all-encompassing ahavas Yisroel, with no detail overlooked. The Rebbe gave us a directive, and Reb Moshe lives by the commitment he made to the Nossi Doreinu.
So this is how Reb Moshe runs his shlichus. It all comes down to a bar of soap.
As we ask hashem to care for our gashmius, let’s take care of his children’s gashmius.
Please participate in the mitzvah of hosting the Rebbe’s orchim. Please give generously here now to invest in this every-detail-covered hachnasas orchim phenomenon.
The fuel for that machine is Mrs Rubashkin.