Our Tears Following Gimmel Tammuz 5754

By Mica Soffer

Thirty years ago, a few days after Gimmel Tammuz 5754, I needed to go to Boro Park for an appointment. It had been a few days that I had been sobbing bitterly from the moment we heard the unthinkable news and feeling like it was the end of the world. The pain was so heavy that it actually felt like a physical one.

I sat there in the waiting room, watching other frum people coming and going while I carried an unbearable pain. It felt so incongruous and starkly contrasted with what was happening just a few miles away in Crown Heights and in all of our lives.

When we first heard the news on Gimmel Tammuz, we didn’t know what to do, so we headed to 770 and sat on the porch steps crying. 770 had been my second home.

As a young child growing up on Eastern Parkway, the front of the Rebbe’s Shul was my backyard. Every Shabbos morning, we played hopping games on the half-moon etched pavement while our fathers davened and attended the Rebbe’s farbrengens.

As a grade-schooler, I spent many nights in 770. We attended every weeknight farbrengen, sitting in the back rows of the ‘vaiber shul,’ attempting to take notes on looseleaf paper of any Yiddish words and phrases we could catch as the Rebbe spoke.

On Simchas Torah, we waited hours to get a spot in the ‘middle shul,’ crammed with hundreds of girls from everywhere—who became our good friends as we bonded over the long wait—to see the Rebbe dance during Hakafos. There were many farbrengens where the singing was so loud and powerful that we felt certain Moshiach had arrived.

After receiving dollars, we would head back out into the street, slightly disoriented from having been rushed through the line with thousands of others, and all I could think was, “Rebbe, I just want to make you proud.”

Then, there was the first time I saw the Rebbe on the porch after he suffered a stroke on 27 Adar. I will never forget the sound of the collective gasp, and then the sobs, which were heard in the Shul as the curtain was pulled aside and we saw our beloved Rebbe that day.

Sitting in Boro Park that morning, I couldn’t understand how others could go about their day as if nothing had changed in the world. While totally agonizing, In truth, it was a zechus to feel the pain. It meant that we merited to experience being the children of the Moshe Rabbeinu of our generation and bask in the Rebbe’s light.

Today, when I speak about the “golden years” we experienced at 770, I almost always find myself in tears. 30 years later, the pain remains so real, so current. While the connection to the Rebbe remains strong and continues to grow, there is still a part of me that will never be fully whole and will never stop missing the Rebbe.

But my tears are not just of sadness. I am so grateful for the Shlichus that I’ve been given because reporting on the powerful connection that our youth continues to have with the Rebbe and the many who learn and teach the Rebbe’s Torah is a daily reminder of the Rebbe’s leadership, which continues stronger than ever.

The tears are also mixed with joy, that while the younger generation today may not have been where we were or have seen what we merited to see, yet the Rebbe still remains the most important figure in 770 – and in the entire world, even more than back then.

My tears are also of yearning, to see the Rebbe again and fulfill the task which he gave us, to bring Moshiach now.