By Rabbi Yitzchok Kaufmann
As we approach Gimmel Tammuz, every Chossid asks himself the question: How am I preparing for this important day?
But maybe we’re looking at it the wrong way. Instead of asking How do I prepare for the day, perhaps we should be asking: What is this day preparing me for?
Let me explain with an analogy from Avodas HaTefillah.
A person can invest great effort into preparing for davening, as if the experience of davening itself is the goal. But the real focus should be on how to daven in a way that actually changes us—how it impacts the way we live, think, and act every day of the week.
The same is true for Gimmel Tammuz. This day calls on each of us to take a step back and ask: What does it really mean to be a Chossid of the Rebbe?
Am I a Chossid of the Rebbe because I wear a kappote on Shabbos? Because I send my kids to Chabad schools? Because I follow Chabad minhagim or daven nusach Ari?
No. These are things I do because I’m a Chossid—they don’t make me a Chossid.
Being a Chossid is about what’s going on deep inside. It’s about what drives me. It’s a matter of the soul. As the Rebbe explains in the maamar V’Atah Tetzaveh, a Chossid is someone who uses the koach that the Rebbe gives him to live a Neshamah-life.
So the real question is: What does it mean to live a Neshamah-life?
This article isn’t the place to give a full definition. But let’s bring one powerful example. One of the defining themes of the Rebbe’s Chassidus—something we don’t find to the same extent in the previous six generations—is the Rebbe’s strong emphasis on bechirah, on free choice. Not only Hashem’s choice of us—but our choice as well.
Over and over again, the Rebbe teaches that our Yiddishkeit must come from our own free choice. Only then is it truly connected to the etzm haneshamah, the core of the soul. Even foundational ideas in Chassidus—like the famous teaching that “A Jew doesn’t want and cannot be separated, G-d forbid, from Elokus”—are explained by the Rebbe as being rooted in choice. I can’t be separate—because I choose to be connected!
On Shabbos Parshas Shlach, the 28th of Sivan, 5749 (1989), the Rebbe delivered a groundbreaking sicha in which he expanded on this very theme. In that sicha, the Rebbe called on each and every one of us—personally, not through a shliach—to immediately begin spreading Torah and Chassidus, in the spirit of “Shelach lecha – by your choice, I am not commanding you.”
The Rebbe empowered us to choose—knowingly, willingly—to dedicate our lives to spreading Torah and Chassidus personally, until the day comes when “Your teacher will no longer be hidden, and your eyes will behold your teacher,” and “The glory of Hashem will be revealed, and all flesh will see together.”
Gimmel Tammuz comes and asks us a simple but profound question:
Do I choose to be the Rebbe’s Chossid?
– Rabbi Yitzchok Kaufmann, a chassidic scholar, is on the faculty and teaches at Mayanot Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, Israel.
this is well articulated
Well written. The punchline seems to be though that one becomes a chosid of the self, or rather, the rebbe within. After 3 tammuz we’re left with what we have within ourselves of the rebbe. We can be both a rebbe and chosid simultaneously
Go Rabbi Kaufman! Best teacher!!
He teaches there. Please check it out. Amazing teacher!