The Master on the Swing

A Picture Some pictures are worth a thousand words of Torah. Rabbi Sholom DovBer of Lubavitch, fifth leader of Chabad, once stood by a swing in a garden. His son, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak, tells the story. Two young men were sitting there. They were not students at his Torah school, and they were not among those close to him. As is well known, they were hardly the spiritual elite. The master did not step back. He sat with them. He pushed the swing. He played. He talked. Simply. No speech. No moral lecture. No “Let’s study a chapter of the Tanya,” the classic book of Hasidic thought. Surprised? So am I. The Question Think about who this is. A leader of the Chabad movement. The author of some of the deepest teachings in all of Hasidic thought. A man who wrote discourses hundreds of pages long on the hidden secrets of the Torah. A man whose every moment was a treasure. And what is he doing? Swinging with two boys? He could have told them a Hasidic story. He could have shared a short Torah thought. At the very least, he could have asked them when they last prayed. Anything like that would count as “Torah.” But a swing? The Answer Here is the answer. Some Jews have hearts that are closed to words of Torah. This is not because they are bad people. It is because they are far away. A heart that is far away cannot be opened from above. You have to come down to it. Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, author of the Tanya, writes in chapter 32 that love for every Jew means loving the other person’s “body.” That means the whole person, just as he is, with everything he is. You are not meant to love some abstract soul of his. You are meant to love him. The swing says exactly this: I see you. I come to you. I sit with you. This is “a descent for the sake of a higher ascent.” It is not a coming down that means giving in or giving up. It is a coming down that brings people close. The master did not dress up as a child. He came down, with all the weight of his spiritual stature and all the depth of his soul, into the world of those boys. He came down so he could take hold of their souls and lift them up. Going Deeper And here is the real new idea. You might think the swing was only a “warm-up.” A teaching trick. A technique for bringing people closer, so that afterward he could talk to them about the Sabbath and prayer. But that is not true. The swing itself was the Torah. The master sat with those boys at their eye level, in their world, sharing their simple joy. In that very moment he drew a boundless light into their souls. This was not a preparation for something holy to be revealed. It was the revelation itself. “The main thing is the deed.” This is not a slogan. It is how things really are. Hashem wants a home in this lower world. That home is not built only through Torah study and prayer. It is also built, and especially built, on a swing with two boys whose hearts are far away. And You? Dear fellow Jew, my brother. You may be thinking: “I’m small. I have nothing to say. I’m no genius. I’m no miracle worker. How could I ever bring anyone closer?” Ask yourself: What is your “swing”? You don’t need to travel far away. You don’t need to write a deep talk. You need to sit next to your neighbor and ask him how he is doing. You need to laugh with your friend’s son. You need to come down. Simply come down from our spiritual “Mount Olympus,” from our own importance, from our fixed routines. And connect with the person in front of you. Rabbi Sholom DovBer did this on a swing. That is not an old story. It is a living lesson. He showed us the way: Go. Come down. Connect. Love. Everything else will follow on its own.