By Rabbi Yehuda Ceitlin
Issue 1457, 13th of Nissan 5772, p. 30
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One of the people who attended my Chabad House, someone who had just started his way back to his roots, was quite taken aback to find out that ever since 1978, the Rebbe’s birthday - Yud Alef Nissan - has been proclaimed by the American president and Congress as “Education and Sharing Day, U.S.A.”
Naturally, this person had heard a lot about Chabad Houses and the activities of various shluchim. But he wanted to know more about the Rebbe’s views on education as a result of our conversation on registering his son for our summer camp. I explained that while education ensures the continuity of human culture, the Rebbe was not satisfied with merely providing information. Education is also a form of instruction, in order to teach people how to live.
I added that the Rebbe felt that education was for every person, for every age, for every place, and for every given moment. For him, the saying from Proverbs - “Educate a child according to his way” - was practical advice, not empty rhetoric. Giving an example of this, I told him about a personal story, for which I am still waiting to see the video clip to verify all the smaller details.
It was about 1991, and we spent the entire night traveling for seven hours on the train from our home in Montreal to 770 in New York, to receive a dollar from the Rebbe for bracha vehatzlacha - blessing and success. We arrived in time for the distribution of the dollars on that Sunday, and my father asked my brother and I to wait in line while he went to take care of something.
To make sure that we - eight and seven years old at the time - would stand patiently in the long line, he promised us that we would go afterwards to the candy store, and he even gave us coins to buy the candies with. Meanwhile, the line shortened and we were already at the entrance. Our father hadn’t yet returned, or maybe he hadn’t been able to find us in the line.
Someone in the line told us that they wouldn’t let unaccompanied children enter, so we clutched onto the bottom of the jacket of the person in front of us. They suspected nothing. My younger brother stood in front of me, and the Rebbe gave him a dollar. My brother took the dollar with joy, and then he put his hand into his pocket, and gave the Rebbe something in return.
The secretary tried to stop my brother’s hand from carrying out the clearly unusual “bank transfer.” However, the Rebbe took out from behind his table a large cardboard pushke container to put the coin in. Watching the entire procedure, I turned green with envy, and I took out my own coin and presented it to the Rebbe.
The only problem was that after we left and found our father waiting for us, it was a difficult task to convince him that the coins he gave us had found their way to the “Rebbe’s great pushke container.” For the Rebbe, there was no disconnect between theory and action. Education does not start at - nor is it limited to - school. Children learn from every thing they see or experience. And if a Jewish child wants to do a mitzvah and give tzedakah, who better than the Rebbe to encourage him?
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Rabbi Yehuda Ceitlin is a shliach and the assistant director of Chabad in Tucson, Arizona, and the editor of the Chabad news site COLlive.com.
