50 years ago, in Pros 19 in Kislu, the third president was Zalman Shazer, who brushes his hat, gets into his car and drives to the central meeting in Kfar Chabad and drinks Lachaim.
Shazar was the son of a Hasidic family from Belarus, considered himself a Chabad Hasid and maintained a valiant relationship with the Chabadniks. It was probably also thanks to these visits that the name of the Hasidic "Holiday of Redemption" spread far and wide, and many Israelis of that generation heard and knew about it.
Shazer is no longer there and that generation is also disappearing, but Yat Bakslo has become an inseparable part of the Jewish and Israeli experience.
Wherever you turn today you will find a mention of him, and upon entering Jerusalem you will surely get stuck in huge traffic jams due to the thousands crowding the "Thirst" events - the Hasidic festival which is the largest in scope in Israel.
Today is the 19th day in Kislu, the holiday of the redemption of the old rebbe who owns the "Tanya" and the founder of Chabad Hassidism. Today in the year 1798, he was released from prison after being thrown into it for eavesdropping on his opponents who were plotting against him.
Those were the days of great controversy with the Hasidic movement that had come into the world a generation earlier, and therefore the act of whistleblowing was seen as an all-out war against Hasidism, and the liberation - as a heavenly redemption and "giving permission" to the leaders of Hasidism to spread their teachings.
Even today, when Hasidic and good Jews celebrate the holiday of redemption, they are not only celebrating the physical redemption of the Baal HaTanya, Rabbi Shneor Zalman Maladi, but actually the liberation of Hasidism from the shackles of its opponents.
What is Hasidism?
Hasidism is the teachings of the Baal Shem Tov that expanded the concept of Jewish existence from a mental concept to an overall spiritual experience centered on faith and devotion.
At the time it was a strong innovation, but today it is impossible to recognize religious Jewish existence and religious Jewish identity without this basic concept.
This is the concept that was developed a generation and a half later by the groom of the holiday, Baal HaTanya, into the well-known theory of the soul, which is based on the assertion that within every Jew resides the divine soul, that part of God above that must be paid attention to and given life.
This celebration is also relevant for those who are not Hasidic and who are not Chabad Hasidic, because Hasidism is directly responsible for the entire mental and experiential layer of the Jewish concept.
The dignity of Halachic Judaism is in its place, and there is no need to enter into the question of whether it was enough for the Jewish identity to survive, but this story of Hasidism is a piece of gift.
I find it difficult to imagine the religious Jewish life in all the hundreds of years of exile between Judaism in its ritual glory and the founding days of the Hasidic movement.
The conceptual depth, the hidden layer, the relevance of Judaism to everyday life even beyond the religious ritual and the halachic codex, and above all: without Hasidism we would be missing that "Jewish point", which in many cases is the whole point.
It is possible to manage without it, and it is possible not to believe in it at all, but in the end, every Jew who feels here and there the Jewish vibration not in the head but in the heart, in the stomach, between the folds of consciousness - can today wholeheartedly embrace this gift and say: Happy Holidays, Got a good day.
Cheers and blessings.
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