Memories of Simchas Torah • Rabbi Yossi Lew

My grandfather had just had hip replacement surgery and the doctor told him he cannot go to New York and be in a crowd like that. And so he said I will take every precaution and so when it came to Hakoffus that was it was impossible to take any kind of precaution in Hakus. There were just too many people there and whoever was there was very very it wasn't just you were there and packed in. You were there with an excitement which again it's so it's almost impossible to describe this. There was this anticipation and this this haven kite. You were it's not just like you in a different room. You in a different you were in heaven and therefore you knew it. If you're going to be there, you heard about it and they described it to you. And so if you were you physically there, you knew that the Reb is about to come in and your whole year is like going to be changed as a result of this. And when you saw the Reb, it was a different person. And when the Reb got to and the Reb started walking down, there was a shine, a glow came from the Reb that how do you how do you describe that? So there was this it wasn't just a crowd of people it was a very high strong crowd of people and it not always did the people look out for each other. There was a time where the Reb once turned to somebody who was pushing someone who had to hold the safety and the Reb said if you're trying to make a place for the safe remember that there's a person who is holding the safety he's more important. Yeah. It was hard to remember that when you were in that kind of another I don't know if they talking at the same time but um I think I think it was fell while holding a tra and people tried to take the from and the said mentioned pick up the person not the like like there's a there's a person yeah because that was the atmosphere and the rebel was scholars like like like he never had like there was no other time of the year like this. And so I said I would stand with my grandfather by the Reb's haka and during the rest of the hakafas when the reb was in his place and the older people would stand like on the side. So I me young guy with a you know just just married I would be standing with him. So I did I went with him and I carried the safetera. He was he was always given a safety to go with the with the entourage that went in for the first and the last together with the would walk down the would walk down the pathway to the middle of the school where the bimma was. The bimma was surrounded by a by a a row of tables in a shape of a steel tables that were welded together like stuck together. So because the crowd was so so heavy and the people who were in this entourage who were standing inside of the would be asked to lean against those tables. So sort of to either lean back or sit on those tables because the crowd outside of them wanted to see and they would be blocking. So that's what they did. And I put myself plucked myself all the way down by my grandfather's feet. So I sat on the floor right next to my grandfather inside of the fence where the Reb would be dancing. And the Reb starts dancing with the safet. And then the Reb in the later years when the Reb was dancing by himself, the Reb would take the tra and basically fabang with every person there, make eye contact, look into the eyes and there were thousands. And so the reb would would would would hold the safety and go like this for all corners of this beimma look to every side and spend a lot of spent some time I can't say a lot of time in tism the river spent a lot of time but in regular years it was several minutes on each side and the side each side the river was on the back was to the other side the the side that the river's face was towards would go crazy they would jump up and stop screaming like you know this this would be such a moment such an incredible moment and I'm sitting on the floor and the Reb comes over to this side and the Reb's shoes were by my shoes that's how close the Reb was shooting at the table where the people were and I I all all I did was I looked up I looked up at the Reb's face the Reb's holy face and I know I'm going to sound like a radical mishuga and perhaps I am. I could be considered one of those, but I'm telling you streams of light were just pouring out. I never saw the Reb like that because I didn't see the Reb that close when I was uh by our coffers. I stood a little further back. So, you know, from the distance you saw, but you I didn't see that close. I was literally wi within three feet of the Reba and all I saw was this this energy, this light that was projecting out of the Reb.