Reb Nachman's Chair

Yizkor 2024

Sir S.L. Fildes - The Empty Chair (Dicken’s study)

REB NACHMAN'S CHAIR

This Yizkor we remember of course all of our loved one’s who have left us whether in recent days or years, or in decades long since passed. And we as always remember those who died during the Shoah - Al kiddushat haShem. And this year, we add to our memorial the victims of October 7th and the hostages who have died in captivity ... and the memory of the brave men and women of the IDF who died defending Am Yisrael and Medinat Yisrael - the Jewish People and the Jewish State. We pray for the safety and well-being of hostages who are still alive in Gaza and for their speedy return to their dear ones. For all of us who are mourners we say:

HaMakom Yinachaym etchem b’toch sha’ar avlay tzion ve'rushalayim - May Gd comfort you amidst all who mourn in Zion and Jerusalem

In 1870, England's greatest writer since Shakespeare died. Charles Dickens was beloved during his lifetime. His fame was undeniable. His books were purchased and devoured by an adoring public. When Dickens died, his last work remained unfinished on his desk. The Mystery of Edwin Drood was its title. Yet, while it had no final chapter, the book did have an illustrator who had begun to work on it since the day Dickens had submitted its outline to his publisher. The illustrator was a young man named Samuel “Luke” Fildes. It was he who entered Dickens' study on that final day and saw the writer's empty chair standing by the famous desk. A few months later in a holiday issue of The Graphic Magazine, Fildes' famous drawing "The Empty Chair" captured the nation's grief. Thousands had it framed, and it hung in English homes for decades. In fact, quite a few of the reproductions of this drawing can still be found.

Vincent van Gogh - Chair with Pipe

Eighteen years later, Vincent Van Gogh, from memory, took the Fildes drawing and set it on canvas in his own inimitable impressionistic style. In stark simplicity - Van Gogh's "The Empty Chair" is just that - a painting of a chair with a pipe on it. Memory kept the chair alive - the chair reflected its owner's passing.

Rebbe Nachman’s Chair

A Jewish chair is also famous. It was one that belonged to Rebbe Nachman of Bratzlav, one of the early masters of Hasidism, and the great great-grandson of the Baal Shem Tov, founder of the Hasidic Movement. Reb Nachman was a charismatic leader and a great story teller whose influence upon his followers was profound. After his death, the Hasidim of Bratzlav (Breslow) refused to choose a successor. From 1811 to this day, they are the only Hasidic group without a living Rebbe.

As decades passed, the Bratzlaver Hasidim moved from their small Polish community to take up residence in several places throughout the world. A good number of them came to Jerusalem. There they established their major community anew, but one thing was missing — the chair of Reb Nachman, their beloved Rebbe, was still in Uman in the Soviet Union. They were determined to bring it to their synagogue in Jerusalem. But the Russian government would never allow it to be taken, and what is worse, should they realize that it had a value to the Jewish people, they would destroy it.

So, a plan was needed ... and, a courageous plan was devised. Some of the Hasidim in Russia would disassemble the chair and smuggle it out of the country piece by piece. In that way the entire chair was brought to Jerusalem where reassembled, it stands today in the Bratzlaver Synagogue in Meah She'arim. It stands alone in the middle of an otherwise empty room, but somehow his Hasidim sense that Reb Nachman is still sitting there weaving his tales and trying to make better people of his followers, even two centuries after his death.

The stories are instructive. Dickens' chair symbolized the passing of a great person. It was a sign of mourning and grief - of emptiness and despair. It is a sign that grief is still too fresh when we draw or paint its picture over and over again. Each person whose life touched us, each person whom we loved cannot be captured in the abstract, cannot be grieved through paintings, cannot be mourned impressionistically.

Grief is hard work. For some it is perhaps the hardest work they ever do. Like Reb Nachman's chair, the life of one dear to us must be disassembled piece by piece, bit by bit, and examined as it touched on us, on our lives – each piece held close - in secret - near the heart, and carried there for as long as need be until we have sorted it and found comfort with it and are ready to let it go. When perspective and peace have been made, when all the pieces, all the aspects of our relationship is before us - it is time to fit them together again - perhaps as a clear picture, perhaps as a vague impressionistic set of memories, perhaps as a collection of fragments to be assorted and assembled as memory serves us.

The Hasidim of Bratzlav cannot replace the one they have honored and loved - and neither can we. But they can and do continue to live and flourish because they have used their loss constructively; they have drawn strength and purpose from its memory. And we ... in our losses, must do the same.

To purchase Forty Years of Wondering: The High Holy Day Sermons of Rabbi Raymond A. Zwerin - click here. For his novel Holy Fire - click here