Coldness

In my town it is raining. Up north, in Fitchburg, it is still snowing, but here already it is too warm for snow. Winter is departing. We’ve had a few good snowy days, fewer than in some years, more than in others, definitely fewer than I remember having in Ukraine, but I am content.

In my heart, a hot summer was replaced by a lukewarm autumn, and then there was a long, bitter, cold winter. But it is warmer already, and I can feel the spring. Talk of hashgacha protis...

All my life I liked cold. Snow. Ice. Freezing wind in my face. Living for seven years in the South was torture for me. Not just because of the inbred American rednecks. Mostly because of the humid, hot climate.

In Chassidus, coldness is associated with something negative. With lack of passion. With cynicism. Frierdiker Rebbe once said: “A cold person is a step away from a heretic. A person must serve Hashem with passion and a warm heart.” (If you know the exact quote, please leave a comment.) One of the nicknames for a misnaged is “a kalte Litvak”.

One winter, Frierdiker Rebbe (before he had become a Rebbe) was standing outside, smoking. He saw a chossid walk out without a coat. He told him: “Be careful. You are cold.” The chossid answered: “And you?” The Rebbe responded: “I am protected.” Soon that chossid went off the derech. Frierdiker Rebbe saw that the cynicism, the coldness was taking over the chossid.

There is a story about Vilna Gaon. When he had heard that Chassidim use warm mikveh on Shabbos, he said: “It’s a good thing. The gehennim won’t be too much of a surprise for them.” When I read in Tanya that the people who delve into secular sciences for the sake of intellectual pleasure will be punished by the Hell of Ice, I thought that it’s a good thing that I like cold.

(Interestingly, it is in the South that I have started my journey towards Chassidus. The orbit on which I am right now is a result of the momentum I was given there, in the community of New Orleans. In Boston, the weather is nice, but I have never struggled so much in my life to stay afloat b’ruchnius. I won’t say much about the community. There isn’t much to say...)

I have just read a very interesting article by Naftali Silberberg called “Embrace your inner ice”. A quote from it:

They tried to cool our passion — and we are enjoined to never forget their chilling stab, and to utterly eliminate them from the face of the earth.

And on a personal level, there is an Amalek lurking within every one of us. It is the icy voice that attempts to inculcate us with apathy and immunize us against passion and inspiration. This Amalek, too, must be destroyed.

But how?

Well, the most obvious antidote to ice is heat. With enough heat you could melt a glacier.


But there's another way...

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Ice.

Cold. Benumbed. Arctic. Inflexible, rigid, and unyielding.

In terms of spiritual service, ice represents absolute and unshakable commitment to G‑d.

Not a commitment based on emotions (warmth), not one that rests on a foundation of love and awe for the Creator or an appreciation of the beauty and importance of serving Him. For ultimately, any such relationship is based on a feeling of self: I love, I fear, I feel, I like, I appreciate, I understand...

And when the service depends on my warmth and excitement, it will fluctuate from day to day, even minute to minute. Some days will be sunny and warm; others will be overcast and chilly.

But if the commitment isn't driven by warmth and passion, by what I want and feel, but by what is wanted of me — then it's steady and constant, and not subject to vacillations and swings. Because what I'm wanted and needed for doesn't change.

And that is the advantage of Chassidus Chabad, the Lithuanian Chassidus, the cold Chassidus. As Lubavitch chassidim, we have a nuclear reaction burning inside us. But it’s not a nuclear explosion; it’s a channeled, controlled reaction of a nuclear plant. OK, sometimes that nuclear plant becomes a Chernobyl, but that’s already the details...