The Rebbe’s Shtender

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Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu

קטגוריה משנית

135

The connection between Rabbi Eliyahu and the Lubavitcher Rebbe was wondrous. The two of them had a strong spiritual connection, and aside from the all the well-known connections between them, there were also many more, hidden connections.

Rabbi Yitzchak Ovadiah, a New York resident, related: Immediately after the Lubavitcher Rebbe had been buried, Rabbi Eliyahu asked us to take him to 770, the house where the Rebbe used to pray and give classes, in order to talk with the leaders of the Chassidic court and guide them on the future of Chabad. The Rav advised them to get together a group of ten rabbis who would continue the leadership, so that the Chabad world community would not become like a flock without a shepherd.

Those same ten rabbis would take upon themselves the decisions of the movement. The Rav requested that the ten rabbis be gathered together so that he could speak with them and strengthen them. While the Rav was waiting for all the rabbis to arrive from all their various homes, he wandered around the Rebbe’s beit midrash, study hall, without anyone knowing what his intentions were.

At a certain point, he stopped and showed us some tiny slivers of wood lying on the floor - I don’t know how he even saw them. He called one of the senior Chassidim over and asked him, "How is it possible that there are slivers of wood here that weren’t buried together with the Rebbe?"
The Chassidim didn’t understand what the Rav was telling them.

He repeated himself and explained that to make the bier on which the Rebbe had been carried to the cemetery, the wood from his shtender (book rest) had been used. He had been so carried, but it seemed that some tiny slivers had fallen and been left on the floor. And so, they needed to take a brush and pan, sweep up all the slivers and put them in the Rebbe’s grave. I asked the Rav how he knew from where the slivers had come – he didn’t answer me.