Rabbi Shmaryahu Gurary ("Rashag") was born in 1898; his father, a wealthy businessman and erudite scholar, was a leading chassid of the fifth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Sholom DovBer Schneersohn (1860-1920). In 1921, Rabbi Shmaryahu married Chanah Schneersohn (1899-1991), the oldest daughter of the 6th Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn (1880-1950). When Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak passed away in 1950, there were those who saw Rabbi Shmaryahu -- an accomplished Chassidic scholar and elder of the Rebbe's two surviving sons-in-law -- as the natural candidate to head the movement; but when the younger son-in-law, Rabbi Menachem Mendel, was chosen as rebbe, Rabbi Shmaryahu became his devoted chassid. Rabbi Shmaryahu served as the executive director of Tomchei Temimim, the world-wide Lubavitch yeshiva system -- a task entrusted to him by his father-in-law -- until his passing on the 6th of Adar I in 1989.
In the non-physical world of emotions, ideas, and the soul, many things can overlap in time and space.
But a physical world is a place where each thing says, “In my space, nothing else can be.”
When a human being doesn’t allow the spiritual light of his soul to shine, he too becomes a physical object. So he says, “You are taking up my space.”
How large is the space of a human being? As much as he can grab and more. We’re all reproductions of Adam, and there was only one of him occupying the entire world.
But when a human being rises a little higher, a little more spiritual, a little more sensitive to a world beyond him, then he says, “Let’s share this space. There’s room here for all of us.”