Passing of Rabbi Akiva Eiger (1761-1837), outstanding Talmudist and Halachic authority.
Tishrei 13 is the yahrtzeit of the fourth Rebbe of Chabad-Lubavitch, Rabbi Shmuel Schneersohn, known as "Maharash" (a Hebrew acronym for "our master Rabbi Shmuel").
Rabbi Shmuel was born in the town of Lubavitch on the 2nd of Iyar of the year 5594 from creation (1834). His father was the third Chabad Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Lubavitch (1789-1866). Though the youngest of Rabbi Menachem Mendel's seven sons, Rabbi Shmuel was chosen to succeed his father as the leader of Chabad Chassidism in the movement's capitol, Lubavitch, at the latter's passing in 1866 (four of his brothers established branches of Chabad in other towns in White Russia and Ukraine).
In addition to authoring and delivering more than 1,000 maamarim (discourses) of Chassidic teaching, Rabbi Shmuel was extensively involved in Jewish communal affairs and traveled throughout Europe in order to generate pressure on the Czarist regime to halt its instigation of pogroms against the Jews of Russia. Rabbi Shmuel passed away at the age of 48 on Tishrei 13, 5643 (1882).
Links: More on the Rebbe Maharash
There are two sorts of inner convictions of the soul, this thing we call faith.
Unbound by the confines of space and time, your soul sees a reality your mind cannot fathom. From that vision seeps down a conviction that G-d is with you, that He is good, and that there is really nothing else but Him.
Not because you understand. But because your soul sees that this is so. And she sees with a clarity and certainty the flesh eye could never attain.
Nevertheless, a higher vision means there are two and not one: There is you and there is the vision you perceive. And if there are two, two can be separated.
So that, when darkness and confusion swells and storms, threatening to rip you away from your G-d, a higher vision is not enough.
That is when you need to reach to the very core of your soul. Not to that place in the soul that sees G-d, but to the essence of the soul that is truly a part of G-d.
To say, "This is my G‑d. I am His, He is mine, and we are one."
"And so, nothing can stand between us."