![Chassidim waiting to enter the Rebbe's room for yechidut ("oneness") — the meeting of souls between rebbe and chassid. - Painting by Zalman Kleinman | Courtesy Zev Markowitz / Chai Art Gallery](https://w2.chabad.org/media/images/44310.jpg?_i=_nD6C4982354E8EEFCEA38DC71D819F450 "Chassidim waiting to enter the Rebbe's room for yechidut ("oneness") — the meeting of souls between rebbe and chassid. - Painting by Zalman Kleinman | Courtesy Zev Markowitz / Chai Art Gallery")
Mother and daughter; father and son; brother and sister; husband and wife; friend and friend; teacher and pupil. To the varied array of human relationships, the phenomenon and experience of Chassidism has added one more: the bond between the rebbe and the chassid.
What is the nature of this bond? There is fierce love in it, and unquestioning loyalty. There is passion, devotion, admiration, appreciation, awe, mentorship, care, concern, sacrifice. Almost every human emotion is there, in heightened form. (Chassidim even quip that had King Solomon been a chassid, he needn't have resorted, in his Song of Songs, to the example of romantic love as a metaphor for the relationship between G‑d and Israel — he could have used the model of the love between rebbe and chassid.) But can it be described?
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