Rav Yosef Caro, author of the Shulchan Aruch, had been laboring to understand a certain Talmudic passage long into the night. Back and forth he went, checking the conceptual flow of the phrases, the insights of the commentaries, and the ramifications in Torah law. As the light of dawn crept through the windows of his study, he developed an interpretation that satisfied the difficulties he had perceived.

Weary after the night’s exertion, he made his way through the winding, hilly streets of Tsfat (Safed). He saw a number of Jews already entering a house of study and decided to join them. There an ordinary Torah scholar was expounding the passage on which he had labored all night and offering the very same interpretation which he had toiled so long to develop.

Rav Yosef Caro was shaken. Why had he needed to exert himself so to grasp a concept which an ordinary scholar appeared to have mastered without difficulty?

Now Rav Yosef Caro had a medium, an angel who would instruct him in his spiritual development and answer questions for him. At the first opportunity, he asked his angel to explain this phenomenon.

The angel told him that considerable energy was necessary to introduce a spiritual concept into the framework prevailing within our material world. Rav Caro had achieved that through his night of intense effort. Once this was accomplished, the concept became accessible to others, the lesser scholar had thus been able to grasp it.

This pattern can be applied beyond the sphere of intellectual development. Breaking through any new idea, practice or pattern requires unique effort, commitment and sacrifice. Once the breakthrough is accomplished, however, it can and will be emulated by others, and will eventually be considered a matter of course.

Today, there are yeshivos and Torah schools flourishing throughout the former Soviet Union, hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews have emigrated to Israel and the US, and many both in and outside that country have demonstrated interest in increasing their Jewish observance.

In the 50s, 60s and 70s, even in the early 80s, this would have been considered a hopeless dream, nothing more than fantasy.

When the Rebbe assumed leadership of the chassidic movement, there was a small hard core of Lubavitcher chassidim left in Russia. The Rebbe labored unceasingly through directing underground activities in Russia, and by applying influence in both the spheres of international diplomacy and in the spiritual spheres above for Jewish observance to be maintained and amplified in the Soviet Union, and for all the Jews of Russia to be given permission to emigrate.

In the mid 80s, before Gorbachov’s policies had taken form, the Rebbe told his chassidim that these dreams were about to become reality.1 The full story of the Rebbe’s involvement with the Jews in Russia and with those who emigrated to Israel and the US requires a treatment of its own. This chapter merely sheds light on certain personal dimensions of this heroic saga