Sixty years ago, upon the passing of the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, of righteous memory, leadership of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement passed on to his illustrious son-in-law, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, of righteous memory.
The Rebbe revolutionized, inspired and guided the post-holocaust transformation of the Jewish people that continues to this day.
The new Rebbe's discourse entitled Basi L'gani was in fact based upon the very discourse that his father-in-law had submitted a year earlier. He started off where his predecessor left off...
The words Basi l'gani are taken from Solomon's Song of Songs.
The garden is our world. Announcing His arrival here in this garden is G-d Himself—who refers to it not as "a garden," but as "My garden." All that He created belongs to Him, but of all the myriad spiritual emanations and worlds, there's only one that He refers to as "My"; because it is only here – in the very lowest realm – that He wants to call home. The divine light shines ever brightly in the supernal worlds, but only in this physical world does G-d wish to manifest His very essence.
His Shechinah (presence) was here when He created this world. But it was driven away by a series of sins, starting with Adam and Eve eating the fruit from the forbidden Tree of Knowledge. Subsequent sinful generations drove the Shechinah further away, as it ascended from one heaven to the next.
This was no glitch in the plan, it was anything but.
G-d envisioned a world characterized by frightful spiritual blackness wherein creations – possessors of free choice, capable of embracing the darkness or rejecting it – would repress the darkness, and ultimately transform it into light.
Through the difficult work of banishing and transforming the darkness, it becomes a beautiful "garden." A place that G-d is delighted to inhabit.
Abraham started the process of bringing the Shechinah back down here. The next generations continued the process that was completed by Moses, the seventh generation from Abraham—for, as the Midrash tells us, "All sevenths are precious."
At the giving of the Torah, G-d returned in full grandeur—"And G-d descended.upon Mt. Sinai" (Exodus 19:20). A few months later, G-d's presence graced the newly-constructed Tabernacle. This time the Shechinah was here to stay.
And G-d exclaimed, "I've come to My garden."
This day, so relevant to every Jew in our generation, is surely a day for reflection, learning, prayer, positive resolutions and acts of loving-kindness.
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