"Father! Father! Answer me"

The following is an excerpt from the diary of the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, which he wrote after a pleasant visit to a park in the hamlet of Serebrinka. A park that evoked detailed memories of the walks and talks the Rebbe had with his father.

"For an hour and a half I luxuriated in strolling through and sitting in the park, gazing at the sky and drowning in memories, until I heard the voice of my three year old daughter Chanah calling to me: "Father, father, where are you...? Father, father, answer me..." repeating her call twice and three times.

The call interjected most aptly into my thoughts: at that very moment I had been thinking about my father's discourse of the past Shabbat Naso, entitled, "G-d Descended Upon Mt. Sinai". In it, father cites a metaphor to explain the difference between the Divine effluence which comes in response to one's Torah study and observance of mitzvot and G-d's response to one's "service of the heart", one's prayer. The service of Torah and mitzvot draws a Divine response comparable to a father's pleasure in a son who toils in his father's business to increase his father's wealth. But the response evoked by prayer is like a father's response to his small child who yearns for him and cries, "Father, father, answer me..."

Hearing my own daughter's cries, I sensed in my own self how a child's call of "father, father" causes a pleasing of the spirit and awakens an inner delight that is incomparably greater than the pleasure accorded by the older son's most impressive accomplishments.

The calling continued: "Father, father, where are you? Father, father answer me, hug me." I followed her voice and she hugged me and told me that grandfather, grandmother and mother were all waiting for me for the evening meal."