By Dovid Zaklikowski for COLlive and Hasidic Archives
Everett was described as a genius by those who knew him. But there were not many who knew him well. The young man was reclusive, often complaining that people bored him.
Rabbi Leibel Posner, then a rabbinical student, was among the lucky few who knew him. Still, he recalled, Posner did most of the talking during his first meeting with Everett, a four or five hour conversation.
Everett had many questions about religion. “How could one explain the existence of an invisible G-d?” he asked. Posner felt he could not give his brilliant friend a satisfactory answer and decided to put the question to the Rebbe.
During his next private audience, he told the Rebbe about Everett and his dilemma. In response, the Rebbe told Posner that it had become an accepted truth that all matter is composed of atoms, which are too small to be seen. Even the atoms themselves are not solid.
“On the contrary, you have more empty space than solid [mass]. This desk looks like one piece of wood, but it is not… it is actually many atoms next to one another.”
The fact that atoms could not be seen did not make them any less real, the Rebbe said. A person who rejects the atomic theory because he cannot see an atom is considered illogical.
“There is a subway here in New York, and an elephant in Africa,” the Rebbe continued. “A person can imagine the elephant in the subway. However, if you live in Poland, and you do not know what an elephant or a subway is, could you imagine an elephant in a subway? If you do not know what it is, you cannot imagine it. And because you do not know what it is, does it mean that it does not exist?”
Posner relayed this answer to Everett, and shortly thereafter, the young man agreed to come and speak to the Rebbe himself. During their three-hour discussion, the Rebbe encouraged him put on tefillin every day. A while later, the Rebbe asked Posner whether Everett was putting on tefillin. Posner called and asked, but Everett said he had never made such a promise. He had agreed only to consider putting on tefillin, and in the end, he had decided not to.
Over the next several months, the Rebbe periodically checked in with Posner about the young man’s situation. Posner found out that he was in Los Angeles and decided to reach out to him there. After several attempts, he finally got him on the phone and arranged a time to meet, but Everett never showed up.
In a private audience before Posner’s wedding, the Rebbe again asked about the young man, and Posner said he did not know what had become of him.
Sometime later, Posner met a relative of Everett’s and asked how he was faring. “Have you not heard?” the man said. “The police found him dead in a hotel room. He committed suicide.”
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