To Ease Emotional Pain
By Dovid Zaklikowski for COLlive and Hasidic Archives
In the 1930s, shortly after the passing of Rabbi Yosef Rosen, known as the Rogatchover Gaon (Genius of Rogachyov), his daughter began to microfilm the hundreds of pages of his valuable writings.
Beginning from the age of 17, the Rebbe had had an ongoing correspondence with the Rogatchover Gaon, and when the microfilm was discovered in the United States, he strongly encouraged – and recruited funders for – its publication.
Thus, when the first volume on the Talmudic tractate of Makot was published, the Rebbe penned a lengthy letter of comments to encourage them to continue publishing the genius’s works. Written in shorthand, Rabbi Rosen’s writings are difficult to understand.
Rabbi Menachem Kasher and his team wrote copious notes on the text. The Rebbe’s comments focused on those notes. In his very last comment on the 1959 letter, the Rebbe veered from the text, the notes on the Talmud. Instead, he pointed to one of the sources Rabbi Kasher brought from his own Biblical commentary, the Torah Shleimah. The note referenced volume 17, which in turn referenced volume 15.
The Rebbe took the time to follow the references and to comment on the footnote in volume 15, which states that he had recently been asked if a blind person were permitted to bring a guide dog into the shul.
“Based on the Biblical verse,” Rabbi Kasher wrote, based on what it states in Deuteronomy (23:19) that one should not bring an exchange for a dog, which is referring to a harlot, to the House of G-d. If what is exchanged for a dog, he reasoned, should not be brought into the House of G-d – which today is compared to every shul, “Surely the dog itself should not be brought.”
The Rebbe notes that he brings no text proof for his ruling and that Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, in a 1953 ruling, wrote that a dog may have been problematic if it was there to play, or the like, but when it is there to assist with prayers, it surely is permitted.
In response, Rabbi Kasher sent the Rebbe a copy of a letter he wrote to Rabbi Feinstein about why bringing in a dog should not be permitted. In a lengthy response, the Rebbe refutes those proofs, which were derived mostly from allegorical texts – from which, he explained, one does not make rulings on Jewish law.
The Rebbe noted that Jewish law encouraged one to pray with the community and that when it came to embarrassing someone who might not be ritually pure about entering the shul – even on a temporary basis, the Code of Jewish Law states (Rabbi Moses Isserles’ note on 88:1), “they are allowed to go.” Surely when it comes to someone who – according to his ruling – would never be able to go without a dog, they should be permitted.
The Rebbe noted that when it came to paining someone by not being able to enter, or even if it was just that they would not merit to pray with the community, “One should look for ways to permit them to enter.” At the end, the Rebbe added, “This idea is simple to comprehend,” and all should be proponents of permitting service dogs into the shul.
Find Hasidic Archives latest books on HasidicArchives.com My Gulag Life: Stories of a Soviet Prisoner and Dear Rebbe: Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson corresponds with a singer, a writer, a sculptor & a Holocaust survivor.
