By Dovid Zaklikowski for COLlive and Hasidic Archives
On a visit to S. Petersburg, then the capital of Imperial Russia, Rabbi Sholom Dovber, the fifth Lubavitcher Rebbe Rashab, took his young son to visit a cup factory. The factory used a newly invented machine to make a cup out of a solid block of wood.
The two watched as the machine spun a piece of wood very quickly, simultaneously sanding the inside and the outside.
“See what the machine did?” the Rebbe Rashab said. “It took a chunk and made it into a vessel.”
Sometime later, father and son returned to the city, and the Rebbe asked his son if they could visit the factory again. But when they arrived, they learned that the machine was broken. A screw was loose, a worker explained, which caused the machine to chip the cup, ruining it.
As they walked out, the Rebbe Rashab turned to Yosef Yitzchak, who would succeed him as the sixth Chabad Rebbe.
Jews, too, possess a “small screw” which must be carefully maintained, he told his son. If one’s allegiance and devotion to G-d is faulty, or “loose,” cracks will form within, and all our divine service will be wasted.
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