By Dovid Zaklikowski for COLlive and Hasidic Archives
On one of his daily bread deliveries, R’ Meir Blizintzky unwittingly rang a celebrity’s doorbell. Avigdor Hameiri, the first Poet Laureate of Israel, was delighted by the coincidence.
Meir looked like someone who studied Talmud, and Avigdor was just then searching for the right Aramaic word—a word to describe a person who speaks emotionally. By way of explanation (and demonstration), Avigdor gave a spitfire tirade, which included some choice words for the sages of the Talmud.
“Listen,” Meir said, “it seems that your critique is unfounded, but I have no time for discussion now. Perhaps come by my house over Shabbos.”
The author accepted the invitation, and though it was an unlikely relationship, it deepened over the next three decades. At Meir’s suggestion, Avigdor began sending his books to the Rebbe.
In 1953, he sent The White Messiah, a novel about a rabbi who survives the Holocaust, only to commit suicide. The book put the author’s hatred for Jewish traditions, faith, and leadership on full display.
Nevertheless, the Rebbe wrote back to him. “I said that I would, by this time, complete your book and respond to you at length,” the Rebbe wrote. “However, it is difficult and distressing to read, and therefore it is taking much longer.”
A few years later, in a private audience with Avigdor, the Rebbe began to discuss The White Messiah and his other novels. It was clear that he had read them carefully.
Flattered and impressed, Avigdor asked how the Rebbe had found time to take an interest in his writings, which surely did not fit with the scholarly Jewish volumes that were his usual reading.
“Time,” the Rebbe responded, “when used properly, is unlimited.”
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