Your Spiritual Space

On a recent trip to my childhood home in Leeds, my mother asked me to clear out my books that were collecting dust on shelves and in boxes in coveted spaces. I took them to London, and I noticed one of them, a small blue book. I was quite stunned when I looked inside. But first, in 1978 the Lubavitcher Rebbe began a campaign to print an edition of the Tanya, - the first Chassidic book, written by the first Chabad Rebbe, R’ Shneur Zalman - in every city in the world. His directive was based on a teaching of the Baal Shem Tov, that Moshiach would come when “the wellsprings” of Chassidic teachings would spread worldwide. ‘A spring is a source of living water. Printing the Tanya in every location would transform that place into a source and bastion of Spiritual teachings’. The numbers go consecutively from #1 printed in 1796 in Slavita, Ukraine, to today, when the number is over 6,600 and still growing. Here in the UK Mr. Avram Weiss traveled up and down the country in a caravan with a printer assembled inside.

In 1986, when I was four years old, n umber 2861 was printed in St. John’s Wood in that caravan, here on Grove End Road. Late Chief Rabbi Lord Jacobovitz was given a copy, and others were sent around. My brother got one from Wimbledon. Mine was from St. Johns Wood. The little blue book, was that Tanya. It is 21 years, this Shabbat, since the passing of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and almost 30 years since that Tanya was printed. We may wonder what brings us to a place, and what our job in that place is. This was a reminder to me. That the Rebbe saw the Shlichut,

sphere of influence role in each one of us, where ever we are, to carry the light of spirituality and goodness and share it wherever we can. Until we have reached the goal, that cannot be too far away now: Aimatai Kati mar, Lichsheyafutzu maynotecha chutza, the master, Mashiach can indeed arrive, as the wellsprings have outpoured and lit up the world.