1.
It started a month ago, with a phone call from an unknown number.
""Hello, this is Yuval Burns speaking from Tel Aviv," he said, and began a series of sentences that left me quite confused: "Listen, I'm holding an evening in memory of my wife, Rinat Noa Burns, may her memory be blessed. It's happening at the Barbie Club in Tel Aviv, with men and women separated, on the 12th of Tammuz, the holiday of redemption.
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""The title of the evening will be 'Good Decisions Evening,' and last year Kobi Apallo, Ariel Zilber, Arkady Duchin, Meir Banai, Eviatar Banai, David D'Or and Eli Yatsfan already came to the event. I'm just finalizing the artists and singers for this evening this year, and I want you to be the host.".
Wait, what's the connection between an evening in memory of a deceased woman and the Barbie Club? Why is there suddenly an event there in segregation (and how has this not already been a headline in Haaretz about another case of women being excluded)? Why do all these great artists even come to the event? What is the holiday of redemption on the 12th of Tammuz? And what is this title, "Good Decisions"?
Burns began to explain to me, slowly, but by the time I finished hosting this evening, this week on Sunday, I didn't really understand.
So it goes like this: Rinat and Yuval Burns repented, became close to Chabad Hasidism, and spread a lot of Torah and Hasidism in their city of Tel Aviv. Rinat continued this life mission even as she struggled with her illness.
A few months before she passed away, hundreds of the couple's friends and students gathered for an evening of Jewish music and making "good decisions." Each of the participants took on something small and practical for Rinat's healing. Now Yuval is continuing the exact same initiative, but for the upliftment of her soul.
And if all this load of exciting details weren't enough, then the producer that Yuval put me in touch with, and who continued to talk to me towards the evening, kept saying that the event would be held on behalf of "from above.".
""On behalf of whom?" I asked.
""From above. That's the name of our center on King George Street in Tel Aviv. What, don't you know what 'from above' is? The Tanya tells us, 'And the second soul in Israel is a part of God from above,'" Every person has two souls, a divine soul and an animal soul, and the divine soul is a part of God, blessed be He. We all know how to recite this and say 'a part of God from above,' but we don't really pay attention, and so the author of the Tanya adds the word "from above." There is a part of God from above, from above, in us, literally!".
Did you get the genius part? Any Tel Avivian who just asks them what their lecture center is called already gets the first lecture.
2.
""Welcome to the evening in memory of Rinat Noa Burns," I said on stage at the beginning of the event, and in response, a series of thunderous applause began.
This went on for long seconds. However, Shalem whistled, excited, and cheered just at the sound of Rinat's name, which I hadn't gotten to know. "And welcome to the evening for the 12th of Tammuz," I continued. This date also drew enthusiastic applause, and the truth is that I didn't exactly get to know the 12th of Tammuz either.
It turns out that on this date, eighty-eight years ago, Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak Schneerson, the previous Rebbe of Chabad Hasidism, was released from prison after being imprisoned for spreading Judaism. Since then, this day has been considered the "Holiday of Redemption." True, there is a much more famous holiday of Redemption, the 19th of Kislev, when Rabbi Schneor Zalman of Ladi, the founder of this Hasidism, was released from prison.
I have no idea if there are other "redemption holidays" like this, but if I want to find out, I'll simply check Chabadpedia, the site I used to prepare the instructions. It's like Wikipedia, but only about Chabad. In other words, if Wikipedia tries to encompass all of the world's knowledge, in the broadest possible way, here they don't go broad but deep. As detailed as possible, as meticulous and precise as possible, and all about this Hasidism and only about it.
It's unbelievable what resolutions these Chabad-era Jews reach. There is an entire page on this date, the 12th of Tammuz, as on every other date throughout the year. It is written there in minute detail about everything that happened on this day, almost obsessively: On the 12th of Tammuz in 1953, the Rebbe appointed his son, the Rayatz, as his secretary. On this date in 1935, the publication of the Chabad Bulletin, the journal of Hasidism in America, began. In 1942, on this day, a Chabad house was opened in the Gilo neighborhood of Jerusalem, and so on and so forth. Every businessperson who was born or died on this day also receives his own value, and of course there is extensive reference to the Rebbe's release from prison.
I'm a freak of such initiatives. It's really fun to discover how many big and small things happened with each passing day, and how much meaning and history each date has. I wish there would also be a magnificent Viznitspedia of Viznits Hasidism, a detailed Merkazpedia of the Merkaz HaRav Yeshiva, and so on.
3.
Shortly before the evening began, the artists Erez Lev Ari, Amir Dadon, Daniel Zamir, Yishai Ribo, and others were already sitting in the room. Only Shuli Rand had not yet arrived.
The atmosphere was that of a gathering, not a VIP room. Melodies, hugs, a gathering of friends. "Life for life," said the Hasidic Rabbi Dado, one of the organizers, who told more and more Hasidic stories there (what's beautiful about such groups of converts is the names. The fathers are called "Rabbi Ido" and "Rabbi Tomer," and the children are already called Menachem Mendel and Chaya Mushka).
From this room, the guests took to the stage one by one, and simply gave excellent performances of their songs and also of ancient Hasidic tunes.
But the main thing wasn't the songs, but what was in between. The good decisions, remember? That's what we gathered for. These were the rules of the game: Each person in the audience was asked to decide on one good deed, from that night onward. He texted the deed to a phone number (incidentally, it was the personal cell phone number of the late Rinat Burns).
Each such decision was immediately projected onto large screens on the stage, along with the name of the person who wrote it, and a raffle was held among everyone for a flight ticket to 770, Chabad's central synagogue in New York.
Here are some of the decisions announced during the evening. It seems to me that we can learn a little from them about the atmosphere and the wide variety of participants: "Study a chapter of Tanya before prayer", "Be more tolerant of my children", "Put on tefillin tomorrow morning", "Give charity before prayer", "Pray the morning prayer", "Adjudicate every person on merit", "Study with my wife together", "Study Torah with my husband" (the wife of the one from the previous message?), "Occasionally host people who don't know what Shabbat is", "Pray more seriously", "Eat only in kosher restaurants", "Light Shabbat candles ten minutes before the time", "Be more careful about lashon hara, both in speech and hearing", "Determine our next place of residence with our mission in the Jewish people in mind", "In addition to charity, give spiritual charity: smile even to those who don't feel like it", "Recite the blessing of food from a siddur", "Play music and sing more", "Be more polite to people", "Count to thirty before each of my responses", "Put on tefillin for another person at least once a week", "Be careful to tithe," "Call your grandparents every Friday to tell them Shabbat Shalom," and so on and so forth.
4.
The evening drew to a close, and only one person had yet to arrive. It turns out that the Breslav Hasid, who was not in the first act, would not be in the last act either.
Every attempt to understand where Shuli Rand is and when he will arrive is met with difficulties. All the texts I prepared at home for the presentation are already finished, I have already told all the stories that Rabbi Dado told me behind the scenes, all the singers have finished singing the songs they practiced, but Shalem is waiting for Shuli and asks: Where are you?
When we finally caught up with him, it turned out he had another performance that evening ("I remembered one performance according to the foreign date and one according to the Hebrew date, and then it turned out it was on the same date").
So what do we do? I admit I was stressed. Very stressed. But to my surprise, Yuval Burns took a deep breath, a huge smile spread across his face and he said: "Dude, you don't understand. Now, now I'm starting to enjoy myself! Up until this moment, I was running the evening.
From now on – the Holy One, blessed be He, is running it. And he is the greatest producer." And I really saw: as the mess grew and the delay became more embarrassing, it only did him good. He really enjoyed this experience, the uncertainty.
People who had paid to see Shuli Rand began to leave the hall, the singers were asked to come up and improvise a few more songs in the meantime, and with no choice, it was decided to bring forward the raffle scheduled for the end of the evening.
Then, from among the hundreds of good decision-makers in the audience, the winning ticket was drawn: Aharle Lipsker. Event and wedding musician, for those who don't know.
""I see that you're really being helped from above," I said to Yuval, who was thinking exactly what I was thinking: Did musician Lipsker get lucky? It's probably a sign from heaven that he too should play here a little and hold out for a while, and so he did.
""Dear audience, now for the sentence I've been wanting to say for three-quarters of an hour: Welcome to Shuli Rand!" I announced as His Excellency finally emerged and took the stage for several wonderful performances, as usual.
5.
What a sad, happy, original, moving and strange evening, I thought to myself at midnight, when the memorial-performance ended, and I started to walk outside.
""Hey," one of the guys from 'From Above Really' shouted at me. "Actually, you're the only one here who didn't make a good decision tonight, you idiot! You didn't text any receipt of your own!".
Actually, you're right. And I actually had a lot of ideas throughout the evening. This is definitely the kind of event that leaves you with reflections and thoughts.
Maybe, for example, I should take it upon myself not to be late. After all, I don't always arrive on time when I'm scheduled. Maybe I should learn from Yuval how not to stress about everything. Even when what I planned goes wrong. I learned a lesson here tonight in faith, confidence, and calmness. It'll be okay.
And wait, maybe we need to strengthen ourselves in the knowledge that Tel Avivians who seem to me to be completely far from Judaism and Torah are really not what they seem. The fact is, within seconds they take on serious and enviable spiritual acceptances. I don't know. It actually seems to me that after such an experience, my best acceptance is to share it with others and write about it all.
• The column is published in the newspaper 'Bisheva''
