Keeping warm(th)

I was part of the wave of young Rabbi s sent to the USSR in 1989 -90 .It was exciting to be part the post glasnost Jewish renaissance.We were thrust into this situation,with very little training or formal orientation. We were armed with a blessing from the Rebbe,our youthful naïveté and enthusiasm ,and a suitcase filled with the currency of the day, American Dollars, Levi's jeans, and assorted Revlon products,which when produced, magically turned sold out flights,trains,and hotel rooms into available ones! We arrived in Minsk on a wintry Erev Purim and were whisked right from the train to the house of an elderly Russian Jew who had passed away. We were the first rabbi s that many of these people had interacted with,especially the young ones,and the pressure was intense and the expectations seemed unrealistic. After about a week ( yes I know it sound s impossible )I was speaking fairly passable Russian and when I returned back to states I was speaking fluently. In the beginning however it was rough going. So I m sitting in this home with all the bereaved relatives,and these starving hungry souls are looking to me for something.How do you feed a hungry soul ,that s been starving for over seventy years,ESPECIALLY IF YOU DON'T SPEAK THE LANGUAGE ! On a whim I just started singing . A song popped out of my soul and went straight to my voice ,totally bypassing my brain " ..Oiphen priperchik Brent a fayerul ,uhn in shtub is hais ....." It's a sweet slightly sad Yiddish lullaby that describes a cold winter night in a village in Russia ,but inside the house it s warm ,there is a small stove providing the HEAT ,but there is a "Rebbele " a wizened elderly teacher of our faith instructing a small little child in the aleph bet , that is providing the WARMTH . Then the most amazing thing happened ,I realized I was not singing alone , an entire room of elderly soviet Jews was singing with me , Tears were flowing down all of our faces .We had established a common language,a common soul,a shared yearning and sense of nostalgia for the spiritual warmth of our faith. At that moment I realized that although that warmth, that YIDDISHE NESHAMA (Jewish Soul )often lies dormant within us,either due to being preoccupied with The fast pace of our lives,a Jewish upbringing utterly devoid of the more spiritual experiential part of Judaism ,or due tragically to the brutal oppression of a Stalinist regime , that warmth is nevertheless always there , lurking just beneath the surface of our consciousness , and there is no better way to raise a submerged sense of soulfulness than with one of the heartfelt melodies of our people. The way to unlock the door to corrupt Russian bureaucracy was a few cartons of revlon and some American dollars The way to unlock the spiritually starved soul of the Russian Jew was with that Yiddish song oiphen priperchik In the past week I ve spent every spare Moments next to my beloved fireplace basking in its warmth,and realized that the discussions of how cold it is outside and wether our heat is working properly,leads us naturally to reflect on coldness and warmth of a more personal spiritual nature . National grid provides the heat, our faith and yiddishkeit supplies us with the warmth Today I can truly say I m grateful for both ! Shabbat Shalom Rabbi Yossi