When my family and I moved to Crown Heights from Minnesota 22 years ago, one of my first concerns was to find a mashpia. A good mashpia should not only know Chassidus but also live Chassidus and be a shining example by the way he lives. You can identify him more from his personality than from his intellect. And there’s one more thing. As Rabbi Moshe Feller (my mashpia in Minnesota) said, the mashpia should be someone who cares.
I kept my eyes open, looking for someone who would be right for me. In the area where I stood in 770 when the Rebbe MH”M came out on the balcony there was a chassid who caught my attention by his kind manner and the deep Ahavas Hashem, Ahavas Yisroel and Ahavas HaTorah that you could see on his face. This was Rabbi Yitzchok Springer z”l.
One afternoon I approached him and asked him if he would be my mashpia. He reacted with surprise. He lowered his head somewhat and said simply, “You couldn’t find anyone better?” Rabbi Springer was my mashpia for 20 years until he passed away, and in some ways he is still my mashpia (even though I have a new one) because the example he set will always guide me. Sometimes when I have a mashpia-type question I ask myself, “What would Rabbi Springer say?”
One night in 5753 I came to 770 and Rabbi Springer called me over. He told me that he got an interesting call in response to his full page ad in the New York Times about the Rebbe MH”M. It was from a lawyer in Manhattan named Joel Grae who was the president of a corporation that was developing a new nuclear reactor. He read in the ad that the Rebbe MH”M said that the prophecy of Swords into Plowshares—the transformation of military technology to peaceful uses—had begun to be fulfilled. He said that their nuclear reactor was a part of this since the whole novelty of their reactor was that it was non-proliferative. It could only be used to generate electricity; no atomic bombs could be made from it. (For the full story see my book Scientific Thought in Messianic Times, Chapter III.)
Thus began a close friendship between Rabbi Springer, Mr. Grae and myself that continues to this very day. When the Rebbe MH”M gave his haskama and bracha (consent and blessing) for me to establish the Rabbi Yisroel Aryeh Leib Research Institute on Moshiach and the Sciences (on 11 Iyar, 5753), I asked Rabbi Springer to be a board member and Mr. Grae spoke at our annual Moshiach & Science Conference a few times.
Rabbi Springer also spoke at these conferences a couple of times—giving the D’var Torah. On one occasion, at the conference of 5758, something very interesting happened. Rabbi Springer began his speech by asking, “What is a Rabbi doing speaking at a conference of scientists…?” Afterward Professor Branover (Yirmiyahu ben Devora—for a refua shleima) got up to speak and asked, “What is a scientist doing speaking at a conference on Moshiach? The speakers should be Rabbis and mashpiim…”
Here are some selections from Rabbi Springer’s D’var Torah at that conference:
“I just want to say one thing because this is a convention of scientists. The Rebbe MH”M brings in HaYom Yom for 12 Teves something that is extremely important for our time. He writes that the Rebbe Rashab was elected to be the head of the Chevra Kadisha. In accordance with the custom, on Simchas Torah he was escorted by a big crowd of people to the shul where he said a maamer explaining that when Hashem asks something of a person he gets more power to do it. What did the Rebbe Rashab say at the end of this discourse—more than 110 years ago? That people have to put their intellect aside:
“‘Even the great intellectuals of our time have to put their intellect aside and not follow their reasoning because they can take a wrong turn by following their intellect and come to a bitter end. The main thing in this era preceding Moshiach (Ikvisa d’Meshicha) is not to follow one’s intellect, reasoning and knowledge but instead to fulfill the Torah and Mitzvos with sincerity and simple faith in the G-d of Israel.’
“You see that he says not just that the person may make a mistake but he goes further and says that the end will be…
“Not to go after the intellect—if people think they understand what is going on now they are mistaken. It’s better just to look at the positive side. We see that the world is ready for Moshiach and that people want Moshiach and we see open miracles…
“I want to share with you something that happened to me just before Pesach—a little story that demonstrates how the world is now ready, even the non-Jewish world. I was on the way to New Jersey together with Akiva Marshal to see my friend, Shloma Yaakov. While driving we got a flat tire. A non-Jew came out right away to help us. He drove us in his car to our destination.
“While we were in his car I spoke to him. I said to him, ‘You know, the Messiah is coming.’ He said he knows… So I say, ‘No, I am speaking about the real one’ and he says, ‘Oh, Rabbi Schneersohn.’ So we see what is going on in the world…
“I was in California for Pesach at my daughter and son-in-law in Agora Hills. On the Shabbos after Pesach a black man came to visit—to be at the table of my son-in-law for Shabbos—and this is the story that he told. He said that on the night of Gimmel Tamuz 5754 he had a dream that he should go to ‘Judaica,’ something ‘Judaica.’ He didn’t know what it means ‘Judaica’ —no idea what it meant. The next day, on Gimmel Tamuz in the morning, he sees the picture of the Rebbe on all the television channels. He says, ‘Oh, this is the one who came to me in the dream and told me “Judaica.”’ He asked some Jewish people who this is but they didn’t know what to say.
“It was a big Hashgacha Pratis that in the end he came to my son-in-law. After investigating his family background, he found that his great-grandmother was a white Jewish woman from Europe but she married a black man. This man’s mother was the daughter of the daughter of that Jewish woman and he came to my son-in-law as a Jew to observe Shabbos…”
FOR GENERATIONS…
There is a famous saying of the Tzemach Tzedek that when something is printed it remains for all generations to come.
When I received the haskama and bracha from the Rebbe MH”M in Adar 5753 to publish the proceedings of the Moshiach & Science Conference of 5752, Rabbi Yisroel Aryeh Leib’s 40th yahrtzait, I began working on the lectures from that conference. In the meantime the material was expanded upon in the conference of 5753 so I had more material to incorporate. This happened again the next year…and the next. I realized also that I had to write a considerable amount of introductory material so that the book—it was already developing into an actual book—would be self-contained and accessible to the general reader.
Then I got an answer in Igros Kodesh to include footnotes. I had written some footnotes but now I had to go through the whole book and document everything. It started to get unmanageable and on occasion I wondered if the book would ever be completed. Throughout all this it was Rabbi Springer who continually coached me and pushed me and emphasized how important the book is to the Rebbe MH”M, both because of the material on Moshiach and because of the chapter on Rabbi Yisroel Aryeh Leib. It was finally completed in 5770, Boruch Hashem!
Rabbi Springer was truly the Mashpia of Moshiach & Science.