T.A.C. 5:30
That’s what I wrote on a note that was sent to all the members of the group during the Mishnayos class. The note was written in code, of course, so that not every boy would understand what it said. But I can tell you, only you, what it meant.
It meant: Today, afternoon, Chaim. Meaning, today, at 5:30 in the afternoon, the meeting would be at Chaim’s house, at my house. The meetings are not always at my home. Sometimes they are at Zalmy or Shmuel or someone else’s house. But this time I initiated the meeting so they would all be coming to me.
There was an urgent matter that you will read about soon, but before that, the teacher’s sharp eyes noticed suspicious movement in the middle row. The note was confiscated. He read it quickly and gave a little smile.
As usual, the teacher did not refer to the note during the lesson and continued explaining the Mishna. It was only right before the bell rang that he asked, “Chaim and Mendy, please come over to me at the end of recess.”
If you don’t know us yet, then I will introduce us. I am eleven-year-old Chaim and my partners are Mendy, Zalmy, Shmuel and Simcha. Our group has undertaken a number of secret missions and solved mysteries, some of which can be publicized, but not all.
At the end of recess we nervously went over to our teacher. Thank G-d, he sufficed with a warning. Then Mendy dared (what courage!) to ask him why he smiled when he read the note. The teacher smiled again and said, “It reminds me of mafteichos.” We did not understand what he meant by that. Oh well.
Everyone came on time to the meeting and a noisy discussion ensued around the table. In school, a contest had started at the beginning of the year with prizes. Every week there was a new and interesting assignment.
The assignment this week was to choose a topic in inyanei Moshiach and Geula and find as many places as possible where it is mentioned in the s’farim of the Rebbe and in general.
The teacher said many points would be given to the one who brought sources from the biggest variety of s’farim. So each of us, at home, tried searching in order to find sections about Geula and Moshiach.
We were unsuccessful. In a bookcase there are many more s’farim than there appear to be and they are full of all sorts of topics that are not relevant to the topic we were seeking. So we held a meeting in order to come up with ideas about how to find what we were looking for.
By the end of the meeting we had decided to go our separate ways and for each of us to ask adults ways of finding sections on Moshiach and Geula.
At the meeting we had the next day, everything looked different. It turned out that we had failed.
I had asked R’ Nochum, the gabbai of the shul. He listened impatiently and then blurted, “What’s the problem? Look it up in the mafteichos!” He didn’t wait for a response and just walked away. I did not understand what he meant. R’ Nochum has a big ring of mafteichos (which also means keys in Hebrew), with keys for the shul, but what connection did keys have with Moshiach and Geula?
Simcha asked his older sister, Yael, who told him she didn’t know exactly, but maybe he should look at the mafteiach nos’im (subjects). Shmuel said he knew about keys for locks and a mafteiach tzinoros (a pipe wrench), but not a key for subjects. We agreed with him. None of us had heard of a key like that.
Shmuel asked R’ Michel, the old mashpia. R’ Michel speaks in Yiddish and with children he speaks Lashon ha’kodesh, so what Shmuel understood was something like, “Nu, of course, look in the mafteichos.” Mafteichos? What’s that?
So we were stuck. Nobody had any ideas.
The only thing we knew was that it was somehow connected to some mysterious key somewhere. Mendy tried suggesting that maybe it had to do with a book that was in a locked closet, but that did not sound right.
Only Zalmy gave a mysterious smile and waited for us all to quiet down. When that finally happened, he announced that he had the solution. He had called his counselor from Camp Oro Shel Moshiach who revealed the secret to him.
In the D’var Malchus, said Zalmy, the Rebbe says, “Inyanei Melech HaMoshiach and inyanei Geula were explained in numerous places, and it is easy to find them by using sifrei mafteichos (books of indexes of which there are many in our generation) with the right arachim (entries): Geula, Moshiach, etc.”
We did not understand, so Zalmy explained. In many books, and this is the case with most of the Rebbe’s s’farim, at the end of the seifer they add a list of topics, books, and people that were mentioned in the book. This is so that someone who is looking for something specific can easily find it. These are called mafteichos – indexes!
That is what Simcha’s sister and R’ Nochum the gabbai and R’ Michel the mashpia had meant. We ran over to the bookcase and each one grabbed a different book and at the end there really was an index of topics arranged alphabetically. For example, for the letter Gimmel there is Geula, Galus, and all sorts of other words. Each of these is called an erech – an entry. We discovered that in big sets of books, such as Likkutei Sichos, there are special volumes of indexes.
Then we understood what the teacher meant when he said that the note reminded him of mafteichos. Entries are arranged that way, with the abbreviation of the volume and then the page number. For example, י”ח 176 means the topic can be found in volume 18 on page 176.
We remembered that at first, when we looked randomly into s’farim, we had seen pages like that and thought maybe it was a printing error and that it didn’t mean anything. Now we understood that it was very meaningful.
But aside from that, we discovered something else we hadn’t known. We always thought that only the Rebbe was so involved with the topic of Geula and that it hardly appears in other s’farim. We saw we were mistaken.
Nearly every book that I know of has at least a few topics on Moshiach and Geula, even in the Mishna in all kinds of places, and the Gemara, Rambam, the Siddur, and every Jewish book.
As the Rebbe says, really, in every book you can find something about Geula and Moshiach. You just have to look.