A little Chabad history and personal history about celebrating birthdays.
CHABAD HISTORY ON BIRTHDAYS
So until 1988 there wasn’t much in the way of birthday celebrations in Chabad. Yes, there was a new song each year for the Rebbe’s new Psalm chapter (corresponding to the years) and we did extra study or Mitzvahs as a spiritual-gift to the Rebbe for his Yud-Alef Nissan birthday, but for the most part we didn’t really celebrate birthdays beyond childhood. Generally, the Chassidic and Yeshivish communities didn’t celebrate birthdays much. After all, the only birthday explicitly mentioned in the Torah is Pharoah’s birthday in the butler and baker story, and Pharaoh isn’t one of our heroes. And there’s a Midrash about celebrating a returning ship, successful at sea, more than celebrating a new untested ship going out for the first time – as a parable for why we commemorate yartzeits more than birthdays.
In 1988 the Rebbe lost his wife, Rebbetzin Chaya Mushka, and all that year he prayed at home on President Street (where they lived together for many years) instead of at the 770 synagogue. There was a rotation system based on last name initial as to who could pray there which day. Some days, after the prayer, the Rebbe would also say a short talk. For those of us at the 770 synagogue there would be a live audio feed, so we could hear it on the loudspeakers there.
The Rebbe’s birthday initiative was so shocking and unusual that I remember where I was standing when I heard it. It was on the 25th of Adar (the Rebbetzin’s birthday, though I did not know that at the time) and the Rebbe launched this idea of celebrating birthdays in a Jewish way, with a farbrengen and good resolutions, later adding customs such as eating a Shehchiyanu fruit and giving more Tzedakah etc. So from then on we began celebrating birthdays (our Hebrew date birthdays) in a Jewish way, as the Rebbe instructed and encouraged. It has become a big thing in Chabad, and now also in other communities, to view one’s birthday as an opportune day for blessing, for recharge and growth, for meaningful celebration.
Now, my Hebrew birthday is in Shevat, about a month before this talk in Adar. So my first teen birthday celebration was the following year when I turned 16. Here are two specific memories from my birthday of that year:
THE UNUSUAL CARD
I have a dear friend, to this day, who was my longtime Chavrusa – study partner. We studied Talmud for many years together and grew together in many ways. Today he is a Rosh Yeshiva in the Midwest. We are still close (albeit long-distance). Now and then, he is learned scholar, with a rich brilliant understanding and deep appreciation of Torah study. So he’s a serious guy. But he also had a lighter, livelier, even mischievous side (which he may have inherited from his mother, whom Raizy learned by).
One day, a few days before my birthday, we were walking back to Yeshiva from the 770 synagogue, and my friend said he needed to stop at the corner stationary store to buy a card. It’s at the same location where the Sweet Expressions shop is today. I remember that place best because it being a place that sold Parker Pens, which was a thing in those days. It also had a card rack, for birthdays and anniversaries and what not. My friend went and picked out a “Sweet Sixteen” card, it was quite feminine, and brought it up to the counter. I remember the store’s proprietor (he died years later during Covid), he was an earnest and sincere Chassid, he may have been a Yemenite or Jerusalemite, a pious man with peyot. I remember the look on his face, his face dropped. Obviously, he felt this card very unbecoming and inappropriate for a Yeshiva student. But he sold my friend the card and we were on our way.
For my birthday, my friend presented me with this card, complete with footnoted scholarly annotations and references, in his distinctive handwriting (he has excellent handwriting) richly expressing and twisting the card’s message in a most meaningful and personal way. I treasured that card and my daughters have come across it in basement boxes. We still have it.
THE FISH
As stated earlier, my 16th birthday was my first one celebrated under the Rebbe’s new instructions. So special was it, that my father, Rabbi Yisroel Rubin, drove down from Albany to farbreng with my class for my birthday. I remember the setting. We set up the tables in a big square on one side of the Mini-Zal. My father shared various things, but one thing I especially remember, and perhaps because I was a little embarrassed of it back then, not sure what I was thinking, but I’ve often thought of this parable and message and relate to it very much since.
There was a Mama Fish and a Baby Fish. And the Baby Fish was happily frolicking around in the shallow areas of the pond eating plankton or whatever fish eat. Mama Fish kept urging Baby Fish to swim in the deeper parts of the pond but Baby Fish was afraid and saw no reason to leave the easy comforts of the shallow part of the pond. There’s plankton everywhere, no need to learn to swim at deeper depths. Eventually the season changed, maybe it got colder and the shallow areas froze over, or it got too hot and the shallow areas dried up, either way, shallow areas were no longer an option and the deep was the only place to survive.
My father explained that in Yeshiva years there’s often no urgent imperative to take thing much deeper, after all there’s plenty available in the shallower ends, too. But as you go through life, often the shallow areas dry up or freeze out, and the only way to survive and thrive is if we know how to access the depths. It takes deeper appreciation, deeper understanding, deeper connection to be able to maintain and continue despite any and all challenges and variations in environment and circumstance.
Go Deep!