Planting Seeds

The thing about gardens is that you can never really know what will grow and what will not until you begin to see the results of the seeds you planted, watered, and patiently waited for.

The thing about life is that you never really know what will grow and what will not until you begin to see the results of the seeds you planted, nurtured, encouraged and perhaps even scolded along the way.

With God's help, we are lucky enough to see the seeds we know about grow into amazing young adults and watch as they become parents themselves. These are the obvious seeds that we watch even before they are born until the day we die. But sometimes, there are other seeds we plant and often we never know what will happen in the future.

This is true of teachers, who touch lives in so many ways but often never know what happens once the students move on. For example, when I was 13, I began to become more religiously observant. My teacher, Rabbi Rokeach (I don't even know his first name), made a huge impact on my life. He was what we would call Haredi - ultra-Orthodox...or at least that's what I thought he was. Perhaps he was modern Orthodox and felt it appropriate to wear a suit to the Conservative Hebrew school where he taught three times a week.

I wish there were a way to show him that the seeds of faith he planted, grew into a life here in Israel with my husband, children and grandchildren.

On a recent trip to India, I heard a story that shows more clearly than most how you can plant seeds and perhaps never find out how they will blossom. The Chabad Rabbi and his wife in Bangalore are amazing people. I've written several of their stories and here's another.

They've been in Bangalore for many years. But before they started, right after the Rabbi had finished studying, he was trying to decide what he wanted to do. He considered becoming a Chabad "Shaliach" - a messenger. In modern terms, this often means getting posted in some distant place and waiting for Jews to come by and it is your job to help them. Help them find kosher food; give them a place where they feel at home. In times of emergency, it means reaching out and helping.

Upon his graduation, he and his young wife were asked to consider going to India to serve there. No way, he answered. He might consider China but India was just not where he saw himself beginning to raise a family. He was told that they were short handed and asked if he would consider just helping out over the Jewish holidays - a four week period that consists of several different holidays.

The young couple agreed and were flown to India. They spent a lonely Rosh Hashana with almost no visitors and wondered why they had come. The Rabbi was sure there was no reason for him to stay but as the second holiday approached, he was asked again to be there for Yom Kippur. This time, there were many young Israelis who shared the meal before the fast day and the Rabbi felt that he'd found the reason why God and Chabad had put him there. And then, shortly before the solemn fast day began, the Israelis stood, grabbed their bags and began making plans to leave.

The Rabbi and his wife asked the young Jews where they were going - they'd been so sure they'd spend Yom Kippur together. They had to catch a train, the young people told the Rabbi - on to their next place to visit on a trip that would last them months away from home. The Rabbi was devastated but his amazing wife was more angry than anything else. She saw the disappointment her husband was feeling and turned to the Israelis and asked them how they dared, on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, to turn away and do this? They were Jews, she told them, even so far from home. She yelled at them and then watched them leave.

After the holiday ended, the young couple returned to Israel, sure that they would not go back to India. A few years later, two things happened. The Chabad Rabbi who had convinced them to come to India, Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivka were murdered in a terror attack in Mumbai and something else.

The second thing was that the Rabbi met a man who told that his daughter had run away from home years earlier. She had left with nothing and left no trace. He had searched for her, even hired private detectives to find her. She had stopped being religious but all he wanted was his daughter to come home. And then, one day she did.

She told her parents that she had traveled to India and all around India. She had left everything behind. And then, as Yom Kippur was approached, she went to the Chabad house and ate with the Rabbi and his wife. And when she told them she was leaving, the Rabbi's wife had yelled at her to remember who she was, where she was from. She traveled away from that place to another, and there she fasted and remembered. She honored that Yom Kippur and has honored all that have come since.

She returned home, even as the young Rabbi and his wife took up residency in Bangalore and began helping thousands of others, giving them a warm meal, a place to spend Shabbat. They never judge. They never yell. But what they do, is plant seeds...and then pray they will grow.

Many don't. Some Israelis go off and never come home. But many, many do. They plant those seeds with every bit as much devotion and hope as the farmer in the field but unlike the farmer who watches his crops grow, the Rabbi and his wife live on faith - faith that God will continue to nurture the seeds that the Rabbi planted, that God will watch over them as they leave the Chabad house and travel onward.

He knows that they will find their way home - and almost all of them do find their physical home. But it is the spiritual home that he nurtures even more - with a song, a warm meal, advice when it is needed.

The thing about life is that you never really know what will grow and what will not but you have to have faith. You have to plant, nurture, encourage and perhaps even scold along the way.