18th Yarzheit of Reb Shlomo 11.1.

12
mashmie tzeaka hashmiu tzaakatenu
Propagators of cries, make our cry heard

lifne shomea tzeaka

Before Hearer of cries

Machnisei dima haknisu dimotenu

Presenters of tears, put our tears

lifnei meleh mitratze bidmaot

Before King Who gives in to those in tears

There is a place of tears A hall A palace A Heichal Where I meet Reb Shlomo. His raspy voice never moved me His music folksy and repetitive Never inspired my sophisticated classical musical Critical ear.

But when he speaks My tears well up Every time.. I cannot explain it. In this hall of tears Heichal hadimaot Things make sense And life takes on a tragic but real quality And his words ring out with TRUTH Like none others. In this hall of tears My life is brought into perspective So rare in the clutter and noise of daily living And the chasing of things of no import. His insistence on the majesty of the Jewish soul Without trite answers to the philosophical questions. This gives me hope After all the words have failed. His teaching is so simple Worthy of the Holy Baal Shem Tov The search for the real question Is a life-time quest A heroic quest And that question is not what but who1 Abraham asks who is the master? Responsible for the burning inferno? The Holocaust back then And the one within; Only then, for the first time in history The midrashic divine responds I am the master ani baal habira Insufficient a response to the inquiry But sufficient to establish a connection. Those tears arise from a deep grief That my life, and yours Has within its core this unbelievable tragedy
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That only he understood in his songs his raspy voice And his Toirah And his hug. Shlomo never really answered your questionsOn the surface that isFor the question you may have asked him Triggered within him An autobiographical question he must have once posed So the answer was as much his own response To his own question. But his insistence that the answer was also good for you Was enough Of a comfort, That he too had struggles with the same issue The same pain, like the Baal Habira. Tormented by the Six Million Like no other, he bore it in his guitar, It haunted his melodies, Did you ever see him laugh? Did you ever not see the sadness in his melody? The tears and the madness Moishe-gut-Shabbes haunted his strings. His music and his Toirah Was the response to the tears His life was the response He saw the Birah Doleket The Pain is so infinite he once said: you could sing it for 10000 years non stop and then maybe we will have covered the first second of pain Who else introduced us to the world of Rebbe Nachman and the Izhbitzer? Who else taught us that Chassidus meant more than Chabad? That connection to another Yid was as important as davening? That singing was as important as leining noch a blatt? Ani Baal Habira! Sometimes I think he felt like he was the only one alive Like Abraham his forefather Who felt the presence of the Mayor of the burning city Whose Presence

Tormented him With his gaze Ani Baal Habira! 18 years ago he died and without him there is no prophet to kill us with kindness and hug us with unconditional love and the streets of New York have never been the same and the homeless have no Rabbi since to pitch in a dollar or two. Like the Kalever Rebbe Whose funeral cortege was accompanied by hundreds of shepherds We once again relive His memory And accompany him We beggars, and thieves We the nameless flock Who live in fear Of authority and social pressure. His soul was unique His mission was singular His silent talmidim Now remember And sing. I can only connect to him in this hall of tears So today I pray:

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