Yud-Beis, Yud-Gimmel Tamuz

This Shabbos and Sunday marks the 79th anniversary of the liberation of the Fridiker Rebe (Rebbe RaYatz, Yosef Yitzvhok Schneersohn) from the jail of Kostrama. The imprisonment began on the15th of Sivan, 5687 (1927) in Leningrad, and on the third day ofTamuz, the death sentence of the Rebbe was lifted. Instead he was to be imprisoned in Siberia for ten years. In anticipation of the new sentance, the very police imprisoning the Rebbe allowed him to return home for six hours and bid farewell to his family and Chassidim. No one expected to see the Rebbe again, but to their amazement he returned again after only ten days, on the 13th of Tamuz.

In a letter from 5694 (1934) explaining his imprisonment, the Rebbe writes,

"Normally, an analogy is less earnest than its analogue. Consider,then: If imprisoning a body in a jail of wood and stone is called suffering, then how intense must be the suffering of the Divine Soul when it is imprisoned in the body and the animal soul. This is something worth thinking about deeply.

A lifetime spans a certain number of changing stages- childhood,boyhood, youth, young adulthood, adulthood, advancing years, and old age. People also vary in their gifts- whether common and mediocre or wonderfully luminous; likewise in their natures- for example, whether bashful and morose, or jolly and exhuberant. But apart from all these variables, in the course of a lifetime Divine Providence engineers particular periods which sometimes change a man's very nature. They develop his gifts and set him up at a particular height, so that he can gaze upon the ultimate purpose for which a man lives his life on the face of the earth.

Above all, a man's personality and gifts are most intensely escalated by a period rich in suffering which is inflicted on account of his vigorous endeavors for an ideal. This is particularly so if he struggles and battles with his pursuers and persecutors for the sake of preserving and advancing his religious faith.

Such a period, though fraught with affliction of the body and suffering of the spirit, is rich in powerful impressions. Such days are the luminous days in a man's life.

Every single incident in such a period is significant. In particular, if imprisonment is involved, the resultant spiritual benefit is so great that it warrants the recording not only of days and nights but even of hours and minutes. For every hour and minute of torment gives rise to inestimable benefits: it makes a man so resolute that even a weakling is transformed into the most courageous of men."

-- from A Prince In Prison