(2002) Last night being the Lubovitcher Rebbe’s Z”TL yartzheit, I decided to travel to the holy rebbe’s kever (gravesite) with a group of everyday west siders in order to get a first hand experience of this holy day at one of the Lubovitch’s most revered locations: Queens, NY – the final resting place of possibly the holiest man of our generation.

While a yartzheit is translated as the anniversary date of a soul’s departure from this world; (literally meaning: a Year Passed) the day, according to our tradition, is the point in time when the departed soul ascends to a higher level in the next world. As Jews we are taught early, one must celebrate a family achievement of any nature. We certainly have been through our share of family shindigs – anniversaries, birthdays, graduations and some wild siddur parties to know that Jews don’t take celebrating lightly (think of any occasion where the word “Kvell” is used and the Black label is served). A Yartzheit essentially continues this tradition of celebration, even after one is gone from this world. With this in mind, one may start to finally understand why there is an occasional shnapps and kichel Yarzheit party served at 8am– this too is a graduation party, but of a much more profound level. And I was headed to most holiest of yarzheit parties of the most fun partying Chasidim in existence – an experience I truly believe every jew should do once in their lives.

My intentions of visiting the grave were not purely experiential, but also personal. My religiously unaffiliated parents found observant Judaism through Lubovitch in the late seventies and my dad took me and my twin brother to meet the holy Rebbe when we were babies. (I’m still searching my attic for that dollar!) So in truth, I owe much of my faith to the wise Lubovich families in Crown Heights and Philadelphia, who understood the ways of connecting to a young soul-searching, hippie macrobiotic-eating couple’s hearts was through some good spiritual vegetarian kosher cooking.

With that being said, and with this medium being bangitout.com, I decided here to keep most of my own personal spiritual experiences to myself and instead simply share some of my simple observations of this visit. It is important to first know that this was not some college Chabad-house Fabrengen singalong, drink-up and mention Moshiach as much as possible sort of thing. When entering the Queens site there is a crowded huge room of Chasidim, families and all learning, davening, meditating, thinking and writing. Sounds like a strange way to party? It was.

Anyhow here goes:

Lubovitch children wait in line for the kever for hours as if they were kids in Disney World on line for Space Mountain or more accurately, lehavdil, for a shopping mall Santa. Asking every five seconds, “Imma, what else should I ask for??!”

Very much like the places aforementioned, you wait on line for a good 30 minutes only to get 2 minutes at the kever itself -which, ironically, is timed exactly. Then they send in a couple of club-going Israeli bouncers to clear the grave of Lubovitch praying stragglers who refuse to leave the gravesite until they finish that one last kapitul. It’s like a teacher collecting tests after the time is up from students desperately trying to jot in that last answer with hopes of getting something right.

All Lubovitch girls on line with us were about 15, all silently super anxious, as if the cast of the OC was signing autographs at the end of the line. All seemed to be equipped with funky rings on their fingers and flowing tehillim whispers on their lips.

All Lubovitch men were round, bearded and outfitted with the trendiest glasses on the planet.

It is important to note, that I did not see one person there without a smile on, which is crazy since I saw absolutely no vodka in the joint! So either these people were sincerely basking in the overwhelming spirituality of the evening, or like others in my car, they preboozed.

While you wait on line, there is free tea, coffee and the greatest sugar cookies man has ever created.

When you ask any Lubovitcher guy to explain about the Rebbe being the Moshiach, you will hear, for an extended period of time, some of the greatest mushalim, parables, ever told -generally leaving you with a crystal clear understanding of the Lubovitch philosophy and some belief in Jesus.

Lubovitchers in the mikvah just rock. On the one hand you’ll see the common round, bearded chasid, wearing only his tiny glasses and birthday suite, and then all of a sudden a tour of unaffiliated greasy spike-haired Sephardic teenagers will hop right in to the same mikvah. Which of course, poses a serious problem, especially if you are already in that mikvah suddenly to find yourself trapped between some bearded dude who is having a synchronized swimming mikvah bob competition with his overweight friend Shmuely. But it was really a spiritual bathhouse of unity and I came out of that with a lot more than I ever expected, namely other people’s body hair. But as a bonus, we were only charged the “Bochrim” 2 dollar rate. (No facial hair, blue shirts = Bochrim) as opposed to the 3 dollar “Adult” rate, which the 11 year old bearded kid in front of me was quickly charged. I doubt they minded, as no one bothered us or really even talked to us there, although I think that may have had something to do with one of our guy’s bright orange silk Hawaiian “Hot Love” Boxers. But who knows.

I also noticed the entire place was swarming with NYPD cops, which almost rivaled the number of simultaneous Rebbe’s greatest hits shiurim video screens (ala Deli Kasbah) playing virtually everywhere, even in the graveyard!

I have to say it was really cool seeing an old wise bearded Lubovitcher (think Yoda) sitting down next to a five year old kid ( also bearded) writing the same sort of letter of personal requests. Before visiting the grave we were told to write all of our life’s requests on a simple piece of paper. (Honestly, I saw lots of people with notebooks jammed with written requests) My page consisted mostly of my name, my friends and family names and the word “Bashert” a lot.

Once you finally get to the kever you take off your shoes, pray for two minutes (exactly), light a candle and then, get this, after going through all of that waiting, mikvahing, writing, praying – you suddenly tear up your personal request paper and chuck it over the kever! Which begs the question – how the heck is the Rebbe supposed to read it if it’s all torn up!!??

And in short, I guess that is the answer. He’s not.

Perhaps the underlying idea of the night is that they are not praying to Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson ZTL, rather they are grasping at the opportunity to ask Hashem to finally listen to their own requests, but this time it’s different. They have an in. The help of a merited soul, whose requests have been heard on seemingly countless occasions, and by the looks of the smiles and excitement of the night, continue to be answered today.

Bang that.