Yitzchak Block: The Man to Whom the Rebbe Said “No”
“IF YOU FIND SOMEONE WITH MORE FEAR OF GOD (YIRAT SHAMAYIM) THAN YOU, YOU CAN GIVE THE JOB TO HIM.” When the young Irving (now known as Yitzchak) Block set up an appointment for a private meeting with the Lubavitcher
Rebbe, Rabbi Chaim Hodakov, the Rebbe’s chief of staff, scheduled it for Thursday at ten. At the time, Block was staying at an apartment in upper Manhattan, a considerable distance from the Lubavitch headquarters in Brooklyn. Thursday morning, Block made sure to set out early, allowing himself a full hour and a half, and was relieved when he arrived early for his appointment in Crown Heights. Yet when he presented himself at the Rebbe’s office, he was greeted with puzzled stares and the question, “What are you doing here?” Block in turn was puzzled by this odd response. He walked over to Rabbi Hodakov. “I have a ten o’clock meeting with the Rebbe.” “Ten o’clock at night,” Rabbi Hodakov answered. Everyone in Rabbi Hodakov’s world knew that the Rebbe’s private meetings were held at night, information so obvious to Chabad insiders that no one thought to clarify this for Block (the Rebbe once explained to the New York Times reporter Israel Shenker that after 8:00 p.m., it is difficult to reach people at work, so time is available for visitors). Equally obvious, it would never have occurred to Block, raised in Nashville, that an appointment scheduled for ten o’clock could mean anything but 10:00 a.m. One feature that made the yechidus experience so memorable for participants was precisely this feature. You didn’t meet with the Lubavitcher Rebbe at 10:00 a.m. or at 1:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon, the way other meetings were scheduled. You met with the Rebbe, if you were lucky enough to get an early appointment, at 8:00 or 9:00 p.m., or more likely at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning. You saw the Rebbe when the rest of the world was asleep.
Those of non-Chabad background sometimes bristled at these unusual times. When Yehuda Avner set out to schedule an appointment for Yitzchak Rabin, then Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Rabin told him, “Don’t let them make it at a sha’ah meshuggaat [crazy hour].” Indeed, the Rebbe acceded to Rabin’s request and met him during the afternoon. But for many people, part of the mystique of encountering the Rebbe was the lateness of the hour. The meeting with Block was eventually rescheduled, and it inaugurated a long relationship with the young man, who was then a graduate student at Harvard. Block had recently spent some weeks at 770 learning in the yeshiva, and his Hebrew and Aramaic textual skills were still quite rudimentary. But it was not Talmud that the Rebbe wished to speak to him about at that first meeting; rather, it was his university studies. At the time, Block, who was studying for an MA in philosophy, was immersed in the study of the great Greek thinkers, Plato in particular. And that’s the direction in which the Rebbe led the discussion. Only Block didn’t realize at first to whom the Rebbe was referring, because it was a man named Platon about whom the Rebbe started talking. It finally struck him that Platon is how the name of the Greek philosopher is written in Greek, though in English his name is always pronounced as Plato. It’s not that the n is silent in English; it isn’t written at all. This was Block’s first surprise of the day. The man seated in front of him, dressed in the garb of a Rebbe, obviously knew about Plato, or Platon, from the original Greek and pronounced his name as it was supposed to be pronounced. But the Rebbe’s next comments are what really staggered Block. In the circles in which Block moved at Harvard, Plato was regarded with the highest respect, representing the epitome of high culture and civilization. But the Rebbe had a different take on Plato’s writings: He spoke of Platonic philosophy as cruel. “That’s the word he used, ‘cruel,’” Block recalled in an interview decades later. What upset the Rebbe in particular was Plato’s social philosophy, his advocacy of the abolition of the nuclear family and his belief that children should be taken away from their parents. Plato claimed that parents influence children to be egotistical, and it would be better if children were raised without knowledge of their parents, as wards of the state. For Judaism, the family was central, as expressed in the Fifth Commandment; for Plato, the family was destructive. Although everything Block heard that day about Plato was accessible to anyone who read through his writings, this critique was new to the young philosophy student. He had never heard it offered at Vanderbilt or Harvard, the two universities where he had studied. Yet, as he sat there, he realized it was unarguable (it was clearly expressed in Plato’s writings, though academics ignored it) and that the implications were immense and far-reaching. In addition to the obvious ills that resulted from alienating children from their parents, an attack on the family was also the source of totalitarian ideologies. Once you raise a generation of children to be more loyal to the state than to their families, there is no limit to what you can demand of them.
Those of non-Chabad background sometimes bristled at these unusual times. When Yehuda Avner set out to schedule an appointment for Yitzchak Rabin, then Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Rabin told him, “Don’t let them make it at a sha’ah meshuggaat [crazy hour].” Indeed, the Rebbe acceded to Rabin’s request and met him during the afternoon. But for many people, part of the mystique of encountering the Rebbe was the lateness of the hour. The meeting with Block was eventually rescheduled, and it inaugurated a long relationship with the young man, who was then a graduate student at Harvard. Block had recently spent some weeks at 770 learning in the yeshiva, and his Hebrew and Aramaic textual skills were still quite rudimentary. But it was not Talmud that the Rebbe wished to speak to him about at that first meeting; rather, it was his university studies. At the time, Block, who was studying for an MA in philosophy, was immersed in the study of the great Greek thinkers, Plato in particular. And that’s the direction in which the Rebbe led the discussion. Only Block didn’t realize at first to whom the Rebbe was referring, because it was a man named Platon about whom the Rebbe started talking. It finally struck him that Platon is how the name of the Greek philosopher is written in Greek, though in English his name is always pronounced as Plato. It’s not that the n is silent in English; it isn’t written at all. This was Block’s first surprise of the day. The man seated in front of him, dressed in the garb of a Rebbe, obviously knew about Plato, or Platon, from the original Greek and pronounced his name as it was supposed to be pronounced. But the Rebbe’s next comments are what really staggered Block. In the circles in which Block moved at Harvard, Plato was regarded with the highest respect, representing the epitome of high culture and civilization. But the Rebbe had a different take on Plato’s writings: He spoke of Platonic philosophy as cruel. “That’s the word he used, ‘cruel,’” Block recalled in an interview decades later. What upset the Rebbe in particular was Plato’s social philosophy, his advocacy of the abolition of the nuclear family and his belief that children should be taken away from their parents. Plato claimed that parents influence children to be egotistical, and it would be better if children were raised without knowledge of their parents, as wards of the state. For Judaism, the family was central, as expressed in the Fifth Commandment; for Plato, the family was destructive. Although everything Block heard that day about Plato was accessible to anyone who read through his writings, this critique was new to the young philosophy student. He had never heard it offered at Vanderbilt or Harvard, the two universities where he had studied. Yet, as he sat there, he realized it was unarguable (it was clearly expressed in Plato’s writings, though academics ignored it) and that the implications were immense and far-reaching. In addition to the obvious ills that resulted from alienating children from their parents, an attack on the family was also the source of totalitarian ideologies. Once you raise a generation of children to be more loyal to the state than to their families, there is no limit to what you can demand of them.
In the Soviet Union, as the Rebbe, who had lived under Communist rule, knew, the government glorified children who informed on their parents and sometimes brought about the imprisonment—or worse—of their parents for making anti-Communist remarks or showing opposition to the state. Raise people to not feel love or loyalty to their parents, and it will not be easy for them to feel love or loyalty to anyone else—only to the state. The cruelty of Plato’s thinking, the Rebbe emphasized that day, was not just in breaking up the family unit. It was in depriving children of parental love. For it is the parents, not the state and its functionaries, who have a genuine love for their children. And depriving children of this love, which is their due, was perhaps Plato’s greatest cruelty. Block recalled that a few years later, a philosopher with respected academic credentials stunned the world of philosophy by writing about these aspects of Plato’s writings. In the book, he depicted Plato’s social philosophy as “cruel.” Block remembered being struck by the philosopher’s use of this term, the same word used by the Rebbe. The book caused a furor, but what really impressed Block was that “nobody ever refuted it in any way.” However, as Block recalled, all that this professionally trained philosopher, a man who devoted his whole life to philosophy, had done was “to say the same thing that the Rebbe told me years earlier.” It is perhaps no surprise that shortly thereafter Block became an Aristotelian, no longer a devotee of Plato, and has remained so for his entire academic career. At this same meeting, when Block asked the Rebbe if he should remain at Harvard, the Rebbe emphatically told him, “You should stay there.”
Over the coming years, it became apparent that the Rebbe’s enthusiasm for Block’s academic pursuits at Harvard was even greater than Block’s own. On several occasions, Block faltered in his studies, once early in his graduate career, another time when he was at a far more advanced level. Both times, he conveyed his wish to the Rebbe to leave Harvard and to learn full-time at the Lubavitch yeshiva.
On one occasion, he actually left Harvard for the yeshiva and announced to his friends and to the rabbinic teachers there that he was back to stay. Everyone at Lubavitch was overjoyed except for one. “I think that you will regret that you gave up your profession” was the Rebbe’s response. Block was shocked and upset, but nonetheless, “I got back on the bus and went back to Harvard.” Block eventually completed his PhD and subsequently became a faculty member at the University of Western Ontario in the Canadian city of London. There was a small Jewish community in London and a few Jewish faculty members at the university. Soon, Block was asked to run the Hillel on campus. After a few years of doing so, it became clear to him that it was consuming much of his time— “hundreds and hundreds of hours,” as he put it—and he wasn’t enjoying it. Furthermore, the university administration was unhappy with the amount of time he was diverting to Hillel. Block asked for a yechidus with the Rebbe and told him: “I want to resign because I’m having too much political tzoros [headaches; literally “sorrows”]. What do I need it for?” he lamented. The Rebbe said to him: “If you can find someone with more fear of God (yiras shamayim) than you have, you can give it to him.” The Jewish population in London, Ontario, was small, the job remained overly demanding, and Block never found a replacement. No surprise.
On one occasion, he actually left Harvard for the yeshiva and announced to his friends and to the rabbinic teachers there that he was back to stay. Everyone at Lubavitch was overjoyed except for one. “I think that you will regret that you gave up your profession” was the Rebbe’s response. Block was shocked and upset, but nonetheless, “I got back on the bus and went back to Harvard.” Block eventually completed his PhD and subsequently became a faculty member at the University of Western Ontario in the Canadian city of London. There was a small Jewish community in London and a few Jewish faculty members at the university. Soon, Block was asked to run the Hillel on campus. After a few years of doing so, it became clear to him that it was consuming much of his time— “hundreds and hundreds of hours,” as he put it—and he wasn’t enjoying it. Furthermore, the university administration was unhappy with the amount of time he was diverting to Hillel. Block asked for a yechidus with the Rebbe and told him: “I want to resign because I’m having too much political tzoros [headaches; literally “sorrows”]. What do I need it for?” he lamented. The Rebbe said to him: “If you can find someone with more fear of God (yiras shamayim) than you have, you can give it to him.” The Jewish population in London, Ontario, was small, the job remained overly demanding, and Block never found a replacement. No surprise.
The Rebbe said no to Block’s repeated requests to leave Harvard, no to his request to resign his position at Hillel, and a particularly emphatic no to his request to study for rabbinical ordination, but it was part of the wonder of the Rebbe that Block always felt loved and respected by him. While still a young man, he was once sitting on a bench, waiting his turn for a yechidus, when a couple came out from their meeting with the Rebbe and glanced at him. One said to the other, “That’s the one the Rebbe was talking about.” He wondered what they might have heard, and soon learned that the Rebbe had told them that sitting right outside his office was a great philosopher. At the time, Block had not yet published any philosophic writings and was still a graduate student. After hearing such praise, how upset could Block be by the Rebbe’s “no’s”? Block also knew of another talent of the Rebbe, the ability to find the quick word, the flash of insight that could inspire an otherwise dejected soul. In this case, it was Block’s mother who needed the inspiration. Mrs. Block had been widowed at a young age; throughout Block’s years in Crown Heights, the Rebbe would often ask him about his mother, who continued to live in Nashville. Having heard so much from her son about his meetings with the Rebbe, she came to New York and told her son that she wanted to meet the Rebbe. Block was able to arrange for a yechidus, and she told him not to accompany her; she wanted to go in alone. After the meeting, she told him what she had discussed with the Rebbe, that she had two sisters, both married, but that she was alone. “And on Friday nights when I light the Shabbat candles, I’m all by myself, and I feel very lonely.” Block was embarrassed at his mother’s words, feeling that this was an inappropriate emotion with which to approach the Rebbe, particularly at a first encounter. But the Rebbe, it turned out, didn’t feel that way at all. He simply told her, “You don’t have to feel lonely. Der Aibershter is ale mol mit dir” (“God is with you all the time”). Block recalls: “My mother came out and she was calm.” Later, whenever he asked his mother how she was and how she was feeling, she would answer, “Come on, now, God is always with me.” Indeed, she told her son that from the point at which the Rebbe told her these words, she was not lonely in the same way anymore. The Rebbe knew what the elderly Mrs. Block needed to hear and to know. And he sensed what the Jewish people needed from Yitzchak Block, that he become a Harvard-trained philosopher and a God-fearing person. In the United States of the 1950s that was a rare and needed combination, and the Rebbe knew that even before Yitzchak Block did.
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