17 Years-Yesomim hayinu, v'ain av

Tonight is the twenty seventh of Adar. There are many bochurim in lubavitch who weren't even born. At least I remember when it happened. The question of course is, what does this day mean to us? What does it do to us? And what do we do for it? The answers to these questions are not simple ones. In fact, I don't know if anyone even has the answers. But that doesn't mean we don't have to ask the questions. Because if you don't even have the question, how can you ever expect to work out the answer? Because that's what it's really all about. Every person has to look inside their heart and say, "Hey, what's up? What have I accomplished? What does 17 years without mean to me? Have I gotten over it, or am I still in mourning?have the chai, the living, yiten el libo, taken it to heart? Or was this generation's parah adumah completely wasted?" Those are the types of questions we all have to ask ourselves.

There's two types of 27 Adar farbrengens. There's the ones where the mashpia gathers his charges around and relates the story. I've been to several of these, and although they're informative they're also almost always depressing. The identity of the scapegoat changes depending on who is doing the farbrenging, but at the end of the day, after everyone's been blamed for everything, those 17 years still remain.

The other type of farbrengen, much more rare, is the one where the mashpia rallies the troops and inspires them all to do everything possible to hasten the coming of the messiah. Since it's 27 Adar this is not sufficient; it's also necessary to ask those questions I laid out above. You know why this type of farbrengen is so rare? Because it's so difficult. To sit there, as a mashpia, not knowing the answers to the questions you're asking-that's tough. It's always easier to simply retreat into the past, to pretend that it's 1993 or '95. But doing this is also giving up. Yes, it's important for bochurim to know where they're coming from, but even more importantly, they have to know where they're going.

And where is it that they're going? I wish I knew. Honestly, it's such a crazy world out there, who knows what's going to be? All we can do is, in the words of the immortal Lipa Schmeltzer, "Hut bitachon vet aleh zein gut." Yup.