Thankful Am I

As a young boy in 1950s Brooklyn, Nachum Stilerman delivered groceries from his father’s store to the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s mother. She would invite him into her apartment, tell him to sit, give him milk and cookies, and speak warmly with him. He once asked her, “What is the Rebbe’s favorite prayer?” She didn’t know, she said, but promised to ask her son. When Nachum made the next grocery delivery, she had the answer:

“It’s a very short prayer,” she said. “It’s the very first prayer we say in the morning, Modeh ani lefanecha: “Thankful am I before You, living and eternal King, that You have mercifully restored my soul within me. Great is Your faithfulness.”

“That’s it?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “That’s his favorite.”

That short, seemingly simple prayer, which Jewish law directs us to say immediately upon awakening from the fog of sleep each morning, later became a focal point of a profound and complex monograph that the Rebbe delivered on 19 Kislev 5726 (December 13, 1965). In it, he explored the question, What is the essence of Chasidut? It was all of seventeen pages, with 135 extensive footnotes, several of which the Rebbe wrote. He then appended the monograph to the first volume of the Chabad Encyclopedia. To the Rebbe, this was an essential explication of Chabad philosophy.

A decade later, in 1977, I was a Ph.D. student in English literature at the State University of New York at Buffalo. I had become a regular at the Chabad House near campus, which was drawing me closer to G-d and Torah. One of the rabbis with whom I was studying, Rabbi Heschel Greenberg, suggested that we honor the Rebbe’s upcoming seventy-sixth birthday by translating that extraordinary monograph into English. We went slowly for months, agonizing over every word, looking up and explaining every reference in the footnotes, from the Bible, to the Talmud, Jewish law, Midrash, Kabbalah, philosophy, general Chasidut, and the writings of the previous six Chabad rebbes. Our translation was published with the title On the Essence of Chassidus. Looking back now, I realize that nothing else I have learned in Torah and Jewish thought in the past forty-seven years has affected me so profoundly.

Over those decades, most of the details and intricate analyses of On the Essence of Chassidus receded from my conscious memory. I became a professor of English literature and taught for twenty years at the University of Maryland. I moved to Israel in 2001 and spent another two decades at Bar-Ilan University. But some words never left my heart and mind. In the past months of cruel and unending war that began on October 7, 2023, in Israel, these words have given me solace, resolve, and strength. In the limited space I have here, I want to share them with you.

1. The power of Modeh Ani

My task is somewhat difficult. The monograph introduces novel explanations of fundamental concepts in Chasidic thought such as the three levels of creation, the four modes of Torah interpretation, the five orders of the soul, the ten “Divine attributes,” and the infinite meanings of G-d’s kabbalistic name.  

But in the second part of the talk, the Rebbe returns to his favorite prayer. Of all the possible topics in Torah literature to illustrate the “essence” of Chasidut’s light and vitality, he chooses Modeh Ani. As he looks to the Chasidic depth embedded in the prayer’s literal meaning, he shares the words that I have never forgotten. 

Why, the Rebbe asks, are we allowed to say the Modeh Ani prayer immediately upon awakening? All other prayers require us to wash our hands first, clearing away the ritual impurities of sleep. The Rebbe answers:

Because all the impurities of the world cannot contaminate the Modeh Ani of a Jew. It’s possible that a person may be lacking in one respect or another—but his or her Modeh Ani remains perfect.

All the impurities of the world cannot contaminate the Modeh Ani of a Jew. There is, he explains, an indestructible, pure essence to every Jew’s soul that is connected to the essence of G-d. He goes on to say that this connection imbues every Jew with a selfless devotion to his or her Divine purpose. This is the source of a Jew’s willingness to sacrifice his or her life for G-d, Torah, a fellow Jew, the nation of Israel.

For me personally, looking back over the thirty years since the Rebbe’s passing, and the forty-three years of his term as Rebbe, those few words summarize the way he was “waking us all from sleep.” The Rebbe inherited a post-Holocaust generation of Jews who had lost connection to their deepest soul. The Rebbe woke us from this sleep, and in our confused fog, he activated the power of our Modeh Ani.

Our translation was published with the title On the Essence of Chassidus. Looking back now, I realize that nothing else I have learned in Torah and Jewish thought in the past forty-seven years has affected me so profoundly.

2. The simplicity of essence

I can only briefly give you a taste of how the Rebbe elicits this essence from within even the most basic, literal level of the prayer’s interpretation. The Rebbe explains why we are obligated to say the Modeh Ani prayer upon awakening each morning: so that we will immediately remember the presence of G-d, Creator of all worlds, “standing over” us, and so “arise with zeal.” 

And, the Rebbe adds, this is also how we serve G-d throughout the entire day, and why we follow the Torah and fulfill its mitzvahs throughout our entire lives: to have G-d constantly in mind. The Modeh Ani prayer ends with a period, but, as the fifth Chabad rebbe, Rabbi  Sholom DovBer, said: “One must spread the ‘dot’—the period after the word ‘mercy’ in the prayer—out over the entire day.”

There is also something curious about the way this prayer is formulated. It does not contain the standard, familiar, legally codified words we usually use for blessings of gratitude or enjoyment: “Blessed are You, L-rd our G-d, King of the universe . . . ” It doesn’t have any of the holy names of G-d that are used in those blessings (Ado-nai; Elokeinu), or any of the seven other names for G-d that we’re not permitted to erase. Jewish law explains this omission as due to the prohibition on pronouncing any of these names until after the ritual washing of the hands first thing in the morning, to remove the “ritual impurities” of sleep from the soul and body. 

Chasidut, says the Rebbe, offers a different reason for the omission of G-d’s names: even with impure hands, the essence of the Jewish soul, which is drawn from the essence of G-d, is higher than G-d’s seven names. The Jewish soul remains pure and perfect, despite any external imperfections.

This highest level of soul is called in midrashic and kabbalistic sources the Yechidah. In Hebrew, Yechidah means “sole,” or “only one.” It’s the “soul of the soul,” as it were. The “quintessence.” In Kabbalah, it’s beautifully described as the “small spark [of G-d, which] enclothes itself in the small spark [of the human being].” The Yechidah receives directly from and unites with G-d, who is  Yachid, meaning literally in Hebrew “the Sole, Only One.”

The Yechidah level of the soul is this essence. It is abstract, ungraspable, beyond our names, beyond our biographies, beyond all the particular ways in which we express ourselves. Yet it underlies and gives life to everything we are.

Let me offer a personal way of explaining this. After my mother passed away, while cleaning out her apartment, I found a box of love letters to her that I had never seen before. They were from my father, who had died fifty-two years earlier. Some were several pages long and beautifully written. One of them, in its utter simplicity, was among the most moving to me: just a few words on an aerogram, written from a plane while on a business trip: “I love you only.” That’s it. In other words, you are the sole, only one; I am yours completely, I belong to you only. That is the “simplicity” of essence.

In Chabad thought, “essence” (atzmut), the Rebbe reminds us, is defined as abstract, ungraspable, beyond all description and division, beyond all form, or any particular manifestation. But it also underlies, enables, and unites all those manifestations. 

The Yechidah level of the soul is this essence. It is abstract, ungraspable, beyond our names, beyond our biographies, beyond all the particular ways in which we express ourselves. Yet it underlies and gives life to everything we are. It is at once utterly transcendent and particular; and that, the Rebbe notes, gives rise to the Jew’s capacity for self-sacrifice. 

3. Simchat Torah revelation

I had earlier encountered a slightly variant explanation of this quality of the Jewish soul in chapter 18 of Tanya, by the founder of Chabad, Rabbi Schneur Zalman. He writes emphatically that “even the most unlearned, and those ignorant of G-d’s greatness, and even the transgressors of Israel, in the majority of cases, sacrifice their lives for the sanctity of G-d’s Name, and suffer harsh torture rather than deny the One G-d.”  

I confess that l had always been somewhat skeptical, even though it was a beautiful idea. Maybe it was true for the great heroes of past Jewish history, or those who have highly developed themselves. But the notion that it’s in the power of each one of us, no matter what our spiritual status, or level of knowledge, or observance, or transgressions, was hard for me to accept or empirically experience.  

And then came Simchat Torah, October 7, 2023. Since that day, and up to the very moment I am writing these words, I witnessed a traumatized nation arise, and Jews of all kinds—religious and non-religious, learned and unlearned, soldiers and citizens—give their lives and limbs to defend their fellow Jews and the nation of Israel. The masks came off; the Yechidah was revealed. 

I have space for only a few short examples among endless possible others, which I read and hear on the news every day. Consider that one of the hostages released in the exchange of November 2023 related that after her time in Hamas’s tunnels, she had been held in an apartment with fellow nineteen-year-old female hostage Agam Berger (who was still in captivity as of this writing). Agam was kidnapped from her military base near the Gaza border early in the morning of October 7^th. In the apartment, the two were treated as servants and commanded to clean, cook, and so forth. When Friday evening arrived, however, Agam refused to light the stove or cook . . . because it was Shabbat. Jewish law would have permitted her to override the prohibitions of Shabbat to save her own life, but she resisted nonetheless. From where did Agam gain this strength?

Ben Sussman was a twenty-two-year-old combat engineering soldier from Jerusalem who had finished his formal service and been discharged in July 2023. He heard the news on October 7 and, before receiving any official call from the army, packed his bag and went directly into action as a reservist. Here are a few lines from the letter he wrote that day, which his mother Sarit read at his funeral in December 2023. 

I’m writing this letter to you as I’m heading to the base. If you’re reading this, something must have happened to me. . . . I am happy and grateful for the privilege I have to defend our beautiful land and beautiful people of Israel. In case something happened to me, I forbid you from sulking in sorrow. . . . I am filled with pride and a sense of purpose, and I always said that if I had to die, I wish it would be in defense of others and the State.

All the impurities of the world cannot contaminate the Modeh Ani of a Jew. It’s possible that a person may be lacking in one respect or another, but his or her Modeh Ani remains perfect.

             Thankful am I.

Susan Handelman is Professor Emeritus of English Literature at Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv, Israel. She is the author of many books and articles, including The Slayers of Moses: The Emergence of Rabbinic Interpretation in Modern Literary Theory (Albany, NY: SUNY University Press, 1983), and Fragments of Redemption: Jewish Thought and Literary Theory in Scholem, Benjamin and Levinas (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1991).