The Munkatcher passport – a passport we need with the virus
Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach often told the story of the Munkatcher passport.
In this story his uncle asked the Munkatcher Rebbe for a passport to travel from Munkatch to Berlin just before WWII. Considering the climate of the times the request seemed impossible to fulfill.
After many hours, the Rebbe emerged from his private chambers and gave him just an empty piece of paper soaked with Tears. With this paper Shlomo’s uncle was escorted everywhere in Germany with great honor.
The Munkatcher passport surfaces over and over in our lives. When a bride walks around her groom, they give each other the Munkatcher passport.
When children are born they close their eyes and cry,giving to and receiving from their parents the Munkatcher passport.
And when we stand near the Kotel (something we are forbidden from doing this virus crisis) and place a kvittel in its crevice, we do so with the Munkatcher passport.
And, concluded Rabbi Carlebach, when we begin the Talmud, we start on the second page — daf bais. Where is daf aleph, the first page? It is empty, absolutely empty. It is the Munkatcher passport.
What is the Munkatcher passport? Perhaps it represents infinite love. Hence the aleph in Vayikra (the first word of the new book of Leviticus) is small to remind us of the importance of humbly, sincerely approaching God with daf aleph, with the Munkatcher passport — symbol of the unconditional love that we ought to have for God and that God has for us and that we should all have for each other.
Here is an example of Patience:
A Holy Healer
Sadie is having terrible headaches that just won’t go away so she goes to her rabbi to see if there’s anything he can do. She whines, and cries and talks for hours not only about her headache, but about her terrible living conditions as well.
All of the sudden, Sadie shouts, overjoyed, “Rabbi, I think your holy presence has cured me! The headache is completely gone!
To which the rabbi responds, “No, no Sadie, it’s not gone. I have it now.”