Grab It While You Can

The hopefulness inherent in those words is obvious. It means that a time like now, as we reel from the loss of Maran Rav Chaim, is a window of great spiritual opportunity. It’s reminiscent, l’havdil, of those contests years ago in which the winner, having answered some riddle, was granted ten minutes alone in a bank vault. Armed only with a burlap sack, it was a chance for him to stuff into it as many five and ten dollar bills as he was physically able, as the seconds ticked down to zero.

But Rabbeinu Yonoson’s words, if read carefully, also seem to convey a daunting message. “This one can say… and this one can say… and this one can say.”  It’s not sufficient to simply decide in one’s mind to adopt something precious from that of the great niftar. The will to change, to grow, must be verbalized. Only with a statement of the words — audibly enough for him, and perhaps others, too, to hear — can he concretize and render permanent what might otherwise remain a faint, and ultimately fleeting, inner desire.

Indeed, Rav Moshe Sternbuch cited the Yaaros D’vash in his hesped for Rav Chaim, and encouraged each person listening “to announce to his family his decision to devote more time to Torah, or that he has decided to daven with greater kavanah, and with this he’ll be zocheh to the ma’alah of teshuvah, for it to be reckoned as if he were born this day into a new world.”

The Yaaros D’vash doesn’t tell us how long this period of hefker lasts, but presumably there’s a specific window of opportunity. Perhaps we can hope that it extends at least through the 30 days in which hespedim continue to be made. At some point, however, the seconds remaining in this greatest of all bank vaults will tick down to zero, too.