How do our people respond to loss, pain, and inexplicable tragedy?

Sadly, I was privy to witness it from up close.

In just under two years, my parents-in-law, Rabbi Chaim and Sarah Wolosow of Chabad Sharon, Massachusetts, lost a son and a son-in-law, Rabbis Mendel Plotkin and Levi Wolosow OBM. Two young, vivacious, influential, and luminous individuals who suddenly and without warning returned their souls to their Maker.

Both left behind large families who depended on them, and children yet unborn. Both lived with deep conviction, devoted to their values and their Chabad identity.

The grief and the loss have been real. The pain, the absence, the missing presence, profound.

They chose to channel the energy, the grief, and the geshrei into creating the holiest object we possess in this world, the writing of a Torah scroll. At the beginning of this week, the Mendel and Levi Legacy Torah was completed.

My in-laws invited their community, their relatives, and everyone whose life had been touched by these two remarkable souls. With intense emotion and a deep sense of purpose, they completed the Torah.

As the Mendel-Levi Torah was finished, a sense of the sublime entered the room, a feeling that something greater was unfolding, that these souls continue to generate holiness, purpose, and the presence of Hashem in our world.

They cried. And they danced. Cried and danced.

They danced with a sense of eternity. They danced with determination. They danced with the knowledge that the mission these two young men lived for, to make this world a home for Hashem, had moved closer to fulfillment.

Hashem, see how Your people dance when You come close, and grant us the merit to dance with full hearts when Your presence will be fully revealed and those who lie in the dust will arise and dance together with us.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)