Moshe, King David & the Baal Shem Tov Bequeathed Royalty for Three Different Chapters in History

Rabbi YY Jacobson

This class was presented on Monday, 4 Sivan, 5784, June 10, 2024, at Bais Medrash Ohr Chaim in Monsey, NY. This is a text based class on Likkutei Sichos Vol. 18 Shavuos, an address presented by the Lubavitcher Rebbe on Shavuos 5737, May 24, 1977.

Shavuos is linked to three gigantic persons in Jewish history—who all embodied, more than anyone else in Jewish history, royalty and aristocracy. Moses, David and the Baal Shem Tov.

And all of them gleaned this royal energy from Shavuos—the day of the giving of the Torah, when G-d declared: “You shall become for Me a kingdom of princess and a holy people.” Torah turned the Jews into royals. The Jew is no longer just a citizen of the world; the Jew is not anymore only a victim of nature and its fluctuations. The Jew is an ambassador of the Almighty, a carrier of Divinity, a representative of infinity. He or she is not chained down by the shackles of a vast, scary world. He is a king. She is a queen. He looks at the world and knows that it was all created, as Rashi says in the opening of the Torah, “for the Torah and the Jewish people.” 

Yet Moses, David, and the Baal Shem Tov lived in three very distinct generations. It is easy to feel like a king when you are in a desert eating manna, surrounded by clouds of glory. It is also possible to feel like a king when you are living in your own homeland with a powerful leader who defeated all of his enemies. But it was the Baal Shem Tov who taught Jews how to live as kings in the depths of the dark and bitter exile. How?
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