[Avodah] Kivrey Avos

[Zev Sero]

On 21/06/2012 3:42 PM, T613K at aol.com wrote:
> [1] What about the idea that those who have passed away come back and
> go to the simchas of their relatives and descendants?  They must know
> about the weddings at least!  Or do you have to explicitly invite them
> if you want them to come?

The common minhag is to go to the graves and invite them.  Do they not do
that in your family?  (What if the graves are not accessible, or they
never came to kever yisroel?  Does that mean they don't come?  I don't
know.  Maybe if you invite those whose graves you can access, they will
inform the others?)


> [2] What do you think of the Chabad idea that the Rebbe is everywhere
> and knows everything, including the thoughts of his chassidim?  I don't
> know whether this is a mainstream or fringe Chabad belief but it's
> certainly out there.

It's reasonably mainstream, based on the Zohar quoted in Tanya that
"a tzadik who passes away is present in all the worlds more than when
he was alive", because when he was alive he was confined to and limited
by a body.  But this is contradicted by a *lot* of material (including
a scary story about the Mitteler Rebbe) showing the opposite.  I haven't
seen anything directly addressing this apparent contradiction.


-- 
Zev Sero        "Natural resources are not finite in any meaningful
zev at sero.name    economic sense, mind-boggling though this assertion
                  may be. The stocks of them are not fixed but rather
		 are expanding through human ingenuity."
		                            - Julian Simon