Reb Gutman Locks is a very busy man.
He can be readily found at the Kosel Hamaravi doing
his tefillin thing. And if you look like you’re Jewish and off the reservation
as far as the aforementioned tefillin are concerned, Reb Gutman Locks will more
likely than not readily find you.
Tefillin thing?
Reb Gutman spends a lion’s share of his waking hours
enabling his co-religionists in spiritual need to fulfill the mitzvah of laying
tefillin, if but what once in their lives.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
For the fortunate few it leads to a life time commitment.
Just ask Reb Gutman Locks.
A few decades ago he made his first visit to the Kosel
searching for who knows what, but what he found instead was a Chabadnik who
asked him if he would like to put on tefillin.
But rather than simply walk off into the sunset with
the mitzvah of tefillin already in the past tense as applied to him, he allowed
it to become the turning point of his life and he’s been returning the favor
ever since by bringing this mitzvah to literally tens of thousands of others.
For the why
of it all one need go no further than a comment that he recently posted on
Mystical Paths, the blog to which he regularly contributes, where he wrote as
follows:
“If I had to choose just one line of advice that
best sums up what a person should do with his or her life, I would quote the
Rebbe Maharash. If you focus only on
this line of advice your entire life, you will die with a smile on your face,
and you will keep smiling in the World to Come, too.
“Try it for a few days and you will see what I mean.
“‘Everyone
ought to know the route to the supernal chambers, though that is not
essential. All you need is the main thing;
to help your fellow with a complete heart and with sensitivity, to take
pleasure in doing another person a favor.’”
And he was talking about a lot less than the great mitzvah
of tefillin.
