What a Real Friend Truly Is — Remembering Chaim ben Yitzchak z"l

Words spoken on 14 Tammuz, five years after the petirah of my dearest friend, Chaim ben Yitzchak z"l — taken in the Surfside collapse — built on a single pasuk: chaver ani l'chol asher yireucha u'l'shomrei pikudecha (Tehillim 119:63), from the very ches that begins his name.What is a real friend? Of all our relationships, a friend is the one we choose — not the family we're born into, but the soul we pick. And Dovid HaMelech reveals that the true depth of that bond was never in the gashmius — not the trips, not the good times — but in l'chol asher yireucha: the spiritual thread, the yiras Shamayim, that two friends share. Which is why a real connection doesn't end when a person leaves this world. It can grow even deeper. Chaim was my mentor, the older brother I never had — and he has changed my life more since he passed than in all the years he was here.This is also about who Chaim became: a man who made himself last, always; whose humility was forged in the hardest years of his life, caring for his wife; the tzaddik he quietly became. He told me that the one thing that brought him comfort in his darkest times was the Likutei Moharan, Rebbe Nachman's Torah — and that is the very thing we are continuing now.And one thing we cannot let ourselves pack away: the way he was taken was not ordinary. It was a message — to those who were close, and to all of Klal Yisrael. May we hear it, be m'orer one another, do teshuvah, and merit the geulah. May his neshamah have an aliyah, and may he be a meilitz yosher for his family — Shmueli, Yehuda, and Shana — and for all of Klal Yisrael.#RebbeNachman #Breslov #Friendship #Tehillim #Hesped #Chizuk #Emunah #Teshuvah #Uman #LikuteiMoharan