In contrast to the image of the "Days of Awe," AZR remembered the Chabad Rosh Hashanah as "days of light and joy": the Rebbe (R. Shneur Zalman) coming out in white silk garments, singing in devotion, sounding the shofar; and the "Tashlikh" procession to the river. He understood the power of Hasidism:
"Whoever knows the terrible distress that Israel suffered in Russia… can appreciate the lifeline that Hasidism extended to the world's downtrodden, for it made them forget the bitterness of reality and lifted them to higher worlds where there is no exile and no humiliation." AZR, "Rosh Hashanah in Lyady," "Chapters of Memoirs"; Project Ben-Yehuda.
In the cantor Yisrael Shabtils' recitation of the "Malkhuyot" prayers, the child AZR heard not only an abstract Kingdom of Heaven but a call for the return to Zion and for working the land — a seed of his future thought:
"We must dwell in our land and work our soil. In working the land we come to know the Kingdom of Heaven… and because of our sins we were exiled from our land… and now we trade and sell, wandering restless in foreign lands, corrupting the laws of nature and being corrupted ourselves." Ibid.
AZR had a mentally ill uncle, Dov-Ber ("Bereh"), who was chained to the wall. The child AZR (aged 3) approached him with affection; the uncle sang his sad melody and wept, and the child burst into tears — "Don't cry, Uncle Bereh!" This, by his own account, was the key moment in the shaping of his soul:
"That was the first time that sympathy for another person's sorrow awoke in me. May that moment be blessed for ever and ever!" AZR, "Uncle Bereh," "Chapters of Memoirs"; Project Ben-Yehuda.
The compassion awakened here is what would underlie his vegetarianism, his ethics, and his respect for the worker throughout his life (see "Vegetarianism," "Ethics," "AZR and the Labor Movement").
In the chapter "A Dispute for the Sake of Heaven," AZR describes a communal quarrel in the "Himinoar" study house (Ashkenazi rite), when his father, grandfather, and uncles sought to replace it with the Chabad rite — further evidence of the family's Chabad allegiance. The comic "war" was waged around the prayer lectern: some would begin "Hodu" and others "Mizmor Shir Hanukkat." AZR observes that this was not contempt but zealotry:
"Prayer was, without doubt, one of their most important spiritual needs… only they did not sense that in this they were desecrating the sanctity of prayer. Great was the wildness…" AZR, "A Dispute for the Sake of Heaven," "Chapters of Memoirs"; Project Ben-Yehuda.
Once again the child's compassion is stirred, this time toward Zalman Liubkes, the veteran cantor who was pushed aside and left for another study house: "In my tender heart there awoke a feeling of compassion and sympathy for the sorrow of this old man, who found no rest in the house where he and his fathers had prayed all their days." In the end the Hasidim built a new study house, on the site of the home of the author of the "Tanya" (the Alter Rebbe of Lyady), and the Chabad rite prevailed.