3 Tips for Public Speaking From the Rebbes

Welcome to our weekly program, The Inside Story of Chabad in America, through the Mindel Archives. I want to share with you a letter of a Rov in America, in a big city. He has a large shul, and he has a question for the Rebbe. He writes like this: he writes that he's an Orthodox Rov and he has a large shul, many members, and he learns with them every day, and he also gives a class for ladies twice a week - he teaches adult education classes, and he does more activities. But he has a question for the Rebbe: on Shabbos, when he gives a drasha, when he gives a speech, watching this speech - what should be his theme, what should the speech be about? He writes: should it be on the parsha of the week - you know, with meshalim we can talk about that - should it be [unclear], current events? What should it be? So he wants to hear what the Rebbe has to tell him.

So, he gives a class to the ladies, he gives a class - I think he obviously gives a class, and other things - but this is something that he has to speak about, and he wants to know what the Rebbe thinks. So the Rebbe answers him like this: you can speak about whatever you want. First of all, the Rebbe says it has to be [unclear] - that's number one - then people will accept what you're saying, or they will listen. Also, speak about whatever you want, so that when the parents come home with the children on Shabbos, after your speech, after davening, they will sit at the Shabbos table -

like, you have to sit at the Shabbos table - you know, you come home from shul, you sit, and you eat, and over the seudah you will say over what you heard, and you will live with this, and the children, a whole week - that's all it counts, if it comes down to a mashal - that's the ikar. It's not just listening - many people just listen and they forget that, and that's it, it's nothing. But if it's yours - I mean, you'll live with it - and they will learn a lesson - that's important. It doesn't matter what you say - you can say, if it's through a story, it's a story; if it's mussar, it's mussar; Kabbalah, it's Kabbalah - it doesn't matter what, as long as they will live with it.

So, now, this letter was not printed in Igrot Kodesh yet, by the way. In about a few weeks we'll have the sixth volume coming out, but this letter will probably be in the seventh or eighth volume - I didn't put it in this one - it's already in print.

So what do we see, number one, from this - from this lesson? And this is, I think, a lesson to speakers - not that I'm giving a lesson to speakers - this is according to the Rebbe. This, ladies and gentlemen - in Chabad, I mean, we have many, many, many speakers, more than in other places, a lot of speakers - they should know that the ikar is: when you learn, let's say, you're learning Tanya, you're reading your Tanya - that's how it is, you don't have to have a chiddush, a lesson - you're learning Tanya. As we said once in our program, the Frierdiker Rebbe said that a drasha is not a shiur - when you learn, that's one thing; when a person speaks, a drasha is a drasha, it's a lecture. When you learn, but when a person lectures, they have to know what the ikar is, what the pshat is. Many lecturers, when they lecture on philosophy, have their own ideas, and nothing else is in between. So most of the time they can speak, let's say, half an hour, and twenty-seven minutes is their own philosophy, and maybe two minutes is [the actual lesson] - and it should be the equal, this is what we see from here.

Speaking about this, I will have to say something else, and I want to mention - maybe I'll mention it again, and this is by the Mitteler Rebbe. It's a whole story - you can always click back to listen to the entire story - but I'm going to take out the nekuda. The Mitteler Rebbe told them: a lecturer, a speaker, should be like a bee, not like a spider. What's the difference? A spider makes a web, and the web comes from inside the spider. What does that accomplish? Nothing - it kills flies, insects, it doesn't accomplish anything. The web comes from the spider. A bee makes honey - the bee doesn't make honey, honey doesn't come from the bee. If honey would come from the bee, honey would be treif, because the bee is treif. How do you get honey? The bee goes around collecting nectar, collects from flowers, and it makes honey - but the honey is not from the bee, and it becomes sweet.

The Rebbe tells them: if you're going to be like a spider, you're going to speak your own philosophy, your own ideas - people won't accept it, it's just [your own]. But if you're going to be like a bee - you're going to go around and collect, you're going to learn mussar, you're going to learn this, you're going to learn Nigleh, you're going to learn Chassidus - and you'll gather like a bee, you'll go around, and you will speak what you learned - it will become sweet, people are going to listen to you, and people will accept it. And that's a good lesson.

Our Rebbe says, in a place, that even the Alter Rebbe - who can compare himself to the Alter Rebbe? - the Alter Rebbe says, in the Shulchan Aruch and in the Tanya, that he didn't take it from himself. He says he gathered it - he also gathered, he was like a bee. He gathered - he went to the Shulchan Aruch, he looked in the Shulchan Aruch, he looked in the Arizal, he looked in the Zohar - and that's how he wrote the Tanya. So a person should know that whenever you speak, don't speak your own ideas - speak what you gathered.

Number three: say where you got it from - and this is what the Rebbe says. It says in Pirkei Avos, I think, that when a speaker speaks, say where you got it from - very important. And I know that sometimes - I can tell you personally, I give over letters - letters only from the Rebbe - and many times I hear, online, people speaking - people ask certain speakers questions, and they answer, good - but people think that that's their own, that it comes from them. Let them say: "I read it in the Rebbe's letter," this is what was in the letter, or in another sefer that he had - but you have to always say where you got it from. It's very important. The Rebbe always gave credit, where he got it from.

So, talking about that, I want to read you a very short telegram from the Frierdiker Rebbe to somebody. The Frierdiker Rebbe was very upset that somebody had written something, and it wasn't 100% accurate, and they should have checked it with him - whatever it is. This is written in English, and as you know, the Frierdiker Rebbe couldn't write English, so every English letter that came out from him, he asked Rabbi Mindel to write for him. So this is in English - the papers are a little bit old, I can hardly see here - but it was written to someone, to an editor. He writes like this:

"Apparently he wasn't correct with a few things, and he didn't say where it's from. I'm shocked" - the Frierdiker Rebbe writes - "besides this, I'm shocked at your high-handed censoring of my message. No editor has any judicial, and certainly no moral, right whatever to distort a message of any person by transmitting it wrongfully. You may have the right to refuse altogether to publish anything you don't wish to, but not to suppress that part which you don't like to hear. I feel morally wronged by this high-handed editorial operation, and I demand, on moral and judicial grounds, that my message be reprinted in the next edition, exactly in the way [it was] submitted to you, with an apology for the wrongful transmission of my message previously."

I think this was from Talks and Tales, that the Frierdiker Rebbe wrote - that the editor should have checked it over with the Rebbe, and he didn't do the right thing - so you should do the right thing. This is the [unclear] issue. I request that you go to the telegram, and the thinking of the lines - how careful the Frierdiker Rebbe was, how, when you say something, or