The Rebbe’s Practice While Reviewing a Sefer

The Inside Story of Chabad in America — Episode 106: "The Rebbe's Practice While Reviewing a Sefer"

Welcome to our weekly program, The Inside Story of Chabad in America, through the Mindel archives. We have to listen to the previous program to understand this program, because this is really a continuation from last week. We left off last week about skills — how we should teach children. People are looking for new ways, as Rabbi Hodakov mentioned. [unclear] Big people are looking for new things in this world.

And by the way, I got some emails — they asked me if there's anything from the Rebbe, anything from the Rebbe about this, I mean all different things, is there anything in the [unclear] letters. So anyway, that's why I thought I would mention this today to whoever listens to the program.

First of all, an answer from Rabbi Hodakov. He was a principal par excellence in Riga — he was a principal, he had a Talmud Torah, an entire [school] — wherever [Rabbi] Mindel went in that school, he knew every child, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Even when they went on vacation or to camp, he knew where they were, he knew what they were doing. So let's listen to what he says.

I just want to repeat these notes from the conversations that he had with Rabbi Mindel. First of all, he speaks about skills for children — that's all written there, the teachers and principals study them, and you'll see you don't need to find new ways. The most important thing Rabbi Hodakov said here is that the problem is not the children, it's the skills. He says children need skills — of course we know that, we can get that — it's the teachers who need the skills. And his point was that if a teacher or a principal cares about the children, really cares, they become a dugma chaya — a living example — that's the biggest skill you can have. This is the skill the teachers need, not the children.

And the same goes for the parents. The parents have to know that they have to be a dugma chaya, a living example. When the children see at home how the parents conduct themselves — more or less, not a hundred percent, but more or less — the children grow up the way they should grow up.

As I mentioned once, there was a father sitting in shul telling off his son, "Why didn't you answer Amen?" — and maybe even gave him a patch for that. There was another person sitting next to him who said, "Why are you yelling at him? Why are you hitting him? Give the patch to the father, not the child. If the child saw that answering Amen was important to the father, the child would also answer Amen." A parent, he says, has to know — that's why you have to be behind the child.

So Rabbi Hodakov says that if every teacher would care about a child this way, the child wouldn't rebel. This is what he answered, and then he gave a few examples. If a teacher tells the children in class that they have to have respect, but the child sees him go to shul on Shabbos and looks at the teacher — a child sees everything, he says — and sees that the teacher himself lacks respect, no skill will help. Or the teacher tells him he's not supposed to talk during davening, but he sees that the teacher himself talks, or davens late, or comes late to class — a child comes late and the teacher scolds him for it, but if he sees the teacher himself comes late, there is no respect anymore. This is the biggest skill that has to be worked on. They spoke more about that.

And then he mentioned also the mother. He says if a child is home — he knew exactly when the child was home — and the telephone rings, and the mother tells the child, "Pick up the phone, and if anybody asks if I'm home, say I'm not home." So the child tells the person, "My mother is not home." Do you think, he says, that the child will ever respect his mother after that? This is not a dugma chaya. So the only thing is the teachers and the principals, not the children — if they conduct themselves properly, the children will grow up okay. So let's not look for new skills.

And as I've mentioned a few times, this doesn't only mean that a child should honor their mother and father. [A name, unclear] always used to say — he told me — "Honor the father that is within you, and the mother that is within you." If you're a father, honor "father" — behave like a father. Whatever you do, you're a father or a mother. The same goes for a teacher — honor "teacher," behave like a teacher, all the time. You're on vacation — you're a teacher. You go to school — you're a teacher. You go shopping — you're a teacher. You are a melamed, and you care that the child sees that. That's the best skill you can give a child.

Now I want to show you something — I don't know if you can see it, but something very, very important. I heard from bochurim who were here, who lived here in the 1940s. In the program back then, in the 1940s, there was a shul at 770 upstairs, and then there was a second room — there was no shul downstairs, everything was upstairs, on the floor where — you know where the offices are, where the Rebbe's room was. And the Rebbe — many times, as busy as the Rebbe was, it was called then the Ramash — they told me the Rebbe used to sit down among the bochurim and talk to them. In those days there was no telephone, there was no internet — some bochur would come from far away, some had no parents — the Rebbe used to sit down, first of all see how they were learning, and also sit down and ask how they were doing, how their wellbeing was in gashmius — he was very much interested in that.

And I heard from Rabbi Goldschmidt [?] — [unclear] — he told me years ago that he was one of the bochurim who was there, how the Rebbe treated the bochurim, how the Rebbe cared, and this had an influence on the bochurim. So when the Rebbe would sit — he told me that the Rebbe also went to a second room, a small room, and many times the Rebbe used to put his foot up on a chair, take out a sefer — with one foot up — and just flip through the pages, he looked, just any sefer. Sometimes he used to write hagahos in the sefer. And you see, this flipping through maybe took ten minutes, fifteen minutes — this is very interesting, what he told me.

Now, there was a peckel — a box or a plastic bag — of sheimos. Sheimos means holy material that is no longer going to be used, which has to be buried. Many times the Rebbe would put his hand into the sheimos — and here is a book, this is what was given to Rabbi Mindel — this is sheimos from the 1940s that the Rebbe took out, and the Rebbe started to write. He looked, took out this — the sheimos — and this is [ksav yad?], I think, I guess — these are all pages. And the Rebbe wrote — sorry, the Rebbe wrote hagahos on it. He started to write hagahos here — I don't know if you can see it — he wrote hagahos on sheimos. It's unbelievable — here on the bottom he read it, it took him maybe half a minute, and then he wrote the hagahos right away. Can you imagine that the Rebbe knew exactly what it said here within half a minute, because he wrote the hagahos right away on all these pages? And these come from sheimos — all over here, here, here, here, hagahos — this, I don't know, this is Igros, and this is about something — I'm not going to spend too much time with this now, but this is from sheimos, and there are more things that the Rebbe took out and started to write on.

And that was it — he spent time with the bochurim. This he gave to Rabbi Mindel — there's more to it. I just want to bring out that the Rebbe appreciated the bochurim, that the Rebbe came around, and the bochurim never felt uncared for — and this is very important.

So what I want to bring out from this program is that when a teacher, when a person, cares about somebody, and he is a dugma — of course the Rebbe was the dugma — they see that he really cares. This had a big hashpaah on these bochurim, as they told me, who were there then. And this is a lesson that we can learn — we don't have to look for new skills, just the teachers and the principals have to be a dugma. This is what Rabbi Hodakov was always stressing.

Thank you very much. Next week we'll continue our weekly program.