Stop Fearing the Falls: The Secret of Lechatchila Ariber - Farbrengen for Yud-Gimmel Tishrei | Rabbi Shneur Niazov #006

00:00 Speaker 1 Welcome. I’m happy to open our sixth farbrengen here on “Chabad Education,” and this time I sat down for an uplifting farbrengen ahead of 13 Tishrei, the yahrzeit of the Rebbe Maharash, with Rabbi Schneur Niazov, a mashpia at the yeshiva ketanah in Tzfas. This farbrengen is in the merit of Menachem Mendel ben Devorah Leah. If you’d like to contribute and help us dedicate an episode in someone’s merit or for the elevation of a soul, you’re welcome to contact me privately. L’chaim, l’chaim. Rabbi Schneur Niazov, l’chaim, l’chaim.

00:27 Speaker 2 To life, and to long life.

00:30 Speaker 1 So, 13 Tishrei. A Chassidic date that always gets swallowed up. I mentioned this to you a little earlier. It always gets lost between the holidays before it and the holidays after it, and it doesn’t get its own space. Everyone is busy and preoccupied. If you fall somewhere in Tishrei, you barely get talked about at all. So we thought it would be nice to sit down and farbreng about this date. Let’s start at the beginning: What is 13 Tishrei? What happened on 13 Tishrei?

00:56 Speaker 2 So 13 Tishrei is the day of the Rebbe Maharash’s passing.

01:02 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

01:03 Speaker 2 And perhaps it’s connected to the Rebbe Maharash’s approach. Although it was lechatchila ariber, his conduct was unassuming. People didn’t really know him; they hadn’t heard much about him.

01:14 Speaker 1 Yes, actually, I’m not that knowledgeable about it, but relatively speaking, there aren’t many stories.

01:20 Speaker 2 Right.

01:20 Speaker 1 There are a few stories that always come up. There aren’t a lot. There’s no photograph, no photograph of him. There is one that people say is of him.

01:26 Speaker 2 Right. The Frierdiker Rebbe said that there isn’t so much about his grandfather. Even so, the Rebbe had a special connection to the Rebbe Maharash. You can see it in something that happened once in yechidus. Someone asked the Rebbe, “How do I connect to the Rebbe?” And the Rebbe said, “Study what I study. I study maamarim of the Rebbe Maharash.”

01:43 Speaker 1 Really? That much?

01:44 Speaker 2 Yes.

01:44 Speaker 1 Wow.

01:46 Speaker 2 Wow. And you also see that the Rebbe wrote a biographical book about the Rebbe Maharash. The Rebbe wrote brief biographies of all the Rebbes, but about the Rebbe Maharash—

01:57 Speaker 1 Are you talking about the lineage, or a separate book?

01:59 Speaker 2 A book, a biographical book. A book about the Rebbe Maharash by the Rebbe was published.

02:04 Speaker 1 Oh.

02:05 Speaker 2 Yes.

02:07 Speaker 1 In other words, there’s something very special about the connection between the Rebbe and—

02:10 Speaker 2 Absolutely. There’s also the story the Rebbe tells about when the Frierdiker Rebbe came to Eretz Yisroel. A chossid came in to see him who had also been a chossid of the Rebbe Maharash.

02:21 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

02:22 Speaker 2 And the Rebbe relates that when he came in, he fainted. Why? Because their faces looked alike. The Rebbe couldn’t finish telling the story. It was very—several times the Rebbe told it and choked up with tears at the words “their faces looked alike.” The Rebbe stopped. He couldn’t go on.

02:46 Speaker 1 Why?

02:48 Speaker 2 It really shows that there’s some special connection between the Rebbe and the Rebbe Maharash, and between the Frierdiker Rebbe and the Rebbe Maharash. The tears there are really very striking. But you can see the connection between the Rebbe and the Rebbe Maharash in their unassuming conduct, too.

03:09 Speaker 1 Mm.

03:10 Speaker 2 The Rebbe Maharash once said that he toiled twenty-three hours a day, and nobody noticed—not even his wife, the Rebbetzin. And with the Rebbe, too, you saw that unassuming manner, even in how he conducted himself and how he dressed.

03:26 Speaker 1 In all his conduct.

03:27 Speaker 2 Yes. The gray hat, the gray suit, the tie—simplicity. There’s a story about [unclear]. He asked Shmuel Ber [unclear] which of the Tzemach Tzedek’s sons he should take as his Rebbe. “I knocked on the door. He asked me, ‘Who is it?’ I said, ‘Shmuel Ber.’ It took a few minutes before he opened the door. When I went in, I saw German and Russian newspapers on the table. I said to him, ‘May I ask a question about Eitz Chaim?’ He said, ‘Shmuel Ber, you’re a clever man. You’re asking me a question about Eitz Chaim?’ I said, ‘If you don’t answer me, tomorrow I’ll tell everyone in town what I saw on this table a few minutes ago.’” He was persuaded. They sat together until morning, and he explained the matter to him. With the Rebbe Maharash, there was this element of being unassuming. It doesn’t contradict lechatchila ariber. And the Rebbe was unassuming too, so that doesn’t contradict lechatchila ariber either.

05:04 Speaker 5 How do the two go together? L’chaim, l’chaim.

05:06 Speaker 2 L’chaim, l’chaim.

05:10 Speaker 5 How do they really go together? Because I also remember a story about the Rebbe Maharash that very much conveys wealth—how he went about and conducted himself, even showing someone bonds. He invested money, and he had very distinguished clothing and a carriage. That seems a bit like the opposite of—

05:30 Speaker 2 Right. The Rebbe very much took this approach of the Rebbe Maharash and made it a way of life. This lechatchila ariber that everyone quotes in the Rebbe Maharash’s name: the Rebbe Maharash said, “The world says that if you can’t get through from below, you jump over from above. And I say, lechatchila ariber—from the outset, I jump over from above.” That means going against the world. What does “against the world” mean? Not disconnecting from the world, but being above the world while you’re in it. That’s the Rebbe Maharash. And the Rebbe took that approach. That statement of the Rebbe Maharash appears somewhere in the Frierdiker Rebbe’s Igros Kodesh.

06:12 Speaker 5 That’s where it was first published.

06:13 Speaker 2 Yes. And the Rebbe took it and called the Rebbe Maharash the one whose approach was lechatchila ariber. The Rebbe made it part of our daily lives: we need to conduct ourselves in a way of lechatchila ariber. Now, what is lechatchila ariber? Ah. So, l’chaim, l’chaim.

06:32 Speaker 5 L’chaim. L’chaim, and blessings.

06:35 Speaker 2 L’chaim, and blessings. First of all, farbrenging. It’s something very, very fundamental. For chassidim, a farbrengen was something beyond davening. I heard from Rabbi Kopf [?] at the yeshiva in [unclear]. He said that in davening, a Jew would pour out his soul, whether in bitterness or in joy, but a farbrengen went beyond that. There were times in Russia when there was nothing to eat, and what kept the yeshivos going was farbrenging. Why? Because at a farbrengen, one person would demand something of another: “Give something, contribute from your own bread and milk for the Temimim, for the teachers.” And it worked. Farbrenging is our lifeblood. It’s what gives us strength. There’s a reason the Rebbe constantly says to farbreng and farbreng and farbreng: at a farbrengen, you don’t lie. At a farbrengen, you—

07:36 Speaker 5 Yes.

07:36 Speaker 2 Hm?

07:36 Speaker 5 No, I’m agreeing. A farbrengen—a real farbrengen, where something actually happens, is...

07:42 Speaker 2 Exactly. You sit with your friends, and they tell you the truth; they straighten you out. There was a time when older chassidim stumbled in various matters. One chossid remarked that it was because a tree had grown on its own. What does that mean? A tree that grows in a forest grows straight.

08:05 Speaker 5 Right.

08:05 Speaker 2 Why? Because the other trees keep it straight. But when a tree grows alone, you need to put a stake beside it and tie it up.

08:10 Speaker 5 Yes, you often see that when you walk down the street: a little sapling with a stake beside it.

08:14 Speaker 2 Yes.

08:14 Speaker 5 Supporting it so it grows straight.

08:16 Speaker 2 Exactly.

08:17 Speaker 5 In other words, when you’re not growing in a forest.

08:19 Speaker 2 Exactly. A chossid without farbrengens is missing something very fundamental in the ways of chassidim. We need them. We need that criticism from a friend’s love, even when it challenges us—someone who tells you the truth because he’s concerned about you, because he cares about you. There was a chossid who was about to commit a serious transgression. His yetzer hara said to him—

08:42 Speaker 5 Meaning he was on his way to do something.

08:44 Speaker 2 So he immediately told himself, “Wait, I’m going to visit the Rebbe soon.” Somehow, his yetzer hara told him, “It’s fine, that’s still a long way off. You’ll deal with it.”

08:54 Speaker 5 The Rebbe won’t see it. You don’t have to face what you did.

08:57 Speaker 2 Exactly. But then he told himself, “Wait, I sit with my friends.”

09:02 Speaker 5 I’ll be at a farbrengen.

09:03 Speaker 2 “How will I face them? How will I face my friends at a farbrengen?” Because at a farbrengen, you come with your whole self.

09:11 Speaker 5 Everything is there, yes.

09:13 Speaker 2 And that’s what saved him. “If there is worry in a person’s heart, let him...” Yes, there are two interpretations of the word yishchenah: lower the worry, or speak of it. The moment you tell someone else, it fades. When you sit together, when chassidim sit together, everything becomes smaller. Everything that looked like a mountain to you—you see this in a very real way. Sometimes you have worries about your children’s education or about worldly matters. You come and tell a friend, and suddenly they shrink. Two G-dly souls against one animal soul. It’s real; it has power. Yes.

09:54 Speaker 5 L’chaim.

09:55 Speaker 2 L’chaim.

09:55 Speaker 5 Two G-dly souls against one animal soul.

09:57 Speaker 2 Yes. To a good life.

10:05 Speaker 5 Once, at an institute, they ran all kinds of professional training sessions for us. A lecturer came in and called me into the middle of the circle. I stood there, and he started talking about the difficulties in life. He asked, “How are things with your livelihood?” I said, “You work hard.” He gave me a chair to hold. “How many children do you have?” I started telling him, and he handed me a chair for each child. Every time he asked about something in life that takes effort, he added another chair. There I was, standing in the middle of the circle holding about ten plastic chairs. Then he said, “Wait, wait.” I said, “Well? Where is this going? How high is it going to pile up?” He called someone from the circle: “Come join him. Give him a hand.” Then he called another person: “Come over here too. Give them a hand.” So there were three of us holding the chairs. He asked, “How is it now? Is it heavy?” I said, “No, it’s easier now.” He was presenting it from a professional angle, but in practice, just sharing things sometimes doesn’t change them, but it already makes them easier to carry. You don’t have to carry them alone.

11:24 Speaker 2 Absolutely.

11:25 Speaker 5 That’s it.

11:25 Speaker 2 Wow, absolutely. There’s an expression about the Arizal: chassidim would leave a farbrengen not more anxious, but sharper and more uplifted. What does that mean? They know the tactics of the battle. One soldier told me that when he was in Gaza recently, they learned when it was a good time to get out of the tank to use the bathroom, and how to do it. When you’re at war, you develop a feel for things. You pick up on them.

11:58 Speaker 5 You’re more alert.

11:59 Speaker 2 You’re more alert. When you’re at a farbrengen, you suddenly make room for the battle with the animal soul. You don’t suppress it. You say, “Wait, there’s an animal soul here. Let’s deal with it.” Suddenly it becomes much easier. You pick up on the tactics. You know where you need to sit down and learn Chassidus. Yes, you need to come home happy and smile. Yes, every so often you need to dance at home with the children. When you’re engaged with it, when you’re in it, everything becomes easier. You become more uplifted, more perceptive. It’s not that you become more anxious. Of course, afterward it finds expression in observing mitzvos with greater care and all those things, but that’s not what you come away from the farbrengen with. You come away with a sense of smell, right? Reb Mendel said, “I can smell the carcass from two kilometers away.” So when you sit at a farbrengen, you become aware, you pick things up, you smell the—you smell the carcass, so to speak.

13:03 Speaker 6 Yes.

13:03 Speaker 2 So, lechatchila ariber. Lechatchila ariber. We mentioned him, Mendel.

13:11 Speaker 6 Oh, yes.

13:12 Speaker 2 Reb Mendel and Reb Yoel once sat together at a farbrengen. Reb Yoel said to Reb Mendel, “Tell the bochurim about lechatchila ariber.” Reb Mendel said that in the old days, when a bochur went to buy glasses in Vitebsk, the big city, he would have all sorts of battles with the yetzer hara—where to look, and so on. But today, when bochurim go out on mivtzoim with the mitzvah tanks, the world doesn’t interest them. It doesn’t occupy any space for them. What does that mean? What is lechatchila ariber? Does it mean there is no world? There is a world, but the bochur puts himself in a truer place, a more inward place, a more inwardly G-dly place—where his soul is, where the Rebbe is. That is lechatchila ariber.

14:15 Speaker 6 I think that—and then, when he goes out on mivtzoim, he doesn’t take in the world around him in the same way. He looks at it differently.

14:21 Speaker 2 Exactly.

14:23 Speaker 6 That has always fascinated me: you can cross over, you can—You know, when I was learning in yeshivah in Haifa, I used to run along a certain road there, a very busy road. I had permission to go running in the evenings, and during the day I would also do mivtzoim on that street. I’d run there at night, and I could really see the difference. During the day, when I was there on mivtzoim, I came wearing my jacket and carrying my tefillin bag, and I’d go around putting tefillin on with people. It was the main street, but I hardly registered what was going on around me. I was on mivtzoim. I’d see someone and say, “How are you? How’s it going? Good afternoon. Have you put on tefillin yet?” and so on. Then I’d come there at night and suddenly arrive with a different mindset. I was coming out for a run.

15:11 Speaker 2 Wow. There’s a story that really captures that.

15:19 Speaker 6 Mm-hmm.

15:19 Speaker 2 There was a soldier at some base in Russia. He was hungry, so he went into a Jewish town, entered a house on Shabbos, took the cholent and started eating. He liked it, and everyone was afraid of him—a soldier, in those days. He ate and ate until, tasty as it was, he couldn’t eat any more. He wanted the rest for the road, so he packed it up, put it on his horse and galloped off. He galloped and galloped, and when there’s something hot on a horse’s back, the horse runs. He charged into enemy territory, and because the horse was galloping with such force, all the enemy soldiers fled before him. He captured a very substantial area. When he returned to base, there was a parade right away, and the general awarded him medals and praised him. Another soldier at the parade was jealous. He said to himself, “What’s this? He’s just an ordinary, unskilled soldier. I’m a serious soldier. I’ve been here for years and I’m capable. I’ll do the same thing.” So he took a horse and headed toward the enemy. As soon as he entered, they started beating him. It was terribly embarrassing.

16:57 Speaker 7 He didn’t succeed.

16:58 Speaker 2 Not at all. He came back and was thoroughly humiliated. The general shouted at him, disgraced him and punished him. Afterward, he went to that ordinary soldier and said, “Tell me, I’m more capable than you. How did you succeed when I didn’t?” The soldier told him, “Don’t you understand? It was the cholent. It wasn’t me; it was the cholent.” When you grasp who you really are—lechatchila ariber means that we do have difficulties in serving Hashem. We do. But when you truly contemplate who you are, you are the yechidah of the soul. What is the yechidah of the soul? It’s a power that has no limitations whatsoever. When it shines forth, there are no limitations, physical or spiritual. It gets through everything. And when we live that way—the Rebbe writes about this in the maamar Padeh Veshalom Nafshi, in Melukat, volume 6—when you contemplate the essence of the yechidah and decide that this is how you will conduct yourself here in this physical world, with physicality and food and everything else, you live from the yechidah, where the world poses no obstacle. It happens. It works. This is avodas Hashem; this is our avodas Hashem today. If you had said that in the past, people would have called you a chitzon. Yes, “chitzon” was an insult among chassidim: someone who doesn’t live what he talks about.

18:34 Speaker 7 Why? Because—

18:36 Speaker 2 We barely relate to nefesh, ruach and neshamah, the lower levels. And suddenly you come to me and say, “I live from the yechidah.” In the past, people would have thought you were strange, that you were being dishonest. Today the Rebbe tells you—the Rebbe tells us—that this is how you need to live. This is how you need to go forward.

18:57 Speaker 7 No matter where you are, no matter what point you’re at in life. Go, have a positive influence. Go, bring light. Go, do good. Go. Because you’re connected to a very high place, the yechidah. That’s how I explain it.

19:08 Speaker 2 Exactly.

19:10 Speaker 7 And in the past they would have said, “Oh, stop confusing people. Who are you? I know who you really are. You don’t belong on that level.”

19:14 Speaker 2 Absolutely. Today we say: This is us. This is our reality. And come on, let’s not fool ourselves. There are setbacks, yes, but a chossid is flexible. That’s the difference between chassidim and misnagdim. There was an expression: chassidim were called “the happy ones,” while misnagdim were called “the sad ones.” Why? After all, a misnaged also has mitzvos, and a chossid also has sins. So what’s the difference? The chossid sees the glass as half full; the misnaged sees it as half empty. A chossid says, “I’m connected. I belong. I’m my Father’s son. I’m the Rebbe’s son. I have a G-dly soul. I have a yechidah.” The misnaged sees the other side: “I’m no good. I sinned. I did wrong.”

20:13 Speaker 7 We also have that tendency inside ourselves sometimes, that—

20:17 Speaker 2 Absolutely.

20:18 Speaker 7 That sense of inferiority.

20:19 Speaker 2 Yes. Nowadays there really aren’t misnagdim anymore, as the Rebbe says—

20:21 Speaker 7 Yes.

20:21 Speaker 2 It’s the misnaged within you.

20:25 Speaker 7 Yes.

20:26 Speaker 2 So this idea of truly living as who you are—that’s lechatchila ariber, and it’s hard. Because the yetzer hara always tells us, “Oh, you’re no good. You fell. You failed.”

20:42 Speaker 7 Yes.

20:44 Speaker 2 I once heard from a chossid that the yetzer hara doesn’t want your sin. It wants the depression that follows the sin. It wants the fall, the sadness.

20:55 Speaker 7 Yes, we also say that one sin leads to another.

20:59 Speaker 2 Exactly. And that’s the flexibility of a chossid. That’s what we need to pass on to our children. The Alter Rebbe gave the Mitteler Rebbe responsibility for educating the young married men, and the Mitteler Rebbe was ill—he had heart and lung problems.

21:18 Speaker 7 The Mitteler Rebbe.

21:19 Speaker 2 The Mitteler Rebbe. When he spoke with passion and enthusiasm, he would be ill for several days afterward. Once, he held a farbrengen with the young married men about the service of prayer, about praying at a measured pace, and he became ill. So they asked him, “Why did you put so much into it? Why did you speak so much from the heart?” He said, “I’ll tell you. When my father, the Rebbe, put me in charge of educating the young married men, he told me that I had to see each person as he is in the primordial thought that encompasses everything. What does that mean? At his very source. And he said this includes several things. First, every person is a son. A son loves his father; he isn’t a servant. A servant acts under compulsion. No, you aren’t acting under compulsion. You love it. And every person has essential powers—meaning, without limits. You have to look at each person not as he is now, but at his grandchildren and all the generations after him.” And the Mitteler Rebbe added, “My father told me that, of course, I also have to look at myself that way.” So that’s why I became so ill. I couldn’t help speaking from the heart. I had to. L’chaim, l’chaim.

22:44 Speaker 7 L’chaim and to blessings.

22:53 Speaker 2 So that’s the flexibility that only a chossid has. There was someone in Lubavitch—

23:01 Speaker 7 But how? What does flexibility mean? Let’s spend a little time on that. What does it mean to be flexible in my work, in my life, in my service of Hashem?

23:11 Speaker 2 In life, day to day.

23:12 Speaker 7 Yes.

23:12 Speaker 2 For young married men? For bochurim?

23:14 Speaker 7 A working Jew, a young married man.

23:17 Speaker 2 Say you’re a young married man and you’ve had a challenge at work or on shlichus, or you’re hot and tired. You come home after a busy day. You walk in as a new person. Whatever happened up to that point doesn’t matter. You walk in, you smile, you say something encouraging, you draw people close, you show love, you’re at ease. It doesn’t matter if you’ve had the most stressful day. I heard [unclear] say, “The Rebbe receives all the troubles of all the Jews. He goes into [unclear] and says, ‘Ay, yay, yay.’ The Rebbe—the Rebbe has all the troubles you could never imagine. He receives them every day from all the Jews, but he comes in encouraging people, joyful.” That’s how we should be. That’s lechatchila ariber in our daily lives. And as we said earlier, to do that you need the channel. You need that place where you open a Tanya, you open a siddur, you enter that space and discover your true inner self. Because the world is very confusing. The world blurs things. You have so many worries, and you, you, you... Suddenly something settles. I remember when we were on shlichus in Venice, we were around people all the time, with one thing and another going on. Then we’d get close to the Chabad House. There was this huge screen where you could hear the Rebbe farbrenging. Suddenly there was an inner calm, a kind of quiet. Oh, this is it. That familiar voice—that’s home, that’s rest. There’s a story: Once the Alter Rebbe and the Mitteler Rebbe were in an attic talking Chassidus together, and suddenly they heard the sounds of a crowd of chassidim coming to listen. The Alter Rebbe said, “What do they want to hear? News?” In Yiddish, gazeten. Why do they want to hear news? With one line of Tanya, you can become chassidim—

25:40 Speaker 2 Like Avraham Avinu.

25:42 Speaker 8 The Alter Rebbe said that?

25:43 Speaker 2 The Alter Rebbe said, “With one line of Tanya, you can become a chossid like Avraham Avinu.” The question is how you approach Tanya. Do you approach Tanya with an open heart? Knowing that the Rebbeim gave themselves over to this, that it took twenty years to write the Tanya, that it draws down Atzmus, that there were many battles over it, and that it came for you? I heard from chassidim that the Frierdiker Rebbe said of himself that for six hours before delivering a maamar, his hands and feet would tremble, and he wouldn’t know which maamar to deliver. Then his father, the Rebbe Rashab, would come to him and say, “Deliver this maamar.” So the Frierdiker Rebbe said, “I know it will reach someone.” In other words, when the Rebbe delivers a maamar, he has a purpose, a point to make, a message that will move someone to take hold of himself. When you approach a Tanya that way, you can read even one line. You don’t need to study an entire chapter. You read a line, but you approach it seriously. You say, “I want to reveal the inner dimension of my soul right now. I want to rise higher. I want lechatchila ariber—above the world and what is below.”

27:15 Speaker 8 Lechatchila ariber in my life.

27:16 Speaker 2 Exactly.

27:17 Speaker 8 You need that time, that space.

27:21 Speaker 2 Exactly. The Rebbe Maharash said that when Wednesday arrives, a person doesn’t know how he’ll make it to Shabbos, either materially or spiritually. So we tell him, “Come, let us sing joyfully.” Be happy. Thursday comes, and he’s still down. He’s not happy.

27:40 Speaker 8 Mm-hmm.

27:41 Speaker 2 So we tell him to study Chassidus on Thursday night. Then on Friday, there will be “a great King”—the continuation of the verse, “For Hashem is a great G-d and a great King”—and then he’ll be joyful. In other words, when you open Chassidus, you’re not studying it as just some text. You know there’s a Rebbe here who draws down G-dliness. We see in the maamarim that the Rebbe comes out before your eyes and shifts the whole picture. There is a drawing down of G-dliness here, to the point that a maamar can even heal the sick. There was a Jew in San Salvador named Zisel Pekarsky [unclear]. He distributes the coins for tzedakah.

28:21 Speaker 8 Mm-hmm.

28:22 Speaker 2 He was abroad when he was once burned. Several bochurim suffered burns, and he was in the hospital.

28:28 Speaker 8 A fire broke out somewhere.

28:30 Speaker 2 I think it was on a trip, something with the car.

28:34 Speaker 8 Mm-hmm.

28:35 Speaker 2 Something caught fire, and he was in the hospital. He said he was going to a farbrengen. He left the hospital to go to the Rebbe’s farbrengen, and it happened to be Parshas Vayeira. The Rebbe delivered a long sicha about visiting the sick. It appears in Likkutei Sichos, volume 5, and throughout the sicha the Rebbe looked at him. Visiting the sick, visiting the sick—and he recovered. The Rebbe draws down G-dliness, materially and spiritually. That’s the service of Hashem. That’s how we need to approach a maamar, a chapter of Tanya, a line of Tanya. We need to open our hearts. When you approach a maamar, approach Chassidus, that way, it gives you flexibility. You come to understand that you are above the world. Of course, you also need farbrengens. Someone wrote to the Rebbe that he owed several hundred dollars, or perhaps several thousand, and was very stressed about it. The Rebbe wrote back, “Apparently you haven’t sat at a farbrengen in a long time.” Because at a farbrengen you rise above worldly concerns, and you understand that the debt isn’t as big as it seems to you—not so big that you should be stressed and unable to concentrate. Chassidus and farbrengens.

30:04 Speaker 8 Chassidus is the way of chassidim.

30:05 Speaker 2 The way of Chassidus.

30:06 Speaker 8 Chassidus is the way of Chassidus.

30:07 Speaker 2 Yes.

30:09 Speaker 8 L’chaim. L’chaim, Rabbi Niyazov, l’chaim.

30:10 Speaker 2 L’chaim, l’chaim and to blessings.

30:14 Speaker 8 It’s not quite the same as a farbrengen with a whole studio full of cameras. It’s different.

30:19 Speaker 2 Yes, but there are certainly a lot of G-dly souls here against one animal soul.

30:26 Speaker 8 Yes.

30:28 Speaker 2 There was a Jew in Lubavitch named Abe. He was a warm, simple Jew, and everyone loved him. One day they discovered that something was being stolen from the courtyards in Lubavitch. They decided to post guards, and one night they caught sight of Abe entering a courtyard. The guard called out, “Abe, is that you?” In Yiddish, Abe answered—he had a stutter—“Th-th-th-that’s not Abe.” As if to say, “No, no, no, that isn’t Abe.” What did he mean? The Abe you know from shul, the good Abe—that’s Abe. The one who steals isn’t Abe. The chassidim took that story to heart. Our true essence is lechatchila ariber. The world says to start from below; I say to start from above. The Rebbe Maharash [unclear] said that he instilled in his children that eating, drinking and sleeping should not be the purpose. The purpose should be something higher: observing Torah and mitzvos, serving Hashem.

31:47 Speaker 8 I see this a lot with bochurim. What you said about the story with the father. I sometimes work with bochurim, and they always have this question. They see that they daven, they learn, and they’re connected to the Rebbe. But on the other hand, they see that there are areas where they fall, in very animalistic ways, and then they ask, “Who am I?” It’s like a bochur asking: Am I the bochur I am in yeshivah, or the bochur I am on a Shabbos off? In yeshivah I get up on time in the morning, learn Chassidus, do well. On a Shabbos off, my night starts—and, you know, there’s no schedule once I get home. So he says, “Wait, who am I? This one or that one?” You’re saying that lechatchilah ariber means saying: I’m connected. The yechidah within me—that’s me. My identity, the way I define myself, is lechatchilah ariber. Right.

32:39 Speaker 9 Exactly.

32:40 Speaker 8 And that automatically takes the whole dilemma out of it: I’ve defined who I am. Fine, I have lapses. My lapses are what happens on a Shabbos off, the areas where I don’t do so well.

32:55 Speaker 9 Exactly. And that’s our job—to keep telling them this, because they don’t believe it.

32:59 Speaker 8 All of us need to tell ourselves that too.

33:02 Speaker 9 Yes, we do.

33:02 Speaker 8 It’s not easy work.

33:03 Speaker 9 We need to sit down together and work on this: that’s you. That’s a chossid. A chossid knows he has two souls. That’s the innovation of Chassidus, of Tanya: there are two souls, a G-dly soul and an animal soul, and the G-dly soul is who we really are.

33:20 Speaker 8 Mm.

33:21 Speaker 9 It says in Tanya, chapter 31, “The sadness of the body should not disturb the joy of the soul.” The fact that the body is in its lowly state doesn’t interfere with the joy of the G-dly soul. In other words, now you come to the siddur, you’re happy, you daven with “strength and joy in His place.” You’re a chossid, you’re happy, you know that—

33:43 Speaker 8 You’re flexible.

33:44 Speaker 9 Exactly, you’re flexible. What happened happened. Now it’s something new. And that gives you strength, real strength. You know, you see it in shlichus too. Someone goes out on shlichus. I heard about Menashe Altay[?], a shliach in Kiryat Tivon. He arrived in a place that was not at all friendly to Chabad, and he told himself, “There needs to be a menorah at city hall.” He came with workers. He said, “If I ask them, they won’t let me.” So he simply brought workers and put up the menorah. People walked past, including the mayor, and saw workers putting up a menorah. Okay, fine, apparently it had approval.

34:32 Speaker 8 Lechatchilah ariber.

34:33 Speaker 9 Yes. Chanukah passes, and the mayor sees that the menorah is still there. He asks Menashe Altay[?], “What about the menorah?” So he says, “Oh, it needs to be taken down.” The mayor says, “Fine, we’ll bring workers.” Workers—people from the municipality. And ever since, the municipality itself puts it up, stores it in its warehouse, and provides the workers. When you approach things lechatchilah ariber, things work differently. But that comes from Menashe Altay’s[?] hiskashrus, right? That’s Chassidus. A chossid is someone who has learned, and—

35:07 Speaker 8 It doesn’t come out of nowhere. It comes from sitting down and learning. I think that often, after you finish yeshivah, you reach a stage in life when you have to decide that Chassidus is part of your life: you learn, you sit down once a week, and you have a regular chavrusa for learning Chassidus. I remember once, when I was studying for semicha, I stayed with a balabus, a real fine Jew. He used to tell us something I didn’t really understand then. Only now, after—l’chaim, l’chaim.

35:36 Speaker 9 L’chaim, livrachah.

35:39 Speaker 8 Only now do I understand it better. He used to tell us that a week in which you don’t learn Chassidus is a completely different week. A week with it and a week without it are worlds apart. He told us that when we were bochurim. “I feel it,” he said. At the time I was studying for semicha, learning Chassidus all the time—we had our regular study sessions, and—

36:01 Speaker 9 Exactly. When a shliach learns Chassidus, his confidence in dealing with the mayor is completely different. Granted, the maamar doesn’t say anything about putting a menorah at city hall, but it talks about the innermost part of the soul. It says, “There is nothing besides Him.” That illuminates his path. He goes with it. He lives with it. There were also some bochurim in Manhattan once who wanted to rent a hall for an event for people they were reaching out to. They were told, “On such-and-such a floor there’s a Jew who can give you the hall for next to nothing.” Fine. They got into the elevator. A man with a hunched back got in too. He looked a little unusual. They made fun of him in Yiddish, talking to each other and smiling. Then they got out of the elevator and went into the office of the man they’d been told could give them the discounted price. They saw it was the same man. He greeted them in Yiddish, warmly. They immediately understood that he’d caught—

37:22 Speaker 10 What they’d said about him in the elevator.

37:23 Speaker 9 Exactly. So there was one quick-witted bochur there who said, “Look, the bochurim who were in the elevator with you are foolish bochurim. But the bochurim standing before you now are shluchim of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and we need this hall for our outreach activities.” He gave it to them. That’s flexibility; that’s quick thinking. The quick thinking of a chossid who knows. You know, when the Rebbe Rashab had to report for military service, the Rebbe Maharash told him that a chossid is a soldier: a soldier eats like a soldier, sleeps like a soldier, and even goes to sleep like a soldier. That’s what the Rebbe Maharash told him. Sometimes we need to remember that when a chossid goes to sleep, he needs to go to sleep like a chossid too. And there are many stories about soldiers from which chassidim would draw lessons in serving Hashem. There was a chossid called [unclear].

38:34 Speaker 10 [Unclear]. Pesach of Rostov[?].

38:44 Speaker 9 Of [unclear]?

38:46 Speaker 10 Oh, of [unclear].

38:46 Speaker 9 It’s a story about a chossid of the Alter Rebbe, the Mitteler Rebbe, and even, for a while, the Tzemach Tzedek. He told of a soldier whose guard post was near a river. The tsar announced that he was coming to inspect the soldiers at their posts. Everyone stood guard, but then word came that the tsar had been delayed. So the soldier said, “Let’s jump into the water for a bit. It’s hot; let’s swim.” But it was actually a trick to see whether the soldiers were standing guard, and the tsar arrived on time. He saw the soldier in the water. Normally, that would have meant a death sentence. But the soldier was quick-witted. He came out of the water and saluted. He called out to the tsar, “Whom do you need—me or my clothes? I am yours.” The tsar saw his quick thinking and his love. He also saw that he had slipped up, yes, but he saw that the soldier truly understood whom he belonged to and loved the tsar. He let him go. That’s us. We may have lapses. There may be weak moments when the yetzer hara manages to pull us along. But we know who we are. We have a yechidah; we are children of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, not servants. A servant is separate. He acts because he has to, even when he doesn’t want to. We are children; we are one with Him, we love Him. That’s our essence. That’s what our soul-searching after Yom Kippur needs to be: Are we really living this way? And if we’re educators, do we see our children this way? Do we see them as children? Do we see that they belong? If we see them that way—and, you know, education itself follows from that.

41:07 Speaker 11 It’s always like that.

41:07 Speaker 9 Yes, yes. The Rebbe always says that if we educate ourselves, if we shape the way we see ourselves—knowing that we are children, that we know our direction, and that we’re flexible—it will automatically carry over to the children. We’ll see the children that way. We’re so busy with education, under pressure all the time. Come on, focus on the point. See who we really are. Look at your children that way, and that’s how it will be. How did I once put it about a chossid who needs to do teshuvah? No—what is teshuvah? No, not at all. Yes, that too is an innovation of the Rebbe. It’s also connected with living with the Rebbe.

41:47 Speaker 11 Living.

41:47 Speaker 9 Living, living. What’s interesting is that on Motzaei Yom Kippur 5731, the Rashag[?] asked the Rebbe: the Rebbe talks a great deal about teshuvah ila’ah—where did that come from? The Rebbe told him it was a directive for the time. “What do you mean, a directive for the time?” “That’s my concern.”

42:02 Speaker 11 Because, seemingly, teshuvah ila’ah is something very, very—

42:06 Speaker 9 Exactly.

42:06 Speaker 11 Special.

42:08 Speaker 9 The order is teshuvah tata’ah first and then teshuvah ila’ah. But the Rebbe says to start with teshuvah ila’ah. What is teshuvah ila’ah? Learning with vitality.

42:17 Speaker 11 From living with the Rebbe.

42:18 Speaker 9 Absolutely. The Rebbe’s Torah.

42:20 Speaker 11 What really is teshuvah ila’ah?

42:23 Speaker 9 Teshuvah ila’ah doesn’t depend on what came before. Now learn with vitality, daven with vitality, give tzedakah with vitality—that is “spirit cleaving to spirit.” That’s how the Alter Rebbe describes teshuvah ila’ah. When you learn and daven, your spirit cleaves to the spirit of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. That’s teshuvah ila’ah. There’s a bond here—the bond between a son and his father.

42:46 Speaker 11 Yes, but that flexibility is hard, because the yetzer is always there. If the day starts badly, starts off on the wrong foot, it’s very hard to turn it around. “I missed something today. Tomorrow I’ll get up and be a chossid,” and so on—but it doesn’t happen. I’m not there. It’s like saying, “I’ll start a diet tomorrow.”

43:07 Speaker 9 Yes.

43:09 Speaker 11 Exactly. Being a chossid is the antithesis of that.

43:14 Speaker 9 Absolutely. But a chossid is a soldier, and a soldier needs that flexibility. A soldier doesn’t operate according to his intellect, his contemplation, what he understands. He has this strong inner drive. There’s also a continuation of [unclear] in which the Rebbe says that all our contemplation is meant to reveal what’s already there, not to produce something new. All the Chassidus we learn is meant to reveal what’s there—that soldier within us. The Frierdiker Rebbe has an expression: a soldier doesn’t need intellect; he doesn’t need a head. He does what needs to be done. So why does he have a head? To put the—to rest the—

44:07 Speaker 11 Equipment.

44:08 Speaker 9 The butt of his rifle on it. Ah, you’re right, it’s really, really hard. But once you open up your inner self, open your heart, you—

44:24 Speaker 11 That’s a farbrengen, [unclear].

44:26 Speaker 9 Yes. You learn a line of Tanya with complete sincerity and let it touch you. Then it’s simple. Then it’s simple to be flexible. Because you live in an inner world; you live with lechatchilah ariber—going over the top from the outset. The world says, “Come on, be frustrated,” and I say, “Lechatchilah ariber.” What happened, happened. Right now I live with—

44:52 Speaker 11 Wow, that’s powerful.

44:54 Speaker 9 I live with the truth, with G-dliness.

44:56 Speaker 11 I think this really speaks to the world today—the need to go inward. The best-selling medication in Israel today is an antidepressant. That’s the best-selling medication. The world practically tells you, “Get caught in that loop. Be depressed, feel down, beat yourself up.” Lechatchilah ariber is...

45:21 Speaker 9 Exactly. I heard a few stories about Zalman Notik that express this. He said that once he got up late in [unclear] and decided not to go upstairs. It was three fifteen, and he didn’t want to go into [unclear]. What did he do? He went in through the triangles. Suddenly he saw the Rebbe giving out some coins. He moved away. Then he saw the Rebbe begin giving them to the bochurim. The Rebbe offered him a coin; he pulled his hand back, but the Rebbe pressed the coin into his hand and turned around. So he ran to the mashpia Shalom Yizchaki and said, “What? I was trying to stay away, and suddenly...” And the mashpia told him, “The Rebbe wanted to show you: forget the nonsense. You’re part of this.” There’s another story about him. He often went to the Frishman family to farbreng on Friday night, on Shabbos.

46:20 Speaker 11 The Chabad Frishmans?

46:21 Speaker 9 Yes. And one Friday night they heard the doorbell ring.

46:28 Speaker 11 In the middle of Shabbos, someone rang the doorbell.

46:30 Speaker 9 Yes. They opened the door and saw Zalman Notik. “Zalman, it’s Shabbos!” So he said, “[unclear].” He rang the bell on Shabbos, and afterward farbrenged as usual, as though nothing had happened. So when a chossid knows that this is the trigger, this is the issue, this is the battle, he puts all his weight behind it. “I won’t give in. If I know the yetzer hara wants me to fall into sadness after a transgression, I’ll do everything I can to stay strong, to come home with a smile, with warmth, with patience, with ease, with joy.” That’s our job.

47:25 Speaker 11 That’s our lechatchilah ariber.

47:27 Speaker 9 That’s our lechatchilah ariber, yes. There was also a soldier in the czar’s army whom chassidim once saw... I can tell it briefly. A chossid named Reb Isaac saw him being beaten very hard.

47:51 Speaker 11 They were beating the soldier?

47:52 Speaker 9 Yes. He wondered, “What did he do?” They told him, “Don’t ask questions.” But he still wanted to know. The soldier had frozen at his post.

48:06 Speaker 11 What do you mean?

48:08 Speaker 9 It was cold.

48:09 Speaker 11 Ah.

48:10 Speaker 9 Freezing cold, and he had frozen. So Reb Isaac asked, “What’s the problem? He froze.” No—the oath he had sworn to the czar was supposed to keep him warm. Again, the oath he swore to the czar when he was inducted into the army was supposed to warm him even in the hardest moments. Chassidim spoke about this. Reb Isaac said he lived with that oath for twenty years. We have, first of all, the soul’s oath, right? And we also have that moment when each of us became a chossid, when he said, “I’m going with the Rebbe. Yes, I’m leaving everything else behind.” Everyone had that moment. For one person it was in yeshivah ketanah, for another in yeshivah gedolah, for another during his year of study in 770; for another, later or earlier. That moment is supposed to warm you. That point where you say, “The real me is my neshamah, G-dliness, the Rebbe, Chassidus.” The world tells me to start from below, and I say, “Lechatchilah ariber.” That’s what lechatchilah ariber is about. That oath is supposed to keep us warm even in difficult moments, but we have to remember it, right?

49:45 Speaker 11 Recall it.

49:46 Speaker 9 Recall it. Ah, how did the Rebbe Maharash once put it? There are things that befit a chossid and things that don’t, right?

49:55 Speaker 11 Yes. He came to a certain town and said—

49:57 Speaker 9 Right.

49:58 Speaker 11 “This befits a chossid; this does not befit a chossid.”

50:01 Speaker 9 Exactly, that was the Rebbe Maharash. Among the things that befit or don’t befit a chossid: it befits a chossid to know his own shortcomings and his own strengths. I once heard from someone named Mottel Kozliner[?] that “your own strengths” doesn’t mean your talents. Interesting—because your talents were given to you from Above. They aren’t achievements of your own. What does it mean? That you faced a test and stood firm. A person needs to know his own strengths. That means—

50:45 Speaker 11 Because that’s yours.

50:46 Speaker 9 Exactly. Because the yetzer hara comes and tells you, “You can’t do it. You’re not capable.” And you show it: “Look, last time I faced a test, I stood firm.” So you accomplish two things at once. “Don’t tell me I can’t. I can, and here’s the proof.” So how do we become flexible, as you said? By proving it—proving to our animal soul, “Look, we’re capable.” I came home after a packed, frustrating, stressful day, and I came in with joy. Remember that day. Write it down in your diary. Did it happen or not? It happened. When you approach it that way, the animal soul has nothing to say. You’re right, in practice.

51:45 Speaker 11 You can do things differently. You can come home and overcome it.

51:49 Speaker 9 Yes, you’re capable. Even if our animal soul has its own little territory, like a private parking space: “Don’t come near. No entry. Private parking.”

52:02 Speaker 11 Yes.

52:03 Speaker 9 We can overcome that too, little by little. You say, “See, I won here. See, I won there,” and you write it down. You know your own strengths, as the Rebbe Maharash said a person should. You rise above it. Gradually you see: wow, it’s small. The animal soul is small. You can work on it; you can defeat it. So you tell yourself, “Wow, I’ve conquered a little more.” Little by little, I’ve conquered it. Not I, of course, but with the strength Hakadosh Boruch Hu gives me. There’s another idea about strength. In Ashrei, there seems to be a repetition. One verse says, “They will speak of the glory of Your kingdom and tell of Your might,” and immediately in the next verse it says, “To make His mighty deeds known to mankind.”

53:01 Speaker 12 The glory of the kingdom.

53:03 Speaker 9 Wait. The previous verse just said, “They will tell of Your might,” and suddenly we move to “make His mighty deeds known to mankind.” So the meaning here is not to tell people about the mighty deeds of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, but to make a person’s own strengths known to him. A person has strengths and doesn’t know about them. He doesn’t know that he can do it, that he’s capable of resisting temptations. He can do it; he’s capable. So we ask Hakadosh Boruch Hu: “Help me make people aware of their own strengths—that they can do it, that they’re capable.”

53:45 Speaker 12 A person’s own strengths.

53:47 Speaker 9 Exactly. A person has his own strengths, and he can stand firm. That’s what it means to know your own strengths: to know the tests you faced and stood firm through. And that really reflects the approach of chassidim. Especially when working in education with children, you have to keep pointing it out: “See, you stood firm here. You succeeded here.” That fills the arsenal. Right? After all, we’re soldiers. We spoke about that. A chossid is a soldier. It’s...

54:26 Speaker 12 It fills the magazine.

54:27 Speaker 9 Yes, the ammunition magazine, exactly. It gives you strength. It gives you, uh, courage. It gives you tremendous strength.

54:39 Speaker 12 Really, the expression “L’chatchila ariber”—I mean, the Rebbe Maharash and “L’chatchila ariber” are synonymous. The Rebbe put his stamp on that. The Rebbe made that connection.

54:50 Speaker 9 Absolutely.

54:53 Speaker 12 Tell me where it says that.

54:54 Speaker 9 It appears in a letter from the Frierdiker Rebbe in his Igros Kodesh. He writes that his grandfather said something. What did he say? “The world says that if you can’t go under, you go over. And I say: L’chatchila ariber”—go over from the outset. The Rebbe took that and made a major theme of it. The Rebbe called him “the master of L’chatchila ariber.”

55:18 Speaker 12 Yes.

55:19 Speaker 9 And the niggun is a niggun about L’chatchila ariber. Actually, it’s called the “Eins, Tzvei, Drei, Fir” niggun. What does “eins” mean? One, two, three.

55:29 Speaker 12 Mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, eins, tzvei.

55:34 Speaker 9 Exactly.

55:34 Speaker 12 Oh, so that’s what they called the niggun. Beautiful.

55:36 Speaker 9 Yes.

55:38 Speaker 12 Is that a niggun that he composed?

55:41 Speaker 9 The Rebbe Maharash said that he had read a book called Mishnas Chassidim. There were, uh, musical notes at the end, and he said that this niggun reminded him of the “Eins, Tzvei, Drei, Fir” niggun. They really used to play it a lot in the presence of the Rebbe Maharash. Because the Rebbe’s grandfather was [unclear] with the Rebbe Maharash, and he was the one who taught the Rebbe this niggun.

56:11 Speaker 12 So the niggun of L’chatchila ariber came to us through the Rebbe.

56:13 Speaker 9 Exactly. And the explanation is that the “ya ya ya ya ya ya” is seder hishtalshelus—the order of spiritual descent. In other words, conduct according to the world. And then, uh, “ya ya ya ya ya ya ya ya ya ya, ya ya ya ya ya ya ya ya ya ya ya.” L’chatchila ariber. You go above the world.

56:37 Speaker 12 Actually, there’s a farbrengen where the Rebbe said that part. He encouraged that part many times, didn’t he?

56:43 Speaker 9 Yes.

56:43 Speaker 12 To keep the—

56:44 Speaker 9 Yes.

56:44 Speaker 12 Mm, ma, mama, ya, mama, mama. Wow.

56:49 Speaker 9 Mamma mia.

56:51 Speaker 12 So the Rebbe brought out this whole idea of L’chatchila ariber in the Rebbe Maharash—in his teachings, in his conduct, and so on.

56:58 Speaker 9 Absolutely.

56:58 Speaker 12 Revealed it, you might say.

56:59 Speaker 9 Absolutely. And he connected everything to the idea of L’chatchila ariber. Since the Rebbe Maharash stands for L’chatchila ariber, this matter, too, has to be approached in such-and-such a way. And more than that, the Rebbe instilled L’chatchila ariber in our very being, in our minds, in the way we see things. The Rebbe always wants more and greater things, both materially and spiritually. To learn a lot, daven a lot, accomplish a lot. To see things with L’chatchila ariber. And—

57:32 Speaker 12 To see a Jew that way.

57:34 Speaker 9 Yes. If I’m not mistaken, the Rebbe even put it this way, in connection with what you’re saying: if you live with L’chatchila ariber, then the moment you see a Jew, you see him differently. Yes, that’s it. Spiritually, too. I mean, you don’t know what shlichus you’re doing. “No, I need this shlichus. I need this work in education. I need…” There was once a tsar who needed to cross a river.

58:02 Speaker 12 We’ve spoken a lot about the tsar today, at this farbrengen.

58:05 Speaker 9 We said a chossid is a soldier.

58:06 Speaker 12 Okay.

58:08 Speaker 9 The tsar needed to cross the river. There was no bridge, so the soldiers went into the water for the tsar, one on top of another, one on top of another. They made a bridge for him. A chossid of the Baal Shem Tov was struck by this. He took a l’chaim and said, “There’s the soldier who wants to be right at the top, so the tsar will step on him.” And then he said: “What difference does it make whether the tsar steps on you or not? The main thing is that you’re part of the bridge.” In other words, L’chatchila ariber applies even within the G-dly soul itself. You’re looking for something, some special spiritual elevation. Be part of the bridge, part of the plan. It doesn’t matter what your role is; be with the Rebbe.

59:06 Speaker 12 I think that within life itself, you can find where you can be part of the plan. It isn’t an all-or-nothing thing.

59:16 Speaker 9 Exactly.

59:17 Speaker 12 Do you understand what I mean? This point really hits home for me, because I’ve mentioned it in several episodes already. I have friends who studied in yeshivah, spent their year on kevutzah, and then we all built homes, went our separate ways, and each followed his path and his shlichus in the world. We got together again, and one of them told me, “Listen, Meir, I’m not part of what’s happening. You work in education. Mendy went on shlichus; someone else went there and does that. I work to earn a living. I’m not part of it.” In other words, “I’m not part of the Rebbe’s enterprise.” I don’t know whether he said he felt second-class, but he doesn’t see himself as belonging.

1:00:11 Speaker 9 It hurts to hear something like that.

1:00:12 Speaker 12 Yes, I was shocked. I said to him, “What? That’s how you feel?” That’s how he feels. An educator… So, uh, what I’m saying is that this all-or-nothing thinking applies to particular areas of life, too. It means finding the point where I can say, “In this respect, I’m part of the bridge.”

1:00:29 Speaker 9 Absolutely.

1:00:29 Speaker 12 Of my life.

1:00:30 Speaker 9 If I’m part of the bridge by putting on the Chabad House farbrengen on 19 Kislev—or everyone can find how they’re part of the bridge, part of the battle, part of bringing Moshiach, part of the shlichus. Exactly. Everyone can find his own part in it.

1:00:53 Speaker 12 I think the Rebbe—I heard this, though I don’t remember the details—that after the Holocaust, there were many, many questions about where to take Judaism, with the surviving remnant scattered in different places around the world. And many communities decided to close themselves off—to put walls around themselves, so to speak, with barbed-wire fences on top. I mean that figuratively, of course: to shut ourselves off from the world, which was also changing very rapidly. The Rebbe took a different approach, a different direction. The Rebbe says, “You shall spread forth.” We aren’t swallowed up by the world; we ride above it. That’s L’chatchila ariber. A young man will go wherever he needs to go with tefillin, and he—

1:01:47 Speaker 9 Exactly.

1:01:48 Speaker 12 He takes charge of the street. He’s responsible for it now; he’s in charge.

1:01:52 Speaker 9 I even heard Rabbi Nissan [?] say—

1:01:53 Speaker 12 Yes.

1:01:54 Speaker 9 It’s documented that he was around Saudi Arabia, and he said: “I was on a plane. I offered a young man the chance to put on tefillin, and he didn’t want to. Then I saw a young man from our yeshivah putting tefillin on that same person.”

1:02:10 Speaker 12 Amazing.

1:02:12 Speaker 9 So he said, “I don’t know, apparently it came down to the vibe.” That was his sense of it. Apparently, things came down to… Truly, the Rebbe gives us strength. It’s not us; it’s the Rebbe. When we undertake a shlichus, we put in just our little finger. It’s the Rebbe’s long-reaching hand. What’s needed is your decision, your “Here I am”—to say, “I’m here. I’m putting myself into this. I’m flexible. I can be something different.” And speaking of that, yes, we’re now on 13 Tishrei, in the four days between Yom Kippur and Sukkos. Once, the Frierdiker Rebbe asked his father, “What now?” His father said, “Now is when we must truly do teshuvah; now is when we must truly do teshuvah.” The Rebbe explains that this means teshuvah after—not for sins; our sins were atoned for on Yom Kippur. The teshuvah is for having missed our place, our standing. We forgot that we’re children of the King. We forgot that we’re souls embraced by and bound to Him. And once you know that, everything is different. Even the way you look at everything changes. That’s how the Rebbe educated us: everything takes on a different color, even iskafya. I recently met a Jew who told me that he had studied at the yeshivah in Kfar Chabad, and the mashpia spoke very, very forcefully about iskafya. What did iskafya mean? You go into a store and want a suit; you don’t buy the suit you want, you buy a different suit. He used a few other expressions, too, and this man found it very difficult. He went into yechidus with the Rebbe and wrote, “Rebbe, iskafya is hard for me.” So the Rebbe said to him, “What you’ve written—that iskafya means breaking

1:04:20 Speaker 9 yourself—is a mistake.” The Rebbe told him, “I’ll tell you what iskafya is. When you have a fatty piece of meat on your plate and you want to eat it, and then you think it through and tell yourself, ‘It won’t do my physical health any good.’ And you tell yourself, ‘Here’s an opportunity for the strength of the G-dly soul to reveal itself. I won’t give in to this. My G-dly soul is present here right now. I won’t give in to the animal soul.’ That’s iskafya. Iskafya isn’t breaking yourself. Iskafya is saying, ‘Wait—there’s G-dliness here, there’s a G-dly soul here. Why are you getting yourself dirty?’”

1:05:08 Speaker 3 A different place entirely.

1:05:09 Speaker 9 Exactly. That’s iskafya—

1:05:10 Speaker 3 It may be the very same action, but it comes from a different place in the soul.

1:05:12 Speaker 9 [unclear]. Neither of them will eat it.

1:05:15 Speaker 3 Yes.

1:05:15 Speaker 9 But he won’t eat, and he’ll be frustrated, broken, bitter, depressed, and... without a sense of self. And he’ll come from a place of being a king. You mentioned those young men. It’s the same thing: “I work for a living. I work to support myself.”

1:05:36 Speaker 3 “I’m not part of all the...”

1:05:37 Speaker 9 “I’m not part of—” No. You are. You work for a living, but you’re part of what’s happening. You’ll come, you’ll do [unclear], you’ll come and say, “Oh, hold a class in your home.” It’s the same thing. That low opinion of yourself is the same thing, the same kelipah. The same kelipah of hashbarah, of breaking yourself, that there was back then.

1:06:01 Speaker 3 Yes.

1:06:01 Speaker 9 By the way, that same person told me he kept that yechidus secret for forty, fifty years because he was afraid the Rebbe wasn’t right. He didn’t believe the Rebbe. You’re stunned, huh? So was I. He said, “The mashpia had so thoroughly steeped us in this idea of hashbarah that suddenly the Rebbe comes and says, ‘Hashbarah doesn’t mean breaking yourself.’ Wait a minute. We were here in yeshiva. You taught me this.”

1:06:30 Speaker 3 It shattered a lot of what he was.

1:06:33 Speaker 9 And for ten years, fifteen years, he... He’s a Jew named Berkstein who came from Detroit. Suddenly, when this story came out, all the mashpi’im said to him, “Where have you been until now?” And it really is a different way of looking at things. You’re doing something; you’re taking positive action in a different sphere, in a different place. You practice hashbarah because you’re revealing the G-dly soul here. You don’t want to get dirty. You work for a living, but that’s part of the shlichus. So, once I learned with a chavrusa, a young man in [unclear]... Chaim.

1:07:14 Speaker 3 Chaim, Chaim Levi.

1:07:14 Speaker 9 He says to me, “You won’t believe what happened today.” Chaim Levi. I said, “What?” He said, “Today I went into a flower shop.” He was engaged, and he said—

1:07:27 Speaker 3 Patchouli.

1:07:28 Speaker 9 Yes. He says that... Well, he spoke a little with the shopkeeper. The shopkeeper said, “I wanted to go on shlichus. The Rebbe told me to open a flower shop on Kingston.” So wait a minute—is that flower shop on Kingston a disappointment? That’s his shlichus. He needs to approach it like the person who puts tefillin on people.

1:07:57 Speaker 3 Wow.

1:07:58 Speaker 9 That’s his shlichus. His shlichus is to open a shop on Kingston. I once heard that a young man approached Rabbi Chodakov asking for a shlichus. Rabbi Chodakov asked him, “What kind of shlichus do you want—where?” He said, “The most...” Rabbi Chodakov said, “If so, then no.” So the young man immediately corrected himself and said, “Wherever I’m needed.” When you look too hard, are you looking to do what needs to be done, or do you want to be at the very top of [unclear]?

1:08:37 Speaker 4 I don’t understand.

1:08:38 Speaker 9 Do you want to be part of it, or do you—

1:08:41 Speaker 4 You are part of it. You can’t—

1:08:44 Speaker 9 Are you looking for yourself, or do you want to be part of it? Exactly. So lechatchila ariber means we’re in it all the way. Whatever is needed, whatever we’re told. And of course, we can’t do it alone. We need to be together.

1:09:04 Speaker 4 We need the farbrengen.

1:09:05 Speaker 9 The farbrengen, exactly.

1:09:06 Speaker 4 We need to study Chassidus, and then lechatchila ariber is possible.

1:09:10 Speaker 9 Yes. What was that saying the chossid used to say? “Chassidus is cooked in davening. Davening is cooked over a little glass of l’chaim.” Because Chassidus on its own isn’t enough. You have to daven. Davening does the cooking, and that cooking needs a higher flame. I heard a story about [unclear]: once, after davening at length, he wanted to confess, but there was no one left to do it with. He took a child from an Anash family and poured him a l’chaim. He told him, “Don’t drink; I’ll drink for you. But repeat after me: ‘I hereby confess.’”

1:09:55 Speaker 4 That’s how he confessed.

1:09:55 Speaker 9 Yes, because he felt the davening had done its part. But you still need the... Yes, you’re cooking, but it won’t cook all the way through. You need something more...

1:10:07 Speaker 4 A farbrengen.

1:10:08 Speaker 9 A farbrengen.

1:10:09 Speaker 4 Well, Rabbi, I’ll let you go. Thank you very much. L’chaim, l’chaim.

1:10:13 Speaker 9 L’chaim, l’chaim, and blessings.

1:10:15 Speaker 4 May you have lechatchila ariber in everything, with Hashem’s help—especially in serving Hashem, and in material matters too. Material matters will follow naturally. L’chaim, l’chaim. Thank you very much.

1:10:23 Speaker 9 Enjoy, enjoy.