What Does a Bochur in Yeshiva Gedolah Really Go Through? | Rabbi Chaim Hillel Springer #017

00:00 Speaker 1 How do you educate a generation that never had the privilege of seeing the Rebbe with their own eyes? And what does the complex work of education look like in the yeshivos gedolos? For this episode, I sat down with Rabbi Chaim Hillel Springer, a mashgiach at the yeshiva gedolah in Tzfas, a member of the Beis Chana administration and the international Ata board. We had a fascinating conversation about what goes on behind the scenes in the yeshiva world, the challenges facing this generation, and the power of a genuine connection in education—one that is pure and free of self-interest. I’m Meir Wishnefski, and you’re listening to On Chabad Education. Rabbi Chaim Hillel Springer, welcome.

00:30 Speaker 2 Hello, good evening.

00:32 Speaker 1 Yes.

00:32 Speaker 2 Thank you for inviting me.

00:33 Speaker 1 Thank you for making the time to come.

00:35 Speaker 2 May it go well.

00:36 Speaker 1 Amen, amen. May it go well for us.

00:37 Speaker 2 Yes.

00:38 Speaker 1 All right, I have a lot of questions prepared, but before we start, for anyone who doesn’t know you yet: You’ve been at the yeshiva gedolah in Tzfas for twenty years, in several roles. Maybe we’ll start with how you got involved in education in the first place?

00:55 Speaker 2 I don’t have a special story, but there was tremendous hashgachah pratis, truly. I was born in Kfar Chabad, an ordinary kid. I studied at the yeshiva ketanah in Lod, and came to Tzfas for yeshiva gedolah. Here I got drawn in a bit, became involved with the local Ata, and then went to study at 770 with my group. Boruch Hashem, I was at 770 for almost four years.

01:23 Speaker 1 Wow.

01:24 Speaker 2 Almost three and a half years. I returned to Israel and got married. A little while after the wedding, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Wilshansky, a"h, asked me to come work at the yeshiva.

01:38 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

01:39 Speaker 2 And boruch Hashem, I had the privilege of saying yes. So I started working at the yeshiva. At first, the role gradually took shape and changed shape. For many years, the yeshiva gedolah in Tzfas was the center of my life. Twenty-four hours a day, breathing yeshiva, talking yeshiva, thinking yeshiva, organizing yeshiva. Day and night, without stopping.

02:09 Speaker 1 Yes. I’ll never forget when you’d walk into the yeshiva’s zal, and all the Temimim, all the guys, would come straight over: “Can you sort this out? I need to talk to you.”

02:17 Speaker 2 That came at a later stage, but that too was something. The yeshiva kept growing, because the challenges were growing, and the yeshiva wanted to become more professional, to be the best it could be. It’s a yeshiva that has broken new ground in several areas.

02:33 Speaker 1 Yes.

02:33 Speaker 2 Rabbi Wilshansky had a big vision, both for the number of students and for the way things were done. And he wasn’t daunted by anything. I mean, we did it all ourselves, and it’s a very serious, large operation. An enormous challenge. I had the great privilege of learning from him—and sometimes getting an earful from him when I needed it.

02:56 Speaker 1 That’s part of the job too.

02:58 Speaker 2 Yes. And at the end of the day, the yeshiva has a very interesting combination: a much older, highly experienced staff, with enormous experience, alongside younger staff members who are learning and making mistakes, and—

03:17 Speaker 1 It’s always that combination. Even when you first came in, there was—

03:19 Speaker 2 There was Rabbi Wilshansky, a"h, Rabbi Levkava [unclear], Rabbi Nirman [unclear], Rabbi Zev Friedman, Rabbi Bronstein, and others who had a tremendous influence on all of us. And you come in, just starting out, beginning to deal with parents and students, and little by little...

03:36 Speaker 1 All right, so let’s talk.

03:36 Speaker 2 You find yourself standing, standing—

03:38 Speaker 1 Yes, that’s what we came to talk about: the yeshiva gedolah. We’re at the point when the winter term is starting in the yeshivos. Thousands of Temimim across the yeshivos in Israel are starting yeshiva gedolah. A Chabad bochur starts with three years in yeshiva ketanah, finishes there, and arrives at yeshiva gedolah. The schedule, daily routine and subjects of study change, of course. But fundamentally, what does the yeshiva want a bochur to become during yeshiva gedolah? What makes yeshiva gedolah different? What is its goal? These three years are usually around ages eighteen, nineteen and twenty.

04:15 Speaker 2 Wow, that’s a question. To my mind, yeshiva gedolah is something entirely different. A different story. It isn’t a copy-and-paste of yeshiva ketanah for another three years. Yeshiva gedolah is a different environment, a different style. You can even see it later in life: the bochurim among us are identified by their yeshivos gedolos—Tzfas guys, Chabad guys, Kiryat Gat guys. Nobody says—yes, the yeshivos ketanos have their own distinguishing features. Absolutely they do. I spent many years in a yeshiva gedolah, and you can see those features.

04:52 Speaker 1 You can tell where the bochurim came from.

04:54 Speaker 2 Of course. But a bochur arrives at yeshiva gedolah with the characteristics of his yeshiva ketanah. If a group comes together, they’re very, very close-knit. So at the yeshiva here, for example, you might have guys from Tzfas, Lod or Netanya—it doesn’t matter. Gradually, that identity fades in the face of the yeshiva gedolah’s identity. A bochur is meant to connect with his yeshiva gedolah; he becomes known by its name. And in a sense, that’s it. From then on, for the rest of his life, he belongs to it in some way. To him, yeshiva gedolah isn’t an academic institution at all. I mean, it isn’t a school, not even a school for advanced Jewish studies where he studies X hours of nigleh and Y hours of Chassidus, with farbrengens and mivtzoim. A yeshiva is like—he never really graduates from it. He always remains a student. Sometimes he even remains a child in relation to the staff. Sometimes you meet an alumnus you haven’t seen in years, and it’s “Wow! How are you? What’s happening?” Suddenly you both remember the connection, the experiences you shared, all sorts of things. Yeshiva gedolah never really ends; it remains the bochur’s home forever. In a sense, it’s where he goes out from and where he comes back to. We’re chassidim; it’s a shame there’s this concept of “staff,” as though that’s what makes a yeshiva gedolah a home. But in a certain sense, the major educational experiences happen there. Yeshiva gedolah is different: it operates differently, it’s structured differently, and what it produces is different. The challenges it faces are also very, very different from those of the yeshivos ketanos.

06:41 Speaker 1 Can you take us behind the scenes a little? I mean, I’ve always been an outsider. Let’s go inside, for anyone who knows the yeshiva—let’s head downstairs.

06:49 Speaker 2 Call a meeting.

06:49 Speaker 1 Yes.

06:50 Speaker 2 What happens?

06:51 Speaker 1 So when you want— we’ll talk about the numbers in a moment too—but when you want those three years in yeshiva gedolah, in any yeshiva gedolah, to be etched into the bochurim, as you put it—and that does happen. You mentioned Tzfas guys, Migdal guys; each yeshiva has its own... How does it happen? Is there some kind of—I don’t know whether there’s an organized plan, but what do we want to happen to the bochurim during those years? They arrive from yeshivos ketanos.

07:19 Speaker 2 I don’t know if there’s some method, like in a factory: you bring a person in, here he gets folded, here he gets compressed, and then he gets mixed in. I don’t think it works like that. But there’s something about yeshiva gedolah where the parts are greater than the whole. The atmosphere, the staff, the way things are done, perhaps very much the student body as a whole—everything together is like a kind of stew that they slowly, slowly cook in. For some it takes a day or a month; for others, half a year, and for some, longer. But eventually, little by little, everyone enters this bubbling pot called yeshiva gedolah. It’s a very dynamic, lively, bustling place, without a single quiet moment.

08:20 Speaker 1 Really.

08:22 Speaker 2 Not a moment of calm. Every day—and in a positive way. Ultimately, it affects both the bochur’s outward life and his inner life in a way nothing else can. He changes, he grows, he becomes a different person. A person comes to yeshiva gedolah as a little kid.

08:43 Speaker 1 He’s grown—

08:44 Speaker 2 Physically, he’s big; he’s thirty years old.

08:45 Speaker 1 Yes.

08:45 Speaker 2 But he arrives as a certain kind of child, and slowly, before your eyes, he becomes a man, a grown person who has to acquire skills: human and social skills, and chassidishe skills too. The ability to influence others, the ability to learn, motivation, the ability to withstand tests—to identify challenges and overcome them—and to develop an inner connection with his “aseh lecha rav,” the rav he has chosen for himself. Often, these things only begin in yeshiva gedolah.

09:24 Speaker 1 Yes.

09:25 Speaker 2 Because only then is there the right soil and the right air for that process. Its roots are in his upbringing, and certainly in the yeshivos ketanos—that’s clear—but the major growth—

09:38 Speaker 1 Happens—

09:38 Speaker 2 There’s something subtle here. The yeshivos gedolos benefit from the investment made by the yeshiva ketana, while the yeshivos ketanos don’t really get to enjoy the—

09:49 Speaker 1 The result, seeing the—

09:50 Speaker 2 Of course, boys grow there, but it’s a different kind of work.

09:57 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

09:58 Speaker 2 You can see it too, I think. I mean, most of the boys and young married men who manage to maintain a connection with an “aseh lecha rav,” as they should, ultimately have an aseh lecha rav from yeshiva gedola, not from eighth grade. Now, that’s built on the fact that in eighth grade he had someone there; in yeshiva ketana they spoke with him, and he had an aseh lecha rav. And really, the beginnings of an aseh lecha rav in yeshiva ketana are small.

10:18 Speaker 1 Yes.

10:18 Speaker 2 He doesn’t know what to talk to him about, so he asks him—and it really starts with practical questions, uh—

10:23 Speaker 1 Which hat to wear, and—

10:24 Speaker 2 They sound funny to an adult. Which hat to wear, and I don’t know what else. And sometimes, when there’s a good heart-to-heart conversation, that relationship can reach very deep, serious places, even in yeshiva ketana. But in the end—some do maintain their connection with yeshiva ketana, but for most, it’s a relationship formed in yeshiva gedola.

10:44 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

10:44 Speaker 2 Because that’s the age. Of course there are exceptions, but yeshiva gedola is different.

10:48 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

10:48 Speaker 2 It helps people grow.

10:51 Speaker 1 How do you manage to help so many boys grow? The staff—you, Rabbi, I remember you were with the first-year class, right?

10:58 Speaker 2 Yes, at a certain point. Yes, we divided things up.

11:00 Speaker 1 How many years were you the mashgiach for the first-year class?

11:03 Speaker 2 Not that many years, uh—

11:05 Speaker 1 You definitely were in my year. I remember.

11:06 Speaker 2 Let’s say that by the time you were there, it wasn’t long before the yeshiva switched to that system.

11:10 Speaker 1 Essentially.

11:10 Speaker 2 Where we divided up the responsibility for the different year groups.

11:11 Speaker 1 Essentially, the supervision was split up.

11:13 Speaker 2 The supervision was split up. Um, when was that? Probably around 5781 or 5782, I think.

11:19 Speaker 1 Yes.

11:20 Speaker 2 Uh, it took time, and that process itself took time; it changed shape along the way. And, well, perhaps I should say that these days I’m in the yeshiva much less.

11:29 Speaker 1 Yes.

11:29 Speaker 2 I’m there only for morning Chassidus. I’m no longer in charge of the first-year class—this is the second year now. But I don’t know whether the yeshiva has fully worked it out yet. We’re still learning, in some sense, how to divide things up properly.

11:44 Speaker 1 Yes, the responsibility—

11:45 Speaker 2 But each year had 120 or 150 boys.

11:47 Speaker 1 So, 120 boys.

11:48 Speaker 2 170 boys.

11:49 Speaker 1 How do you keep track of that many? And here I’m talking about a situation where they had already divided it—

11:54 Speaker 2 Now, first of all—

11:56 Speaker 1 Yes.

11:57 Speaker 2 You don’t need to. I mean, what do I mean, you don’t need to? One person doesn’t have to know all 170 boys in the year.

12:06 Speaker 1 Yes.

12:06 Speaker 2 That’s impossible.

12:07 Speaker 1 Yes.

12:07 Speaker 2 I mean, you can know who they are, but not know them deeply. That takes time, too. What does it mean to know someone? To speak with a boy, say something to him, meet him, get to know him, recognize him, recognize his reality, recognize his strengths, his home, what kind of home he comes from, what difficulties he’s dealing with, what he expects of himself, what his G-dly aspirations are, where he wants to go, what he knows. One person can’t do all that. The real achievement is to organize a system that can do it. Boruch Hashem, we have a large staff in the yeshiva, so ultimately you divide it up, and each staff member has a number of students he is supposed to take responsibility for. Ultimately, we wanted to reach a point where every boy has at least one staff member who knows him through and through. I mean, someone who knows his pants size—that level, literally. Some boys you get to know right away, just like that; everybody knows them. And there are boys whom it’s very hard to get to know. They’re closed off, they’re—

13:20 Speaker 3 Guarded.

13:20 Speaker 2 They don’t like opening up; maybe they’ve been hurt—it doesn’t matter. But you see that, usually, as you talk, slowly, slowly, slowly, from the first year to the second and third, a boy gradually learns to trust the staff, to know that they aren’t looking for something to use against him. It’s about building trust.

13:41 Speaker 3 Yes.

13:42 Speaker 2 And that’s work.

13:43 Speaker 3 But when it’s divided up, it—

13:45 Speaker 2 It has to be done; it’s the right way to work. I’ll just tell you that there was a time when someone from the Ministry of Education came to the yeshiva, someone from the counseling department. He came to observe and sat with us a few times in the first-year class meetings. He was tremendously impressed by how much we knew about the boys. He said, “Wow, even in a school you wouldn’t see this.” Now, that’s siyata d’Shmaya, yes. And Rabbi Wilshansky, alav hashalom, really didn’t hold back on staffing the yeshiva, creating all sorts of roles and partial roles—whatever it took to make things work properly. It takes a lot of siyata d’Shmaya, a lot of determination. And precisely because of this, the yeshiva strongly encourages the Rebbe’s instruction to “aseh lecha rav.” A boy forms a personal connection with someone on the staff. That’s completely different. If it works—

14:34 Speaker 3 It turns the whole thing around a little. I’m thinking of non-Chabad yeshivos; let’s talk about the differences. When there’s no aseh lecha rav—what you’re saying is actually brilliant. The student creates that framework for himself, that channel, that line of communication.

14:47 Speaker 2 Aseh lecha rav encompasses all of that; it’s an instruction from the Rebbe.

14:49 Speaker 3 Yes.

14:49 Speaker 2 Aseh lecha rav. Now, although the instruction of aseh lecha rav, at its core—by the way, this year we’re talking about—

14:57 Speaker 3 Forty years.

14:57 Speaker 2 Forty years. Yes, from 5747, that’s forty years. So the first thing was that the role of an aseh lecha rav was simply to test you. You would come to your aseh lecha rav to be tested. That was the role. I mean, that’s how it began. What we know today as aseh lecha rav—consulting with him, discussing your dilemmas with him, sharing things with him—is a later development. The foundation of aseh lecha rav was tests. Tests. Come and be tested; see where you stand. It didn’t deal with this whole area of counseling at all. Now, it developed over time, yes, and there are the Rebbe’s sichos at the different stages along the way. And we all know the teaching in Hayom Yom that when two Jews meet, there are two G-dly souls facing one animal soul. But ultimately, it’s also a tool, and you see a boy who has an aseh lecha rav. You understand? He has someone to turn to, someone to lean on, someone to talk through his dilemmas with. And that’s something that can sometimes be a matter of life and death for a boy. Not sometimes—always. It’s just that, with Hashem’s help, things work out, but—

16:02 Speaker 3 Yes.

16:02 Speaker 2 It’s a tool, a very significant tool.

16:04 Speaker 3 In those years when you were the mashgiach—when you, Rabbi, were the mashgiach for the first-year class—there’s that transition when boys arrive from yeshiva ketana, 120 boys, each one—

16:16 Speaker 2 And more.

16:16 Speaker 3 And more. Yes, a large number. And they arrive after—in yeshiva ketana they were already in their element. They were in their third year; they knew the place.

16:26 Speaker 2 They had all the keys and lit the fire. Right.

16:29 Speaker 3 And then they come here, and it’s like starting everything all over again.

16:31 Speaker 2 It’s a very difficult crisis.

16:33 Speaker 3 Yes.

16:34 Speaker 2 It’s not simple, but when you’re aware of it, it’s easier.

16:40 Speaker 3 The students themselves.

16:41 Speaker 2 When a student—when a child is aware of the situation he’s heading into, it becomes easier. I would often tell parents, it’s okay, as if—

16:52 Speaker 3 As if we can handle it.

16:53 Speaker 2 It’s hard. And it’s not only hard in that respect; it’s hard socially, too. A child in yeshiva ketana has his place. A boy’s place is perhaps the most important thing he has, or one of the most important. It’s his security blanket. He has a place.

17:11 Speaker 3 By “place,” you mean—

17:12 Speaker 2 A place where the other boys know him, know him and recognize him. He knows—he has his friends. He’s the scholar, he’s the organizer, he’s the sociable one, he’s the nudnik. Each one—

17:28 Speaker 3 His role in the group.

17:29 Speaker 2 In the social group, among his peers, each one knows his place and doesn’t feel threatened. Like we said, by the second year he’s already found his place. He has his chavrusa—he doesn’t feel threatened. Suddenly he comes to yeshiva gedola and feels threatened. By the way, the same process happens before kvutza. In recent years, the yeshiva gedola has developed workshops to prepare boys for kvutza, and one of the points is this again: a boy comes from his third year in Tzfas, where he has a familiar, established place. Suddenly he lands in 770. There are lots of boys there who didn’t learn here, who don’t know him and sometimes don’t even acknowledge him. And that can bring his life to a halt. A boy comes to yeshiva gedola. Now let’s take a boy who comes to yeshiva gedola in Tzfas. There are so many people here.

18:20 Speaker 3 Yes.

18:20 Speaker 2 He comes here on the first day.

18:21 Speaker 3 The first day is a shock.

18:21 Speaker 2 He arrives here on the first day, and all he knows is his own yeshiva ketana and maybe a few other boys from his community. At this point, he can’t tell first year from second year or third year. He doesn’t know who the staff members are at all. He doesn’t know whom to ask about what. It’s not as though every staff member wears a badge saying, “I’m so-and-so; you get a blanket from me; you get—” He’s thinking, “Who are you? Who are you?” And more than once, in those first days, boys really did get permission from the wrong person for [unclear], until he finds his way and we realize we don’t even know whom he spoke to. But this really is a process, a process that happens. There’s the whole first half-year of yeshiva—

18:56 Speaker 3 Half a year.

18:57 Speaker 2 At least.

18:58 Speaker 3 Wow.

18:58 Speaker 2 Taking apart the previous framework and building a new place for himself.

19:05 Speaker 3 You’ve heard about that big cholent, that stew.

19:08 Speaker 2 I mean, I used to tell the boys: Imagine it as circles, like a hall with lots and lots of circles—real social circles. Say a group of graduates from Netanya comes in, a group from Bnei Brak, a group from Rechovot. You can see each of them forming a little circle. Each group looks out for its own. They’re a social circle.

19:27 Speaker 3 Yes.

19:28 Speaker 2 Most of their chavrusas are with each other. They sit next to each other in the zal, and without even intending to, they’re very, very—

19:35 Speaker 3 Elbowing.

19:36 Speaker 2 They protect each other and make room for each other, yes, so no one gets lost and everyone is okay. They look after one another, and everyone outside the circle is the temporary enemy. A metaphorical enemy, one that threatens to—what?—swallow them up or take over, depending on the situation. And our big task as staff was, and still is, to let these social circles come apart in the right way. Because you want them to come apart, but you don’t want the boys to lose that support.

20:08 Speaker 3 Yes.

20:09 Speaker 2 Because that sense of security is important. Slowly, with a Shabbos here and a break there, it starts to shift. By the Shabbos before Pesach of his first year, when a boy travels home from Tzfas and comes back to Tzfas, his circle is already a Tzfas circle.

20:25 Speaker 3 Yes.

20:25 Speaker 2 For example. And still, there were certain years—without naming names—when we had difficult circles of boys who didn’t integrate. A group of boys came who...

20:37 Speaker 3 Held tightly to each other.

20:38 Speaker 2 Held tightly to each other, and they essentially didn’t let themselves open up to the yeshiva.

20:41 Speaker 3 Wow.

20:42 Speaker 2 They kept to themselves, rather than becoming part of the yeshiva. So there was even a place we called their “embassy” in Tzfas. I won’t say which yeshiva they came from, but it was as though they had just—

20:51 Speaker 3 Never broken out of that circle.

20:52 Speaker 2 Now, you can see this too: Baruch Hashem, the yeshiva has a great many boys from abroad.

20:57 Speaker 3 Yes, there’s a group of—

20:58 Speaker 2 A very large group, dozens.

20:59 Speaker 3 Oh, dozens?

21:00 Speaker 2 Dozens. Now it’s the same process. They come here.

21:04 Speaker 3 From America, France.

21:05 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. And suddenly the Americans—all the English speakers—immediately stick together, even though they didn’t necessarily attend the same yeshiva ketana. One studied at [unclear], another at [unclear], another in [unclear], in Philadelphia, all over the place. In New York, even in Canada. But immediately, immediately, they form a natural defensive alliance.

21:26 Speaker 3 That’s incredible.

21:26 Speaker 2 It’s instinct, biological instinct.

21:30 Speaker 3 Survival instinct.

21:30 Speaker 2 It’s an inborn instinct. So they immediately stick together and close ranks. Once you know about it, you can simply see it.

21:39 Speaker 3 Yes.

21:39 Speaker 2 And then he isn’t free to listen. He doesn’t hear you, the staff; he doesn’t hear himself; he doesn’t hear the other boys around him. He’s constantly occupied with maintaining that alliance—you can see it. And slowly, the work is to talk to the boys and help them understand that it’s okay. He isn’t losing anything. Sometimes it means telling a boy, “Take a chavrusa who came from a different yeshiva.”

22:04 Speaker 3 Ah, to take steps.

22:05 Speaker 2 Step outside a little... change where you sit or where you sleep. You don’t have to be with your friends from yeshiva ketana all the time. And slowly it works. For a boy, that’s part of normal growing up.

22:18 Speaker 3 Yes.

22:18 Speaker 2 And by the way, I’d say it’s the same story when someone is about to enter the army. You can see it in community life too. It’s a common pattern.

22:26 Speaker 3 You’re saying it stays with us throughout...

22:28 Speaker 2 Say someone comes to a shul in a community, right? Who is he drawn to first? He sits next to someone he knows.

22:34 Speaker 3 Right.

22:35 Speaker 2 Now, sometimes that closes him off, locks him in. He doesn’t become part of the community; sometimes he just has his own small circle.

22:44 Speaker 3 He doesn’t open up; he stays in that same—

22:44 Speaker 2 He doesn’t open up; he stays a little, well, a little limited. So we need to understand that. Many, many parents said, “Ah, okay.” When the parents are aware, the yeshiva is aware, and the boy is aware, then time, the setting, and the person himself will do their work.

23:01 Speaker 3 You mentioned the parents. What role do parents actually have throughout this stage?

23:05 Speaker 2 Oh—

23:06 Speaker 3 [unclear]

23:08 Speaker 2 And here, let’s say, in the first year of yeshiva gedola, parents still have a significant role. It isn’t like the third year of yeshiva gedola.

23:17 Speaker 3 Yes.

23:17 Speaker 2 There, it really is a little—

23:18 Speaker 3 Generally, how old are they in the first year? The first year of yeshiva gedola.

23:21 Speaker 2 Sixteen, seventeen. It depends. In Jerusalem they’re younger.

23:25 Speaker 3 Yes.

23:25 Speaker 2 With all those chadarim, where that system operates. But in Tzfas, the yeshiva has boys from every background. So, first of all, I believe parents have a significant role. The more involved parents are, and the more they know about what’s happening, the better.

23:45 Speaker 3 Even at this age.

23:46 Speaker 2 Certainly. Of course, you have to find the right way to be involved. And here you’re taking me back a little to all my experience with [unclear]. I don’t want to resort to a cliché, but parents aren’t their children’s spokespeople or their protective wall. Parents are our partners, and we are their partners in educating their children. Many times we would sit down with parents for meetings—some pleasant and some unpleasant.

24:17 Speaker 3 Yes, especially in a supervisory role.

24:19 Speaker 2 Yes, every yeshiva has that too.

24:21 Speaker 3 Yes.

24:21 Speaker 2 So often I would sit on the boy’s side, rather than opposite him. I wouldn’t have him sit next to his parents.

24:27 Speaker 3 Oh, really?

24:27 Speaker 2 Not sitting together as though it’s me against you. I’d say, “We’re all on the same side. Here’s the boy, and together we need to figure out what to do.” Even if, let’s say, G-d forbid, the yeshiva isn’t right for him, G-d forbid, we still have to make every effort. And I’ll say there have been many mistakes and failures. I owe some people an apology. But this is work; education is work.

24:51 Speaker 3 G-d forbid.

24:52 Speaker 2 But the first idea is that we’re all partners, all on the same side. It’s not that we now want to send the boy away and the parents don’t, and the question is who will win the battle, who’s stronger. No, no. Suddenly we have a challenge. The boy wants to be in yeshiva, we want him in yeshiva, sometimes he himself wants to be there, and his parents want it too. Now let’s see how to make that work—and that takes work. As for the parents’ role, I’m not even talking about how, when parents say a chapter of Tehillim, that certainly helps him in this regard too. But knowing what’s happening with their child and working together with the staff—when parents understand that the staff isn’t the enemy, and work with the staff rather than siding with their son against the staff, that opens up an entirely different world. Because when the yeshiva knows it has people it can work with, people who will cooperate, and that everyone can work without judgment or criticism, everything goes much, much more easily. It takes work. Sometimes parents—really, all of us as parents—the thing that affects us most is our children. Their education is the most precious thing a parent has. It touches places so deep in the soul that nothing else compares. I don’t know if there’s anything else like it.

26:07 Speaker 3 You mean the fears about—

26:08 Speaker 2 About the children. It can set a person off, take him out of himself, more than money, more than health—the education of his children. Now, when a child becomes challenging, it’s something that disrupts an entire home. It isn’t simple. And sometimes, when things get difficult, it can disrupt lives, and there’s so much involved. We can’t work out of anxiety; we have to work with our minds. And that’s where the parents come in. It’s work, shared work. On the other hand, sometimes parents can’t help at all. It’s tragic.

26:48 Speaker 3 In what sense?

26:49 Speaker 2 Either they have no communication with the child, or they do, but the communication is strained.

26:55 Speaker 3 Yes.

26:55 Speaker 2 That too. And sometimes these are patterns of behavior that have been there for many years, that nobody has managed to change, or things just aren’t going the way the parents want. So there’s a struggle over the child, and the parents are... But over the years, baruch Hashem, the parents have had a lot of room, a good place, in our yeshiva. I don’t know if they do this anywhere else, but it’s very interesting: a parents’ meeting for parents of students in a senior yeshiva. I don’t know if they do that anywhere else.

27:26 Speaker 3 I thought they did that in every yeshiva.

27:27 Speaker 2 Not at all. In senior yeshivas? Not at all. I don’t think only Tzfas does it. Maybe today it’s Tzfas and its offshoots, but no. In the wider world, certainly not.

27:36 Speaker 3 Or yeshivas that fight for the truth.

27:38 Speaker 2 A parents’ meeting? Not at all. These are parents of—now the yeshiva, the entire staff, goes down to America.

27:43 Speaker 3 Yes, I remember.

27:44 Speaker 2 The parents can come to the event.

27:45 Speaker 3 Actually, the entire staff goes down to Italy.

27:46 Speaker 2 You sit with the parents. That’s the first thing in itself. Even the staff getting to know the parents is a blessing, even if nothing else comes of it. Just that meeting—getting a sense of the child’s character, how his parents behave, what’s going on with him, where he comes from—it teaches you a tremendous amount.

28:03 Speaker 3 Yes.

28:04 Speaker 2 And with the parents, too, you can suddenly say, “Let’s agree on this,” or “We’ll do this; we’ll do that.” You talk with them about what to do and what not to do. You make the parents into partners—and that’s a different world. They aren’t your review board, and they aren’t waiting for you to slip up. When you learn to speak to parents as partners, everything works better, more easily, and more honestly too.

28:28 Speaker 3 What do you mean?

28:30 Speaker 2 You talk about what actually matters. When there’s no communication, so much gets blown out of proportion: “You didn’t tell me. Why didn’t you call me? Why didn’t you speak to me?”

28:37 Speaker 3 Ah.

28:38 Speaker 2 Now I could say to the parents, “Why didn’t you call me? Why didn’t you speak to me?” Where would that get us? Maybe a court could find someone at fault, but that wouldn’t help us at all. It wouldn’t get us anywhere. Fine, someone’s at fault; give him a beating. But how would that help the child now? How would it help the child, the parents, or us? But if you’re wise about it—and very often, when parents come in, they’re in distress. You have to understand that. When parents come in with issues, there are problems, right?

29:05 Speaker 3 Yes.

29:06 Speaker 2 They’re in distress, genuine distress. And when a person is in distress, he acts like a person in distress. He grabs on to any—

29:15 Speaker 3 Anything he can.

29:15 Speaker 2 Anything he can.

29:16 Speaker 3 Especially when it comes to raising children, as you said.

29:18 Speaker 2 And sometimes that really leads to difficult places. This is a prayer for all of us—as a father, as a parent, as an educator. We want to succeed. “Do not bring us to a test or to disgrace.” The purpose of the yeshiva is to keep the bochurim in yeshiva, not to send them away.

29:30 Speaker 3 Yes.

29:31 Speaker 2 You have to understand that. The yeshiva isn’t looking to send a bochur away. It wants to succeed. It doesn’t want to fail, and here—

29:37 Speaker 3 Your success is when they’re there.

29:40 Speaker 2 Of course. If a yeshiva reaches dangerous dropout rates, that means there’s a problem. You have to look at what’s happening. Sometimes the situation is bad, but you have to look into it.

29:51 Speaker 3 And throughout those years you worked very closely with Rabbi Alshinsky, the rosh yeshiva.

29:55 Speaker 2 That’s true. Yes, mainly with him.

29:57 Speaker 3 On educational dilemmas, or—

29:59 Speaker 2 The entire staff was very involved, but I worked a lot with him on registration, on admissions to the yeshiva. The whole admissions process in recent years was my responsibility. So we worked closely together.

30:12 Speaker 3 Are there things you can tell us about... Open your heart.

30:16 Speaker 2 Once he took me aside for a talk.

30:19 Speaker 3 Yes.

30:21 Speaker 2 Rabbi Alshinsky was a man of truth. If something needed to be done, you had to do—

30:26 Speaker 3 You could count on him.

30:27 Speaker 2 I’ll put it this way. He had a rule. He would always say, “How does it go? Every rule has an exception—and that isn’t a rule either.” He would accept bochurim who went against the yeshiva’s very DNA. Let me explain: he saw himself as a father to everyone. He couldn’t... Sometimes a bochur would turn up wanting to enroll in the yeshiva.

30:56 Speaker 3 And you would tell him—

30:56 Speaker 2 And I’d say to him, “What? How is this relevant? What?” Of course, someone can apply from any country in the world. I don’t know, from Egypt, from wherever—I don’t want to single anyone out. But I’d say to him, “Rabbi Alshinsky, registration closed a month ago. It’s already Kislev. Why has this fellow suddenly decided to enroll here? He has no yeshiva; he was thrown out. Why should we get ourselves into this mess?” And he’d say to me, “Where will he go? Tell me, where will he go?” If it was a bochur born in Tzfas, say, you could say, “Look, he’s here in the community, outside the yeshiva.” But a bochur from overseas? You bring him here—why bring him to the city? For what?

31:35 Speaker 3 Wow.

31:35 Speaker 2 He couldn’t do it. He just couldn’t. What did it mean to him? This bochur had nowhere to go. He saw himself as a father in education, a father to orphans. That’s the way I have to explain it.

31:45 Speaker 3 Wow.

31:46 Speaker 2 He was very sensitive. He couldn’t bear the idea of telling a bochur no. And by the way, I want to say that at admissions meetings, the first people he accepted were all the weaker students.

31:54 Speaker 3 That’s where you start.

31:55 Speaker 2 That’s where we start. What other yeshiva would take them? We started with all the weaker students. For the first class, the first year, those were the ones he accepted first. Later, when places became tight, we couldn’t accept so many weaker bochurim. You also need plenty of strong bochurim. But little by little, he pushed to accept more and more bochurim, against his own interests, against the admissions committee and against the administration. He never took the number of beds in the dormitory into account. It wasn’t a factor in admissions at all. He didn’t count the beds and then—

32:24 Speaker 3 The stories you’re telling—

32:26 Speaker 2 In the last two or three years, the numbers had already grown so much that he became more careful. He would tell bochurim, “Look at your exam. We can’t accept everyone; there’s no room.” In the end they opened the place in Nof Hagalil, so there would be somewhere to put the bochurim who came while the building was being renovated.

32:40 Speaker 3 Yes.

32:41 Speaker 2 So it would open up an option for bochurim.

32:42 Speaker 3 Wow.

32:43 Speaker 2 Now, it’s funny—I ended up getting a taste of my own medicine. Whenever he told me there was no room for a bochur, I’d say, “Let him go to Beis Chana.” He’d say, “What would he do at Beis Chana? It’s for girls.” I’d say, “What does that have to do with us? We have no room.” In the end I wound up at Beis Chana myself. But that was how it was; you couldn’t work any other way. Information would come in, difficult information. And the rabbi, z"l, would say, “Take him. We’ll deal with it. Because who will deal with it if not us? Who will deal with it if not us? What will happen to this bochur?” And there really were bochurim who came here and succeeded, with Hashem’s help.

33:18 Speaker 3 Wow.

33:18 Speaker 2 I could give you names, names.

33:19 Speaker 3 People you look at and say—

33:21 Speaker 2 Today I say that if the rabbi, z"l, hadn’t insisted, they wouldn’t... They may understand it, but they don’t know that he accepted them against all logic.

33:31 Speaker 3 Wow.

33:31 Speaker 2 And today a bochur gets married and builds a Chassidishe, Chabad home. You say, “Just think!” Maybe that’s how you could describe his way of working: he wasn’t bound by any rule or framework. Yes, there’s no room—but who gets left out? On a personal note, my grandfather, my mother’s father, a"h, was the director of Beis Rivkah in France for decades.

33:57 Speaker 3 Amazing.

33:57 Speaker 2 Herbert Gurevitch [unclear]. When there was no room in the old Beis Rivkah dormitory, the Rebbe wrote that they should bring in triple and quadruple bunk beds.

34:08 Speaker 3 What did he write?

34:08 Speaker 2 Yes, to bring in beds stacked three and four high. The inspectors there in France didn’t agree.

34:16 Speaker 3 Government inspectors.

34:17 Speaker 2 The rooms would be so crowded. So the Rebbe wrote that they could explain to the inspectors that the girls weren’t in their rooms for most of the day. It was only at night, and it wasn’t so terrible. That’s not just something people say—the Rebbe wrote it.

34:29 Speaker 3 Yes.

34:29 Speaker 2 Somewhere. Now, by the way, let’s talk about the yeshiva. Quantity brings quality. You can see it plainly, without a doubt. Quantity brings quality. It really does.

34:44 Speaker 3 Yes, you walk into the zal.

34:45 Speaker 2 Were you in the zal this morning for morning Chassidus? Listen, it’s a pleasure. Bochurim are sitting and learning Chassidus—third-year students, first-year students, second-year students. Bochurim are learning. I’m the mashgiach; I made a round of the zal. You know, maybe some are sleeping, I don’t know, perhaps twenty. But in the zal they’re learning. You hear the sound of Torah. They’re learning, learning, learning with energy.

35:05 Speaker 3 Wow.

35:06 Speaker 2 Now, I’m not even talking about the special atmosphere in the yeshiva, how it has become such a name among everyone. People call about coming to your yeshiva: “I heard there’s a chassidic atmosphere there. It’ll help him.” What can I tell you? Are you coming from Florida, from California, from Los Angeles? But yes, numbers bring quality.

35:22 Speaker 3 But you see—

35:22 Speaker 2 One yeshiva, and another, and another, and another. There are, there are.

35:26 Speaker 3 But when you look ahead, let’s say, at the map of yeshivos in Israel—not that we’re making a decision here at the table right now—do you think that’s the ideal for a yeshiva? Large yeshivos, large numbers of students in yeshivos—

35:38 Speaker 2 It’s a whole story. Look, I’ve dealt with this a lot. So, you know, let’s talk numbers for a moment. Okay, let’s, let’s.

35:43 Speaker 3 Go ahead.

35:44 Speaker 2 By the way, it’s just before elections now, so let’s talk numbers. Let’s talk data.

35:48 Speaker 3 One second, just adjust that a little.

35:49 Speaker 2 The Chabad community, bli ayin hara, is growing at a rate that isn’t linear. I mean, it’s not growing by the usual increments. The numbers are jumping by hundreds and thousands.

36:02 Speaker 3 You mean the increase in births.

36:03 Speaker 2 The growth is enormous, boruch Hashem, bli ayin hara.

36:06 Speaker 3 Yes.

36:07 Speaker 2 How many children are there today in first-grade classes in Chabad Talmud Torahs?

36:16 Speaker 3 Across the country.

36:16 Speaker 2 Across the country. Now, we’re talking—I hope I’m right; I’m not in that field today—but I think we’re talking about close to three thousand.

36:27 Speaker 3 Close to three thousand children.

36:28 Speaker 2 If I remember correctly, close to three thousand children in first grade in Chabad schools in Eretz Yisroel.

36:34 Speaker 3 Okay.

36:35 Speaker 2 Now, first-year classes in the senior yeshivos.

36:38 Speaker 3 How many are there today?

36:39 Speaker 2 Let’s say all the senior yeshivos—Tzfas, Beit Shemesh, Kfar Chabad, Migdal, Tirat Tzvi, all of them—in the first year, we have six hundred, seven hundred beds.

36:50 Speaker 3 That’s it?

36:50 Speaker 2 Yes. A hundred and fifty in Tzfas, a hundred and eighty in Tzfas.

36:52 Speaker 3 Oh, just the first year.

36:53 Speaker 2 Just the first year, yes. The Galil yeshivos have a hundred and— I don’t know how many.

36:56 Speaker 3 That’s a number, that’s...

36:57 Speaker 2 Do you understand the difference? Now, the children in first grade today will be coming to the first year of a senior yeshiva in another ten years. Right?

37:06 Speaker 3 Right.

37:06 Speaker 2 Eight.

37:06 Speaker 3 Eight years, plus two.

37:08 Speaker 2 In another ten years. Meaning that in ten years, you need to—

37:12 Speaker 3 Triple it.

37:12 Speaker 2 Triple your number of beds.

37:14 Speaker 3 Oh.

37:15 Speaker 2 Now, in reality, not every child who starts first grade makes it to a senior yeshiva. Some schools aren’t only for Chabad families; there are families who have become close to Chabad, and there will be some attrition along the way, a certain percentage. I’m even talking about twenty percent. Okay? Twenty percent who leave that track—not necessarily dropouts.

37:31 Speaker 3 Who won’t get there at all.

37:32 Speaker 2 Twenty percent won’t get there. So twenty percent of three thousand? Five hundred.

37:38 Speaker 3 Yes.

37:39 Speaker 2 What kind of numbers are we talking about?

37:40 Speaker 3 They need to grow.

37:41 Speaker 2 So you’re saying that, before we know it, there won’t be room in the senior yeshivos. By the way, there won’t be room in the junior yeshivos either. And we’re not far from that today. In Tzfas, two people are competing for every seat in the senior yeshiva. Twice as many applicants are tested as there are places. In the junior yeshiva in Tzfas—

38:00 Speaker 3 How many?

38:00 Speaker 2 There are more than five applicants tested for every place.

38:05 Speaker 3 How many? How many? How many? What’s the capacity—

38:06 Speaker 2 I don’t know what they have there. I don’t remember.

38:08 Speaker 3 Say a hundred and twenty.

38:09 Speaker 2 Say that—I don’t know. I’m telling you, more than five applicants tested for every place. Now, obviously, a boy applying to a junior yeshiva is tested at several yeshivos, so it’s not really five to one. But the number of applicants... Meaning, we’re going to need more of this and more of that and more of everything. There’s an advantage to large yeshivos with thousands of students. Everyone understands that. You walk in and see a thousand bochurim—that makes an impression. But you need to build a system that knows how to take care of a thousand bochurim. Instead of fifty staff members, you’ll have three hundred. You need more people.

38:42 Speaker 3 Yes.

38:42 Speaker 2 Again, because you don’t need one person who knows everyone. That’s not possible. You need to build the right system. And if the system is built properly, then in the end it doesn’t matter how many students there are. Because if it isn’t built properly, it can’t even take care of one student; it doesn’t know him either. If it’s built properly—meaning there are classes, and each class has someone senior overseeing it, and someone above him, a kind of pyramid, a hierarchy that works together—then you can do it. You have another ten students? Add another staff member, let’s say.

39:08 Speaker 3 Yes.

39:08 Speaker 2 And there’s a need for more junior yeshivos too. If only there were more senior yeshivos. You understand? A senior yeshiva—

39:13 Speaker 3 There’s no growth, no growth in the number of senior yeshivos.

39:14 Speaker 2 A senior yeshiva is a difficult undertaking. It’s hard to open one.

39:18 Speaker 3 Unlike a junior yeshiva.

39:19 Speaker 2 A junior yeshiva is... A senior yeshiva is harder to open for all sorts of reasons. But it’ll happen. It’ll work out.

39:28 Speaker 3 Meaning reality will bring it about.

39:29 Speaker 2 There’s no other way. The existing yeshivos will grow a great deal, and today all the senior yeshivos are growing. The question today is the quality of the boys coming in. I mean, are good bochurim coming to you or not? But as for how many are coming—there’s no other way.

39:46 Speaker 3 Wow.

39:47 Speaker 2 But it’s a challenge. A senior yeshiva isn’t a junior yeshiva. A junior yeshiva mainly needs order and structure. A senior yeshiva needs to give something different, and you need to know how to give it. There are other differences too. Anyway, a senior yeshiva is much more—

40:01 Speaker 3 In a senior yeshiva, even with the numbers and everything, the system is more relaxed—that’s how I remember it. You feel you have more breathing room, I’d call it. There’s less attention to every little thing. Is that something deliberate, something that allows you to grow, or do I remember it that way because of how stifling the classes were?

40:20 Speaker 2 In my opinion, yes. Yes.

40:23 Speaker 3 Wow.

40:23 Speaker 2 I can even tell you there were bochurim who came in deeply scarred by a junior yeshiva. Not any particular one, but junior yeshiva had been very hard for them.

40:38 Speaker 3 Yes, that’s—

40:38 Speaker 2 And it was specifically in senior yeshiva that they flourished—that they flourish.

40:41 Speaker 3 Flourish.

40:41 Speaker 2 Flourish, precisely because of that freedom. Now, in a junior yeshiva, I’ll put it this way: the maggid shiur is expected to be exacting, right? He can’t tell his students, “I don’t know.” He can’t. In the first year, right?

40:56 Speaker 3 Yes.

40:56 Speaker 2 In a junior yeshiva, he has to know everything. He has to know every sugya.

40:58 Speaker 3 That describes it. That’s how I remember it.

41:00 Speaker 2 When you’re in a junior yeshiva and you ask your maggid shiur a question in nigleh, and he tells you, “I don’t know”—think what that does. In a senior yeshiva, it’s the opposite. It’s perfectly natural that your maggid shiur doesn’t know, right? He doesn’t know the entire Torah. Of course there are things he doesn’t know. So the relationship becomes a different kind of relationship. It becomes more personal, more—

41:31 Speaker 3 More human, even.

41:32 Speaker 2 It’s not just more human. It’s a relationship that pays more attention to where the person in front of you is. The framework is just a very external, technical tool that makes growth possible in a senior yeshiva.

41:50 Speaker 3 By “framework,” you mean arriving on time.

41:52 Speaker 2 The order, the rules.

41:54 Speaker 3 The discipline.

41:54 Speaker 2 The discipline. In a junior yeshiva, by its nature, there has to be a very strong emphasis on—

42:04 Speaker 3 The rules in general.

42:05 Speaker 2 But I don’t know junior yeshivos. I didn’t attend one. I just have a son, and—

42:09 Speaker 3 He’s already in yeshiva.

42:10 Speaker 2 In a junior yeshiva.

42:11 Speaker 3 Wow.

42:11 Speaker 2 So I can’t say for certain, but there are junior yeshivos that work on giving the boys a bit more freedom, and you can see it in their graduates.

42:21 Speaker 3 And when they come to a senior yeshiva, you can see it in them.

42:24 Speaker 2 Immediately. Yes, absolutely. It’s very, very noticeable.

42:27 Speaker 3 Wow.

42:27 Speaker 2 Now, that comes at a cost. Because a junior yeshiva that gives more freedom has some attrition. Some bochurim slip through the cracks. The two go together.

42:36 Speaker 3 That’s the cost.

42:36 Speaker 2 When the framework isn’t strong, there are boys who can’t manage. But for those who can, a senior yeshiva is, from the outset, geared more toward the individual and less toward the group. And that’s a different world. Also, you know, when I would speak with a bochur, I would often stop for a second and tell myself, “Chaimi, remember: standing in front of you is a person with feelings, desires, with everything that makes him who he is. He isn’t a bad kid.”

43:08 Speaker 3 Yes.

43:09 Speaker 2 He didn’t wake up in the morning and decide to be... You know, sometimes you see someone on the street—excuse me—a person in a terrible state. We come across people in terrible situations.

43:20 Speaker 3 Yes.

43:20 Speaker 2 And I say to myself, when he was a child, he wasn’t like this, right? He was a sweet kid, played soccer, ran around. He wasn’t walking around like— I don’t know, if I suddenly see someone in front of me wearing layers of clothes and rummaging through the trash, he wasn’t always like that. And the bochur in yeshiva, too: sometimes you encounter him because—I don’t know—he jumped out the window into the wadi and went off to... Or he gets angry.

43:41 Speaker 3 You need to deal with the situation.

43:42 Speaker 2 It’s very serious, no question. It’s something you have to deal with. But when you know that you’re talking to someone, to a bochur, it’s a different kind of conversation. You’re not the police, saying, “You broke the law. Come in. Points on your record.” That’s a police officer. You’re not a police officer; you’re involved in education. And education is very complicated work, because you’re not pressing buttons.

44:04 Speaker 3 Yes.

44:05 Speaker 2 These things call for creativity. It’s work, a great deal of work, boruch Hashem.

44:09 Speaker 3 I want to ask about the—after all, you’ve spent years with generations of students coming through, year after year. I understand that things have changed over these twenty years too, but could you point to the main challenges you’ve seen bochurim face during those years, at eighteen, nineteen, twenty? Like, what—

44:29 Speaker 2 There are challenges. We have general challenges, let’s say, that the whole generation shares. Media, society.

44:37 Speaker 3 Mm-hmm.

44:39 Speaker 2 And now, unfortunately, the army, or the draft, is a very difficult matter. The whole situation can drive a bochur out of his mind. It’s a major issue.

44:49 Speaker 3 There’s no peace of mind with...

44:51 Speaker 2 None. This whole draft situation is very difficult, because we want to preserve the option of traveling abroad.

45:00 Speaker 3 For that.

45:01 Speaker 2 Not just for that; for Tishrei too. And that complicates things tremendously. If a bochur comes and says, “I don’t care, I’m a full-fledged draft evader,” that’s either a kind of small-mindedness or broad-mindedness. But fine, that’s settled. Now he’s waiting to see if he’ll be arrested, or he says he doesn’t care. For now, he thinks he doesn’t care. And military prison is no small thing, let’s be clear.

45:19 Speaker 3 Military prison is not—

45:20 Speaker 2 Military prison is no summer camp. It’s not as though someone can take a book there and finish the entire Shas. That’s not how it works. But let’s say a person can prepare himself mentally for that—

45:29 Speaker 3 Yes.

45:29 Speaker 2 To some extent. We don’t want to be draft evaders; we want to travel abroad. So you end up in a delicate, complicated dance with the army, because you’re also maintaining contact with them. It’s a very, very complicated situation. A bochur can get tangled up in it.

45:47 Speaker 3 So when you see a bochur, you might say, “He’s unsettled because of this.”

45:50 Speaker 2 I’m telling you, there are dozens of bochurim. I spoke to one today. He has a draft notice for the beginning of Kislev this year, a month from now. A draft notice. This can drive a person crazy. These are challenges that we share—it’s universal.

46:06 Speaker 3 Yes.

46:06 Speaker 2 It’s shared by us and by the whole generation. It isn’t specifically a Chabad problem. But there are Chabad challenges too, first and foremost. You want to raise a generation that’s connected and alive. You yourself are talking about education. I myself want to live it, to go about my day with peace of mind, and to teach my children and the bochurim that this may be the most important thing in their lives. And it really is. That’s a challenge. A big challenge.

46:38 Speaker 3 Wow.

46:38 Speaker 2 And this can’t just be lip service. You can’t pretend. In our yeshiva we write to the Rebbe once a month. I don’t know—that alone isn’t the point. If you want to educate—

46:49 Speaker 3 That’s where it starts.

46:49 Speaker 2 You need to establish habits, to change lives. And, incidentally, you want a bochur to go on shlichus to a Chabad center and not lose his bearings.

46:58 Speaker 3 Yes.

46:59 Speaker 2 And that’s a challenge unique to us. I mean—

47:03 Speaker 3 Yes.

47:03 Speaker 2 For a bochur to be a chossid. Then there’s combining mivtzoim with learning, combining all of that with—

47:10 Speaker 3 Yes, camps, a positive outlook.

47:12 Speaker 2 Camps, camps, [unclear], Pesach, Mivtza Matzah and Lag BaOmer—there’s no shortage. Yeshiva life is full, for better and for worse. These are challenges. So on top of all the usual educational challenges of this generation, let’s call them—

47:27 Speaker 3 Smartphones, uh—

47:29 Speaker 2 Media, the internet and so on, let’s say. There are also very real challenges, internal challenges. You want to teach a bochur about chassidic conduct, even about being meticulous in mitzvos—

47:47 Speaker 3 To preserve it.

47:48 Speaker 2 To illuminate himself, his home, his community. To build a chassidic home here—these are values. It isn’t a page of Gemara; it’s something else entirely. It comes from farbrengens, from mivtzoim, from all kinds of informal experiences. But it’s a challenge. A big challenge. A real challenge, different from, say, the challenges of media. With media, for instance, there are people who can teach you how to deal with it.

48:23 Speaker 3 Yes, methods, or—

48:24 Speaker 2 Methods. To start with, you have filtering. Let’s begin with the simplest thing: there’s a phone, and it’s blocked. Hadran, specifically, or whatever—it’s blocked.

48:32 Speaker 3 Yes.

48:32 Speaker 2 There’s no browser; whatever works for each person. But there are challenges for which we don’t have solutions. Look, we’ve just come back from Tishrei. There are many bochurim who—when you think about it, you realize that the Rebbe is alive. What’s happening isn’t natural.

48:49 Speaker 3 Yes.

48:50 Speaker 2 But at the same time, we weren’t there; we didn’t hear.

48:55 Speaker 3 Right.

48:56 Speaker 2 And as the older person, I have nothing to tell the bochur in front of me. I don’t have solutions. I don’t have tricks. I can’t tell him, “Listen, do one, two, three, and you’ll feel it.” How could I?

49:10 Speaker 3 Wow.

49:11 Speaker 2 And it’s not just that. There’s a difference in years between us. My memories are different; the people I know are different. In a way, the more I describe it to him, the more ridiculous I’ll sound. It just becomes more and more distant. And that’s the challenge. An enormous challenge. A big challenge. Of course it’s possible, or it wouldn’t be happening.

49:36 Speaker 3 It is happening.

49:37 Speaker 2 But still, it’s a challenge. By the way, when I was a bochur in [unclear], I had a connection with—we went there a bit; we volunteered at [unclear] when I was a bochur in [unclear].

49:48 Speaker 3 Chaver Saba?

49:49 Speaker 2 No, we didn’t go—we used to learn there with bochurim. Never mind. Someone on the yeshiva staff said to me—I was in my second or third year, in 5768—someone on the staff said, “We’re now getting the first bochurim, [unclear], [unclear], who never saw the Rebbe.”

50:07 Speaker 3 In the second year, in 5768.

50:07 Speaker 2 I mean, yes, right.

50:08 Speaker 3 Yes.

50:09 Speaker 2 Bochurim who never saw the Rebbe. Israelis had never seen him anyway, so to speak, but suddenly they were starting to get Americans who hadn’t seen him either. He said, “That’s a different challenge.” A child who doesn’t have a picture of himself with the Rebbe at home, like his older brother does. He doesn’t have a dollar he received from the Rebbe. He has nothing tangible, no living memory to hold on to, in a sense. And someone on the staff there in the yeshiva said, “That’s a different challenge.”

50:33 Speaker 3 Wow. What can we say today?

50:35 Speaker 2 Exactly. But it’s a real challenge, a living one. It’s very, very...

50:43 Speaker 3 Present.

50:44 Speaker 2 Present. Now, when you know this, and you live these things and think about them—listen, what you experienced with the Rebbe, write it down. You yourself write, and you yourself... Because ultimately, when a bochur is connected to the Rebbe, he’s in a good place. And the bochurim are good; they want this. All in all, there’s [unclear] now, that feeling, that resolve: “We will not let go of him.” We don’t give up. We don’t give up on the Geulah. You see things going on another minute, and another minute, and another prayer, and more—it doesn’t end. You’re waiting; they’re waiting for the Rebbe to be revealed. It’s very much alive, very present. And then you understand that it’s real; it works. You can even see it out of the corner of your eye in the things you’re looking at. At Simchas Beis Hashoeva, you see those two blocks there, Rabbi [unclear]—

51:35 Speaker 3 Yes, it’s a kind of—

51:35 Speaker 2 And [unclear] dancing there. Listen, I watched it from the side and thought, “Wait a minute, you have to realize, this isn’t normal. This doesn’t just happen. There’s no way it could.” If the Rebbe weren’t making it happen, it couldn’t happen. Because, you know, it’s an experience—

51:55 Speaker 3 Wow.

51:55 Speaker 2 Of a different kind. But it’s a challenge. A big challenge.

52:00 Speaker 3 I have young children—a seven-year-old, and children of three and four. It’s a question I ask myself: How do I... Grandpa was at the distribution of dollars. That’s about all I can tell them.

52:10 Speaker 2 That’s good.

52:11 Speaker 3 Good, but how—

52:12 Speaker 2 I can’t say. I’ll tell you something: it’s like any educational question. Ultimately, first of all, education requires siyata d’Shmaya. You have to daven. I don’t know if there’s a formula for education.

52:25 Speaker 3 Yes.

52:25 Speaker 2 But ultimately, there are certain things. There’s personal example. There’s how a home—if we—

52:33 Speaker 3 Yes.

52:34 Speaker 2 [unclear]—want to.

52:34 Speaker 3 How do I present myself as a father?

52:36 Speaker 2 How do I—how do I really live at home? In the end, you can’t fake it.

52:40 Speaker 3 Yes.

52:40 Speaker 2 I mean, how do I live? What do I go to sleep with, and what do I wake up with? Everyone knows all these things; in practice, they’re felt and familiar. When you’re involved in mivtzoim—Sukkos comes, and you go out on mivtzoim—your children know. My children know that now is an opportunity to help people make the bracha over the lulav. Or do they think it’s an opportunity for something else? The same goes whenever a Yom Tov comes around. By the way, that’s an education beyond measure.

53:04 Speaker 3 Yes.

53:05 Speaker 2 That’s not education. I told this to a bochur. You asked me about it too. I was in a shul in Kiryat Chabad, and there was a book going around. I forget what the book was called. Later I saw there was another book like it: How to Have a Shabbos Meal with Children.

53:20 Speaker 3 Ah.

53:20 Speaker 2 Then I saw another one: “How to Daven with Children.” A Breslov chossid, I think, a”h, wrote the two books. In this book there was a story about a shul. I was there. A fascinating story. It sounds like something that couldn’t have happened. He tells it like this: In kindergarten, there’s a “Shabbos father.” The Shabbos father makes Kiddush, right?

53:39 Speaker 3 Yes.

53:41 Speaker 2 You’ve probably seen this many times. The child chosen to be—

53:46 Speaker 3 The symbolic Shabbos father.

53:48 Speaker 2 He’s told, “Hold the Kiddush cup.”

53:49 Speaker 3 Yes.

53:50 Speaker 2 He holds the cup and says, “Oy, I have no energy. The sixth day, and the heavens were completed...” Now, the message—I read through it—is clear. We know what happened here.

54:01 Speaker 3 Yes.

54:01 Speaker 2 That child’s father, may he be well, might say, “I have no energy,” when he makes Kiddush. The child doesn’t know that “I have no energy” isn’t written in the siddur. What do we say? Are we coming to Shabbos happy and with a glad heart, grateful to Hashem for the opportunity? What do we talk about at the table? What does the Shabbos table look like?

54:24 Speaker 3 Always, always, always, the question is, “How do I get my child to...?” In the end, the answer is about you.

54:28 Speaker 2 A child—

54:29 Speaker 3 Yes.

54:29 Speaker 2 Follows his parents. We need siyata diShmaya.

54:34 Speaker 3 Yes.

54:34 Speaker 2 It’s no guarantee, but ultimately, when you plant an apple tree, you get apples, not oranges. I mean, we have work to do. We need to daven, write to the Rebbe, give tzedakah. There are spiritual matters.

54:49 Speaker 3 Mm-hmm.

54:50 Speaker 2 And there are other things too. There’s washing your hands beside the bed—all these are spiritual things that help the G-dly soul cope. By the way, in yeshiva, often a bochur comes and says, “I don’t like learning.” I’m not talking about someone who doesn’t understand.

55:07 Speaker 3 Yes.

55:08 Speaker 2 Not understanding is a different matter. That has to do with ability.

55:10 Speaker 3 Right.

55:10 Speaker 2 “I don’t like learning. It doesn’t speak to me.” In most cases—the vast majority—it’s a matter of spiritual practice.

55:16 Speaker 3 Meaning mikveh—

55:17 Speaker 2 Mikveh, the elastic on the tzitzis, the morning brachos, washing hands beside the bed, saying the entire bedtime Shema. Putting on Rabbeinu Tam tefillin after davening without really putting effort into it—things like that.

55:30 Speaker 3 Those are the things you’re talking about—

55:32 Speaker 2 Tried and tested.

55:33 Speaker 3 Wow.

55:33 Speaker 2 I’m telling you, this is tried and tested. Say he comes and tells me, “I can’t find a chavrusa. I have no one to learn with.” I wouldn’t stop there. I’d ask him: Do you say bedtime Shema? Where? What does it look like? Do you wash your hands beside the bed? Do you get up?

55:44 Speaker 3 And after a while he tells you, “I—”

55:46 Speaker 2 Often I—look, it takes work. It doesn’t happen in a day.

55:50 Speaker 3 Of course.

55:50 Speaker 2 But yes. Ultimately, these spiritual practices have an effect. It’s tried and tested.

55:55 Speaker 3 Wow.

55:56 Speaker 2 Often that’s where the issue lies.

55:58 Speaker 3 How do you—adolescence is an age with so many challenges.

56:03 Speaker 2 It’s fascinating, by the way.

56:04 Speaker 3 Yes. And how can you get a bochur who doesn’t always see it to recognize the benefit? I’ll call it the benefit, the gain and the loss. To see what he gets out of it. Because nowadays people will pay seven or eight thousand shekels for a course that promises, “You’ll earn this much,” and they buy it. In a world so focused on gain and loss, when you meet a bochur who doesn’t see the benefit—and I gather you’ve met many like that—

56:33 Speaker 2 Let’s put it this way: Most bochurim very much want to be good. When a bochur comes to yeshiva gedolah—and this is true of yeshiva ketanah too—he comes full of good resolutions.

56:43 Speaker 3 Yes.

56:44 Speaker 2 No bochur comes to yeshiva gedolah saying, “I’ll be here for six months and then go home.” There’s no such thing. A bochur comes full of good resolutions. He wants to learn all—sometimes he even makes resolutions that aren’t realistic for him. He wants to learn all day; he’ll get up every day. But what about his yetzer hara? He hasn’t left it behind. What are you going to tell him? Do you think that when you go to yeshiva gedolah, you can leave your yetzer hara with us? No, it goes home with him.

57:09 Speaker 3 It goes with him for life.

57:10 Speaker 2 So we can’t focus only on his yetzer hara. The bochurim want to be good. They know what they stand to gain. They really do. What’s needed is to believe in him, give him the ability, support him sometimes when the material world is right before his eyes and G-dliness is in the books. But really, he enjoys it too, like anyone else. When a bochur learns and davens, he feels good; when he doesn’t, he feels lousy. He knows it, and he wants to get out of that place. Sometimes he doesn’t know how to talk about it, and sometimes he doesn’t know how to ask for help. Sometimes he doesn’t know whom to ask. But at heart, people really want to be good.

57:54 Speaker 3 In other words, he knows the benefit. He knows it from within.

57:57 Speaker 2 Sometimes you need to make it clearer, to say it, to help him believe it. But we’re not talking about something that doesn’t exist for him. It’s not just a story about something in Gan Eden, somewhere far away, that he’ll know about when he gets there. A bochur wants to have yiras Shamayim.

58:13 Speaker 3 I think you feel that in Tzfas too. You feel that when you arrive—that’s been my experience. It’s present.

1:00:15 Speaker 2 Around 5756–5757, in some form. No, but there’s a history to it with the Frierdiker Rebbe. The Frierdiker Rebbe established an organization with the idea that all the yeshivos would be members, bringing yeshiva students together, with each student a member. An internal program—or Chabad yeshivos, of course—and over time it changed form. What we know today is that each yeshiva has an Atah, the organizational framework for the bochurim’s activities: helping people put on tefillin, Shabbos programs, gatherings for Torah study, and sometimes Rambam siyumim. All these local, informal activities. I’d say they’re activities the bochurim organize themselves, though it depends. In some yeshivos the administration organizes them through the bochurim; in others, the bochurim get the administration involved. It depends. Around [unclear], there was a feeling that we needed to create renewed momentum in learning about Geulah and Moshiach. After all, learning about Geulah and Moshiach is the direct path to bringing about the revelation—that’s what the Rebbe says. So they did it. It began with learning campaigns in the yeshivos. When I was learning in yeshiva, there was already a set time for learning about Geulah and Moshiach. Back then there wasn’t—no, nothing like that existed. Gradually it got started. This worldwide Atah was born at first—what years are we talking about? 5756–5757. I traveled to 770. Rabbi Berel Endel was involved, and later Yehuda and Yuval Mishansky [?], and Mendy Endel and others—bochurim and young married men who were trying to—Mendy Shinsky [?], each generation of them—who said, “We need to bring energy to learning about Geulah and Moshiach.” They simply ran campaigns, sent materials to the yeshivos, held a campaign with a raffle, and that gave people energy, and so on. Gradually it took shape. I became involved in it at 770, when I was there as part of the kvutza, and I got involved.

1:02:16 Speaker 2 To work on this. Then came the Rebbe’s 100th birthday, on 11 Nissan. That was when Likkutei Sichos on Geulah and Moshiach began to come out. It really started because of the campaigns, and it kept growing and spreading. Later, in the good years you’re familiar with, there was Dor Deah. Yes. That was a whole different league. Rabbi Drazin, may he live and be well, gave a lot of money. We’re talking about enormous amounts of material. In recent years he stopped doing that, and the organization has continued to grow and develop, boruch Hashem. So what about today? Our main focus, let’s say, is to promote the study of Geulah and Moshiach. That’s what it’s all for. There are also things aimed inward, so to speak, like learning campaigns. In recent years, boruch Hashem, we started running a national Geulah and Moshiach quiz competition, and it’s been very successful. The bochurim work through enormous amounts of material—sichos about Geulah and Moshiach—and come to know it. There’s a worldwide competition, too, and they study for it during their breaks. They study during breaks? Yes, of course. There are prizes that are really worth winning, and there’s a whole surrounding program: a Geulah and Moshiach Shabbos, a summer Shabbos, Tishrei. In the end, every bit of it was created to bring a bochur to live with Moshiach. As the Rebbe says on Shabbos Parshas Tazria-Metzora 5751, the straightest, easiest and quickest way to bring about the revelation of Melech HaMoshiach is to study the sichos, Likkutei Sichos and maamarim of the Nasi of our generation. That’s what the Rebbe says explicitly. Now, as we see it—yes—that is the straightest and easiest way to bring about the revelation of Melech HaMoshiach. In other words, bringing about the revelation of Melech HaMoshiach is at the top of our agenda. So we need to, and want to, study Geulah and Moshiach. Now, every yeshiva’s resources are limited in some way: time, money, personnel. It’s also busy with a great many of the practical details involved in running this thing called a

1:04:12 Speaker 2 yeshiva. And there’s an established schedule that you can’t move around too much. Here, working together with the yeshiva administrations, of course, you can find the right balance between what comes from outside and what happens inside. You give the bochur a framework of support that the yeshiva can’t always provide. Our big dream is to create an organized Geulah and Moshiach curriculum. Work on that is under way now, and I hope it will soon be ready for a first pilot program. The idea is that throughout a bochur’s seven years in Chabad yeshivos, starting in yeshiva ketanah, he’ll have a structured course of study. He’ll study organized material and gain knowledge: What is the order of the Geulah? What is Eliyahu Hanavi’s role? What are all these sichos I’m talking about—the two periods, the days of Moshiach, all these things? A bochur should be well versed in and permeated with Geulah and Moshiach. And I’m not even talking about the laws of the Beis Hamikdash and subjects that are, in a sense, another part of the teachings of Geulah—the laws of the korbanos and so on. But at the end of the day, we’re looking for a bochur who won’t let up. I think the Divine assistance has been extraordinary. There’s always another idea, another booklet, another... It might sound as if there’s some huge organization sitting around, putting things out and thinking them up. No, that’s not how it is. It’s bochurim sitting at desks, an office and a few employees who have to raise the money. And it’s a lot of money—a great deal of money. Enormous. Even though parents sometimes pay a little—summer Shabbos, for example, costs parents money—it doesn’t cover everything that’s needed. It doesn’t. Basically, whenever the yeshiva isn’t filling that space—during the Pesach bein hazmanim, say, or yeshiva gedolah’s Tishrei break—that’s where you come in. That’s where you come in. Yes. And the bochur takes advantage of that opportunity to live with it.

1:06:01 Speaker 2 In the end, everyone benefits. Yes. The yeshiva gets a bochur back. Today, boruch Hashem, some yeshivos understand this and, to a degree, try to encourage a bochur to sign up for summer yeshiva instead of staying home. Take a bochur who has finished shiur alef in yeshiva ketanah. What does he do during bein hazmanim? Yes, rather than sit at home and pass the time. Of course, today there’s the question of serving as counselors in day camps and overnight camps. We’ll come back to that. Is it right? Is it not? At what age? What exactly? But first and foremost, he shouldn’t just be at home. Idleness is the root of all wrongdoing. Now the bochur is home. You know, when we were bochurim in yeshiva, we always felt the most dangerous time at home was Sunday morning. On Friday we were preparing for Shabbos, and on Sunday the parents left for work. There was a computer and there was time. We’re up north here. Yes. What happens after Pesach around Tiberias? Before Pesach there are two weeks of preparations; there’s no time. By Chol Hamoed things have already calmed down. After Pesach, you drive around and see. Yes. He hasn’t done even one task. So during that time in Nissan there are bein hazmanim yeshivos, and in the summer there was a yeshiva gedolah program, held this year at Givat Washington. That was a big step up financially as well. We took on quite a challenge, but that’s the summer yeshiva. Then there’s Tishrei: farbrengens, learning materials. You don’t want a bochur who travels to the center—sorry to interrupt—to have free time and no one providing anything for him. He needs it and wants it. Is there no one taking responsibility for that? Is that where you come in? At the end of the day, when we work together, we can make the most of our resources. At best, a yeshiva can look after its own students. And even that is very complicated and very expensive from a distance. Yes. Very complicated, with time differences. But

1:07:49 Speaker 2 you... you have to send someone. You have to take a bochur and give him something. If you do it, one candle can light a hundred. Yes. At the end of the day, there are also things that come down to the fact that the person isn’t in yeshiva right now. There isn’t a mashgiach looking over his shoulder to check on him. Arrange a place for him to do mivtzoim. If someone provides that, he’ll go out on mivtzoim. So you do that? We try. Yes, it’s hard, but we try. There are farbrengens, gatherings, panels, all kinds of things whose ultimate purpose is to create that framework. This year, boruch Hashem, its effect was very, very noticeable. Very noticeable. There’s a daily schedule that fills a bochur’s time and gives him a place and a direction, and that fills him up. The atmosphere changes; he’s immersed in it, and his surroundings are filled with good things. Then he has the time to absorb inwardly what he needs to absorb. But if, G-d forbid, G-d forbid, a bochur is surrounded by nonsense, then he absorbs nonsense inwardly too. Yes. It’s the same in the summer. We’ve just had the Geulah and Moshiach quiz competition. At the end of the day, we’re physical people. Right. I mean, we have a great many interesting pursuits besides learning. Now, if a person suddenly sees a prize in front of him, that’s how it works: his heart is stirred and he gets to work. When does the quiz campaign take place? The quiz is in the summer. In recent years there’s been a charter flight for 11 Nissan and a quiz in the summer. It’s been very successful. This year there may have been a charter flight for Tishrei. What does that mean? A forty-hour learning campaign, at the end of which a group of bochurim from yeshivos all over the country... go there. They travel together to 770. Yes, for several years now. All these things work together in the end. This system complements the yeshivos; it really works together with them. The big challenge

1:09:31 Speaker 2 In the end, it’s money. Yes, that’s always the... But that’s always the big challenge, a challenge for everyone: money. And how—who makes up the team? I mean, how many people are involved in the project, in all these projects? Let’s say today, well, there’s an office operating in Tzfas. Its director is Mendy Chermetz [unclear], and there’s Evyatar Shalar [unclear], there are avreichim, Yosef Aharonian [unclear]. It’s a team, it’s not... a whole team. There’s a leadership group made up of Avishai Galishansky [unclear], me, and Mendy Chermetz [unclear]. And there’s an office at 770, run by bochurim, from which guidance goes out to the whole world. Rabbi David Gabriel is involved with the... content. And there are other people. There’s also a whole team that travels to the bochurim, with Daniel Cohen and Gadi. There’s a whole group of friends. Five years, six years, and we’re still not in the Beis Hamikdash. It’s about creating that same framework you mentioned, for the seven years and afterward... While doing one thing, you’re thinking five years ahead, [unclear]. But let’s say there’s the big dream of producing organized material on Geulah and Moshiach, which is fundamental. That’s the big goal. It’s not the... It’s part of it, and above all, to succeed in creating a framework for all the bochurim, for every bochur. I mean, both for the outstanding bochur and for the exceptionally outstanding bochur. Even to go a little beyond Chabad’s usual boundaries and... provide the right response for many people. Yes. To... bring them in, so that in the end everyone will be well versed in the teachings on Geulah. Well versed—to know all the sichos off the top of their heads. Because at the end of the day, that’s a big thing. It’s a lot, and it’s hard, but when the great goal—let’s say the goal is to bring about the revelation of... Yes, in the end that’s the... Not “in the end”; that’s what it’s all about. That’s what you work on, what you think about, what you dream about, and that’s...

1:11:27 Speaker 2 So for you, the hope is that all this work will be the final hammer blow. We won’t have to keep things going. We won’t need more work. With Hashem’s help. Yes. In recent years—what do I mean, “years”? It’s been two years already, I understand—you moved to a new position. Yes. So let’s hear a little about it. We really did make a move here. Things developed, and... So today you’re at the yeshiva gedolah? I’m at the yeshiva very little, certainly compared with before. I’m there for the morning study sessions and on Shabbos, and I try to help however I can, and... Wait, I want to tell you something. I’m sure many of our yeshiva alumni listening to this will remember. I’ll never forget how, on Shabbos morning, when everyone was getting up late... I don’t do that anymore. Rabbi Chaim Hillel Springer would go through the dormitory, all five floors, singing niggunim. That was me. I tried doing it for a few years. I wanted to see—I’ll never forget it—whether it would work. It was a big effort. It helped at the time... No, no, no. Let’s say that by the time you got to my friend, I was already... I don’t know which floor you slept on. I’d start on the first floor, go up and down, and so on. Between you and me, I saw that it didn’t work. Whoever wants to sleep, sleeps. Yes. Whoever wants to get up, gets up. That’s not the answer. It’s too much effort to spend Shabbos morning waking someone who doesn’t want to get up. Let him sleep. So I’m saying it failed badly for me. It worked for me, yes. Anyway, things developed. The whole story doesn’t matter here, but I was asked, called upon, offered a move to Beis Chana, to its administration. I wrote to the Rebbe about it and sought advice. I saw a positive answer. So, wow, I moved to Beis Chana, where I’m less involved in education itself and more in organizing the educational system, but not... Beis Chana

1:13:21 Speaker 2 here in Tzfas. How big is it? In Tzfas, for girls. Yes. So it’s not another world, but it’s a very different world. There’s something to learn in both directions: from the yeshiva to Beis Chana, and of course from Beis Chana to the yeshiva. Every place has its own soul. They’re different institutions, with a different way of doing things, and not just because one is for boys and the other for girls. The place’s DNA is different too. So that’s... that’s life. How big is it today? What, Beis Chana? Yes. Thousands—well, almost a thousand students. Wow. There are hundreds of girls in the high school. The seminary, for Israeli students and students from abroad, has over three hundred. It’s an enormous operation. Soon we’ll have a thousand students, yes. More and more. It’s a big place. There’s a school, a middle school, a high school. So you give classes there too, but also... I give classes too, mainly in... that as well. I’ll tell you, I miss the yeshiva, the connection with the bochurim. But it’s all right. Boruch Hashem, I was privileged to have that for many years. And you’re still privileged. Yes, to be in the Rebbe’s institutions all day—that’s a great privilege. Boruch Hashem. Boruch Hashem for what was, and Boruch Hashem for what will be. With Hashem’s help, may I have more nachas. Yes. Well, we have a little tradition here of ending with... asking each guest to end with what I call a tip for avodas Hashem or for education. I think the whole episode has been that, but perhaps something a bit more personal, something that works for you. Speaking about education, I’ll just say this: our great challenge, as parents and educators, is to talk with children. Not to talk about children—to talk with them. To develop the ability to talk with our teenagers. Not just ask a child in yeshiva, “How are you? How was it?” but

1:15:10 Speaker 2 to take a genuine interest and be able to have a conversation with him, a deep conversation about life. Developing that muscle is very hard, because with the people closest to us, even people who are very verbal and talk a lot naturally fall silent. This is your child, your own flesh and blood. Suddenly your child comes home from yeshiva with some new thing he likes, with ideas of his own. And even if you can’t... you can’t just tell him no. Save your “no” for serious things. But know how to talk, and know how to let him talk too—how to talk together. Maybe that’s the thing, the thing that can make a difference in education: knowing that we always, always, always, always talk. Always. That we have that too—that I know we talk. There’s communication between us. Once, I consulted someone—perhaps I’ll say who. I once consulted Rabbi Yaakov Abuchatzeira about a certain challenge, someone... From the community here? Yes, yes. A boy who was an extraordinary educational challenge. Mainly as a bochur in yeshiva. A bochur—perhaps he had already left the yeshiva by then—but he was already moving in other worlds. Listen, I’m sorry, he really was. He was getting to places from which, within minutes, there might be no return. Wow. I had a relationship with that bochur, and I didn’t know... We met once, and I asked Rabbi Abuchatzeira, “Tell me, help me—how, how can I influence him?” He was just starting out then. Rabbi Abuchatzeira said to me, “Really, how will you influence him? Why would he listen to you? First, set up a regular chavrusa with him. Sit down and eat together a few times. Keep in touch with him for the sake of the relationship, not for the sake of getting a message across.” Yes. In other words, I’m in touch with him not because I now have a mission to keep him religious, for example.

1:17:26 Speaker 2 Yes. And then I stay in touch with him. No—I keep the relationship clean, free of... ulterior motives. A relationship for its own sake. And then I actually said to this young man, “Listen, we have a connection. Let’s do something with it. Let’s learn once a week.” And he agreed. I was very nervous. I was afraid he’d say, “Rabbi Chaim, I’m not getting into all this nonsense.” I said to him, “Listen, you’re around here in Tzfas, and I’m here. Let’s set something up.” And he was receptive. For a while, we learned together for ten minutes a week over the phone—but we learned for ten minutes every week. Sometimes a sicha, sometimes an Igeres Hakodesh. We learned something every week. Now, over time, that relationship matured and grew. So, you could say, a happy ending: this man got married and built a truly chassidic home. That was golden advice, golden advice, and I pass it on: don’t maintain a relationship because— Yes. I need to tell you something. I mean— But this connects to what you said earlier: because our children are our greatest fear, we can maintain that relationship with an eye to, you know, making sure he’ll be okay, that he’ll finish yeshiva, that things will work out for him, that he’ll be wearing a jacket and everything. And, by the way, that’s a mistake. It’s... Yes. Really, the challenge isn’t yeshiva; the challenge is life. What’s yeshiva? Yeshiva is three years. After that, it’s over. Yes. Yeshiva isn’t a large part of a lifetime. I mean, it’s significant. But now we’re focused on surviving yeshiva. No—what do you mean, surviving yeshiva? To what end? Why maintain a relationship? And by the way, even in a community, right? You say hello to someone not because you need to borrow a thousand shekels from him tomorrow and want

1:19:13 Speaker 2 him to say good morning to you. No, you say hello because he lives here, because you see a fellow Jew, and you’re a human being. You say, “Good morning, hello.” As one person to another, you see his worth and maintain a relationship with him. Wow. And that doesn’t mean you’ve eaten a Shabbos meal at his house or he’s eaten at yours, and that’s fine. It’s a relationship for its own sake. With young men and teenagers—and with teenage girls too—it’s the same story. When there’s a relationship for its own sake, when there’s a healthy relationship, good things grow from it. The relationship is good, so when a child has difficulties, he’ll know how to talk about them. You’ll be able to sense what’s going on and guide him. But if the relationship is always for the sake of something that’s never quite achieved—by the way, right? Yes. Then there’s no relationship, and if there’s no relationship, there’s nothing for anything to grow from. Mm-hmm. And that may be one of the... Wow. ...things. And this applies to an educator in a school, to a father with children, and to any person with a friend. Not always having an ulterior motive, as you said. These days we’re like that, right? “What do I get out of it?” There’s no time. I mean, I can... And our children are looking for that connection. That’s where you started. Yes. They’re looking for a connection. They’re looking for someone who takes an interest in them, who’s interested in them. Just now, I saw a letter someone had sent in a WhatsApp group, written by a Jew to his sister about the Rebbe. He tells her, “I love...” He says, “More than that...” I was very moved when I saw it. He says, “I love the Rebbe—not just as a chossid. I love him because he loves me. The Rebbe rejoices in my joys; it hurts

1:21:02 Speaker 2 him when I’m hurting.” He tells his sister, “Okay, yes, write to him the way you write to Dad.” That’s how he puts it. That’s how he writes about his relationship with the Rebbe. Now think about what he felt. He felt that the Rebbe had a personal connection with him, that the Rebbe saw him for who he was. Not in order to draw him closer, or keep him involved, or get a donation from him. Yes. Just to see him as he is. As you are, as each person is. And look what that did for him emotionally. He says, “Not only am I a chossid; I love him.” That’s something else altogether. Yes. He tells his sister to write to the Rebbe the way she writes to their father. Of course, there’s more to it as well, but when you maintain a relationship with someone not because you need him, but because you find him interesting, that relationship is like healthy, stable soil where things can grow. All sorts of things can grow from it. Look, I learned this in yeshiva too, partly the hard way. When there’s a young man and all your communication with him revolves around whether he got up in the morning, or whether he’s learning—come on. Nothing comes of that in the end. But if you maintain a relationship with him... He came to yeshiva. We always tell the young men: Hakadosh Boruch Hu brought us here, so we’re here together. Not just to yeshiva. Now, where do you start? We have a connection. That’s the reality. So first, let’s build a relationship. Let’s talk to each other like human beings. After that, let’s see what comes of it, where it grows. But the relationship itself is the goal. Again, not in order to gain something. Yes, a relationship for its own sake. That’s what we need to aim for, to think about, and not lose sight of. And it works.

1:22:45 Speaker 2 Tried and tested. Well, Rabbi Chaim Hillel Springer, yasher koach. Thank you very much. [unclear]. Wow. You took me back. Even I don’t know how deeply these things still sit within me. It shows. Yasher koach. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you for what you’re doing.