The Secret of the Bond Between a Chossid and the Rebbe: Seeing the Light Within the Concealment - Farbrengen for Rosh Chodesh Kislev | Rabbi Levi Nissilevitz #008

00:00 Speaker 1 Welcome. I’m happy to open our eighth farbrengen here on “On Chabad Education.” This time, ahead of Rosh Chodesh Kislev, I sat down for a farbrengen with Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Nissilevitch, a mashpia and member of the administration of the yeshivah ketanah in Tzfas. A special farbrengen to open Kislev, a month full of Chassidic dates. Enjoy listening and watching. L’chaim, l’chaim. Rabbi Levi Nissilevitch, welcome. L’chaim, l’chaim.

00:23 Speaker 2 L’chaim and blessings.

00:25 Speaker 1 Blessed are You, Hashem our G-d, King of the universe. Amen. L’chaim. Rosh Chodesh Kislev—the opening of the whole Chassidic month, a month full of farbrengens. Let’s start with the basics. What is it, actually? What happened on Rosh Chodesh Kislev? What’s the whole occasion about?

00:46 Speaker 2 You called it the opening of all the farbrengens. And it really is a full, packed month—full to overflowing. That’s what the Rebbe called it: full to overflowing.

02:01 Speaker 1 Rich in special days. Rich in Chassidic special days. But Rosh Chodesh Kislev is actually a little different. And 14 Kislev—these are our dates, so to speak.

02:09 Speaker 2 The month of Yud Shvat.

02:10 Speaker 1 Yes.

02:11 Speaker 2 Right. And Rosh Chodesh Kislev really is, as you say—14 Kislev is still a date very closely connected to our generation. It’s our Rebbe, and the Rebbe described it as a day connected with him and the chassidim. But Rosh Chodesh Kislev is a day that took place right in the midst of the seventh generation, at the height of those glorious years, so to speak. Beautiful years, when Chabad had already grown, if one can put it that way, and everything was vibrant and alive. It was already almost thirty years into the Rebbe’s leadership. And it’s also a day connected with the Rebbe himself and, if one can say it, with the Rebbe’s physical well-being. Of course, with the Rebbe, physicality isn’t what we understand it to be: “The life of a tzaddik is not a physical life,” and so on. But if we’re speaking about a tangible love and connection, a connection with the Rebbe in our terms, this was something that touched the Rebbe himself physically. It wasn’t even like the court case over the sefarim, which affected the Rebbe very, very deeply. Here it was the Rebbe himself, physically speaking—again, to our eyes of flesh. This was a day of celebration for us. The truth is, there’s a point we need to make here. When we talk about the health episode on Shemini Atzeres 5738, we’re talking about something connected with the Rebbe’s physical well-being, as we said. We always have to remember that we don’t really understand the Rebbe’s life. Again, “The life of a tzaddik is not a physical life.” Even what appeared to us to be doctors coming and doing this and that—yes, the secretaries had their job. They had to bring in a doctor, bring in the senior doctor, and do whatever was needed. There was the debate over whether to take the Rebbe to a hospital: the doctors recommended it, and the Rebbe insisted on not going. That discussion took place, but even then they understood that if the Rebbe had decided he wasn’t leaving 770,

03:57 Speaker 2 then he wasn’t leaving 770. Even if the doctors said it was a matter of danger to life and not something to play around with, with the Rebbe it was different. We understand that it isn’t really as we interpret physical things.

04:08 Speaker 1 Let’s try to lay out the timeline a little. I mean, what exactly happened, starting from the beginning?

04:13 Speaker 2 Right.

04:13 Speaker 1 Before we dive into it in depth.

04:15 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. Just the basic outline. We know that Tishrei is a time when the Rebbe expends tremendous strength and energy, giving his all for the chassidim. By Shemini Atzeres, it’s the very end, so to speak—the end of the festivals, the last Yom Tov. The night of Shemini Atzeres comes after the night of Hoshana Rabbah, with Tehillim, and after Hoshana Rabbah itself, when the Rebbe distributes lekach to those who hadn’t managed to receive it before Yom Kippur, along with everything else going on. Then comes the night of Shemini Atzeres, the beginning of the final days. During hakafos, the Rebbe stands at the front facing the lectern, and then turns toward the crowd and encourages the singing. There’s also the hakafah when the Rebbe comes down and dances himself with the Rashag. During one of the hakafos, people saw that the Rebbe’s face was very pale. He looked somewhat unwell, and the Rebbe asked to sit down. Leibel quickly ran to move the chair, and someone else ran to bring a glass of water for the Rebbe. The Rebbe wouldn’t drink it—I think it was Rabbi Kleiner[?], if I remember correctly. In any case, they realized something was wrong. They saw the Rebbe massaging his chest, over his heart, so there was some kind of heart episode. I don’t know whether they knew exactly what to call it then, but afterward they understood that that was what it was.

05:30 Speaker 1 In the middle of all that commotion.

05:31 Speaker 2 770 was packed. This was a packed 770 in the middle of hakafos, right at the very center of it all. There was something else, too, during the first hakafah, I think. At one point the Rebbe called Leibel over and said something in his ear. As Leibel later told the story, the Rebbe said he wanted to make an announcement after the fifth hakafah. In the end, the health episode happened during the fourth hakafah, and the Rebbe never said what he had originally intended to say. I mean, everything had been going in the usual order. Nobody thought anything was amiss. The Rebbe wanted to say something after the fifth hakafah—which, incidentally, was a hakafah after which the Rebbe would speak. I think there was even such a practice with the earlier Rebbeim, but certainly with the Rebbe. And then, at a certain point, people immediately started signaling to everyone to go out, go out, go outside, simply so there would be air for the Rebbe to breathe. The air was stifling from the hakafos, the dancing, everyone’s sweat, and the steam rising. The Rebbe asked, and the men asked, everyone to go outside. They broke the windows of the women’s section to let air in. Whoever could stay did stay—a small crowd, or rather a much smaller crowd. I don’t know exactly how many, probably a few dozen, but a small crowd remained to continue hakafos. The Rebbe insisted on continuing the hakafos in their proper order.

06:41 Speaker 1 Had they already suggested at that point that the Rebbe go up to his room?

06:43 Speaker 2 I don’t know exactly. We could check the diaries. But in any case, yes, the Rebbe wanted to continue in the usual order. It went more quickly and on a smaller scale, without any doubt. The truth is, much of what I picture is somehow alive for me, in a way—the experience of what happened then—even though I wasn’t there at all; I hadn’t been born yet. But my father was at 770 in those years, and he told us about it several times. He conveyed it vividly, authentically, so to speak, and it made a deep impression. The spirit and atmosphere, how it affected everyone, how everyone was focused on it—that was etched deeply in my mind. That’s the general picture. And as for the timeline, from then on the Rebbe was in his room with the doctors treating him, and [unclear].

07:30 Speaker 1 They had to finish the hakafos downstairs in 770.

07:32 Speaker 2 [Unclear] went back upstairs to the room, and the Rebbe went out to make Kiddush in the sukkah and would not compromise on that, as is well known. After that, I think there was another heart attack that same night. At some point the doctors identified it. A doctor asked the Rebbe how he felt. The Rebbe said he felt discomfort near his heart, around the heart. So the doctor asked whether it felt like hammer blows or like stabbing pains, and the Rebbe said it felt like stabbing pains. The doctor said, “That’s a heart attack.” I think it was another heart attack. In any case, the situation was still very serious. And that was the beginning of a period that lasted about five weeks, until the Rosh Chodesh Kislev we all know about.

08:13 Speaker 1 Yes.

08:13 Speaker 2 During that period, the Rebbe was out of the chassidim’s sight. They didn’t get to see the Rebbe; they didn’t have what we call any visible appearances. They knew the Rebbe was there, in his room, and received updates from time to time, but they didn’t actually get to see him. What did happen was that the Rebbe continued delivering sichos. So the Rebbe moved the Shabbos farbrengen to after Shabbos—already on the night after Simchas Torah, two days after the heart attack. On the night after Simchas Torah, the Rebbe spoke from—

08:40 Speaker 1 Simchas Torah must have been complete turmoil. Nobody knew what was happening.

08:43 Speaker 2 On Simchas Torah, a little bit of information came through from someone. Word got out that the Rebbe had sat up in bed—and perhaps it was Rabbi Shimon Yitzchak[?] himself; I don’t remember. That made everyone very happy, and they burst out in excitement and joy. Every tiny scrap of information mattered. But the Rebbe insisted: he couldn’t hear any noise. They had wanted to keep things quiet upstairs so as not to disturb him, but the Rebbe couldn’t hear the sounds of celebration. The Rebbe wanted them to dance, and that itself would contribute to his health. The Rebbe really wanted everything to continue as usual. And—

09:12 Speaker 1 So on the night after Simchas Torah, when—

09:14 Speaker 2 The night after Simchas Torah was the first time everyone was able to feel what was happening with the Rebbe and hear him. They heard the Rebbe speaking from his room. You can actually listen to the recording of that sicha, and it’s very, very moving. Any chossid who hears that recording—you think about the situation. First, the chassidim in 770 were all in the zal, listening to the Rebbe speak.

09:45 Speaker 1 They were used to—

09:45 Speaker 2 I can’t see.

09:46 Speaker 1 Yes.

09:46 Speaker 2 They were used to standing at a farbrengen facing the Rebbe’s place and seeing the Rebbe. By the way, they say the Rebbe remarked then that they shouldn’t think the chair was empty. They had prepared the Rebbe’s chair for the farbrengen, the Simchas Torah farbrengen at the end of Yom Tov, as usual, but they didn’t see the Rebbe. It was a state of shock, with a certain sense of concealment. In any case, the Rebbe spoke on the night after Simchas Torah, and they heard him. It was moving to hear the Rebbe’s voice. You can hear the familiar cadence, but his voice is weaker and a little slower. You hear him speaking a little differently from what you’re used to, and it’s very touching. You can also hear on the recording that at the end of the sicha—at the end of the maamar, the end of the sicha—the Rebbe’s voice is truly choked with tears. You can hear it clearly on the recording. I’m talking about the end, when the Rebbe also expresses a wish for the Geulah at the end of the maamar. It’s a maamar that’s somewhat like a sicha, but at the end of the maamar and at the end of the sicha, just as the Rebbe finished speaking, his voice was truly choked with tears. Again, we don’t need too many explanations. It touches a chossid’s heart. It really, really does. But I say again: even when we speak about the Rebbe’s health—and give thanks for it, and recognize how remarkable it was and what it means to us chassidim—the Rebbe, or at least what we saw of the Rebbe, is not what we think. To a chossid that’s obvious. But sometimes, with all the attention paid to it, and with more detailed information about exactly what happened, what the doctors said, the tests and everything, we need to remember that we don’t really understand. There’s a story I would tell in this connection, a story that really stayed with me. It appears in Beis Rebbe.

11:33 Speaker 1 L’chaim.

11:34 Speaker 2 L’chaim v’kayam. L’chaim, l’chaim. It’s a story I saw in the book Beis Rebbe. I don’t know if it appears elsewhere. Once, on a Friday night, the Maggid was in his room. The story goes that in the adjoining room, perhaps the zal or somewhere like it, his students were sitting and reviewing the Chassidus he had taught them. Suddenly, the attendant came out and asked, “The Maggid wants to know where Reb Aharon is”—Reb Aharon of Karlin. They told him he was in that room. They saw him sitting in the adjoining room, murmuring something. What was he saying? He was reciting Shir Hashirim. So the Maggid’s attendant told him to stop reciting Shir Hashirim. Why? He said, “The Maggid is trying to sleep. He says Reb Aharon of Karlin’s Shir Hashirim is making such a great commotion in heaven that he can’t fall asleep.” Now, Beis Rebbe relates that when Rabbi Hillel of Paritch would tell this story, he would sometimes weep with emotion. Why? Rabbi Hillel would say at a farbrengen, “Look at this, look at this! Reb Aharon’s Shir Hashirim makes a commotion in heaven—his Shir Hashirim is something tremendous—and yet it does not compare to the Rebbe’s sleep.” We don’t understand what a Rebbe’s sleep is. The Rebbe needs to sleep, so Reb Aharon must stop reciting Shir Hashirim. But what kind of Shir Hashirim? One that makes a commotion in heaven. Yet if the Rebbe needs to sleep—what does it mean for the Rebbe to need sleep? A Rebbe’s sleep is something else entirely.

13:10 Speaker 3 Yes.

13:11 Speaker 2 In other words, we can begin to understand how little we understand about what a Rebbe is, and what a Rebbe’s sleep is. There’s also the story told about Reb Alter Simchovitch, the well-known mashpia in Jerusalem.

13:22 Speaker 3 Toras Emes.

13:22 Speaker 2 Toras Emes. He was in Eretz Yisroel, while the Frierdiker Rebbe was in—was in Russia, and later, after he left, in Poland. But Reb Alter was very, very deeply connected—

13:35 Speaker 3 The Rebbe Rashab sent him, right?

13:37 Speaker 2 The Rebbe Rashab sent him, yes. In 5673, when he went to Toras Emes. I think he was sent along with him. I don’t remember. But he was certainly in Eretz Yisroel during the Frierdiker Rebbe’s time and was very connected to him. The Frierdiker Rebbe came to visit Eretz Yisroel in 5689, almost a hundred years ago. They say that as soon as Reb Alter heard the Frierdiker Rebbe was coming, he was beside himself with excitement. They say the students could no longer quite follow his Chassidus classes at Toras Emes. He was completely caught up in it. When the Frierdiker Rebbe visited, Reb Alter stayed close to him. He went with him, traveled with him everywhere, and was truly attached to the Rebbe. The Rebbe’s arrival was a source of tremendous excitement for him. After the Frierdiker Rebbe left, he began to take in what had happened. He sat and farbrenged with the yeshivah students, and there was an expression he repeated several times. It just burst out of him. He told the students, “Did you see a nose? A nose. Did you see a nose? You saw G-dliness. You saw a nose—you saw G-dliness.” What he meant was: “You think you saw the Frierdiker Rebbe? You’re looking at him as a human being. No—you saw G-dliness.” He was still completely caught up in it. And this point is obvious to a chossid. I think that in connection with Rosh Chodesh Kislev, sometimes we’re so involved because we genuinely care—what happened with the Rebbe matters to us. But at the same time, we know we don’t understand a thing. This isn’t an ordinary human being. They also saw things beyond nature then, things the doctors couldn’t understand at all: how it was possible, how the Rebbe was functioning, and everything else. These were truly supernatural things. On the contrary, they only—

15:11 Speaker 2 Show us that the Rebbe is above nature.

15:13 Speaker 3 Yes, I have—

15:14 Speaker 2 In any case.

15:14 Speaker 3 That brings me to two things. First, then, what is a Rebbe? Or is it impossible to explain? What can we say?

15:20 Speaker 2 That’s just it. If a Rebbe is above nature, how can we explain what a Rebbe is?

15:23 Speaker 3 So what can we say?

15:24 Speaker 2 Well, in any case.

15:25 Speaker 3 L’chaim.

15:26 Speaker 2 L’chaim, l’chaim.

15:27 Speaker 3 Kislev in general brings us deeply into everything connected with this idea of a Rebbe and a chossid. Because 14 Kislev, the day that bound all the—19 Kislev—I think Rosh Chodesh may be the beginning. What does the relationship between a Rebbe and a chossid really mean?

15:42 Speaker 2 You’re saying that although, in the order of dates, it comes last on the list, it’s the foundation: a Rebbe and a chossid.

15:49 Speaker 3 Yes.

15:50 Speaker 2 You know, it reminds me a little of the story they tell about Reb Zalman Moshe and Reb Moshe Gurary in Tel Aviv, who had a deep intellectual grasp of Chassidus. Reb Zalman Moshe once approached him and said, “Come, explain to me what Atzmus is.” And he answered, “What do you mean, Atzmus? How can I explain what Atzmus is? It’s beyond every description and definition.” But Reb Zalman Moshe kept pressing him. “Come on, Moshe, you explain Chassidus, you understand Chassidus. Explain what Atzmus is.” He kept pressing and pressing until Reb Moshe gave in. He began to say, “Atzmus is—” He had barely opened his mouth when Reb Zalman Moshe smacked him. “Aren’t you ashamed? You’re opening your mouth to speak about Atzmus?” That story expresses the point exactly.

16:27 Speaker 3 Yes.

16:27 Speaker 2 On the one hand, we have to try to understand as much as we can: what Chassidus says about Atzmus, what has been revealed to us. But in truth, we can’t understand what it is. So what do we know about a Rebbe? We know that, at least as it concerns us, a Rebbe is the intermediary who connects us with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. And as Chassidus explains, a connecting intermediary doesn’t mean something that stands in the middle, some kind of intermediate layer. There’s—

16:54 Speaker 3 Yes.

16:56 Speaker 2 There’s Hakadosh Boruch Hu, there’s us, and then some separate third thing in between. No. A connecting intermediary means that he is part of both. He is part of both. He is also part of us.

17:04 Speaker 3 And that is why he connects us.

17:05 Speaker 2 And that is why he can connect them, and he is also part of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Yes, what is called “his lower half is a man, his upper half is G-dly.” These things are well known. But since you asked, I will mention a very interesting letter. It’s a letter the Frierdiker Rebbe wrote to Reb Chaim Naeh about one of his books, Ketzos Hashulchan. He sent it to ask for an approbation—that’s how it seems, at any rate—and received a letter from the Frierdiker Rebbe. He printed it in his book, but it was printed there and apparently got lost, so to speak, among the pages. It didn’t attract much attention; not many people knew about it. Years later, a newspaper published in Israel called Bitaon Chabad printed various things connected to the Chabad Rebbes. They also published this letter from the Frierdiker Rebbe to Reb Chaim Naeh, and suddenly it caused a stir. Or at least someone made a fuss over it and sent the Rebbe an angry letter. You can see from the Rebbe’s reply that he had received a complaint—a strong complaint. What was the story? What was all the fuss about? In the letter, the Frierdiker Rebbe writes about the difference between the way a chossid studies Torah and the way a misnaged studies Torah. He says: a chossid sits and studies, and comes across something that doesn’t make sense to him, something he really can’t understand. So he says, “Apparently I don’t understand it properly. I need to think about it more; I need to put more work into it.” A misnaged sits and studies, and something doesn’t make sense to him. His conclusion is, “Apparently there’s a mistake in the book.” Now someone wrote to the Rebbe in a tone of complaint: How can you say such a thing? How can you say this is how misnagdim sit and study Torah? He took it personally. It was—

18:41 Speaker 2 What, the Vilna Gaon? Are they trying to say that this is how the Vilna Gaon studied? That if he saw something that didn’t make sense, he would say there was a mistake in the book? He himself understood that it made no sense to say that. And thanks to this provocation—or this question, at any rate—we received a reply from the Rebbe, a long letter of several pages that speaks about one’s rebbe. The letter places particular emphasis on one’s rebbe in the context of Torah study: the Rebbe has the final word, so to speak. But at the heart of the letter—and this is what I wanted to get to—the Rebbe says, almost in these words, that the fundamental difference between a chossid’s outlook and a misnaged’s is that a chossid takes it as a given that his soul, and the souls of his fellow chassidim, are branches of his rebbe’s soul. He is just a branch of the Rebbe’s soul. Your whole being is, in fact, a kind of radiance from the Rebbe’s soul. You are part of him. Once you understand that, everything makes sense: the strong bond we have with the Rebbe, that natural connection, the longing to see the Rebbe, to meet the Rebbe. It isn’t just some kind of... Some people—I never liked this much—but when they’re at the mikveh or places like that, and they talk about the Rebbe, they don’t want to refer to him as “the Rebbe,” so they say “the boss.” I really didn’t like that. What am I getting at? What is a boss? A boss and a worker are two separate people. There’s a boss, and there’s a worker. I do a job for him, and he gives me something in return—payment.

20:12 Speaker 3 Compensation.

20:13 Speaker 2 We are part of the Rebbe. That’s something entirely different. We are truly part of the Rebbe’s soul, and so the Rebbe feels each person the way a body feels every one of its limbs. We really, really are a part of him. And on Rosh Chodesh Kislev, that point rises right to the surface. Think of how the chassidim felt, of the longing throughout that whole period. You and I weren’t there at the time, but it’s worth picturing it. You hear from people who were there, read a little in the diaries, and then there’s the natural feeling of a chossid that we have. We can imagine it a little.

20:49 Speaker 3 Were there actually things people did during that period because they hadn’t seen the Rebbe?

20:55 Speaker 2 You mean in terms of wishing him a complete recovery?

20:58 Speaker 3 How did it show itself? Yes, what did the chassidim do—

21:00 Speaker 2 Look, the truth is I don’t know very much about that particular point; I haven’t heard much about it. But I can tell you something very interesting that happened in our family. A few years ago, one of our family members visited a Chabad family in the north and saw a letter hanging on their wall. They had put it up without thinking much of it. He looked at it: a letter from the Rebbe—and then, wait. It was a letter to our grandfather, our zeide Reb Moshe Nissilevitch of Nachlas Har Chabad, a"h. A letter from the Rebbe to him. Well, that really caught his attention. It turns out my grandfather had given the letter to the head of that family in recognition of some donation he had made to Chamah, or something like that.

21:39 Speaker 3 To the organization that—

21:40 Speaker 2 To the organization my grandfather was in charge of. But the letter was an original that my grandfather had received from the Rebbe. What was the letter about? The letter itself was one that many people received. The Rebbe sent it to many people—a “general-personal” letter, as it’s called. In other words, the Rebbe sent it to a particular group of people, but still a group. The letter is dated early Marcheshvan 5738, which means—

22:01 Speaker 3 A week and a half.

22:01 Speaker 2 A week and a half afterward, or something like that. It’s a letter in which the Rebbe, you could say, speaks very personally. The Rebbe shares something, speaks about himself, speaks in his own voice. In any case—

22:16 Speaker 3 Which group of people received it?

22:18 Speaker 2 From the content of the letter, it sounds like people who had sent the Rebbe wishes for a complete recovery. At the beginning, the Rebbe writes—I’m sorry I don’t remember the exact wording—thank you very much for the blessings and wishes for my recovery, and, thank G-d, the prayers of the many helped me, and thanks to that my condition has improved, and so on. That’s the content of the letter. Now, my brother who saw it showed it to them and sent it to the whole family: a letter from the Rebbe to our grandfather. At first, yes, it was to our grandfather, so it felt close to home. But a letter the Rebbe sent to many people wasn’t new; that was less exciting. Then I looked at the letter and saw that at the end, after “With blessing,” where the letter ends, the Rebbe had added something by hand, as he sometimes did for particular people. He had added something specifically for my grandfather. The Rebbe wrote: “With blessing for long life and good years, and for success in your holy work.” That last part is another point, but “for long life and good years”—I stopped and thought to myself, What kind of blessing is that? It’s not one the Rebbe commonly gave. Where do you find a letter ending, “With blessing for long life and good years”? It was a little strange. My grandfather wasn’t all that old, not even sixty yet. What was going on here? And suddenly it clicked. [unclear], at any rate. The Rebbe wrote this to him because—my father told me about it. My father was at 770 in those years, as I said, and at the time of the heart attack, that same day or another night, my grandfather was also there at 770. He called two of his sons aside: his eldest son, Reb Leizer, a"h, and my father, may he be distinguished for long life. He called them aside and spoke to them with complete sincerity, from the bottom of his heart. Anyone who knew my grandfather knows that’s how he was.

23:59 Speaker 2 Everything with him was genuine, genuine, genuine. And he told them that if it was needed, if the Rebbe needed it, then right then, in the presence of the two of them—perhaps he wanted some kind of beis din or something—he was giving the Rebbe ten years of his own life.

24:12 Speaker 3 Oh.

24:14 Speaker 2 Now, perhaps that explains what the Rebbe wrote to him in the letter. I don’t think my grandfather told the Rebbe or wrote to him, “I’ve decided to give ten years.” I find that hard to believe; it wasn’t his style. So apparently there’s also a clear instance of ruach hakodesh here, but—

24:30 Speaker 3 Actually, was he very... Maybe he was older? It’s not that he needed—

24:33 Speaker 2 No, he wasn’t old, and as far as I know, he didn’t have any particular health problem. In any case, the Rebbe gave him a blessing to live long and enjoy good years. The letter the Rebbe sent him just a week and a half later said: May you live long. Don’t worry, your life will be long. It’s very interesting. But the main thing I wanted to say in connection with what you brought up is that when a chossid comes and says, “I’m giving ten years of my life to the Rebbe,” that comes from tremendous love. During that period, the bond we spoke about between a chossid and the Rebbe rose right to the surface. In ordinary times, you don’t feel those things as intensely. As it says in Tanya: when a person is going about his life as usual, he’s fine; he loves himself, but he doesn’t think about it. When a person suddenly becomes very tired and worn out, he awakens and longs for the life of his soul. And so it is with the Rebbe. There, it’s speaking about Hakadosh Boruch Hu—“my soul.”

25:24 Speaker 3 Precisely because of those five weeks when they didn’t see the...

25:26 Speaker 2 That period of concealment created tremendous longing and some worry, but in any case, an intense desire to see the Rebbe already. It was something that surfaced in everyone, and that love showed in everyone’s expression. That period brought to the surface, revealed, something that exists in every chossid’s heart. Yes.

25:44 Speaker 3 The worry and the love, really—those things.

25:46 Speaker 2 Yes, out of the tremendous love that’s there. Now, that tremendous love is always there, but it’s somewhat hidden. Suddenly it surfaced.

25:51 Speaker 3 What can we say today?

25:52 Speaker 2 Huh? What can we say? Well, for that, one has to say l’chaim oneself.

25:58 Speaker 3 Yes.

25:58 Speaker 2 But l’chaim, Meir. L’chaim.

26:00 Speaker 3 L’chaim. We’re coming back to this so long afterward, to those more than five weeks.

26:07 Speaker 2 Of concealment, when they didn’t see the Rebbe.

26:10 Speaker 3 Also, the children—my children—we’re growing up in a generation that hasn’t...

26:16 Speaker 2 That hasn’t yet merited to see him.

26:17 Speaker 3 Yes, we sit with the stories, the videos, the diaries, the sichos, the maamarim.

26:24 Speaker 2 You know what? I don’t think anyone had a moment’s doubt that this situation would be resolved, and resolved quickly. But even so, the longing was: What’s happening now? We want to see the Rebbe already, we want to and want to and want to. We, we... There’s a lot we can learn from that period for our own time, certainly. It’s a comparison that comes to mind for anyone who thinks about that period.

26:47 Speaker 3 Now the joy is more pronounced. We can talk about those...

26:52 Speaker 2 That there was then.

26:52 Speaker 3 Yes, [unclear], and there’s the niggun, and you see the Rebbe, and [unclear]. We can talk about that time.

26:57 Speaker 2 There really is a lead-in to that. The story of those days also gives us a perspective on the stage before that; it helps us understand—ah, we really need to correct that. But I want to address what you brought up. First of all, the faith—the faith everyone had. Now that faith needs to permeate us in exactly the same way, and even more. Now it’s bound up with the very fact that Moshiach needs to come. And the Rebbe promised us that we have already completed all the work, and we’re waiting for the moment of revelation. So obviously we need to be certain. And alongside that certainty, when you’re waiting for something and you still haven’t merited to see it, the longing only grows. The Rebbe spoke about this point in several sichos. The longing and yearning to see the Geulah already grows and grows and grows and grows precisely when you feel that lack, when you don’t see it and don’t receive it. As we saw recently in the Dvar Malchus sichos of the Rebbe on Parshas Vayeira—or the story about the Rebbe Rashab. He knows that Hakadosh Boruch Hu appeared to Avraham, but did not appear to him. So he thirsts and longs for it to the point of tears, even though he had never seen Hakadosh Boruch Hu before.

27:58 Speaker 3 Yes.

27:59 Speaker 2 [Unclear], the people there had merited to see the Rebbe all those years. And you know what? Tishrei itself—Tishrei is the peak time for revelations. All the holidays, one after another, and all the farbrengens and distributions, the shofar blowing and the march and everything. And in the middle of all that, suddenly—just like that—the Rebbe disappears. Suddenly, on the night of Shemini Atzeres. The very pinnacle of Tishrei is about to begin, in terms of joy and the Rebbe’s outward expressiveness, his visible movements and everything, and suddenly it all stops. That created an enormous thirst. Now, we wouldn’t have wanted that thirst, but I’m saying that, in practice, it brought everyone’s great love for the Rebbe to the surface. And not only that, by the way—the other side too: the Rebbe’s love for the chassidim.

28:44 Speaker 4 Yes.

28:45 Speaker 2 There’s so, so much to learn from that period. We saw so much of how the Rebbe cares about each person, how the Rebbe loves us and wants us. And not only the chassidim, by the way—all of the Jewish people. The Rebbe belongs to everyone. The secretaries wanted to make things as easy for the Rebbe as they possibly could. They wanted the Rebbe to stop reading letters during that time. After all, reading letters means reading a letter and entering into people’s stories of distress. The Rebbe spoke more than once about how much that demands of him, and they wanted to cut back. But the Rebbe sensed it. The Rebbe sensed that they weren’t bringing him everything, that they were limiting the letters, and the Rebbe commented on it. No—the Rebbe wanted everything. They should bring him all the letters. And every day the Rebbe would read letters; they would read them to him, and he would read letters and dictate what to write in response. The Rebbe would not give that up. The Rebbe wanted them to give him everything. An interesting point that’s less well known: Hoshana Rabbah 5739, a year later, exactly a year, the day before Shemini Atzeres. The Rebbe came down for the Hoshana Rabbah circuits. There’s the whole... the Rebbe comes down with the lulav and esrog and makes the circuits while reciting the Hoshanos. They arranged it so that when the Rebbe came down, the whole crowd waited so as not to interfere, and the Rebbe went around with a small, limited group, with the chazzan ahead of him.

29:57 Speaker 4 Sometimes there’s a sort of circular path around the...

30:00 Speaker 2 Yes, they left the area around the bimah clear. So the chazzan goes first, the Rebbe walks behind him, and then the secretaries are alongside, and so on. What was interesting then was that, for some reason, the Rebbe came down for the first circuit with only the lulav, without the esrog. That’s what happened. Why? I don’t know. But the Rebbe did say the text of the... of what’s said.

30:16 Speaker 4 Of Hoshana Rabbah.

30:17 Speaker 2 And the Rebbe completed all seven circuits, and then the Rebbe... Now, for the second circuit, the Rebbe did take the esrog and continued, everything in the usual order. The Rebbe finished all seven circuits, and then started walking an additional circuit without saying anything. The Rebbe had already said everything.

30:35 Speaker 4 When the chazzan was already going back to...

30:36 Speaker 2 The chazzan was going back to his place. They continued saying the whole long text. Um, this is my own thought: perhaps the Rebbe wanted, in any case, to make seven circuits with the lulav and esrog together. True, the Rebbe had said everything, but you make the seven circuits with both. The Rebbe wanted to do it all. Now, when the Rebbe finished the seven circuits, before that additional circuit that the Rebbe unexpectedly began, the crowd was already starting to move forward. This was the crowd’s turn to go around. So Reb Leibel saw that the Rebbe was continuing, making another circuit. He didn’t quite understand what or why, but the crowd was coming, so he tried to move them aside. And the Rebbe commented to him. The Rebbe said, “Why does it bother you that I want to walk with the people? I want to walk with the people.” Now, for me, at least, it connects. A year earlier there had been the heart attack, and the Rebbe wanted to be with the crowd. Those five weeks when the Rebbe wasn’t visibly with us had been enough. The Rebbe wanted to be with the crowd. Why does it bother you that I want to make a circuit with the people? Yes, in the usual order, the Rebbe makes the seven formal circuits on his own, but it worked out that he was walking with them. Let me walk with them. The Rebbe with the crowd. An astonishing thing. The Rebbe finished the, the circuits. Sorry, what I mean to say is: the Rebbe had a heart attack on Shemini Atzeres, and we missed out on so many revelations. We missed the usual farbrengens; we missed out. And then you see—we spoke about how the Rebbe wouldn’t give up. The Rebbe wanted to give to the chassidim, to give them everything. The Rebbe put it this way. On one occasion the Rebbe said that the chassidim had looked forward to the Simchas Torah farbrengens and hadn’t had them, “and I feel an obligation to make it up to them.” Now, what obligation? Was it something within his control? I mean, in the natural course of things—

32:22 Speaker 2 After all, it was a heart attack, an event that doesn’t really create any obligation here. But even so, the Rebbe wanted to give to the chassidim. The Rebbe wanted to give them what they needed, and so during that period, in the winter of 5738, the Rebbe held distributions of kos shel brachah four or five times. That’s a point that not everyone—uh, it isn’t always emphasized. In the winter of 5738, the Rebbe distributed kos shel brachah four or five times.

32:44 Speaker 5 In that winter alone.

32:45 Speaker 2 Over the course of the winter.

32:46 Speaker 5 Nineteen.

32:46 Speaker 2 The better-known one is 7 Chanukah, when the Rebbe suddenly announced a farbrengen. That’s really a story in its own right. There was something almost otherworldly about it; it looked as though the Rebbe had decided on it right then and there. So that’s...

32:57 Speaker 5 That’s 7 Chanukah, a few weeks after the Rebbe...

32:59 Speaker 2 Yes, starting from Rosh Chodesh Kislev. It’s told that the Rebbe said then, perhaps to the secretaries or someone like that, “I’m looking for time to make up what I missed,” or something along those lines. In any case, on the seventh day of Chanukah, at twelve noon, the Rebbe called JJ Hecht and asked him to buy a few things for a farbrengen. There would be a farbrengen that day after Mincha. The Rebbe told him to keep it a secret. Why a secret? The Rebbe simply didn’t want to disrupt people. The Rebbe said he didn’t want people to stop working in the middle of the day. Even with the farbrengen after Mincha, people would start leaving work and closing their businesses in the afternoon, and he wanted it kept secret. So he asked the Rebbe, “Not even tell Merkos?” The Rebbe said no. “What about the broadcast room, so they can hear the sicha?” He said no. There would be a tape afterward; they could listen to the tape of the farbrengen.

33:47 Speaker 5 Right, it wasn’t actually Shabbos.

33:48 Speaker 2 Yes. So he asked the Rebbe, “Can I tell the bochurim?” After all, the bochurim are the ones who are always at the farbrengens.

33:56 Speaker 5 Yes.

33:56 Speaker 2 So he said to the Rebbe, “I’ll make sure they keep it secret,” or something like that. The Rebbe told him, “If the bochurim know, it’ll be public knowledge all the way in Australia.” It wasn’t something they could keep quiet. The Rebbe gave him—

34:10 Speaker 5 It was celebrated.

34:11 Speaker 2 Oh, I see. The Rebbe gave him permission to tell his son in Morristown. Not to actually tell him, but to say he should be there, without saying why. And he could tell JJ Hecht’s brothers too. In any case, it was kept quiet and discreet, but by Mincha word had gotten out. There was a farbrengen, not a long one, with washing for bread. Now, there’s no such thing as a farbrengen with washing for bread. We have that at the end of Pesach, at the end of Shavuos, at the end of Shemini Atzeres—

34:36 Speaker 5 Three times—there are four times a year.

34:37 Speaker 2 Yes, at the end of Simchas Torah. Four times a year there’s washing for bread, a farbrengen, and kos shel bracha. Here, for the first time ever, the Rebbe held a farbrengen with washing for bread in the middle of the year, on the seventh day of Chanukah, and afterward distributed kos shel bracha to everyone there.

34:49 Speaker 5 And that didn’t happen again in another year. The Rebbe didn’t—

34:51 Speaker 2 No, the Rebbe did that once, with kos shel bracha on the seventh day of Chanukah. Then it happened again in Shvat, and again in Adar, and again—four or five times there were farbrengens like that, with washing for bread, which was unexpected. Now, what did the Rebbe want to make up? Why do it this way, and why so many times? I don’t know. But the Rebbe didn’t want anyone to miss anything. He wanted the chassidim to have what they had missed. You see, something comes through very strongly from the other side too: the Rebbe wants to be with chassidim. The Rebbe doesn’t want them to miss anything. The Rebbe wants to give to them, to read the letters and answer everyone. This time around Rosh Chodesh Kislev really, really—

35:34 Speaker 5 Brings it all to the surface.

35:34 Speaker 2 All of it. Yes. Let’s say that in the period beforehand, when people didn’t see the Rebbe for those few weeks, we really saw—what I mean is, a tremendous longing arose among the chassidim. And when they finally saw the Rebbe on Rosh Chodesh Kislev, the joy that burst out was also something immense. And with the Rebbe, in the way he acted afterward to make things up to them, and at the time itself, you see this essential bond between Rebbe and chossid. That’s something to take from Rosh Chodesh Kislev: to think about it, to reflect on the bond and the love, the love we have. That too needs to be awakened—to awaken the old love we have for the Rebbe and that the Rebbe has for us. To reflect on it. How much the Rebbe sees us.

36:20 Speaker 5 When we reflect on how much the Rebbe gives us and loves us, that’s... But we have to think about a chossid in the seventh generation now. Right now.

36:30 Speaker 2 Well?

36:31 Speaker 5 So you’re talking about revelations, about thinking how the Rebbe wants to give, and the Rebbe says things like that, and in the end there was kos shel bracha five times. What about us? What—what can I say? First of all. Yes, yes. We have to give thanks.

36:51 Speaker 2 First of all, it’s a very serious question, a question directed to Heaven. And let’s leave that question for Hakadosh Boruch Hu to answer. Because the revelation of the Rebbe Melech HaMoshiach and—

37:00 Speaker 5 But where does our reflection on the Rebbe’s love for us come in now?

37:03 Speaker 2 I think—

37:05 Speaker 5 Where do you see it?

37:06 Speaker 2 Right. I think that ultimately, first of all, we—we—you know, I’ll tell you something. I heard from my grandfather, a"h, Rabbi Schneur Nissilevitch. He spoke about the time they were in Russia, stories people know.

37:22 Speaker 5 He appears—there’s a video, he appears in it. Is that him? There’s something, I’m saying. There’s a video of chassidim in Russia—

37:28 Speaker 2 No, no, no, no, no. He wasn’t shown in that. There are a few photos, but not video. But in Russia they ran underground chadarim, and they risked their lives for it. The stories of just how much they—

37:41 Speaker 5 A lot hasn’t been told, either.

37:42 Speaker 2 Huh?

37:42 Speaker 5 A lot hasn’t been told.

37:43 Speaker 2 Probably most of it hasn’t been told.

37:45 Speaker 5 A lot of widows. So many—

37:47 Speaker 2 All kinds of stories of literal self-sacrifice, openly and in the most straightforward sense, in actual practice. And now I think about my grandfather. One day I found myself thinking: all the years he was in Russia—and this was true of so many chassidim; I knew him—they lived by the strength they drew from the Rebbe. What does the Rebbe want? They wanted to give the Rebbe nachas. And when a picture of the Rebbe arrived on one occasion, they quietly passed it around among the group so each person could see it. For them it was something deeply personal, something that touched the innermost part of their souls. By the way, there was an occasion—I don’t remember the date—when they showed the Rebbe, or told the Rebbe... Maybe it was on Nittel Nacht, and they showed the Rebbe a video a few times. In any case, there was something—I don’t remember whether they showed the Rebbe or told him—about the chassidim in Russia. Someone who had been there in Russia, I think it was Reb Berel Levy, and he—

38:40 Speaker 5 About them showing the picture?

38:42 Speaker 2 He told the Rebbe that the chassidim there in Russia sang the niggun for the Rebbe’s kapitel of Tehillim. I don’t remember which kapitel it was, but it was the one for that year. They sang it with such feeling—I mean, it touched them deeply. They sang the Rebbe’s kapitel and wished the Rebbe all good things. And when the Rebbe heard this, the Rebbe cried. That love the chassidim had for the Rebbe, though they had never seen him. And that’s the point I want to make. Think about it: I think about my grandfather. He was born in 5685. By 5710, when he was twenty-five, he had already been somewhat involved in this work, but he hadn’t known the Frierdiker Rebbe. Who knew the Frierdiker Rebbe then? When my grandfather was two, two and a half, the Frierdiker Rebbe had already left Russia. Who knew him at all? There were pictures, but they didn’t even know what he looked like. In 5710 the Rebbe assumed the leadership. They had a new Rebbe. They heard that there was a new Rebbe, the previous Rebbe’s son-in-law. They hadn’t seen him. What did he look like? They didn’t know; they couldn’t see him, hadn’t heard him, nothing. They received, somehow... A sicha of the Rebbe’s arrived, smuggled in by someone, and everyone copied it from one another. My father tells me that as children they would copy the sichos so there would be copies there. But they hadn’t seen the Rebbe, and they lived with such longing, dedication, and bittul to the Rebbe. My grandfather left Russia—again, not just him, multitudes of others like him—twenty years after the Rebbe assumed the leadership in 5710. For twenty years they showed tremendous self-sacrifice and dedication, and sent the Rebbe questions by whatever means they could, asking what to do and receiving instructions about spreading Yiddishkeit. Of course, yes, certainly we want to see the Rebbe. Of course that’s part of the ways we connect to him, and it’s the most natural thing. But it isn’t, it isn’t

40:22 Speaker 2 It holds things back. What I mean is that the essential bond between the Rebbe and a chossid is something within us, and when we reflect on that bond and devote ourselves to the Rebbe, it grows stronger. When we study the Rebbe’s teachings. There’s something very interesting. I was looking in Hayom Yom, at the teaching where the Rebbe writes that the great longing to connect can be satisfied only through study. I don’t remember the exact wording, but it’s through studying the maamarim the Rebbe says and writes; seeing his face alone is not enough. Everyone knows this. I looked at that entry in Hayom Yom. What date is it? 9 Adar. What does it say? 9 Adar. One day I said to myself, 9 Adar. Wait. 9 Adar is the day the Frierdiker Rebbe arrived in America. That was the day he set foot on New York soil, on American soil, and came out. Everyone there had been longing and waiting to see him. They were waiting to finally see the Rebbe. Some chassidim had never seen the Rebbe. Some had seen him earlier in Russia and then come to America, but there were chassidim there who had been born in America, as they say, made in America, and they longed deeply to see the Frierdiker Rebbe. And then they saw him. Now the Rebbe writes this in Hayom Yom, and surely that isn’t incidental. 9 Adar. The Rebbe published Hayom Yom two years after the Frierdiker Rebbe arrived in America, three years after he arrived. And this is the teaching in Hayom Yom. What is it really saying? Of course, seeing his face was the most natural thing. “To be expected” is a strange way to put it; it was only natural that everyone wanted to see the Rebbe and greet him. Right, and that’s one of the ways of connecting to the Rebbe. But at the next stage, it isn’t enough. What does “isn’t enough” mean? It’s only... Wait a second, it isn’t enough. Now, if you want to satisfy that longing, to fill yourself with an inner connection to the Rebbe, study his teachings, devote yourself

42:06 Speaker 2 to the Rebbe’s directives. That, ultimately, is the enduring connection. So that’s what I’m saying: right now we don’t see the Rebbe openly, as of this moment, and very soon, immediately, we will merit his revelation. There’s no answer to that. Yes, and we have to demand it of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and we demand “Moshiach now,” and so on. But, but, but the Rebbe’s love for us—and the fact that today countless people write to the Rebbe and receive answers and see guidance, even on very difficult, weighty questions, and people make their decisions based on the Rebbe’s answers, including people who aren’t Chabad—we all see all the time that the Rebbe is with us and accompanies us. In other words, we see the Rebbe’s love for us in this way, and not only in this way. There are endless stories, endless things we all experience, but we have to engage with it. And as you said earlier—l’chaim, l’chaim, l’chaim ulivrachah—as you started to say earlier, we need to sit and, as they say, savor it, to feel how profound it is that the Rebbe devotes himself to us and how much he cares about us. That certainly stirs love in return: “As water reflects a face back to a face, so one person’s heart reflects another’s.” But that has to find expression in something you take on in your daily life, something that expresses this connection. And incidentally, only then is the connection firm and strong. You can really see this today in education. I’ve had the privilege of working in education, and there are bochurim who can tell you, “I love the Rebbe.” But that connection—where does it show up day to day? Bochurim, we all love the Rebbe. Where does it show up amid, you know, the rushing waters of our lives, the pressures and the race, this rat race of this world? That’s what Chassidus teaches us. As the Alter Rebbe writes in Tanya, chapter 40—there’s a line he writes that we have to remember all the time. It’s fundamental. The Alter Rebbe writes:

44:11 Speaker 2 “For the purpose of love is service out of love.” The purpose of love, of loving Hashem, is to serve out of love. In other words, to love, to love, to love. Certainly, that’s what fuels us, gives us life, inspires us, and makes all our service alive and vibrant, a Divine service. But, but it has to find expression in actual practice. The purpose of love is for it to come down into action. In the end, you have to count it in cash, as the Rebbe says, count it in cash. You have to bring it into action, and those actions are vessels that hold the love. There was once—Rabbi Shmuel Lew tells this story—he was with the Rebbe on Yud Shvat 5711, and during that farbrengen, between the second sicha and the third sicha...

44:55 Speaker 6 Who was he? Tell me a little about him.

44:57 Speaker 2 Rabbi Shmuel is Reb Zalman Jaffe’s son-in-law.

44:59 Speaker 6 Ah, okay.

45:01 Speaker 2 Yes. He had the privilege of being with the Rebbe for many years. And during the Yud Shvat farbrengen—the day of connection, when the Rebbe accepted the leadership—he was sitting there as one person among the crowd, thinking to himself, and suddenly felt a strong awakening in his connection to the Rebbe. He decided: That’s it, I’m going to strengthen my connection to the Rebbe. This happened between one sicha and the next. Then he raised his little cup, as everyone did with the wine, looked toward the Rebbe, hoping the Rebbe would wish him l’chaim, “l’chaim ulivrachah,” and drank. Then the third sicha of the farbrengen began. When I once read the story, I was very interested to hear the recording of the Rebbe, the recording of that farbrengen. The Rebbe begins the third sicha. He begins like this, in Yiddish, of course: “The story told by the Rebbe, my father-in-law, the Frierdiker Rebbe, is well known: the Rebbeim would from time to time bring those connected to them to mind.” Again, this is the Rebbe’s connection to the chassidim from his side. “And when a chossid suddenly feels an awakening in his connection to the Rebbe for no apparent reason, it is because the Rebbe thought of him.” Then the Rebbe goes on to say: “So when a person feels such an awakening, as is known in Chassidus, something that comes from Above needs vessels to hold it.” You have to give it a concrete form so it will remain, so it will be lasting and permanent. He’s sitting there at the farbrengen, having just felt this powerful awakening in his connection, and suddenly he hears this sicha. To him, it was as though the Rebbe was speaking directly to him. The Rebbe says that when a chossid suddenly feels an awakening in his connection for no apparent reason, the Rebbe has thought of him. In a sense, he suddenly received the message: “Even your awakening in this connection—I’m looking after you; I awakened you.” But in terms of what we were discussing earlier, you have to bring it into action, give it vessels, and then it becomes much

46:48 Speaker 2 stronger. The love is strong. You have, so to speak, proof for yourself that you love the Rebbe. But by “proof,” I mean that inwardly it becomes strong and solid. And above all, you bring the Rebbe nachas. You do what the Rebbe wants; you do what the Rebbe asks of you. You bring the Rebbe nachas.

47:07 Speaker 6 Mushko Lashki, sorry.

47:09 Speaker 2 Yes.

47:09 Speaker 6 That was it.

47:10 Speaker 2 Look, in Tanya we saw the Alter Rebbe speak about a son and a servant. There’s the bond of a son and the bond of a servant, and the Alter Rebbe also cites the Zohar about a son who is also a servant. That is, a level of service with a very, very strong bond, the bond of a son, of love, but it also contains the element of a servant. He loves his father so much and feels so connected to him, and that feeling is so present within him, that he does everything for his father. Not, not, not like a servant to a master, but he does have that element of a servant. Whatever his father needs, he’ll do, because he loves him that much. We see this among chassidim, we really do. We see it in all of us, each person to the extent that he manages to express it within himself. But that’s the point. “Set aside your will for His will”—that’s part of our work: to fulfill what the Rebbe wants, to bring it into actual practice, to express love through deeds, not only through feelings, which we’re always good at. To bring it into action, that’s...

48:13 Speaker 6 A great deal of work.

48:15 Speaker 2 It’s work, it’s work. And that’s Rosh Chodesh Kislev. If it’s Rosh Chodesh Kislev, then in the end, what does it mean? That we haven’t seen the Rebbe? That we do see the Rebbe? What is it, ultimately? It touches us; the Rebbe himself touches us. It touches our connection with the Rebbe, and we devote ourselves more deeply. We take the Rebbe’s inspiration and carry it through, making more of an effort.

48:33 Speaker 6 Yes. If it’s a date when you can delve into all the information, what happened and the joy that... In the end, you have to bring it into vessels, to...

48:41 Speaker 2 Look, both are true.

48:41 Speaker 6 To express the connection.

48:42 Speaker 2 We know that on every holiday, every Jewish holiday, we recount what happened.

48:46 Speaker 6 Yes.

48:46 Speaker 2 So at the Exodus—on Seder night, “At first our ancestors were idol worshippers,” we start with the whole history, “and they shall enslave them for four hundred years,” and so on, and finally reach the Exodus from Egypt. And when you see what things were like, what kind of Egypt we were in, and how Hakadosh Boruch Hu brought us out, it suddenly magnifies the greatness of His love for us.

49:05 Speaker 6 Mm-hmm.

49:06 Speaker 2 From Egypt, “the nakedness of the land.” When you talk about Megillas Esther, the Rebbe addressed in several sichos why the Megillah begins with the whole story of Achashverosh, and why it goes on at such length about the feast he made and the extent of his rule. Because that lets you understand just how terrible the decree was—a decree “to destroy, kill and annihilate all the Jews.” What does it mean, throughout all the provinces of Achashverosh’s kingdom? Throughout the whole world.

49:24 Speaker 6 Yes.

49:24 Speaker 2 Not to leave a single Jew.

49:26 Speaker 6 After all, it tells you who Achashverosh was and what he was.

49:28 Speaker 2 Who was he? He ruled over the entire world and everything. So it really was an enormous decree, and then the magnitude of the joy afterward: “The Jews had light and joy.” So the account of those days tells of the distress, the—the anxiety, the concealment that existed then. Against that background, the tremendous joy of Rosh Chodesh Kislev is something else entirely. Come and tell someone who didn’t see or hear it, “On Rosh Chodesh Kislev, the Rebbe came out to the chassidim.” That means nothing. What came before it? What a void there was, so to speak, right? At least as far as what was outwardly apparent. And likewise with every celebration—the Alter Rebbe’s Festival of Liberation, and so on and so forth. And we really need to bring this down into practice. I’m reminded of something someone recounted about Kislev 5749. The Rebbe—as we mentioned earlier, the Rebbe called the month a chassidic month.

50:18 Speaker 6 Chassidic.

50:19 Speaker 2 And then, too, the Rebbe urged people to farbreng every day throughout the month of Kislev. Every day, to farbreng. A month of farbrengens.

50:27 Speaker 6 In our kibbutz, there were two Temimim who...

50:30 Speaker 2 Made sure it happened.

50:30 Speaker 6 Yes, it was—

50:31 Speaker 2 Farbrengens all day long.

50:32 Speaker 6 All through Kislev and Shvat.

50:34 Speaker 2 Now you say to yourself, “Farbrengens, farbrengens, farbrengens, farbrengens.” Yes, farbrengens all day long, to stir people up, to stir them up again and again. And still you need to bring it into actual practice, to stir your soul and bring it into action. But there are farbrengens, farbrengens, farbrengens. Anyway, the person told about one of those farbrengens at 770. Rabbi Shur[?] Friedman from the yeshiva at 770 had had quite a few lechaims, and at one point—this is just one episode from a farbrengen—he spoke to the boys like this. In those years, the Rebbe often came downstairs to deliver sichos during the week.

51:05 Speaker 6 Yes, much more than later on.

51:06 Speaker 2 Yes, much more often than in the years before that, too. After Maariv on many days, and on many, many occasions. And he began saying to them: In Likkutei Torah and Torah Or, we often learn of the question the Alter Rebbe asks: Why did the soul descend below? Why did it descend below? Why did it descend below? And the answer is the purpose of creation: the descent is for the sake of an ascent, and then the soul’s strength is revealed. But he says to the fellows, “Why did the soul descend below?” The soul is the Rebbe. Why does the Rebbe leave his room and come down here to us? Another davening with us, another sicha with us, another distribution of dollars, and more and more and more. Why did the soul descend below? Listen, stop for a moment and think: Why does the Rebbe do all this? Why does the Rebbe invest so much? What, is the Rebbe lacking something? Is he lacking the chance to sit alone in his room, learn Torah and daven? Ask yourself why the soul descended below. The Rebbe comes down to us for the chassidim, for the chassidim, for the whole world. To influence, to give, to bestow. That is what the Rebbe is about. That is the Rebbe’s devotion to every member of his flock. As the Rebbe related one year in connection with 12 Tammuz, in one of the early years: the Rebbe said that when the Frierdiker Rebbe was in exile in Kostroma, he wasn’t there long—about a week and a half, give or take. Yes, but suddenly there was something... After he was released from prison itself, from Shpalerka, he arrived in that remote place, a town of non-Jews, though apparently there was also a small Jewish community and a shul. And the Rebbe elaborates that, as soon as the Frierdiker Rebbe arrived, he immediately saw to it—even there, while he was still in the midst of the ordeal for which he had been sent there, because of all he had done to spread Chassidus and so on—even

52:55 Speaker 2 so, he arrived and immediately saw to a cheder, a mikveh, and whatever else was needed. Even before he went there, he had made sure to send shluchim ahead to take care of what was needed. And he continued working on behalf of Russia as a whole. The Rebbe says: He had time there. He was alone, without the whole community around him. He had time on Shabbos. The Frierdiker Rebbe davened at great length—for long hours, as the Rebbe puts it. The Jews in the area had never encountered such a thing: a Jew davening and finishing only after the minyan was over. They had never seen anything like it, a davening that long. What was going on? It made such a stir in the town, the Rebbe relates. No WhatsApp, nothing like that, but everyone knew. Word spread that there was a Jewish rabbi there who davened for an extraordinarily long time. It reached the ears of the town’s priest. The Rebbe relates that the priest came specially to the shul to see with his own eyes the wonder of a Jewish rabbi standing in prayer for hours, until three or four in the afternoon. The Rebbe says jokingly that the local Jews had already davened, gone home, eaten their Shabbos meal, slept, and woken up again. But still. And yet, the Rebbe emphasizes, despite all this—despite his concern even from there with spreading the wellsprings, and despite his lengthy davening, and what could be greater than that?—one day the Frierdiker Rebbe said to one of the chassidim who were with him, either Reb Chaim Althaus or Rabbi Chodakov, as the Rebbe puts it. Apparently that detail wasn’t passed down precisely, but he said to one of them: The Rebbe expressed great sorrow and pain that it had already been quite some time since he had written a letter to a Jew about simple matters. Simple matters. Simple matters of everyday life—people’s material needs, parnassah, their finances. People

54:44 Speaker 2 seek advice and ask what to do about their children, their health, all sorts of things. And not only that: the Rebbe said something very stark. The Frierdiker Rebbe expressed it this way: “Who needs this hand? Better that this hand should shrivel up.” Meaning, become useless. Who needs this hand if it isn’t writing anything to a Jew? Now, the Rebbe tells this story, and that is exactly the point. What does the Rebbe want to convey there? The Rebbe could daven for long hours and, so to speak, be spiritually fulfilled—but not the Rebbe. “Who needs this hand?” The whole point is to accomplish something for another Jew. The Rebbe was active in other ways too, but in practice it wasn’t only about Torah and avodah. The Rebbe wanted to help Jews materially. If Jews were lacking materially and the Rebbe could not help them at that time, it caused him immense pain in his heart. Just reflect on that a little. Yes. It brings us back to the point. What emerges from this is that when a Rebbe comes down into the world—yes, I’m describing this rather abstractly—his role is to connect... Yes, to form that connection, and that includes caring for the smallest needs of every individual among the people. It really goes both ways. Yes, “I stand between Hashem and you.” So Moshe Rabbeinu, [unclear]—Moshe, in essence, gives to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. The flow of blessing passes through him to the world, and through him we also connect to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Certainly, those are the two sides. So Tanya, chapter 2, discusses this aspect of connecting through Moshe: we connect and bind ourselves to the supernal wisdom. But there is also much explanation of how Hakadosh Boruch Hu gives through the nasi of the generation. He is the channel for that flow of blessing. The world is sustained and renewed. It’s an extraordinary expression, that a hand should go because I can’t—

56:29 Speaker 2 To write. To make sure that... That’s why the Rebbe dwells on it. It’s deeply stirring. The Rebbe cares about the simplest things in our lives. And whose simple concerns? Everyone’s. Yes. Every individual’s. Whoever turns to him, no matter who they are or what they need—every Jew matters to the Rebbe personally. We need only recall that period in 5751, when someone spoke negatively about Jews who do not follow the path of Torah and mitzvos. It was widely known, and in response, the Rebbe spoke at length, Shabbos after Shabbos, about the greatness of the Jewish people, and how anyone who touches them touches the apple of Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s eye. You could see the Rebbe advocating for them before Heaven, so that, G-d forbid, nothing negative should be heard about a Jew. And which Jews? Jews who are like children taken captive, Jews who do not observe Torah and mitzvos. Every one of them matters to the Rebbe. And... and... we can also say that, in a sense, the Rebbe himself mentions this: among the Jewish people, a chossid has an additional, special connection to the Rebbe. The more connected you are to the Rebbe—as in Tanya, chapter 2—the more connected you are to the leader of the generation, the stronger the bond is. It makes you different. The responsibility you take on is greater. There’s... one of the chassidim put it this way: why was Shir Hashirim written about a woman? It could have been written about the bond between a Rebbe and a chossid. Right. Why is the bond between the Jewish people and Hakadosh Boruch Hu described with that kind of analogy? It’s the bond between a Rebbe and a chossid. There’s nothing beyond that. That expression is quite a radical idea. I think it was Reb Aizik of Homil, if I remember correctly. The misnagdim couldn’t bear to hear that sentence, but it really is so. But ultimately it has to find expression in... Let’s not leave

58:04 Speaker 2 it there, with the Rebbe as some sort of headline. It has to come down to practice. Look, in a Dvar Malchus from 5752, in the sicha of Shabbos Parshas Vaeira, the Rebbe speaks about connecting to the Rebbe: “As we stand on Shabbos Mevorchim of the month of Shvat, and particularly its tenth day”—that’s how the Rebbe puts it—“we must now strengthen our connection to the leader of the generation with even greater vigor and strength.” That’s what the Rebbe says. He’s speaking there about the Frierdiker Rebbe. For us, of course, this applies particularly to the Rebbe. And then the Rebbe puts it into practical terms. What does it mean to... what does it mean to be connected to the leader of the generation? The Rebbe says in that sicha: “How is this connection expressed? In that a Jew’s very being and all his affairs, ‘in every respect,’” as the Rebbe uses that phrase to mean everything, absolutely everything, “all become consecrated to the leader of the generation.” Now, that’s an expression I don’t know if you’ll find many like anywhere in the Rebbe’s teachings. Such an absolute expression: that your entire being should be for the Rebbe. “His very being and all his affairs, in every respect”—the Rebbe uses that expression for emphasis. Everything becomes consecrated to the leader of the generation. That means everything we do in ordinary life: eating, even drinking, going to work to bring home a livelihood, and certainly learning Torah, observing mitzvos, and reaching out to others. Everything, everything, everything is devoted to the will of the leader of the generation. The Rebbe immediately focuses this further: his central task is to bring about the days of Moshiach. The Rebbe clarifies for us what it means to be consecrated to the leader of the generation, what his purpose is, and where all of this leads... Everything, everything is directed toward bringing about the days of Moshiach. We’ve just come from Shabbos Chayei Sarah, this past Shabbos. In the sicha for the 5752 Kinus Hashluchim, the Rebbe emphasized this there too. And there’s something interesting about the organizers: they announced that the Kinus Hashluchim would be held under the theme “All the days

59:59 Speaker 2 of your life, to bring about the days of Moshiach.” That was the slogan they used... Yes, that was the theme of the kinus. In the sicha, the Rebbe mentions that the focus of the kinus is bringing about the days of Moshiach—“All the days of your life, to bring about the days of Moshiach.” The Rebbe immediately explains what that means. I don’t know whether they realized just how demanding the words they had written were. The Rebbe explains “all the days of your life”: every single moment, every detail of every hour of the day and every detail of one’s work—everything, everything must be permeated with the goal of bringing about the days of Moshiach. And that is something we’re meant to carry with us. That’s what the Rebbe demands all the time, in every single thing you do. Everything is for the sake of bringing about the days of Moshiach, bringing the Geulah. On that Shabbos, at the end of the farbrengen—as we know, at the end of every farbrengen, the custom was for people to come up, particularly shluchim who were organizing something special. But not only shluchim. Say someone was holding a celebration for completing Rambam, an event or a farbrengen, or opening a new Chabad House, launching something. Before Shabbos, they would submit a bottle of mashke to the Rebbe’s secretariat. The bottles would be brought to the Rebbe’s table at the farbrengen, and at the end the Rebbe would... There’s the familiar wording the Rebbe would use, that those who had prepared the bottles should “come up from below to above,” approach to take their bottle, and announce what they were doing. So they would come up and speak about the purpose of their event. The organizers would take the bottle, but the point here is that the Rebbe was presenting them with a bottle of mashke. They had submitted it for the Rebbe to take. The Rebbe would take the bottle, open it, pour some into his cup, and pour it back from his cup into the bottle. That way, they had a bottle containing mashke from the Rebbe’s cup. The Rebbe was, in effect, giving it to them. Why did the Rebbe do it in such a public way? Presumably, it’s a mitzvah

1:01:34 Speaker 2 to publicize those who perform a mitzvah. The Rebbe wanted to give it its due. Yes, and to inspire others too. But then the organizers of the kinus come up. So on that Shabbos—Shabbos Parshas Chayei Sarah 5752—usually on a Shabbos like that there would be two, two announcements. Three. Four, yes. On that Shabbos there were fifty-six bottles. Wow, so many shluchim had arrived. Presumably that’s why. Lots of people announced various things they were about to do. It took time. One of them was an organizer of the Kinus Hashluchim. He approached to take a bottle of mashke, and the Rebbe handed him the bottle. As the Rebbe gave it to him, the Rebbe said, “To bring about the days of Moshiach.” You read that in a diary and think, what’s going on here? Why not “blessing and success” or “good news”? Instead, it’s “to bring about the days of Moshiach.” As I understand it, the Rebbe wanted to say—of course, in the context of the kinus, whose entire theme was this, yes—but I would say: everything, everything, everything is about bringing about the days of Moshiach. The bottle of mashke is about bringing about the days of Moshiach. You drink a cup of coffee: it’s about bringing about the days of Moshiach. You... everything, everything is about bringing about the days of Moshiach. The Rebbe didn’t tell him, “This bottle of mashke is for the kinus, whose theme is...” No: “To bring about the days of Moshiach.” That’s what the bottle of mashke is for. It’s meant to instill in us the understanding that every single thing we do now must be done with that focus, with that goal before our eyes. Why are we doing it? To bring the Geulah. You’re walking your child to preschool? You can tell him, “We’re on our way; we want to reach the Geulah already. Let’s go by way of preschool. All right, we’ll merit the Geulah, climb onto clouds, and travel.” It comes down to those details of our lives. This is the Rebbe’s wish; this is what the Rebbe wants from us. So of course, when I go to work, I

1:03:16 Speaker 2 I go to earn a living—we need to look at everything this way. Someone once wrote to the Rebbe that he was at work and felt disconnected, or something along those lines; I don’t remember exactly. He worked in an office. So the Rebbe told him: When you go from one office to another—from room to room there in the office—stop for a moment and think: I’m making a dwelling in the lower realms. I’m working to make a dwelling in the lower realms. Something like that. The Rebbe certainly didn’t mean that the whole time you’re doing the accounts, you should be thinking, “A dwelling in the lower realms, a dwelling in the lower realms.” That doesn’t work. You can’t do that. The Rebbe said this even about Reb Binyamin Kletzker, who did an accounting and arrived at the total, “There is nothing besides Him.” The sense is that he did the calculation, went through all of it, and at the end, the sum total of the calculation itself was “There is nothing besides Him.” In other words, you deal with the world, you deal with the world, but you remind yourself before you leave for work, when you get up in the morning, when you start another stretch of work after lunch—it doesn’t matter. You awaken yourself again to the purpose. So we’ve always known that we need to work on doing “all your deeds for the sake of Heaven.” That could mean: I’m working now to earn money so I can support my family and pay my children’s tuition, so I can educate them in the way of Torah and mitzvos. Of course that’s how it should be. The Rebbe sharpens the point, focuses it a little more. The purpose is that they should follow the way of Torah and mitzvos so that Moshiach will come immediately. Because when we conduct ourselves as we should, Moshiach comes. That brings the Geulah.

1:04:53 Speaker 2 And we do everything with that point, with that focus before our eyes. That’s what the Rebbe wants.

1:05:00 Speaker 7 That means living life at a very intense pace, as though everything, absolutely everything, is directed toward a purpose.

1:05:05 Speaker 2 If not now, when?

1:05:06 Speaker 7 Nu.

1:05:07 Speaker 2 We’ve now reached—we’ve had the merit to reach—that point, and that is Rosh Chodesh Kislev.

1:05:12 Speaker 7 Why is that Rosh Chodesh Kislev?

1:05:13 Speaker 2 Nu.

1:05:13 Speaker 7 Why?

1:05:14 Speaker 2 Rosh Chodesh Kislev—you could explain it from several angles, once you start thinking about it. Based on what we’ve discussed.

1:05:20 Speaker 7 Yes, we haven’t discussed much; that’s why I’m asking.

1:05:23 Speaker 2 Right, so let’s gather it together a little. Rosh Chodesh Kislev. There’s even the point of the concealment that existed then, and no one gave in to that concealment or was broken by it. They knew the Rebbe would reveal himself immediately. We’re waiting for that revelation now. And within that very concealment, it’s remarkable how the Rebbe teaches us to look at events in life even when, G-d forbid, something doesn’t go well. In the sicha on the night following Simchas Torah 5738—

1:05:52 Speaker 7 Yes.

1:05:53 Speaker 2 So—

1:05:53 Speaker 7 The first sicha that he—

1:05:54 Speaker 2 The very first sicha. The beginning, the opening of the first sicha. You can hear it on the recording. It’s also a sicha that was published in an edited version in Likkutei Sichos, or in the additions to volume 28. The Rebbe begins the sicha—and again, his voice is somewhat weak—and says, “Since, because of a certain reason...” Because, for a certain reason, the farbrengen is taking place after Havdalah, a large farbrengen. And then the Rebbe continues: In this situation, it can be heard throughout the world. There’s a broadcast to every place; Jews all over the world can be brought together and united through the Torah learning at the farbrengen, and the teachings of our Rebbeim can be brought to the whole world, and so on. Notice how the Rebbe phrases it: “Because of a certain reason.” It’s a certain reason. We all know what the reason was, but in a sense the Rebbe is saying that the issue matters less right now. Don’t sink into the difficult situation. For a reason, a Divine reason, we’re in this situation right now. Let’s see what good there is in it. What opportunity is here? That’s what’s contained in those words, right? For some reason, you’re here now. This is how the Rebbe wrote more than once to people. In the letters, there’s someone who was hospitalized and asked for a blessing for his health, and the Rebbe writes to him: You’re not there for no reason. It appears in different versions, with different wording, but the point is that you’re there by Divine providence. So surely he would spread Yiddishkeit among his hospital roommates. There are quite a few examples like that. You’re in a place like that for a reason. Do something there.

1:07:30 Speaker 7 Seemingly, there had been a heart attack. Chassidim can’t see you now. But it’s also possible to—

1:07:33 Speaker 2 One of the most difficult situations there could be, for all of Chabad throughout the world: the Rebbe was in a condition where he wasn’t communicating with us in quite the usual way.

1:07:42 Speaker 7 Ah, “for a certain reason.”

1:07:44 Speaker 2 “For a certain reason.” There was once a convention of shluchos in America—I don’t remember where, perhaps California. When the event ended, they needed to return to Crown Heights. But just then there was a heavy snowfall and they couldn’t fly. All the planes were grounded. They wrote to the Rebbe asking for a blessing, sent a message to the secretariat asking what to do, and so on. And the Rebbe gave them a bit of a telling-off: How could they not understand that if they were there, they had a shlichus there? Their stay was being extended, and with all the publicity in the newspapers about the situation, the group that remained there was getting more media attention. They could use that to spread Yiddishkeit. That was the way he looked at it. Now, we don’t want to remain in that situation. Back then, too, the Rebbe didn’t want that concealment to remain. But from the very first moment—the first time the Rebbe sent a message to the chassidim after the heart attack—the Rebbe’s first message was something he told Reb Leibel to pass on to Rabbi Yoel Kahn: a lesson that could be taken from the syringe, where it’s specifically the vacuum that draws in the substance.

1:08:47 Speaker 8 He wanted to learn a lesson.

1:08:48 Speaker 2 A lesson in serving Hashem from the syringe.

1:08:49 Speaker 8 That what—

1:08:49 Speaker 2 It’s specifically through the vacuum in the syringe—there’s a vacuum created to draw in the substance. So the Rebbe told him that this was precisely the point: tzimtzum, contraction, is for the sake of revelation. Tzimtzum is not an end in itself. Yes, in the Geulah the virtue of tzimtzum itself will be revealed, but tzimtzum is for the sake of revelation. And the Rebbe told Reb Leibel to tell Rabbi Yoel Kahn to explain this at length, in detail. At the Simchas Torah farbrengen, that’s what he did: he stood and explained the subject at length based on what is taught in Chassidus. The Rebbe immediately established the point. There is a tzimtzum here; there is a contraction. The Rebbe didn’t deny that reality. But tzimtzum is for the sake of revelation. There would be a greater surge forward. And afterward, of course, the whole subject of Moshiach advanced by leaps and bounds. That’s the first point.

1:09:34 Speaker 8 Specifically after Kislev.

1:09:35 Speaker 2 Yes, and that’s the first point. It’s a real lesson for our everyday lives in general, and especially for the situation of galus. We’re waiting for the Geulah every second; we’re already in the days of Moshiach, and the Rebbe needs to reveal himself at any moment. Let’s understand that even in this situation, in every moment that the Geulah has not yet arrived, there is something to find. The Rebbe asks us to focus on the present situation, to find the opportunity in it. What can I still do? What does the Rebbe say about when Moshiach comes? The Frierdiker Rebbe says that when Moshiach comes, people “veln zich chapn farn kop”—they’ll grab their heads. It’s a Yiddish expression, a gesture of “Ah, I missed the opportunity.” Now is your opportunity, a second before the Geulah arrives. Come on, do it. Then you won’t have the opportunity to spread the wellsprings. You won’t have all sorts of opportunities. You won’t be able to give tzedakah to a poor person. There’s some discussion about that, but that’s how the Rebbe puts it. So it’s “because of a certain reason.” It means finding that point, and above all, looking ahead.

1:10:34 Speaker 8 Yes.

1:10:34 Speaker 2 After the tzimtzum comes the revelation. The Rebbe wanted us to see the revelation from the very first moment. Now, of course, we’re waiting every moment for the Rebbe’s revelation. Let’s see it already. The Rebbe tells us today to rejoice already with the joy of the Geulah, to rejoice right now over the revelation that’s coming. Let’s be wise and not, as they say, fall into it and sink into... No, it’s just about to happen. We don’t accept the present situation. The longing grows stronger; the yearning is very intense. The Rebbe speaks about this more than once in his sichos. The Rebbe learned from the Rebbe Rashab about the yearning for the Geulah. But—

1:11:06 Speaker 8 What do you mean, from the Rebbe Rashab?

1:11:07 Speaker 2 There’s the story of the Rebbe Rashab, who went to the Tzemach Tzedek and cried, “Why doesn’t Hashem reveal Himself to me?” And the Rebbe brings that home to us: we need to have a longing for the Geulah. And what do we do with longing? As we said about love for the Rebbe, what do we do with longing? The Rebbe immediately says that when a person truly longs for something—and this is a natural process—when a Jew longs for the Geulah, he naturally does everything in his power to become a fitting vessel to receive it. Do you really want it? Do you seriously long for it? Does it truly matter to you? Then you don’t sit at home. You do everything, everything, everything to bring the Geulah, to merit receiving it.

1:11:43 Speaker 8 Yes, longing is a very powerful motivator.

1:11:45 Speaker 2 Longing is a powerful motivator.

1:11:46 Speaker 8 Yes.

1:11:47 Speaker 2 So again, we would be glad not to have this vacuum that creates longing, but that’s the reality right now. Awaken that longing. Want the Geulah, picture the Geulah, experience it already as much as you can, and do everything to bring it.

1:12:02 Speaker 8 That means going beyond nature in... in... What does “beyond nature” mean? It’s hard, in the vacuum, in the darkness, in the midst of the challenge, to see the... But that’s life. Isn’t that how Hashem established the order of creation?

1:12:13 Speaker 2 Look, living like a chossid always takes work.

1:12:17 Speaker 8 Yes.

1:12:18 Speaker 2 Or like a Jew in general, but especially like a chossid. What do I mean? A chossid—Chassidus is about the inner dimension. It requires you to uncover the deeper layers of your own soul, just as Chassidus teaches you to uncover the love you have for Hakadosh Boruch Hu, which you don’t ordinarily feel. To uncover the... the connection you have; to uncover your Ahavas Yisroel for one another when you discover the essential bond between you. All of that takes work. But we’ve been fortunate to speak the language of the inner dimension. When we talk about galus and Geulah, you look at galus, at the reality around you, and you see galus. You see a situation that isn’t so good. And the Rebbe teaches us, first of all, that even within galus we should look at certain events and recognize in them the beginnings of the Geulah.

1:12:58 Speaker 8 For us now, boruch Hashem, there’s... everything that’s happened recently.

1:13:02 Speaker 2 In recent years.

1:13:03 Speaker 8 Yes.

1:13:03 Speaker 2 So, so there are also—

1:13:05 Speaker 8 You can see—

1:13:05 Speaker 2 Events that shook things up somewhat, and on the other hand, things where you can also see supernatural, G-dly successes—

1:13:09 Speaker 8 Absolutely.

1:13:09 Speaker 2 In all kinds of ways. And... and also to see within... to work on ourselves, too, so that despite experiencing certain things, we look for the Geulah in them and understand that it really, truly is here. How did the Tzemach Tzedek put it? They once asked him: Why do we study Chassidus? After all, in the Geulah the teachings of Moshiach will be revealed, and that will be Chassidus many times over. What we have today is only a taste of the Geulah, of the teachings of Moshiach. So the Tzemach Tzedek said it’s like someone standing beside a wall while two people on the other side are talking. He hears them chatting, but he can’t make out the words. Later they tell him, “We were talking about this and that.” “Oh, yes, yes, yes—now I can put it together.” Suddenly the sounds make sense to him. That’s how the Tzemach Tzedek described studying Chassidus today. You know, you understand something; you’re only scratching the surface. But someone who studies Chassidus today will be able to say in the Geulah, “Oh, okay, now I understand what I heard back then, what I learned back then.” So today we’re just scratching the surface of it, and in the Geulah, suddenly, we’ll discover that what we couldn’t see now—yes, the signs were already clear then, and it had already begun. It’s already there. Yeah. L’chaim, l’chaim.

1:14:28 Speaker 8 L’chaim, l’chaim.

1:14:29 Speaker 2 May we merit the complete Geulah from this Rosh Chodesh Kislev—and even before Rosh Chodesh Kislev, which is a day of Geulah for the Rebbe, yes? A kind of emergence from the confines of Egypt into open space. May we see the Rebbe, the King, in his beauty. May our eyes behold it immediately, and the joy that will burst forth will be many times greater than it was then. It will be a joy not only for chassidim, but for the entire Jewish people. And we need to picture that, too. Picture it and know that it’s going to happen any moment now.

1:14:56 Speaker 8 With Hashem’s help. L’chaim and good Shabbos.

1:14:57 Speaker 2 L’chaim and blessings. L’chaim, l’chaim.