Farbrengen 19 Kislev at Bar-Ilan University

00:00 Speaker 1 According to the visionaries. To the feeling that I’ve achieved something. But it is something else. In other words, this is a new kind of person. It is, in fact, a new figure in Torah life—not in the Torah itself, but in the teachings of the Chassidic community, even in the Jewish community as a whole. This is a new kind of person, perhaps new to the entire way the world understands the human ideal. A new human ideal has emerged: the beinoni, the person who spends his entire life in conflict. The person whose defining feature is the unresolved conflict within him and in his relationship with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. That is the beinoni, and it is something new, something startling. That is... There is another kind of beinoni, too. There is the beinoni who is neither small nor great. Someone who is neither—what my family would have called an average person—neither a bitter rock nor a pea tree. Yes, there is such a definition. Or there was another definition, not in matters of truth but in matters of intellect: someone who is neither a great sage nor a little fool. That is an average person. Now there is a whole world like that, what is called the religious world, which sometimes holds up the knitted kippah as a banner. And that world waves this dream around: to be a beinoni, but not a beinoni like the one in Tanya. A beinoni who really doesn’t have too much Torah, because it might go to his head; not too many mitzvos, because that makes life burdensome. You can’t be everywhere at once. All in all, it is a world of people who live in a certain peace among the different things, always trying to remain at roughly the same distance from every relevant point. Now, in this respect, the beinoni of Tanya is exactly the opposite. The beinoni of Tanya—Tanya’s beinoni—is an asymptote. Throughout his life he tries to approach a certain point. A point that, for him,

02:33 Speaker 1 is certainly impossible to reach. It is the limit of a function. But this is a function that keeps going and going. You can put all sorts of values into it, including very high values, and it still keeps going. He will never arrive at a solution. The formula of the beinoni has no solution. But look how far that formula goes, what heights it reaches. This beinoni is the kind of person who reaches heights that ordinary people stand and marvel at. At the same time, he is a beinoni who practices Chassidus. Not “practices Chassidus” in the sense that Chabad is being made into now: saying l’chaim, sending a letter to the Rebbe, and if the Rebbe is not here, sending a letter to the Ohel. And there are even some Chabad chassidim—perhaps not here—who are especially meticulous about saying “Yechi Adoneinu.” Well, they make that a person’s obligation. A person... Right now I’m defining “person” very broadly. It’s what... defined: simply two-legged creatures without feathers. So there are people like that who try to build an entire Chassidus on the fact that he drinks, that he sends, sends, sends faxes to the Rebbe’s Ohel, or, if possible, to 770. Sometimes he drinks water as a segulah because he thinks it came from the Rebbe’s mikveh. And above all, he says “Yechi Adoneinu” seven times a day, nine times a day. Now, I don’t want to—I only want to say that these people don’t really belong to Chassidus. They belong to a new version of it that has grown up in this world, one that also tries to solve problems the easy way. How does a person become a chossid? There are, there are easy ways. For women, to go up to the Tor... Men, grow a beard, grow a beard. Take, take a stone and say “Yechi.” Maybe

04:51 Speaker 1 you also need to say l’chaim from time to time, but that’s not... Not too quickly, either. Perhaps you’ll bring a certificate saying you have permission to drink. All right. What I’m trying to say is—that was only to explain the point. The whole point of Chassidus, its very essence, is a kind of extremity. If that extremity is absent, something very, very fundamental is missing. And I heard the introduction, and I’m familiar with it. Part of it is adapted from Dubnow’s writings on the social structure of Chassidus. Part comes from other writings. I don’t want to get into an argument about that question now: did Chassidus try to bridge the gap between Torah scholars and unlearned people? I just want to add a historical point. In many places, almost everywhere in the world—and this isn’t merely a phenomenon of the last three or four generations—Chassidus, sociologically speaking, and that is an entirely different subject, was essentially the group of intellectuals who were not fully part of the establishment. Unlearned people were sometimes attached to the Chassidic world, but were not part of it. I don’t know whether any of you know the expression—it’s an expression with various other connotations—“yutzmach.” Does anyone know it? Calling someone a “yutzmach”? You do? Of course. And what is a yutzmach? It’s an expression that began as a term of ridicule for chassidim. You can even tell where it originated: southern Ukraine or Bessarabia, places where they pronounced a patach like a kamatz. When they wanted to make fun of chassidim, they would say, “That man is a yitzmach,” or, in their pronunciation, “a yutzmach.” That was the description. In other words, that is how ordinary people felt about chassidim. Chassidim

07:19 Speaker 1 were yutzmachs, yutzmachs. That doesn’t mean that ordinary people with troubles didn’t go to a Rebbe. But the people with troubles who go to a Rebbe include the best of our faculties. They include leading intellectuals in Israel and other countries. That proves nothing here. But in actual life, chassidim were a group for whom the social question—the question of class and race—was peripheral, off to the side. What they were trying to build was not only a synthesis, but a new version of the central points of Jewish life. And it went roughly like this: the question was who could be called a person at the highest level, at the highest rank of human Jewish character. By that standard, one could assess different people, different figures within [unclear]. One of the things relevant to this point was that, at one time, being a Torah scholar was the starting point. That is true. Now the Chassidic world built something different, and you can see it. If I may say so, it was not an entirely new idea. The Chassidic world built a different structure in which the ideal was the person’s inner character, the person’s wholeness as a human being. That is much less clearly defined. You can test a scholar’s learning. Whether someone is truly a person [unclear]. But that was the Chassidic ideal. Where do you find someone who can be recognized as a person in his own right? What kind of figure is that? And that person may be a Torah scholar. It doesn’t necessarily get in his way. He may also be unlearned. He may have written a Shulchan Aruch. He may be poor, he may be rich, but in himself, in his very essence, he has a higher quality. But here, if Chassidus created something, it created something

09:53 Speaker 1 which was the ideal of a person’s inner self. A person’s inner self is not measured only by how many things he has done, but by who he is. And here the standards are much, much more complex. So, a brief aside: for anyone interested in knowing more about this, Chassidus is one of the first major movements in Judaism to give so much room to self-examination, self-inquiry and self-doubt. Even its great leaders question themselves, because the measure of who they are is not external and objective. It is internal, internal and substantive. The question is: how can you really know who is a great person? King David was a great person; someone else is great. We have definitions of “Who is wise?” and “Who is mighty?” If someone wants to present himself as a Torah scholar, what are the criteria for that? For meeting that standard? There are criteria, incidentally, and they are not especially high. “Who is rich?” “Who is mighty?” But now I am asking: who is a person? Who is a Jew? Here the criteria are far less useful as a definition. And that is part of what gives rise to the struggle. The struggle is not: How do I appear to other people? It is not: What achievements can I list on my résumé? The real question is: Who am I, in myself? And with that question—who am I, in myself?—come the problems, the questions and the doubts. But—

11:47 Speaker 1 To understand and clarify this point, all of it rests on a short passage in Pirkei Avos: “There are three crowns.” There is the crown of kingship, there is the crown of priesthood, and the highest of them all is the crown of Torah. And it says, “But the crown of a good name surpasses them all.” What is the crown of a good name? I know what priesthood is. It is something that can be defined quite precisely. I know what kingship is, in all its forms. I know what Torah is. But what is the crown of a good name? There is such a crown. It is precisely this point: who is the man himself? Beyond whether he has Torah or does not have Torah, there is this crown. Many commentaries were written on the statement that the crown of a good name surpasses them all. In a certain sense, it is as though it is a crown within those bounds, yet ultimately it climbs and rises above the highest crown. It is the great crown. Now, to give an example—and in my opinion, a significant one—the founder of Chassidus was not given this title by others. He called himself the Baal Shem Tov. In other words, that itself emphasized exactly the point I wanted to make. There were many baalei shem, wonder-workers of one sort or another. There are babas of the Sephardi variety, the Ashkenazi variety and the Polish variety; there is no shortage of them. But the question here is not whether someone performs miracles or wonders or things like that. The question was: who is this man, the Baal Shem Tov? He created a world built on this idea of the man of the good name. This man of the good name, who is so hard to evaluate, was what Chassidus sought to attain: how to become a person who is beyond the limitations,

14:02 Speaker 1 the boundaries and the categories by which I usually define people. And here lies the chassidic struggle, the—the path, excuse me, the path of the chassidic world. It was, in essence, this struggle: how does a person reach that point? And here he wants to get down to very simple things. There are definitions, the halachic definitions of the Talmud. There is an ordinary person, there is a tzaddik, and above the tzaddik there is a chossid. That is true in every approach: a chossid is above a tzaddik. A tzaddik is someone who has passed, who has scored a hundred on the various tests of fear of Heaven, good deeds and all these things. What is a chossid? A chossid is the one who always gets a hundred and ten. That is a chossid. A chossid is someone for whom the—not merely the minimum is not enough; even the maximum is not enough. That is a chossid. And that is the definition of chassidim. Look at the chassidim, the early chassidim or Chassidei Ashkenaz. A chossid is not merely someone who did things as the book says they should be done. He is the person who reaches the heights prescribed by the book and says, “Even this, even this is not enough for me.” From there on, the chossid begins at the point where he has broken through the boundary of “How far does my duty extend?” The question becomes, “What more is my duty? What more and more must I do?” Someone reaches a certain point and says, “Now I begin again.” That is a chossid. And so, wherever there is a chossid—and it makes no difference how he lives this out in practice—he is, in essence, a challenge to the message that tells a person: “Were you all right? If you were all right, that is not enough. You were very, very good? That is still not enough.” For the police, a certain standard of behavior is enough. For a particular office, that behavior is enough. For

16:30 Speaker 1 the Supreme Court, that behavior is enough. But before Hakadosh Boruch Hu, all of it is as nothing. And that is where you begin. You begin at the beginning. That, in essence, is what a chossid is. That is what a chossid is. And that is why I said that, in a certain sense, I do not know how a chossid can walk the corridors of Bar-Ilan, because Bar-Ilan will try to contain him. If he behaves nicely, Bar-Ilan will even give him a room and a place to lecture. If he behaves even more nicely, they will even give him a position, even a room in one of those halls, where he can be an official lecturer. That much they are willing to do. But to be a chossid—in a certain sense, it reminds me of the party that existed in Mexico for about a hundred years, called the Institutional Revolutionary Party. That was the official name of the party that ruled there. It is a certain kind of thing. A place like Bar-Ilan, by its very easygoing, pleasant, undemanding nature, sees a chossid and sees a revolutionary. So what do you do with a revolutionary? We say, “First of all, calm down. Have a cup of tea.” But a cup of tea does not calm him down. So they say, “Here is a quiet place. You want to speak? Please do. But don’t make noise. Don’t shout. We’ll invite all the people you want to speak to. You want to speak with the women here? We’ll give you rooms. You want a mechitzah? We’ll give you a mechitzah. But don’t cause an uproar, because the moment you do, you break the very character of this place. You break the character of this place and do not allow it to exist.” Therefore, therefore, we need—we need

18:31 Speaker 1 to do what you might call setting these two things against each other. They want someone to be a chossid? Yes, so they bring in what you might call domesticated chassidim. Because that is rather like bringing in—how do you do it? You take a bolt of lightning and try to put it into electrical cables. Perhaps you can, but what comes out the other end will not be lightning. It will have passed through five hundred transformers and will be good for heating a little electric oven, yes, but it will no longer be lightning. I take an earthquake and turn it into something to rock the fish in my aquarium. That is not the thing itself. And when I speak about what a chossid is about, he is the person who says, “You have reached the threshold,” and here you begin again. Here you begin again. Now, that is also why the beinoni of Tanya, who is a beinoni by the standards of chassidim, is not an average person by the standards of people on the street. He is a beinoni by the standards of chassidim, a beinoni by the standards of chassidim. If all he needed to do was pass external examinations in some faculty or before some beis din, this beinoni would come out a complete tzaddik. But the point is that he wants more than that, and he knows he will never be able to attain what he wants. So he remains there, caught up in that struggle, always dissatisfied, always feeling he has fallen short. Now, I do not mean to deny Bar-Ilan its chassidim, what you might call its pet chassidim. On the contrary, let there be many such chassidim and much such Chassidus. Yes, that is what they are trying to do now. There are already results. And now it is also quite easy to do this through all sorts of interventions.

20:32 Speaker 1 Genetics. Nowadays you can breed horses this size. There’s a farm in Mexico that specializes in raising horses this size. Now, horses aren’t all that impressive. Imagine if someone could raise a tiger at home. A little tiger, a house tiger he could play with, that would be so nice, so sweet. Yes, and I could... this is the kind of tiger that would teach a Chassidus class. After its Chassidus class, everyone would go home. They’d have heard some lovely stories, heard a sweet niggun, and they’d all go home to sleep, no doubt with a sweet smile on their lips. That’s really the dream. The dream of, of, of what you might call Bar-Ilan. Now, I’ve come here as a guest, so I’m allowed to speak a few words of truth. Yes, and... as in other places, one lecture is usually enough for the audience. It’s enough for the audience. They don’t invite me or ask me to come a second time, and that’s good. Good for the place and good for everyone. But I want to return to the point I wanted to explain. Not just to explain that a chossid is such-and-such a thing, but that it has to do with the essence. If you wanted to get at what’s there—the essence of a chossid, the essential point—what is it? The essential point isn’t that people sit around. If anyone does get something out of that, they can come to Kfar Chabad and see one of these things there. People sit up on a big platform: bored people who, for one reason or another, have been pushed up there. Some want to make an appearance, to be photographed somewhere and appear in the Kfar Chabad newspaper. Some come because they were forced to. Some come because they were enticed. A few bored people sit on the platform and listen to endless appeals that make no impression above or below, that Hakadosh Boruch

22:48 Speaker 1 Hu certainly doesn’t listen to, because He has better things to do, and that people don’t listen to either, because they too have better things to do. And they sit there and drink a little vodka to show that they belong to the movement. Yes, that’s one of the movement’s symbols. They drink a little vodka, farbreng, drink a little more and say l’chaim. Then they say all the fine expressions, and that’s it. So you understand what he is not? What is a chossid not? What is a chossid not? Now, to know what a chossid is... it isn’t as though there’s someone I can point to and say, “Here, I’ll show you an example.” Because once you can point to something, put your finger on it and make it an example, it has surely already been extracted. It’s no longer the real thing. But where is that thing? Where is the chossid? The chossid is found inside books from time to time. Sometimes he’s found in a saying. He’s found in the look two people give each other. That’s where he is. That’s where he is in shlichus. Now, how do you find him? It’s harder to isolate him than a straw mattress. Hard to isolate him. He doesn’t just walk around in the street like that. He doesn’t just walk around in the street like that. A chossid goes about his way, and you can’t just put him somewhere and look at him wherever you like. That’s the question: where is what you might call the higher soul? Where is that part in which a person exists differently, in another way, in another mode? These are the things I wanted to explain. To explain. Just a little explanation of what a chossid is. Now, since I was told to choose a topic, and of course I didn’t obey—that’s part of the nature, at least, of a family of chassidim in the past: one of its traits is that if

24:51 Speaker 1 they give me a topic to speak about, it must be a boring topic that one shouldn’t speak about. And if they tell me to choose a topic, I’ll choose one that surely nobody cares about. Still, so that people won’t say that all chassidim lie too, I’ll speak about that topic as well—a little for the sake of the occasion, and also because I think it’s connected to the point. You see, 19 Kislev is what’s called the Festival of Liberation. The expression in Chabad books is “the festival of our liberation and the redemption of our souls.” These are very emphatic, very strong expressions from people who don’t generally tend to use superlatives, and don’t use them for nothing. I’m not talking about Chabad newspapers, which are a creature unto themselves—but they’re here, after all. Here I’m doing something that shows my submission to Bar-Ilan: drinking tea. Lukewarm tea. That’s exactly, exactly what’s fitting. L’chaim.

26:10 Speaker 2 Coke.

26:10 Speaker 1 Do you see what’s here? Water on one side, water on one side, and Coke—Coca-Cola, not even Coca-Cola, but an imitation of Coca-Cola. On the other side, an early Chanukah menorah and a little [unclear]. It’s exactly the sort of event I was talking about. They could at least have put a small glass of 96 here, as a symbolic gesture. Does anyone know what that is? It’s the only vodka really worth drinking. It’s 96 percent alcohol. Yes, there’s someone here who works in chemistry. In fact, the normal stable concentration of alcohol—pure alcohol—is 96 percent. You can temporarily make a higher concentration of the alcohol people drink. So the lecturer talks about other things, things that aren’t appropriate. That’s what happens: the lecturer is given water to drink. What do you expect him to say that’s any good? Yes, it’s no wonder at all. All right, now. I’m talking about a matter. What is the essence? What is the historical significance of 19 Kislev? On 19 Kislev there was... it was one of the high points of the struggle between chassidim and misnagdim, and that struggle reached its peak in the ugly form of an informing to the authorities. It was a wide-ranging denunciation containing many charges. Among them was the accusation that the leader of the Chabad movement—the divisions had not yet been so sharp—supported the Turkish government. And the proof? He sent money to Eretz Yisroel. There were also other claims: that he was trying to establish a new religion, something that, incidentally, was strictly forbidden in Russia. Establishing new sects was forbidden. This was a prohibition on principle, not specifically concerning Jews. So this was a trial that the author of Tanya saw as taking place on two levels: a trial below, meaning in court, and a trial above—that there was a judgment

28:38 Speaker 1 above concerning what would determine the fate of Chassidus, what its standing would be. The earthly court had to decide whether Chassidus would have a recognized standing or would be actively persecuted, not only by organizations within the community but by the authorities themselves, the Russian authorities, who were relatively... Remember, we’re talking about the period after the partition of Poland. That is, a period when this area, which had historically belonged to Poland, had passed from Polish rule. All that had been a loose kind of rule, oddly innocent and democratic. Yes, it was a republic headed by a king, with a veto for every member of parliament. In other words, a completely crazy state—and in its place came an authoritarian, totalitarian regime that was very serious about what it said. If it said to exile someone, they exiled him, roots and all. In short, this was a trial of fundamental importance. In practical terms, it was a very important trial. And on a fundamental level, he saw that even while he was, as it were, speaking with the ministers below, he was really speaking with the ministers above as well. They stood opposite one another. When he won—when he was found innocent—all the accusations against him were dismissed, and he received permission to continue his activities as he wished, without anyone being able to harass him as a person considered undesirable in any respect. Now, on a fundamental level, this was perhaps the last and most basic occasion on which the very existence of Chassidus was in doubt. People thought there had been earlier crises. There had been, but none quite so grave. This was a very grave moment. Its resolution, its liberation, mattered even to those who did not know.

30:53 Speaker 1 It was the beginning of a new period, a period in which Chassidus now had to contend for its standing, for its very existence: what would it become, and how would it continue to live as a powerful force in its own right? And then came the question—the question I wanted to touch on a little: What do you do when you win? What do you do with victory? Sadly, as a people, we have plenty of experience with defeats. A large part of the events we mention and remember are troubles here, troubles there, a pogrom there, a defeat there, destruction there, and so on. Now, what to do in defeat, we more or less know. People hunch down and try somehow to go on living despite the defeat. But what do you do with victory? It turns out there are always challenges. There is the test of poverty, and there is the test of wealth. There is the question of what someone does when he is persecuted and attacked from every side—and what he does when he has now won. What does the victor do? I certainly don’t want to get into politics now, or anything resembling politics, because for some reason this subject is even more charged. But that basic question—what does the victor do?—is a real question. It is actually a much broader question, and it is one of the things that comes up here. I wanted to speak not about the aspect of the Geulah as a Geulah, but about what happens afterward. What does the victor do once he has won? What does he do when he has reached the place he has reached? And for this I brought a book, not an animal. There is—

33:17 Speaker 1 In the collection of letters by the author of the Tanya that appears here, called Igeres Hakodesh, there is the second letter, and the whole of it is really about one thing. It is more or less an announcement. The letter has a note indicating when it was written: “After his return from Petersburg.” That is, after he was freed in Petersburg, with all that this involved. There are other letters here and elsewhere that he sent to close friends about this same matter, writing to them about this victory. I have come out of prison—and again, this was not a private release. The movement had been vindicated. Now it could continue, and so on. But here is a letter that is very, very characteristic and important, and I thought it was worth discussing. It is worth discussing because we are not always in situations where we face this particular test. The letter begins with something directly connected to the weekly parsha—exactly connected: “I have become small through all the kindnesses and all the truth.” This is written by the man who has now won. He had wrestled, in that sense, and to him it was clear that he had wrestled with G-d and with men: with his adversary below, and with the adversary above—Esav’s, or perhaps not Esav’s. He has gone through all this, and he comes back to that same point: “I have become small through all the kindnesses.” I don’t want to read the maamar, though that would have been much better than talking about it. Instead, I want to talk about the dangers that lie in wait for the victor. The first danger that lies in wait for the victor, which he discusses at length, is becoming puffed up: the feeling that after a victory, a person begins to swell with pride. After the victory, he begins to feel how

36:00 Speaker 1 great I am, how wise I am, how talented I am, and more and more besides. That is the victor’s first danger. Because he has won, he begins not only to feel good about himself, but to feel that he has some special merit. He begins to think more highly of himself than the facts actually justify—because he won. Now, the fact that he won is something we have to acknowledge. Being victorious matters, and netzach—victory—is a holy sefirah. It is not for nothing that victory and netzach are one and the same word. There is something very great in it, but we have to recognize its limits. Victory means that I won in this instance, in this case, on this occasion. It does not say anything about the victor himself—about who he is, what he is like, or how highly he should be regarded. I won; that is a fact. Now what do I do with that fact? Yes, I have to get to work. But if, when I reach the point of victory, I feel that I should now be full of myself—he discusses this here and explains that this is the crucial point. How does a person respond to victory? That is what draws the dividing line between what belongs to holiness and what belongs to kelipah. In the world of evil, the world of kelipah, success in any area produces more ego. The higher a person rises, the more his ego grows. That is the ongoing process. Kelipah reveals itself in this, because it is entirely based on ego, and that ego keeps growing. The more a person wins, the more obstacles he overcomes, the more he becomes in his own eyes, and so he magnifies himself. The moment a person reaches some point of

38:32 Speaker 1 victory, some point of superiority, the concern—the danger—is that he will say: This proves I’m all right. This proves I’m complete. This proves I’m greater in this way and that. In fact, what he says about this point, which we might call the moment of victory, is what ought to happen instead. The person who wins has to begin seeing himself as smaller and smaller. The greater he becomes, the more he succeeds, the smaller he should see himself. He gives an example, and it is not just an incidental list of the great prophets of Israel. It illustrates something else: If I have accomplished something, has it brought me closer to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, or farther from Him? If I swell up as I draw close to Him, I am actually moving farther from Him. Any genuine drawing close means that I become smaller and smaller. When I stand before Him, I am small—utterly small. When I measure myself against other people, I am always great, and greater still, and more full of myself. So the question of what the victor looks like is not a side issue. It is really a question of where he stands. Is he in some dim place where he can swell with pride, or is he on a path that brings him closer to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, where his main feeling upon winning is how long the road still is, how many tasks there are, how much remains to be done? In a sense, the victor sometimes feels bewildered: Am I really the one who won? Am I really the one doing all these things? That is the question facing the person we call the victor.

40:59 Speaker 1 That is one point, and it is the problem. What does the winner feel inside? What is that inner feeling? Back when I studied chemistry, this was the question. People reacted in different ways. What happens when someone is told that his exam result is a pass or a fail? It was very interesting to see how people reacted to one result or the other. Do I dance, rejoice and smile? Or do I shrug and say, “Well, I’ve cleared one more hurdle. Now the real journey begins”? These are not trivial matters. They define what kind of person he is. Is he a person of kelipah, whose entire concern is one great big ego? Or is he a person of holiness? A person of holiness sees the tasks ahead, not the achievements behind him. There is a beautiful explanation of the verse, “You shall not ascend by steps to My altar.” Why are there no steps up to the altar? Because someone walking toward Hakadosh Boruch Hu is not given steps where he can say, “Ah, now I’m on level four. Now I’m on level five.” I am always walking up an incline, and that incline continues until I reach Hakadosh Boruch Hu. All I know is that I am walking. I keep walking along this path, walking and walking. That is the way. But there are two other things that were discussed, two important points to talk about. One is how he treats others. How do I treat those who have been defeated? There is a kind of victory that simply keeps moving forward, a victory without anyone defeated. But there is also victory in a battle—one kind of battle or another,

43:08 Speaker 1 whether in business, with tanks, or even in a struggle over something trivial. Who gets that chair in that place? Now there is a struggle with winners and losers, and one side, for some reason, sees it from its own point of view. Heaven forbid that we should try to humiliate, insult or hurt those who lost, even when I am certain they were wrong. In a sense, that was the situation here. The Chassidic movement received legitimacy. Those who tried to fight the movement back then were part of an establishment that stood behind those efforts and was trying to accomplish something. They failed in that attempt. Now I could [unclear]. The point here is that the person who wins must put himself in the place of those who were defeated and treat them with every courtesy and respect. Because when there is a dispute, a real battle, it is usually because two people see things differently. The other side’s view may seem to me utterly baseless, unreal, impossible. But I still have to respect the other person, to the point that I will not persecute him. And from here I want to come to another point he discusses, one that is no less important. What happens to the winner? Winners, for some reason, encounter a remarkable phenomenon. Yes, it says in the Book of Mishlei, which speaks about this at length, that the wealthy have lots of friends and acquaintances. The poor, for some reason, find that their circle of close relations keeps shrinking. A wealthy person discovers second, third and fourth cousins he never knew he had. And the way to tell how wealthy he is is to see just how distant

47:49 Speaker 1 these relatives claiming a connection are. “Remember when we went to elementary school together? Remember when we once played backgammon together? Remember that one time I spat in your direction?” All of this is an attempt to establish what they call a close relationship. That is “Many are the friends of a wealthy man,” while for the poor it goes the other way. The same is true wherever there is a victory. So victory has not only many fathers; it has a great many friends. Every victory has lots of friends, lots of people cheering, a huge crowd. And failure sits there completely isolated. Its fathers died long ago, and its friends—all those who supported it—have disappeared. But that is only the first point. The real question is something else: what happens within us? Along with victory comes a tendency among people, and this is true not only of one kind of victory. It is true of ideological victories and the like, and of other kinds of battles too. There is a tendency to construct a falsehood, a false network of false friends. That is one of the problems with victory. Victory can—and often does—create a false reality. It turns people who were never friends into friends. It produces so-called supporters, friends and admirers, people who attach themselves and cling to it, all of them false friends. Here there is a warning. One of the chassidim said that if the Alter Rebbe had not stressed in this letter that he wanted only those who genuinely wanted these things, he would have gained another eighty thousand chassidim at once. Certainly eighty thousand, or eight hundred thousand. A winner has a great many followers. But he wanted to use precisely this opportunity to begin sorting out who they were, and where the truth lay.

50:26 Speaker 1 The truth is that when the great crowd arrives, when the great victory arrives, that is also when falsehood and deception find their place. When do you find things that are not false or deceptive? Where are they? Perhaps at the low point. He reminded us of what it is like when I am brought low, when I am humiliated and downtrodden. Perhaps that is when my friends are real. But the question is not about friends; it is about our attitude toward things. How can I let that go at a moment of victory? A moment of victory actually calls, as he discussed here, for a fresh examination of what has been achieved. It also calls for a fresh examination of those joining in. Are you serious? Are you trustworthy? Are you truly joining? Tests of truth are very difficult tests, and these are the things that show us how we reach a moment of testing. So, then.

51:46 Speaker 1 I want to stop at this point, and once again I can tell you: read the letter itself. It is in the Tanya, the second letter in Igeres Hakodesh, and it deals with this question. It is the only letter he sends to all the chassidim. And surprisingly, surprisingly, you find that the heart of the letter is not how to celebrate, or how to crush all the enemies rising against us. The answer is: try, try. My advice to my friends who supported me, who helped me achieve this victory, who share in it: try to conduct yourselves in this victory as people ought to. Make yourselves smaller. Reexamine your own truth, and examine the truth of others. Do not become arrogant; do not grow proud. Now, this is another way of looking at it, because the point applies to what people do in circumstances like these in general. In a sense, everyone’s path has its ups and downs. And at this point, what happens to me when I am on the way up? The answer is that when I am rising, that is when I need to be more careful. When I am at a high point, I need to be more careful about myself, about who I am, about my truth. When I am down, others will make sure to scrutinize me, find fault with me and criticize me. When I am rising, when no one is checking me, that is when I need these things. And just to return to Chassidus before my friend speaks and explains to you how good it is to be a chossid. In a moment he will talk to you about Chassidus and economics, so that you will immediately understand that a chossid also makes a lot of money. Which, I think, is more or less the national purpose in life of the State of Israel right now. I think that is a fairly good description of what we see as people’s fondest dream. That is

54:14 Speaker 1 Not what you’d call... Their wildest dreams come in the form of dollars, not in the other forms people might imagine. Yes, but before he goes on to talk about how wonderful it is for people to become chassidim, and how much it helps them—helps them succeed in the world, which would certainly make anyone happy—I want to finish the subject I started. Look, being a chossid is, first and foremost, a great challenge. It says to a person: “Understand that you’re setting out on a path. It isn’t a paved road, because if it were paved, it would no longer be the path of a great challenge. You always have to search for the way forward.” Now, where are you trying to get to? In a sense, I would put it this way: even the highest place isn’t enough for you. Even the greatest expectation isn’t enough in your eyes. You have to look at things specifically as a chossid, and a chossid must have a measure of humility. After all, King David also says he is a chossid. Yes, and Hakadosh Boruch Hu also says He is a chossid. Nobody calls himself the commander of the guard, but when Hakadosh Boruch Hu calls Himself a chossid... The chossid tries to build that relationship. It’s a way of looking at things, of trying to measure them. On the one hand, I would say, it means seeing things not from someone else’s standpoint but from your own innermost point. Not in terms of how I feel good, but at that innermost point: How do I stand before Hakadosh Boruch Hu? How do I measure things from His point of view? Now you can tell me that’s impossible, that it ruins

56:27 Speaker 1 your life. True. It’s impossible, and it ruins your life. And that’s what being a chossid means. You look at a chossid—yes, you look at him—and in the end, after all that, after he has become wise, strong and wealthy, you look at him and say: “And you, you little creature, you little, insignificant creature—is this all you managed to do in your world? Become wise, strong and wealthy? Apart from that, you haven’t managed to do anything important in the world.” Yes. What is important in the world? That, essentially, is what it means to be a chossid: to do the impossible, to do the impossible. And that, really, is what Chag HaGeulah is about. It’s about people sitting together, even here, and trying to make a decision: How can I do the impossible? How can I take a student at Bar-Ilan University and help him become a Jew? Is that possible? I know it’s a challenge. It almost borders on defying the basic laws of physics. Yes, but that’s one of the challenges. It’s not just building something; it’s harder than building [unclear]. It’s building a person. Taking a young man and... I’m not talking now about the color of his kippah or the fact that it’s knitted. Taking someone with a knitted kippah and helping him become a person whom that knitted kippah won’t prevent from becoming a Jew with all the... with all the passion and intensity. And that passion and intensity doesn’t mean speaking crudely in the street. That’s not what it is. It means that a person can rise as high as he can, and still get caught up a little in small things, overcome every test, and know that even that is not yet what truly matters. To do that, to daven, to daven with every ounce of your soul, and say: “But I still

58:34 Speaker 1 haven’t reached the point.” Someone who has done that has come some way toward being a chossid.

58:51 Speaker 3 Thank you very much, Rabbi Adin Even-Israel. I’d like to invite Mordechai, Mordechai Werdyger, for another Chassidic niggun. Meanwhile, I’ll just mention that in Hayom Yom, by Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak, the father-in-law of the last Rebbe, the entry for 26 Elul says: “The procedure for preparing meat for eating and removing the forbidden blood from it is soaking, salting and rinsing. Their meaning in avodah is: soaking—immersing oneself in the Rebbe’s words, that is, studying his teachings; salting—yechidus, a meeting with the Rebbe; rinsing—a niggun.” This speaks of the role of a niggun in connecting with the Creator and preparing a person. So, as we said, a niggun has a significance in Chassidus beyond what one might think. Please come up, Rabbi.

59:59 Speaker 1 Because I have so much to say—no, I don’t want to speak at length.