Farbrengen of Gimmel Tammuz 5765, Kfar Chabad

00:05 Speaker 1 Right away, immediately, as stated at the end of that maamar: “May we merit to see the Rebbe here below, in a body and below ten handbreadths, and he will redeem us.” Ladies and gentlemen, one of the ways chassidim connect to the Rebbe is by reciting the Rebbe’s chapter of Tehillim. I am honored to invite the chairman of the Kfar Chabad committee, our host for this central gathering, Rabbi Binyamin Lipschitz, to lead us in Chapter 104 of Tehillim, the Rebbe’s chapter. The audience will recite it with him, verse by verse, standing. Rabbi Lipschitz, please.

01:09 Speaker 2 Blessed are You, Hashem our G-d, King of the universe, Who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us to kindle the Chanukah light. Blessed are You, Hashem our G-d, King of the universe, by Whose word everything came to be. You bring darkness, and it is night; in it all the beasts of the forest stir. The young lions roar for prey and seek their food from G-d. When the sun rises, they gather in and lie down in their dens. Man goes out to his work and to his labor until evening. How manifold are Your works, Hashem! You have made them all with wisdom; the earth is full of Your possessions. There is the sea, vast and wide, teeming with creatures beyond number, small and large. There ships travel, and there is Leviathan, whom You formed to play in it. They all look to You to give them their food in its time. You give to them, and they gather; You open Your hand, and they are satisfied with goodness. You hide Your face, and they are dismayed; You take away their spirit, and they perish and return to their dust. You send forth Your spirit, and they are created; You renew the face of the earth. May the glory of Hashem endure forever; may Hashem rejoice in His works. He looks at the earth, and it trembles; He touches the mountains, and they smoke. I will sing to Hashem as long as I live; I will sing praises to my G-d while I exist. May my words be pleasing to Him; I will rejoice in Hashem. May sinners cease from the earth, and the wicked be no more. Bless Hashem, my soul. Hallelujah. Thank you very much, and yasher koach to the chairman of the Kfar Chabad committee, Rabbi Binyamin Lipschitz. This is the village for whose residents the Rebbe arouses abundant mercy. In the Rebbe’s holy words: “They, their wives, their sons and their daughters, among all the Jewish people in Kfar Chabad, and everything they need, both materially and spiritually.” Ladies and gentlemen, as we said, this day is an auspicious time to connect with the Tree of Life. There are three kinds of connection: when we repeat a teaching of the Rebbe, that is connecting with the Rebbe’s speech. We begin with a teaching of the Rebbe. I am honored to invite the rabbi of the city of Arad and a member of the Beis Din of Chabad Rabbis, the distinguished chossid Rabbi Ben Tzion Lipsker, to open with a teaching of the Rebbe. Please.

04:32 Speaker 3 Distinguished members of the presidium, chairman of Tzeirei Agudas Chabad Rabbi Aharonov shlita, honored moderator, and assembled chassidim—men, women and children. A few words. I know—I heard the moderator. He touched on many important points that give us life, that give us the strength to carry on despite the doubled and redoubled darkness in which we find ourselves. We have so many important teachings and guideposts from the Rebbe’s sichos. They are our very life. Anyone who read Hayom Yom a few days ago saw what the Rebbe says there: “Whoever wants to know how to connect with me—how can it be done? Through studying my Torah, bonding with the chassidim, and following the paths I asked them to follow.” That, in fact, is what gives us life. It is what gives us strength in an extraordinary way, beyond the natural order. I was looking at one of the sichos, and I wanted to mention a few brief points and remind ourselves of them. First, even though the darkness is doubled and redoubled, the strengths we have been given are supernatural. They enable us to carry on and grow far stronger than before. In his final sicha of Yud Shvat 5752, the Rebbe spoke about something astonishing and startling. You can see an actual prophecy there. The Rebbe spoke about how the Frierdiker Rebbe, rachmana litzlan, was afflicted with a terrible illness precisely in the faculty central to his work: speaking—delivering maamarim and sichos and receiving people for yechidus. His doctor even asked: How can it be that a Rebbe who devotes his life to spreading Judaism and Chassidus should be afflicted precisely in this essential faculty, the crucial means through which he can spread Judaism—the power of speech? And the Rebbe, in effect, prophesied this about himself: not more than a month and a half passed, rachmana litzlan, before what happened to the Rebbe happened. Instead of speaking almost every day

08:33 Speaker 3 and spreading and teaching Chassidus to all of us, he was suddenly afflicted in his speech, and so on, as we all know. In that sicha, the Rebbe says that on Wednesday—which was Yud Shvat that year, 5752—the luminaries were “suspended,” spelled with a tes. “Suspended” can also be spelled with a tav, as hinted at in Shaar Hayichud Vehaemunah. The luminaries were suspended with a tav: the great luminaries began to shine forth. The Rebbe then says that the Frierdiker Rebbe’s dissemination of Chassidus actually became much stronger, much more significant—spreading on an incomparably greater scale—precisely during the period when his speech was lacking. There he also touched on histalkus: despite the histalkus, despite the concealment and obscurity, the spread of Judaism and the matter that occupied the Frierdiker Rebbe most of all in his final years—“Immediate teshuvah, immediate Geulah”—grew even stronger. And the Rebbe explains in that sicha that we are the generation of the Geulah. We are a reincarnation of the generation of the desert, the generation that actually entered the Land. They were the ones who came into the Land. We will be the generation that brings the Geulah. In other words, the Rebbe tells us that what we see today, after eleven years have passed—eleven very bitter years—is not what those who mistakenly think these are great revelations imagine. “Weeping is lodged in my heart on this side.” Nor is it as those who think we do not say Tachanun on this day imagine, as the Rebbe already instructed. “Weeping is lodged in my heart”: we do not see the Rebbe with our physical eyes, and we have no farbrengens, no new directives and no sichos. Yet at the same time, we see the loftiest revelations, as the moderator mentioned. The Rebbe’s work continues to spread and grow beyond all comparison. I want to tell you: I have had the privilege of being the Rebbe’s shliach for over twenty—almost twenty-eight years. Yet today I envy the young shluchim: their boldness, their strength, their drive. It all comes from the power of

12:05 Speaker 3 the one who sends them. They do not merely follow the approach of lechatchila ariber. How did the Rebbe once put it? Even what once seemed beyond comparison is incomparable to what young shluchim accomplish today. It all comes from the power of the one who sends them, and the Rebbe’s strength is with the shluchim and the institutions. The reach of the Rebbe and of Chabad has grown beyond all comparison. You cannot even describe how the light keeps increasing wherever Chabad chassidim are found. In every corner of the world, you cannot describe the scope and strength of what the Rebbe’s shluchim do—what the Rebbe does—in every place around the world. Another point I thought to mention: there is a Lag BaOmer maamar in which the Rebbe speaks about Rashbi. He says that Rashbi lived in the era of the Tannaim, when there were many Tannaim—and I will not name them, for they are many. Nevertheless, the Rebbe makes the point that Rashbi was incomparably greater than all the Tannaim of his generation. He gives just one example, Rabbi Nechunya ben Hakanah. Why was he called ben Hakanah? Because he authored a book called Hakanah, a work of Kabbalah. And the Rebbe says that although he too authored a book of Kabbalah called Hakanah, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai’s power was incomparably greater than his and than that of all the Tannaim. I will not explain the entire maamar at length now. Those who know and are familiar with the Rebbe, who live with him and have experienced him, know that the Rebbe is the head, was the head and remains the head—and all the tzaddikim, chassidim, Temimim and upright people are leaders of thousands among Israel. No one else is the head. We know how incomparably greater the head is than even the body’s most important organs: the heart, the liver, the kidneys that advise, the liver that acts, and the beauty of eyesight. None of that approaches the power and might, the incomparable stature, of the head of the Jewish people. And with the Rebbe we see leadership—let me put it this way, leadership—in actual practice. As with the Baal Shem Tov, when I was

15:32 Speaker 3 As a young boy, I read stories about the Baal Shem Tov. He would speak to some landowner about something, and the landowner had no idea why the Baal Shem Tov was raising the subject with him. Then, ten years after the Baal Shem Tov’s passing, the landowner suddenly understood what he had been talking about, and what great salvations the Baal Shem Tov had brought about ten years earlier when he spoke to the landowner about going to buy horses with a certain Jew. At the time, he hadn’t understood why the Baal Shem Tov was speaking to him at all. In the same way, we see great salvations from the Rebbe specifically in our own time, connected with things spoken about twenty or thirty years ago. I’ll tell you two short stories about this. I heard the first one a week ago. A yeshiva student was flying from New York, from the Rebbe’s court, to Israel. On the plane, he happened to sit next to an older woman from the United States, and as people do when they’re sitting together for twelve hours, they talked. She told him her name was Mrs. Abrams and asked where he was coming from. He told her, “I’m coming from the court of the Lubavitcher Rebbe.” She said, “Ay, ay, ay! When the Rebbe was physically alive in this world, I could consult him, I could speak with him. Now there’s no way. You can’t speak with him.” The student tried to explain that the Rebbe is with us today even more than during his physical lifetime. Even today, there are ways—perhaps through Igros Kodesh, perhaps by going to the Ohel, perhaps by entering the Rebbe’s yechidus room or studying a maamar. He spoke to her about these things, but she insisted, “No. Something is still missing.” Well, their conversation ended, and the student put on his headphones and played a recording of a sicha from one of the Rebbe’s farbrengens twenty years earlier, one of the general farbrengens—

18:15 Speaker 3 19 Kislev, or Yud Shvat, or 12 Tammuz; I don’t know which. There was a break between sichos, and people began to sing. During the singing, they could hear the Rebbe speaking with someone, and could make out the words. The announcer said that the Rebbe was speaking with Mr. Abrams, the attorney general of New York. The student stopped the tape and asked her, “Ma’am, do you have any connection to Mr. Abrams, the attorney general of New York?” She said, “Yes, he’s my husband.” So he told her, “I heard the Rebbe wish your husband that your daughter should have a complete recovery. Was your daughter—was your daughter ill?” She said, “No, she wasn’t ill, and my husband was puzzled too. Why did the Rebbe say, ‘Your daughter is ill—a complete recovery’? When he came home, he told me the Rebbe had said, ‘A complete recovery for your daughter.’” “Did something happen to your daughter?” he asked. She said, “No.” So they had decided it was just a passing incident, and surely the Rebbe had mistaken Mr. Abrams for someone else. Suddenly, as she was speaking with this student, her face turned red and she began to weep bitterly. She told him, “Now I understand what the Rebbe said. Do you know where I’m going? I’ll tell you. My daughter moved to Israel, and two or three weeks ago I got a call saying she had contracted that terrible disease, rachmana litzlan. I’m going to care for her during the last weeks of her life. Perhaps it’s Divine Providence that right now, on this plane, you’re playing the words ‘A complete recovery for your daughter’ for me. Perhaps that is the blessing the Rebbe gave my daughter twenty years in advance, and perhaps it will bring her recovery now and save her from this terrible disease.” I don’t know how the story ended, but I do know that this gave new life to

21:08 Speaker 3 this woman. She understood why the Rebbe had said “a complete recovery”—why the Rebbe had wished her husband a complete recovery for their daughter, looking twenty years ahead. And one more short story. I heard this from shluchim who returned from the Kinus Hashluchim. At the Kinus Hashluchim, they invited one of Chabad’s special speakers, Rabbi Yosef Jacobson, and this is what he told them. A few months earlier, before the Kinus Hashluchim, he went to visit a friend who had become a shliach in Florida two years before. His friend invited him for Shabbos. He thought: here’s a new shliach; surely his Chabad House is in some tiny room, and on Shabbos he has to go looking for a minyan, gathering people from outside. During the week he probably davens facing the western wall of his house because he has no minyan. That was what he innocently imagined. He arrived in town, and on Shabbos his friend said, “Come, let’s go to shul.” As they approached the Chabad House, he saw a beautiful four-story building and a huge shul. It was astonishing. He asked him, “Tell me, am I awake or dreaming? Is this real? You’ve barely been here two years. Where did all this come from?” His friend said, “Listen, I’m not going to tell you. With Hashem’s help, tomorrow the man behind it will come to shul, and he’ll tell you himself. I won’t tell you.” The next day, a Jew arrived. The shliach said, “There he is—that’s the man. Speak with him after davening.” After davening, Rabbi Jacobson sat down beside him and asked, “Tell me, my dear fellow Jew, what is your connection to this enormous, magnificent building? After all, this is a young shliach, barely twenty-three or twenty-four. He’s hardly had time to get the milk off his lips. How did this huge building come about so suddenly?” The man said, “To tell this story, I have to go back fifty years. Fifty years ago, I was

24:02 Speaker 3 a young man. It was 5713, during the Korean War, and I was drafted into the army. I wasn’t very religious, and I wasn’t traditional either. We lived then in Crown Heights, the Rebbe’s neighborhood. My father insisted that before I left for the Korean War, I go in to ask the Rebbe for a blessing. I went in, and the Rebbe told me several things to do throughout the war. He said, ‘If you do what I tell you and keep to it, I bless you, wish you well and promise you that you’ll come home safely.’ Three years passed,” the man told him. “No one else in my unit survived. They were all killed in the war. I was the only one left alive, though I was seriously wounded. Boruch Hashem, I recovered. I spent a few months in the hospital and regained my strength. I had a slight limp, but boruch Hashem. When I returned to New York, I decided to go in to the Rebbe and thank him. My father was a wealthy Jew, so as I was thanking the Rebbe, I took out my checkbook and started to write a check. The Rebbe said to me, ‘Don’t write me a check. I don’t need your check. A day will come when you’ll know whom to write the check to—someone doing my work. You’ll know whom to write it to.’” That’s what the man told him. He left the Rebbe thinking, “What a strange Rebbe. He doesn’t want money! What Rebbe doesn’t want money? But that’s the Lubavitcher Rebbe.” In short, little by little he succeeded in business and became enormously wealthy—and as his wealth grew, so did his stinginess. He gave charity to no one. It got to the point that the federation that collects donations struck him from its list. They asked him for money several times. He said, “Listen, I worked—I worked hard enough for this money. If they want money, let them go to work.”

26:39 Speaker 3 “Why are they bothering me? Let them work and succeed. Why should I give them anything? I don’t have to give them a thing.” Now, he said, this young shliach had arrived there some time earlier. He went around town and started talking with the wealthy people. They took a liking to him, and he said, “Do me a favor and give me a list of the wealthy people in town.” They gave him a list and told him how much each one gave. He asked, “Aren’t there any others?” They said, “Yes, there’s one wealthy man, but there’s no point going to him. Even we don’t keep him on the list. You’d be wasting your time.” So he decided—you know, a young man thinks differently from us older people—he decided to start with that very man. He made an appointment and went to see him. “I’m a shliach of the Lubavitcher Rebbe,” he told him. “I’ve come here to spread Judaism, to bring Yiddishkeit to people. I’d very much like you to help me.” “Help you?” The man looked at him, thought and thought, then took out his checkbook and wrote him a check. He put it in an envelope and said, “Here, take it.” In America, there’s a rule—I’ve learned this the hard way—that if someone gives you a check, don’t open it and start arguing with him. Go outside and see what you got. If you try to be clever, you’ll close the door on yourself. But then this wealthy man said to him, “Listen, nice young man, open the envelope and take a look.” He opened it, thinking there might be thirty-six dollars, fifty dollars, a hundred dollars. A million dollars, no more and no less. He stared at it. He thought the man was playing a joke on him. Here, if you’ll excuse the expression, a little fish comes to see a wealthy man, and the man tells him, “Listen, my dear friend, today I’m paying a debt I owe the Lubavitcher Rebbe from fifty years ago. Take that million dollars and build a big Chabad House. Choose

29:11 Speaker 3 the nicest building you see in town and turn it into a Chabad House. And that million dollars is only a down payment. With Hashem’s help, I’ll give you much more.” For fifty years, from 5713 to 5763, the Rebbe waited for this Jew; the Rebbe waited for this place. And here, he found a way to collect his debt—to build Jewish life and spread Judaism entirely beyond the natural order. Chassidim, we have the strength; we have the courage. We won’t be afraid to go lechatchila ariber. We will see to it that the Geulah comes. We will see to it that Judaism spreads, that Chassidus spreads, beyond the natural order. We will love one another as the Rebbe wants. As the Rebbe said in his first maamar, the unity of chassidim will take them everywhere and bring them to the Geulah. And it is all beyond the natural order, because today he is present in all the worlds more than during his lifetime. He gives us the strength, the courage and the power to do things we never dreamed of, things entirely beyond the natural order. And with Hashem’s help we will prevail, and with Hashem’s help the Rebbe will come very soon, down here below ten handbreadths, and he will redeem us.

31:10 Speaker 4 Thank you very much, and yasher koach to the rabbi of Arad and member of the Chabad Rabbinical Court, Rabbi Ben Tzion Lipsker, for connecting us with the Rebbe’s words and with the Rebbe’s deeds. As is known, when you tell a story, you form a connection with the Rebbe’s deeds. Yasher koach and thank you very much; may he long continue in his position. We still have to connect with the Rebbe’s thoughts, and we do that by singing a niggun. I’m honored to invite the Chassidic singer Reb Yoni Shlomo, of the Chabad chassidim community, accompanied by Reb Elor Welner’s orchestra, to begin with the joy of a mitzvah and with song: the Rebbe’s niggunim, the Niggun Haga’agu’im, Shamil, and afterward, “Hu Elokeinu.” Yoni and the orchestra, please.

36:01 Speaker 5 Hear, O Israel, Hashem is our G-d, Hashem is One. [unclear] There is none like You, [unclear], my G-d. There is none like our G-d, there is none like our G-d; there is nothing besides Him. There is none like You, [unclear], my G-d. There is none like You, [unclear], my G-d. G-d. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, and yasher koach. And the ruling of our Rebbeim is well known: the joy of a mitzvah and song nullifies all judgments and all accusations, both spiritual and physical. Thank you to “Shir”—the initials of Reb Yoni Shlomo. Thank you to “Or,” Reb Elor Welner—initials. Thank you, the El Or choir. I didn’t thank Or: alef, vav, reish, the initials of Reb Elor Welner. That’s what we said. So we have song and light; may we merit the great light very soon. We read on the cover of Kfar Chabad, in the Rebbe’s holy handwriting, what the Rebbe told a woman who felt weak in several respects. The Rebbe wrote to her: “She should look at a picture of my revered father-in-law, the Rebbe, when she feels her good resolve weakening, and remember that he, as a true shepherd of Israel, is looking at her at that moment, and this will help with the above.” Those words speak for themselves. Ladies and gentlemen, let us watch this holy footage: an excerpt from a farbrengen on Yud Shvat 5733, in which the Rebbe explains the meaning of this great and holy day, the passing of the tzaddik whose yahrzeit we mark. Holy footage presented by JEM. Please.

40:26 Speaker 6 The third of Tammuz is the anniversary of the Rebbe’s passing in 1994. Every year Jews around the world gather to mark this date. But how could we be inspired on this day? At a time of such sadness, can we truly be enthused? Certainly it is not an occasion for celebration. Every year on the yahrzeit of his father-in-law and Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak, the Rebbe would address a farbrengen. Hear a talk on the Frierdiker Rebbe’s thirty-third yahrzeit.

41:10 Speaker 7 It is understandable that when people gather in connection with a passing—and a passing is the very opposite of life—they feel the opposite of life to its fullest extent, with all the bitterness that it entails and brings a person. A passing is the opposite of joy, and that is why it is associated with various customs that do not express joy. Yet here we say that people gather in connection with a passing with the intention that, through gathering together, they should have even more strength, even more vitality and even more joy in carrying out their mission. The answer becomes clear at once from the one whose yahrzeit we mark, and is grounded in a number of teachings of our Sages in the Gemara and Midrashim, as well as passages in the Oral Torah. In the words of the Mishnah: “Everything that Hakadosh Boruch Hu created in His world, He created solely for His glory.” And in the words of the Gemara: “This too is for the good.” And in the words of the verse: “The advantage of light comes from darkness.” This does, of course, underscore that there is, seemingly, darkness, and that darkness is used to produce light. But on the contrary, precisely because it is truly darkness, it will bring about even greater vitality. From this it is understood that when one reflects that Hashem directs all matters, the passing of the one whose yahrzeit we mark was certainly an act of Hashem. At the same time, Hashem’s instruction stands in full force, with all its strength: there must be avodah

43:39 Speaker 7 There, with joy. And we must serve Hashem constantly, since we were created to serve the Shechinah. Every moment a person lives, he was created to serve the Shechinah. And since a person is an intelligent being, he understands that he was created to serve the Shechinah—and that Hashem says in the Torah, as mentioned, “Serve Hashem with joy.” But there seems to be a contradiction here, and I think we can understand it through reflection. When there is a histalkus, it is not, G-d forbid, that the soul ceases to exist. On the contrary, it is all the more understandable that with every person, and particularly with a leader of the Jewish people, the soul is eternal. And his leadership is a reality in this world. In the words of the Gemara: “Just as there he stands and serves, so here too he stands and serves.” A leader of the Jewish people, even after his histalkus, seeks ways to carry out his mission in the world—among them, by helping every person fulfill his own mission in the world: to make it a dwelling place and a garden for Hashem. And when the soul ascends Above, it does not mean that it is Above and has departed from below. On the contrary, as the Alter Rebbe brings in Igeres Hakodesh, it is even more present: “A tzaddik who has departed is found in all the worlds more than during his lifetime.” After the histalkus of a tzaddik, and particularly of a leader—and “Your people are all tzaddikim”—he is present even more than he was before, more than during his lifetime in a body, when his activity was subject to the

46:20 Speaker 7 limitations of the body, which can only be in certain places. That is not the case in the spiritual realm after histalkus. When Jews gather together and repeat a good teaching, the soul of the person whose yahrtzeit it is is present wherever they gather and review a word of his teachings. And most importantly, “the deed is the main thing”: they take from it a practical lesson about what to do, following his guidance, to go forward with goodness, uprightness, joy and holiness throughout the world, without regard for themselves, and

00:06 Speaker 1 When we speak of the passing of a person, his soul is primary and the body is secondary. The soul receives even greater strength, because it no longer has the limitations of the body that it had during his lifetime. But through a person's bond with him, there must still be connections [unclear]. And this means going about daily life according to his instructions. Yet these two things together seem, at first glance, to be opposites. Passing is an occasion of mourning, and yet it is called a hillula, a celebration. And this can bring joy—an even greater joy, like light that comes from darkness. And we should make use of that joy in serving Hashem with joy.

01:57 Speaker 2 Master of the Universe, Master of the Universe. Look upon the poor and have mercy. And [unclear].

04:20 Speaker 3 “You are our father; we are Your children.” Words of longing and yearning, ladies and gentlemen, that say it all. Thank you to Rabbi Yoni, thank you to Reb Elor[?], and thank you to the Chabad Chassidim Choir. Ladies and gentlemen, according to the program, the local rabbi, Rabbi Mordechai Ashkenazi, was to join us here and speak. But because he is in mourning for his mother and brother, he asked us to excuse his inability to join us, and we extend our condolences to him from here. Ladies and gentlemen, it is well known how deeply the painful issue of the integrity of the Land concerned the Rebbe, and how precious it was to him. On this day, when all the Rebbe’s Torah, deeds, and work shine openly and bring salvation throughout the Land and the world, I have the honor of inviting the person charged by the Rebbe with safeguarding the spiritual integrity of the Land, who works for it tirelessly with daily self-sacrifice. He is the chairman of Agudas Chassidei Chabad and Tzeirei Agudas Chabad in the Holy Land, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak HaKohen Aharonov. He will show us the close connection between the spiritual and physical integrity of our Holy Land, “a land which the eyes of Hashem your G-d are upon, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year.” Rabbi Aharonov, please. L’chaim, l’chaim. Honorable members of the Chabad Rabbinical Court, community rabbis, heads of yeshivos, mashpi’im, shluchim, directors of institutions, guests who have come from abroad, chairman of the Kfar Chabad committee, my friend Rabbi Leibowitz, and esteemed congregation: After all the heartwarming and stirring words we have heard, and will yet hear this evening, all that remains is to put them into actual practice. As the Rebbe emphasizes again and again, action is the main thing. As we stand today on Gimmel Tammuz 5765, each of us must ask himself: What does the Rebbe expect of me? What is my duty at this time as a chossid of the Rebbe? What is my duty at this time as someone connected to the Rebbe? We find ourselves

09:22 Speaker 3 in a very difficult period for the Jewish people. It is a time of distress for Yaakov. The heart of every one of us is torn when we hear the calls and preparations to expel some ten thousand Jews, who have shown such self-sacrifice, from their homes, and to hand these flourishing communities over to terrorists, who will see it as a tremendous achievement and a great victory for terrorism. The mind cannot comprehend how a wise and understanding people can make such a terrible mistake after seeing the disaster brought upon us by the Oslo Accords and those that followed. This is in addition to the grave danger to human life that this move could bring upon all the people living in the Land of Israel, as the Rebbe warned. We see with our own eyes the rift this move is creating among the people. Precisely when the Jewish people need unity in the face of dangers and threats from outside, enormous internal tensions and frustrations are arising, raising barriers between Jews and spilling over in undesirable directions. It is precisely at this difficult time that each of us feels a deep longing for the Rebbe, a genuine desire to hear the Rebbe’s voice and his instructions: What must we do now? And now we can only rely on the instructions we received from the Rebbe. First and foremost, the Rebbe established for us the framework that would determine the course and leadership of the Chabad movement in our Holy Land. In these explicit words, which the Rebbe wrote in his own holy handwriting: “The authority and direction of the affairs of Anash, may they live, in the Holy Land are in the hands of Agudas Chassidei Chabad, headed by the Chabad Rabbinical Committee as halachic authorities with the authority of the Torah.” Any sensible person understands that not every initiative someone proposes is appropriate for Chabad chassidim. Not every action, even if it is good and important, should bear Chabad’s stamp. Not every declaration or statement can be made by a person whom the public sees as representing Chabad and the Rebbe. Therefore, although the heart of each

12:38 Speaker 3 of us is seething, and we all feel a powerful urge to act with boundless self-sacrifice to annul this terrible decree, there is no doubt that the first duty the Rebbe placed upon us is for the authority and direction of Anash to follow the call of the authorized bodies, especially in a matter so important and sensitive. The Chabad Rabbinical Committee has stated in the clearest terms that Chabad must protest and raise its voice against the disastrous disengagement plan, and take part in lawful protests organized by the official bodies leading the struggle against this dangerous plan. Every Chabad chossid has a duty to take part in these protests, strengthen them, and give them greater force and impact—but in keeping with the Rebbe’s approach and instructions. That means working to protest and explain, but under no circumstances being drawn into a conflict between brothers or, G-d forbid, confronting police officers and soldiers. At the call of the Chabad Rabbinical Committee, the Headquarters for the Peace of the People and the Land has published this new informational leaflet, distributed here this evening, which clearly presents the Rebbe’s view of the grave danger posed by the process of withdrawal and concessions. We must distribute the leaflet to the masses of the Jewish people to amplify the voice of protest and create a clear majority among the people against the plan. We will act and protest against this abhorrent plan, but in Chabad’s way: with Ahavas Yisroel and an effort to awaken the Jewish spark hidden deep in every Jew’s heart. We will go out to the people and explain the great danger, so that opposition—opposition to the plan of uprooting and expulsion—will encompass as many Jews as possible. And we will pray to Hashem that these actions become a vessel for blessing, through which Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s miracle will come and save us all from this disastrous plan. Ladies and gentlemen, on this very day, Gimmel Tammuz 5742, the Rebbe delivered a special sicha on the integrity of the Land, in which he spoke clearly about what each of us can do

15:52 Speaker 3 on this issue. The Rebbe called on everyone to strengthen their Torah study, prayer, and tzedakah, which certainly strengthen the Jewish people and the Land of Israel. Therefore, alongside protesting and making the Rebbe’s holy view on the integrity of the Land heard, now is the time to intensify our work in the tefillin campaign, the mezuzah campaign, Shabbos candle-lighting, and the other mitzvah campaigns that give the Jewish people spiritual strength, which in turn gives them greater strength in material matters as well. So let us all, ladies and gentlemen, make good resolutions on this great and holy day: to do more in every area of work the Rebbe asks of us. In the merit of these good resolutions, may Hakadosh Boruch Hu send us Moshiach Tzidkeinu immediately, and may we see the Rebbe here, below ten handbreadths, with the true and complete Geulah. Thank you—excuse me. Thank you and yasher koach to the chairman of Agudas Chassidei Chabad and Tzeirei Agudas Chabad, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak HaKohen Aharonov. May Hashem give him added strength to continue carrying out the Rebbe’s instructions with the greatest energy and momentum. May he lead for many years in health and joy. My brothers and friends, the saying of the Tzemach Tzedek is well known; the Rebbe repeated it many times at farbrengens and on other occasions: “Tracht gut, vet zain gut”—think good, and it will be good. This is the great foundation of every Jew’s faith and trust, and of every chossid’s in particular. This faith—“Tracht gut, vet zain gut”—is the key to victory. How do we put it into practice on the ground? We will now hear about that and more from our guest, who serves with distinction as the rabbi of Gush Katif and Gaza, the esteemed Rabbi Yigal Kaminetsky shlita. Please.

19:15 Speaker 4 With the permission of all the rabbis and Torah scholars, shlita, each according to his standing and honor: my teachers and friends, dear and holy congregation. We are at a fateful moment for the Jewish people. Let each of us know that those of us on the front line are not fighting for our own homes. We are fighting for everything precious and holy to the Jewish people. This struggle is as it says in Tehillim: “The kings of the earth take their stand, and the rulers conspire together against Hashem and against His anointed one: ‘Let us break their bonds asunder, let us break their bonds asunder.’” The disengagement is directed against Hashem and His anointed one, no less. There is a desire here to destroy, uproot and dismantle entire communities, entire regions, entire settlements devoted to Torah, faith, settling the land, serving Hashem, self-sacrifice, mutual aid and bringing merit to the many. The struggle is over everything, and sadly, there is nothing good behind this plan. It is impossible to understand what is happening. We sat with all the heads of the army and security services and with the politicians, and we asked them: What does this accomplish? We all know it will only worsen the security problems. It will bring peace to no one and may, G-d forbid, lead us into security dangers that Hashem should protect us from. For those who do not know, public buildings within a seven-kilometer radius of Gush Katif are already being fortified. Warning systems are already being prepared for Ashkelon and Ashdod. And you ask: What is all this for? They say, “Let’s solve the demographic problems.” But we already left all the cities in Gaza under the Oslo Accords. We are not in Gaza City, Rafah, Deir al-Balah or Khan Yunis. So you ask: What is going on? And we should all know that, G-d forbid, what happened in Lebanon will pale beside what could happen here. In Lebanon we fought against just five hundred Hezbollah members; here we will face a terror state. The overwhelming majority of the people there are involved in terrorism. So now is not the time to stay shut up at home.

23:28 Speaker 4 It is unthinkable for a Jew to stay at home at a time like this. We must cry out, sound the alarm and do everything we can. We need to try to rouse the public, and baruch Hashem, the public is becoming more and more aware. We just need to see how to bring hundreds of thousands into the streets, how to create a grassroots protest, so that everyone knows the overwhelming majority of the Jewish people oppose this. Every person must do whatever he can: get up tomorrow morning and ask, “What am I doing to prevent this danger?” I only want to tell you that what I am asking of you is a tiny fraction of what we in Gush Katif are doing. We know that we are commanded, and we say every day, “You shall love Hashem your G-d with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your might.” My teachers and friends, dear and holy congregation, I want to tell you that the residents of Gush Katif live all of this every day, every hour. “You shall love Hashem your G-d with all your heart”—with both your inclinations, the good inclination and the evil inclination. In other words, we have to turn the evil inclination toward good. Anyone who comes to Gush Katif will see how an area of shifting sands, a desert, a parched and desolate place where nothing could grow, has become a flowering garden, a paradise. You can see Hashem’s blessing there with your own eyes: sand growing trees, flowers and grass. And if you have a chance to walk through the greenhouses, you will see tomato plants growing and trained to stretch for thirteen, fourteen and fifteen meters. This is an area of ordinary Jews from every background and every walk of life. But baruch Hashem, it is an area that has grown and developed together. There is not one Jew living in Gush Katif who has not grown. Wherever he started, he came, he grew, he connected, and baruch Hashem, we merited to build an area

26:38 Speaker 4 of love of Torah and fear of Heaven, of acts of kindness and self-sacrifice, of settling the Land of Israel and bringing merit to the many, and many other good things. So we have fulfilled “with all your heart.” “With all your soul”—even if He takes your life. Sadly, we have fulfilled that in a very real way. Gush Katif has been, and still is, a defensive wall against the terrorism that threatens the State of Israel. The public should know: Gush Katif has been at war for almost eighteen years, since what they called the First Intifada. Gush Katif has endured tens of thousands of hostile attacks, whether anti-tank missiles, Qassam rockets, mortar shells, roadside bombs or small-arms fire. And military figures, various generals, have already said that without the settlements in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, we do not know where the State of Israel would be today, had all that firepower been directed, G-d forbid, at Sderot, Netivot, Ofakim, Ashkelon and so on. So sadly, we have already fulfilled “with all your soul.” I say “sadly,” but I saw something remarkable in the Rebbe’s commentary on Pirkei Avos. He cites the Maggid Meisharim, who appeared to Rabbi Yosef Karo in a dream and told him: “You should have merited to be burned at the stake, but because you sinned in one matter, you will not be burned at the stake.” That is what the Maggid Meisharim says. The Rebbe says there: Look at the power of self-sacrifice. If Rabbi Yosef Karo had been burned at the stake, the Jewish people would have lost more than four hundred years of studying the Shulchan Aruch, and the tremendous Torah study of the entire Jewish people that came from it. Yet he tells him, “You should have merited to be burned at the stake.” That shows us the power of self-sacrifice. And today, beyond all that, we face “with all your might”—with all your possessions. A Jew comes to me today and says: “Rabbi, I have equipment here worth two million shekels. There’s a warehouse, a factory, machinery, greenhouses. I can dismantle it all. If I dismantle it

29:48 Speaker 4 today—if I start dismantling it today—I’ll recover the two million shekels. But if I keep fighting, because starting to dismantle it now would weaken the struggle, I’ll lose two million shekels. Rabbi, what should I do?” Understand the self-sacrifice these people are showing. I tell you this so we all know that we are called upon to connect ourselves to that self-sacrifice. In the end, self-sacrifice can break through worlds. The Midrash, the Tosefta, says: Why did Yehudah merit kingship? When the Jewish people stood at the water, the tribes were shouting at one another, each saying, “You jump in!” Until finally Nachshon ben Aminadav entered and split the sea. And it is interesting: before that, Hakadosh Boruch Hu says to Moshe Rabbeinu, “Why do you cry out to Me? Speak to the Children of Israel, and let them journey.” What does that mean? The Torah tells us that Pharaoh said, “They are confused in the land; the wilderness has closed in on them.” The Jewish people were in terrible trouble: wilderness beside them, sea ahead of them, Egyptians behind them. What else can you do at a time like that but cry out? So why does Hashem say to Moshe, “Why do you cry out to Me? Speak to the Children of Israel, and let them journey”? Hashem is saying: There is a time for prayer, a time to cry out, but there is also a time for self-sacrifice. Nachshon ben Aminadav jumps into the water, and through his self-sacrifice he splits the waters. He splits the sea. Self-sacrifice itself has the power to bring about miracles and wonders. That is its power. After all, we know that every day in our prayers we say, “Give strength to G-d,” so to speak. What does that mean? Are we giving strength to Hashem? And in the Ashkenazic prayer text we say, “Rock of Israel, arise”—not “arise to Israel’s aid,” but “arise with Israel’s aid.” As it were, Hakadosh Boruch Hu rises with Israel’s help. Hakadosh Boruch Hu says: I gave you the power to set Me in motion. Prayer serves a need Above. Give

32:29 Speaker 4 Give strength to G-d. When you show mesirus nefesh and set Me in motion, you bring about the miracles. We believe with complete faith that the mesirus nefesh of ordinary Jews—the residents of Gush Katif—will ultimately be capable of bringing about the change. But that does not exempt anyone else. No Jew, wherever he may be, can sleep peacefully knowing, G-d forbid, the magnitude of the danger and the magnitude of this terrible destruction. So from here I call on everyone, on Chabad chassidim, for whom Eretz Yisroel and the dangers involved in giving it away are matters close to the heart. These are things the Rebbe dealt with all the time. Lend a hand, take action and do something. And I believe with complete faith, as I said before, that today we have the power to bring about the change. I just want to conclude. Megillas Esther says, “And Mordechai would walk about to learn how Esther was faring and what would be done with her.” Rashi cites a Midrash there. The Midrash says that two tzaddikim knew they were destined to bring salvation to the Jewish people: King David, and Mordechai the Jew together with Esther. When David goes to fight Goliath—before he was king—Shaul says to him: Why are you coming to fight Goliath? You’re a youth; you’re so small, and he’s so big. It isn’t realistic. How do you expect to fight him? David says to Shaul: Let me tell you a story. Once I was tending sheep, and a lion and a bear came and seized a lamb from the flock. I ran after it and rescued the lamb from its mouth. It tried to kill me, but I grabbed it by the beard and killed it. David says to King Shaul: Why did Hakadosh Boruch Hu bring this trial upon me? Why did Hakadosh Boruch Hu arrange for this miracle to happen to me? He says to him: If He wanted to kill me, why am I alive? And if He wants me to live, why did He bring me the lion and the

35:11 Speaker 4 bear? He tells him: Was it not for the salvation of the Jewish people? Through those bears and lions, Hakadosh Boruch Hu wanted to reveal tremendous strengths in me that had been hidden and held back, and those strengths came from potential into action. Those strengths were meant to bring about miracles. The proof is that I killed the lion and the bear. So David says to Shaul: Everything that happened to me was for the salvation of the Jewish people. That is why I tell you: I will defeat him. We in Gush Katif, too, have already faced many lions and bears, very difficult challenges. But everything we have been through, all the miracles and wonders—was it not for the salvation of the Jewish people? And I just want to conclude. When David comes before Goliath, he says to him: “You come to me with sword, spear and javelin, but I come to you in the name of Hashem of Hosts, the G-d of the armies of Israel, whom you have taunted.” He tells him: I come in Hashem’s name! When I come in Hashem’s name to confront this terrible desecration of His name, when I take this stand not for myself personally but to sanctify the name of Heaven—that we are in Gush Katif not for ourselves, but so that, G-d forbid, the name of the great, mighty and awesome One should not be desecrated, and so that the name of Heaven should be sanctified—we know that, with Hashem’s help, we will act and succeed. But as I said, we need your help. And may what the Midrash says be fulfilled for everyone who helps and takes action: A heavenly voice resounds through the mountains and says, “Whoever worked with G-d, let him come and receive his reward.” Amen, may it be His will. Great strength.

37:10 Speaker 5 Thank you, and yasher koach to the rabbi of Gush Katif and Gaza, Rabbi Yigal Kaminetsky. In the spirit of faith and trust in Hashem with which Rabbi Kaminetsky concluded, we wish him and all the residents of Gush Katif—and ourselves, the entire Jewish people—that, as his name suggests, we merit to see the promise fulfilled: He will redeem us soon with the complete and true Geulah. There will be no disengagement, G-d forbid—there will only be connection and attachment, together with welcoming our righteous Moshiach very soon. Ladies and gentlemen, as we said, one of the matters to which the Rebbe devoted tremendous inner strength was the issue we have just heard about: the integrity of Eretz Yisroel and the security of its residents. The Rebbe began addressing it immediately after the Six-Day War, and continued to fight for it—and continues to fight for it to this day. We are pleased to welcome the man whom the Rebbe appointed as his personal shliach for matters concerning the integrity of Eretz Yisroel, a man of kindness and great accomplishment, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok Gutnick shlita. Rabbi Gutnick’s mesirus nefesh in the struggle for the integrity of Eretz Yisroel, guided by the personal messages he merited to receive from the Rebbe, is well known. It is my honor to invite the Rebbe’s shliach for the integrity of Eretz Yisroel, our guest Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok Gutnick. Please.

39:38 Speaker 6 Esteemed rabbis. Esteemed holy gathering. My friend, chairman of Agudas Chassidei Chabad and Tzeirei Agudas Chabad, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok HaKohen Aharonov; representatives of Gush Katif. This day, Gimmel Tammuz, here in the Holy Land, in Kfar Chabad, near the home of the Rebbe, the leader of our generation—770—is the most auspicious and exalted day to carry out the Rebbe’s wishes and his instruction to us. All of us, as one person with one heart, cry out in a loud voice and with a broken, contrite heart: Ad mosai? How much longer? How much longer will the Jewish people remain in such a strange exile, without our king, Moshiach, at our head? How much longer before the leaders of the people and the government ministers understand that their concessions, whether through action or inaction, endanger our people, our land and the entire world? How much longer will there be people who dare to act against the clear instructions and the established path the Rebbe, the leader of our generation, set for us? How much longer will we sit with folded arms and a weakened spirit while a dreadful plan takes shape before our eyes—a plan for Jews to expel Jews? How much longer will we remain silent in the face of the fact that, rachmana litzlan, Jews are asking, demanding and pleading with the American government to use its power and influence to force other Jews and Hashem’s army to destroy entire communities and forcibly expel other Jews from their homes, their fields, their life’s work, their shuls, Talmud Torahs and yeshivos—and even to the most appalling depth, rachmana litzlan, to violate the dignity of those who were killed al kiddush Hashem and are buried in the cemetery in Gush Katif? How much longer—how much longer will we stand by and do nothing? That is, remain passive. This is in the face of the leadership in the Holy Land openly announcing its clear intention to continue talking about and proposing, on every hilltop and under every leafy tree, the modern-day idolatry of establishing a Palestinian state—a Palestinian state, rachmana litzlan. It shall never happen. How much longer will this bad government, weak in its confused thinking, continue to rule over

44:13 Speaker 6 the people living in Zion and lead the entire people into the depths, G-d forbid, rachmana litzlan? Again: How much longer before we cry out with all the powers of our souls? How much longer, in the face of the indescribable suffering and the many lives lost, rachmana litzlan, toward which this government is leading the entire people with eyes wide open, out of personal interests, bribes, a desire for power and the like? The time has indeed come for this government—which is so afraid of the public’s response and of free elections, a government that acts bombastically against its own instincts while Israel is on the verge of bringing about its own downfall, and that simply thumbs its nose at the people—to go home. This day, Gimmel Tammuz, is an auspicious time for true unity among us, and from us a great light and great tidings will go forth: that we all unite around the banner of the integrity of Eretz Yisroel. That unity will then be stronger than our previous differences of opinion. On this day, true unity is the most exalted and most welcome gift we can give, here and now, to our holy Rebbe, the leader of our generation. This is not only about unity among ourselves, but about unity throughout the world. And to achieve—to achieve unity among the entire people, we must begin with unity on the right. The foundation of unity on the right is what our Rebbe, the leader of our generation, established, and also wrote to me in 5750, and said more than 101 times. This is what he wrote in his holy words

00:06 Speaker 1 The initiative and the scheme of the disengagement plan, G-d forbid—woe to us if it comes to pass—... that the Jewish people agree to the establishment of a Palestinian state. In this outrage, within a few short weeks they are about to expel nine thousand five hundred people, may their numbers increase, from Gush Katif, and many more Jews from several communities in Shomron, G-d forbid—woe to us if it comes to pass. This thing, incomprehensible even to those in this government who are like children taken captive by their own inclinations, cannot, cannot pass in silence. It is an outrage many times over: all the resources of the Holy Land are now being directed toward expelling Jews solely because they are Jews. They would not think of doing such a thing to Arabs, only to Jews. Even after Hamas announces officially, clearly and in detail to the entire world that immediately after the so-called disengagement, not only will they dance on the rooftops in Gush Katif, celebrating terrorism’s victory over the Jews again and again, but they will also rain more Kassam rockets onto the roofs of the homes of the expelled Jews throughout the country. In this situation, there is no choice and no alternative but to take effective, meaningful action. Something new. I came here to our Holy Land a few days before Gimmel Tammuz, and now, on Gimmel Tammuz, I am announcing that there is a new campaign. All the details will be seen and heard in the coming days, with Hashem’s help. We hope that before long, the message of the Rebbe, the leader of our generation, on the integrity of the Land will be seen, seen and heard effectively throughout the Holy Land and the world. This message will be accompanied by practical means that offer a possibility of changing the present situation, and everyone here must also bring this message to the entire people, each man and woman in their own way. May the unity among us and among our people, and the announcement on Gimmel Tammuz that we are rising to launch a new campaign, bring nachas to our holy Rebbe, the leader of our generation. And may we merit, immediately, the true, true Geulah with the coming of our righteous Moshiach.

04:20 Speaker 1 Our king, our Moshiach, and our leader, immediately! Thank you, and yasher koach, to the Rebbe’s shliach for matters concerning the integrity of Eretz Yisroel, a man of kindness and great accomplishments, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Gutnick. Thank you, and yasher koach. And let us wish him that all this struggle—that we will have no need for any of these struggles. The sound of the shofar will yet be heard this evening here, at this great and wonderful gathering of unity, through the power of that unity and the power of joy, which nullifies all harsh judgments and accusations. How fortunate we are, how good is our portion. Please.

06:30 Speaker 8 And how pleasant is our lot.

06:35 Speaker 2 And how beautiful.

06:36 Speaker 8 And how beautiful is our heritage.

06:48 Speaker 2 [unclear]. Oh, how fortunate we are.

07:17 Speaker 8 How good is our portion.

07:20 Speaker 2 And how pleasant.

07:23 Speaker 8 And how pleasant is our lot.

07:26 Speaker 2 And how beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful is our heritage.

07:37 Speaker 9 And with joy—how fortunate we are. And with this joy, we welcome the Rishon LeZion and Chief Rabbi of Israel, the great scholar Rabbi Shlomo Amar shlita. Welcome in the name of Hashem. How fortunate we are, and how good is our portion.

08:05 Speaker 2 Ah-ha, tra-ra ay ya, tra-ra ay ya ay ya, tra-ra ay ya ay ya ya ya, tra-ra ay ya, hey, ay ya ay ya ay ya ay ya ay ya ay ya ay ya ay ya ay ya ay ya. Hey, tra-ra ay ya ay ya ay ya ay ya ay ya ay ya ay ya ay ya ay ya ay ya. How fortunate we are, how good is our portion, how pleasant is our lot, and how beautiful is our heritage. How fortunate we are, how good is our portion, how pleasant is our lot, and how beautiful is our heritage. How fortunate we are, how good is our portion. How fortunate, how fortunate, how fortunate we are—how good is our portion. How fortunate, how fortunate we are—how good is our portion. How fortunate, how fortunate, how fortunate we are—how good is our portion; how fortunate, how fortunate we are—how good is our portion. And how pleasant is our lot, and how beautiful is our heritage. And how beautiful is our heritage. Today is my Independence Day. [unclear], and how beautiful, beautiful, [unclear].

16:16 Speaker 10 Devise a plan and it will be thwarted; speak a word and it will not stand. Devise a plan and it will be thwarted; speak a word and it will not stand, for G-d is with us. Devise a plan and it will be thwarted; speak a word and it will not stand. For G-d is with us. Devise a plan and it will be thwarted. Speak a word and it will not stand. Oy, oy, oy. Devise a plan and it will be thwarted.

17:09 Speaker 11 Oy, oy, oy.

17:09 Speaker 10 Speak a word and it will not stand.

17:11 Speaker 11 Oy, oy, oy.

17:12 Speaker 10 Devise a plan and it will be thwarted; speak a word and it will not stand, for G-d is with us. Devise a plan and it will be thwarted; speak a word and it will not stand, for G-d is with us.

17:33 Speaker 12 A round of applause for Noach Werner.

17:42 Speaker 13 Devise a plan and it will be thwarted; speak a word and it will not stand, for G-d is with us. Thank you, Reb Yoni; thank you to Reb Noach Werner’s orchestra. Thank you to the orchestra of—to the Chabad chassidim’s choir. Ladies and gentlemen, yesterday, during the Torah reading, on the verse “Israel sent messengers,” the Midrash asks, and Rashi quotes it there: Why does it say “Israel sent messengers” in one place, while elsewhere it says “Moshe sent”? The Midrash says: This teaches you that Moshe is Israel and Israel is Moshe. It tells you that the leader of the generation is the entire generation, for the leader is everything. To understand the meaning of the Midrash, to understand what it means that “the leader is everything,” I ask—and am honored—to invite the Rishon LeZion and Chief Rabbi of Israel, the great scholar Rabbi Shlomo Amar shlita, a devoted disciple of the leader and shepherd—the leader is everything—to address this holy gathering. Rabbi, please.

19:31 Speaker 14 With the permission of my teachers and esteemed colleagues, the distinguished rabbis seated on the dais, and this entire holy gathering: may Hashem grant you life, amen, may it be His will. This is the day Hashem has made, a great and holy day, a day of hilula, of which it is said, “on the day of his wedding, on the day of the joy of his heart.” Great is the day on which an awakening from below brings an awakening from above in the most extraordinary way, when [unclear] from the graves and draw down great abundance into the world. On the day of the hilula of tzaddikim, and all the more so on the day of the hilula of the leader of the generation—may his merit protect us and all Israel, amen, may it be His will. When we contemplate the greatness of this great man, a giant among giants who stood head and shoulders above all the people, above all their great men and leaders; when we contemplate his awe-inspiring teachings, his deeds, his conduct in every one of his ways—in each of them we see the extraordinary greatness of this great man. These are things beyond our grasp and far too deep for our understanding. “Deep, deep—who can fathom it?” Through his knowledge, depths were split open: depths of chochmah, binah and daas, depths whose profundity no person can fathom or fully comprehend. Depths that embraced the ends of the earth: “No secret was hidden from him.” And this can be seen even in the Torah insights from the Rebbe’s sichos that were distributed in shuls and study halls, which were also addressed to the wider public. Anyone who studies them, anyone privileged to glimpse even a little of what lies within, sees things that an ordinary person could never reach or even begin to approach. But with his immense greatness and extraordinary vision, he looked into such depths that a person stands astonished before his greatness. And not only at the vast scope of his exceptional mastery, but at the great depth and astonishing acuity that accompanied it. Equally, when we consider the scope and magnitude of his activities—how they were heard of and carried out, how far they reached, and how far their influence extended—it is something difficult to

23:12 Speaker 14 to imagine an example or comparison for these things. And this went on for decades upon decades. His strength did not fail and his eyes did not dim; he remained in full strength and vigor and continued those activities. And the way he looked at people—that special, fatherly, compassionate way he looked at all of the Jewish people, great and small, without exception, without change and without distinction. No breach, no one left out, no difference between one person and another, whether from this camp or another. That is something to contemplate in its own right for many years to come. From Heaven, each generation is given the leaders it needs. For this unique generation, the generation of ikvesa deMeshicha, some of the greatest Amoraim said, “Let him come, but let me not see him.” When we used to read that Gemara, we could not understand it. Could even the simplest person say, “Let him come, but let me not see him”? Could such a thing be? Yet some of the greatest Amoraim said it. But when we see what this generation is going through, when we see the terrible concealment—we always thought we had already reached its peak, and then there is concealment upon concealment. “For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and a thick cloud the nations.” “My dove in the clefts of the rock, in the hidden places of the steep ascent.” What hidden places? What darkness? What confusion is this generation in? And when we see, along with that, the magnitude and terrible scope of its troubles, we understand what our Sages saw in their mind’s eye. With their ruach hakodesh, they saw these things as though they were living among us. They saw how hard it would be to bear, to the point that they said, “Let him come, but let me not see him.” In such a difficult generation, amid such terrible birth pangs and suffering, in such circumstances, Hakadosh Boruch Hu sent before us, to sustain us, a man with spirit in him, a man able to relate to the spirit of each person, a man who knew how to encourage and strengthen broken and downtrodden spirits in every situation and raise them to the greatest heights. A man who knew how to draw an entire generation after him, great and small; a man who knew how to raise them to levels they had never known. This is

26:12 Speaker 14 one of the wondrous ways of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, blessed be His name, Who knows how to provide for every generation. And in this generation, when darkness exceeds light, to recognize Hashem, to reveal the light of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, to reveal His ways—as in “Upon you Hashem shall shine, and His glory shall be seen upon you”—amid all this terrible darkness, is no simple thing. For that, we needed the great luminary to rule the day, to give such a special light even within this terrible darkness. It is hard to get there without a leader whom one can feel and understand. The Gemara says that Shimon HaAmsoni would expound every instance of the word es in the Torah, until he reached “Es Hashem your G-d you shall fear.” There he stopped, afraid to expound it, and said, “Just as I receive reward for expounding, so I receive reward for refraining.” He abandoned his method of expounding every es, until Rabbi Akiva came and said that “Es Hashem your G-d you shall fear” includes Torah scholars. If so, wherever es is said—“And you shall love es Hashem your G-d”—it includes Torah scholars alongside Hashem. The question arises: Of course, if Rabbi Akiva expounded it, G-d forbid that we should challenge him. But we do need to understand. Hakadosh Boruch Hu, blessed be His name, wants to teach us love and fear of Hashem. Is Hashem’s hand too short? Are there no other places to teach us love and fear of Hashem? Must this teaching be squeezed between the words, by expounding es—a word that even Shimon HaAmsoni, one of the greatest Tannaim, was afraid to expound, and so abandoned that interpretation? No doubt Rabbi Akiva, with his broad and great understanding, could expound it. But why must the Torah teach us this specifically here? Why not state it plainly elsewhere? Why in such a constrained and difficult way? I thought, with Heaven’s help, that the point here is not to teach us to honor a Torah scholar. That can be learned in many places. Nor is it teaching us to love

28:45 Speaker 14 a Torah scholar or to fear him. It really is speaking about love and fear of Hashem; it is Hashem’s honor that is at stake here. But the Torah comes to teach something else. How do we come to love Hashem? How do we come to fear Hashem? This is something wondrous, beyond anything we can grasp. How can we understand something we cannot grasp, not in thought and not by any other means? How can we love Him? How can we fear Him? The Torah says: If you want to come to love Hashem, you must begin with the es in “And you shall love es Hashem your G-d.” Do you want to fear Hashem? You must begin with the es that includes the Torah scholar. A person cannot come to fear and love Hashem unless he fears and loves the sage, the leader of the generation. That is the path, the ladder that raises him to love and fear of Hashem. When a person loves the sage and stands in awe of him, he gradually begins to reflect: What is it about this sage that I love and admire so much? Why is my admiration so great? Little by little, it leads him to think: It is because this sage is a servant of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Because he loves Hashem, because he toils in His Torah, because he is wholly attached to Hashem. From this he learns, all the more so—immeasurably more so—to love and fear Hashem. The admiration and great love of the entire people, from one end of the world to the other, for the Rebbe, of blessed memory, teaches us love and fear of Hashem. There is no greater lesson in how to attain closeness to Hashem, blessed be He, how to come to love Hashem, how to understand and grasp something of love and fear of Hashem, than the attachment a person feels to the leader of the generation. That attachment leads him, guides him, lifts him, raises him, until he reaches the greatest heights of love for Hashem and truly cleaves to Him with complete devotion. And the Gemara asks, “‘And cleave to Him’? But Hashem your G-d is a consuming fire.” How

31:12 Speaker 14 can a person cleave to Him? Rather, when a person cleaves to the Torah and to Torah scholars, he merits to cleave to the Shechinah. In this way he can achieve his goal. And we see that to this very day, the Rebbe’s influence continues to spread everywhere. Baruch Hashem, wherever we go, in Israel and abroad, we find his faithful students drawing from their teacher’s Torah and giving the flocks to drink, quenching the thirsty, giving life to downtrodden souls and lifting them up. We pray to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, blessed be His name, that the Rebbe’s merit will stand for us. Just as he fought tirelessly all his life to bring the salvation of the Jewish people closer, to bring their Geulah and reveal the time of Moshiach, so too now he will not rest or be still. As the teacher and guide of all the Jewish people, he will make a great commotion. He will stand before the Throne of Glory and give no rest until Hakadosh Boruch Hu rises from the throne of judgment and sits upon the throne of mercy, brings our salvation near with deliverance and compassion, and shows grace, pity and mercy to our people and to the inheritance of our forefathers. For Hashem will not forsake His people, nor abandon His inheritance. May we merit to see, with our own eyes, Hashem’s return to Zion, speedily in our days. Amen and amen.

33:12 Speaker 15 Yasher koach, thank you very much, and our heartfelt appreciation to the Rishon LeTzion and Chief Rabbi of Israel, the great gaon Rabbi Shlomo Amar shlita, for the wonderful words we have heard. May he long serve in his position in health and joy. And we chassidim are called upon, in light of the Rabbi’s words, to ask ourselves, “When will my deeds reach the deeds of my forefathers?”—the deeds of the Rebbe. What does “reach” mean? At least let them touch, in the sense of making contact. May we have some contact with the Rebbe’s directives, with putting them into practice. And we bid our honored guest, the Chief Rabbi and Rishon LeTzion Rabbi Shlomo Amar, farewell with the blessing, “Go in peace.” Thank you, and yasher koach. Ladies and gentlemen, it has already been mentioned here this evening that the Rebbe’s teachings, deeds and work shine openly today and bring salvation throughout the land. We will now watch a small part of his teachings, deeds and work in a premiere screening of holy footage from JEM, a presentation prepared especially for this event: people’s accounts of the Rebbe’s teachings, deeds and work, from the time he went to cheder until his marriage. A small part of the “holy footage,” please.

34:59 Speaker 3 Yonah Kesse grew up in Dnepropetrovsk during the years the Rebbe was there. He was a writer who later became a member of the Knesset in Israel.

35:09 Speaker 4 The home was a distinctly Chassidic home. His father was a great Torah scholar, the town rabbi, and he had an influence on a large circle of Jews. And we mustn’t forget that this was already the Bolshevik period, when the persecution of religion was beginning. Yet he carried out his duties as rabbi proudly and courageously. I witnessed his tremendous diligence in Torah study. I always found him learning. He had never studied in a yeshiva, only with a tutor. I also remember that even then he was knowledgeable in physics and mathematics. Although he was self-taught, students and even professors would come to consult him about physics and mathematics. Even then, he apparently combined tremendous knowledge of Chassidus with knowledge of what is called secular science. I remember him as a very modest, unassuming man. What I remember of his whole being is Torah.

36:47 Speaker 5 In 1927, the Frierdiker Rebbe was arrested in Leningrad for “counterrevolutionary activity”—spreading Yiddishkeit. A short time later, Rabbi Menachem Mendel himself had to go into hiding. Shear Yashuv Cohen is the chief rabbi of Haifa, Israel.

37:10 Speaker 6 Luga is a small city near Leningrad, today Saint Petersburg, that used to be a kind of resort town. My late grandfather, my mother’s father, Rabbi Menachem Chetkin [?], z"l, was the rabbi of Luga. For some reason, the local Communists admired the rabbi. It wasn’t because he was such a tzaddik—though he was—or such a Torah scholar. What they liked was that he was poor, not rich. Because the small town had limited resources, he had to work in addition to earning his small salary as rabbi. He was a bookbinder, and in their minds that was something positive: a rabbi who works, you know. And as I said, my late grandmother had a cow. She had kosher milk, and people would come there for a dacha—a holiday in the country, as they call it in Russian. The first time I had the privilege of being in yechidus with the Rebbe, he told me that when he was already a

40:15 Speaker 7 to Poland. When I came to 770 for the Megillah reading with the late president of Israel, President Shazar, the Rebbe came out to welcome us. The late president asked the Rebbe, “Do you know this young man?” It was thirty-five years ago; I was still a young man. And the Rebbe said, “Of course, of course. We’re old, good friends.” Old, good friends—not because I go back so far, but because of my grandfather, I’m sure. That was why I had been to Lubavitch, to 770, many times: for yechidus, for farbrengens on 19 Kislev, and on other occasions. I always received special attention from the Rebbe. The town where I was born was a small town called Dokshitz. Dokshitz was what you might call a Chassidic stronghold, a small town with perhaps fewer than two thousand Jews. It had five or six synagogues. All but one were Chassidic synagogues; they were all Chabad synagogues. It was a very Chassidic little town. My father was a shochet there, as were his father and grandfather, going back four generations to the time of the Mitteler Rebbe. That’s Rabbi Dov Ber, the son of the Alter Rebbe. The Frierdiker Rebbe had left Russia and was now in Riga. So in 1929, my father borrowed money and went to Riga to spend Rosh Hashanah with the Rebbe. He received a very warm welcome

42:03 Speaker 7 there. The Rebbe knew him, and he davened Shacharis on Rosh Hashanah. He read the Torah, and it was a very special occasion. Then he came back, and a short time later he received an invitation to the wedding of the Rebbe’s daughter. He had just been there in Tishrei, and this was a month later. He had borrowed money to go for Rosh Hashanah, and he couldn’t borrow again because he hadn’t yet paid off his debts. My father also became quite ill; he couldn’t even get out of bed. As the date of the Rebbe’s daughter’s wedding drew closer, he didn’t know what to do. The problems were both his health and the money. The rav in Dokshitz was a great chossid named Reb Leib Shenin, may Hashem avenge his blood. He was killed by the Nazis in 1942. He came to see his colleague, my father, the local shochet. Seeing him in bed, he asked, “What’s the matter?” My father told him he was sick. So he said, “You’re not going to the chasunah?” My father asked, “Are you going?” He thought the rav couldn’t afford to go either; he wasn’t a man of means. The rav said, “What kind of question is that? I borrowed money to go. At the wedding of the Rebbe’s daughter, with the Rebbe as the chassan, surely

43:20 Speaker 7 all the preceding Rebbeim will be there: the Rebbe Rashab, the Rebbe Maharash, the Tzemach Tzedek, the Mitteler Rebbe, the Alter Rebbe, the Baal Shem Tov. Who knows? They could all be there. So I shouldn’t be there? Of course I’m going.” By the way, the Rebbe later said this himself in a maamar before the chuppah. He said, “At a wedding, one or two generations usually come, but at a certain wedding, many more generations come.” He meant this wedding of his daughter to our Rebbe. When my father heard that, his fever rose, and he became very, very sick. My mother didn’t know what to do. Then she thought, “Let me try to work this out with a little woman’s wisdom—a wife’s wisdom.” She went and borrowed money. She came back and told her husband, “My dear husband, I have the money for you to go to the chasunah, but you must get well. Drink lots of water, drink lots of tea, take aspirin—whatever you need to do to get well. To make it to the wedding, you have to leave within the next two or three days.” The trip from Dokshitz to Warsaw took ten to twelve hours. He listened, and finally, on the third day, he felt better. His fever went down, and he was able to go. That’s what my mother told me. Then she called a wagon driver

44:30 Speaker 7 And she gave him a little blanket. My father wrapped himself in blankets and went to the wedding. He arrived and attended the chuppah and the wedding celebration. Years and years later—10, 20, 30 years later—he would still speak about it. The chuppah was held at the yeshiva in Warsaw, which had been founded in the 1920s. The meal was held somewhere else, and many, many people attended. Our Rebbe sat next to his father-in-law and said nothing the entire time. The Frierdiker Rebbe delivered maamarim—all of them printed in that well-known collection of kuntreisim, I think in volume one, which lists all the maamarim he delivered at the wedding. And our Rebbe did not say a word. He just sat quietly. The Rebbe, the bride’s father—the Frierdiker Rebbe—was filled with tremendous joy. He walked around with a towel over his shoulder, like a host, carrying a bottle of mashke and a bunch of cups, offering people l’chaim and giving everyone brachos. He knew what each person needed—health, parnassah, a match for a child, whatever it was—and blessed each one accordingly. There was such joy. The wedding went on all night. Many, many rebbes attended, famous rebbes from Poland, who

45:51 Speaker 7 came wearing their shtreimels and Shabbos clothes. There was a table for these rebbes, and the Frierdiker Rebbe danced with them too. He danced with the rebbes. My father would say it was very beautiful. I don’t know how many there were—10 or 20 rebbes dancing together. It was a beautiful sight, people of such stature sharing in the simchah. There was a chossid named Altai[?] who was appointed to be the

00:03 Speaker 1 When he was fasting, probably, and all these things, he didn’t realize that this person was a great and awe-inspiring tzaddik, a great tzaddik. He wasn’t just a young man marrying the Rebbe’s daughter. He was somebody very, very special. He writes about him with such ecstasy, with such... We should thank G-d that the Rebbe chose such a very special person. Apparently, people at that time felt that, since the Rebbe had no sons, this person would be the right successor if Moshiach didn’t come first. He always used to talk with us and tell me that he knew the Rebbe’s children. He had known them since Lubavitch, when they were little girls, you know, and this and that. He knew the Rebbe’s mother, and he knew the Rebbe’s grandmother too, Rebbetzin Rivka, the wife of the Rebbe Maharash. He knew her as well, and he told me how special they were. But then he told me about this new son-in-law the Rebbe had: he was somebody very special. Number one, he was a great scholar. He was a gaon in Torah—in the so-called revealed law, in the esoteric teachings, Kabbalah, everything. Whatever you wanted, he was a master of it. He was a young man, and he knew without limit; he knew everything. And he did things very, very quietly. He didn’t like to publicize what he did. He did it quietly, as

01:16 Speaker 1 if he were an ordinary person—the way he dressed, the way he walked, the way he talked to people. Very, very friendly, very humble, and very, very, very beautiful and kind.

01:44 Speaker 2 We have seen and watched only a very small part of what this means, because the subject encompasses everything. But this is truly only a small part of the hundreds of items that JEM is preparing for us in this series, through which we will see and hear about the Rebbe’s teachings, deeds, and work. Ladies and gentlemen, in the early years of his leadership, the Rebbe said that a time would come when our work, as Chabad chassidim, would no longer be bringing Jews closer to Judaism, because many, many others would be engaged in that. Our main work would be bringing Jews closer to the inner dimension of Torah—spreading the wellsprings of Chassidus. Ladies and gentlemen, anyone who looks around today can see that this prophecy of the Rebbe has been fulfilled in full; what is widely known needs no proof. Let us ask someone who both brings many Jews closer to Judaism and devotes himself with self-sacrifice to spreading the wellsprings of Chassidus, someone who grew up and was educated in the Rebbe’s holy institutions, to share words of Chassidus with us—the call of the hour for our generation. I am honored to invite our distinguished guest, the eminent Rabbi, the chossid Rabbi Yoram Abergel shlita, head of the Rav Pe’alim institutions in Netivot, to address the gathering with his holy words. Please.

03:37 Speaker 3 Honored rabbis, members of the presidium, and holy gathering upon whom the spirit of Hashem rests—may you live long—who have come in such numbers, with open hearts, and who are partners in real action. It has been said here that the leader is everything. In the remarks we just heard from our distinguished master of ceremonies, there was an allusion to the weekly parsha, Parshas Balak. The holy Gemara says: From that wicked man’s blessings, you can tell what he intended. He wanted them to have no synagogues or study halls, as it says, “How good are your tents, Yaakov, your dwelling places, Yisroel.” But his prophecy in this matter did not come true. Quite the opposite: “Like streams that stretch out, like gardens by a river, like cedars beside water. Water shall flow from his buckets, and his seed shall be in abundant waters; his king shall rise above Agag, and his kingdom shall be exalted.” The holy Or Hachayim explains that verse for us: “Know that, in proportion to the great understanding that will be revealed when our righteous Moshiach is revealed speedily, the people of Israel will have great understanding, because the great gate—the fiftieth gate—will be opened. This is what is alluded to by ‘water shall flow from his buckets’: in relation to the greater understanding that will be revealed through that gate, all forty-nine gates of wisdom that are revealed now will be like water drawn beforehand, compared with the fiftieth gate.” These holy words of the Or Hachayim express the prophecy of the one-of-a-kind leader of the generation, who explained that the work of the chassidim would be to spread the wellsprings, which contain the Geulah itself. As our teacher the Baal Shem Tov famously asked Moshiach in his dream, “When will the Master come?” and was told, “When your wellsprings spread outward.” As Rabbi Chaim Vital wrote in his introduction, citing Tikkunei Zohar, Tikkun 30, bringing people closer to the study of the inner dimension of Torah brings the Geulah closer. Conversely, when people are not brought closer to the teachings of the inner dimension of Torah, it is said of them: “A voice says, ‘Cry out!’ And I said, ‘What shall I cry?’ All flesh is grass, and all its kindness is like the flower of the field.” The holy Zohar explains there that “all the good they do, they do for themselves.” If, G-d forbid, in these holy days, when this is the call of the hour, those who can act fail to bring the people closer

06:20 Speaker 3 to this wondrous Torah, it would seem that their Torah does not satisfy the will of our Master and King in Heaven. Therefore, the true tzaddikim and chassidim who continue the Rebbe’s path have taken on a great task: spreading the wellsprings, which, with Hashem’s help, will reach young and old, men and women, for all are worthy of a real Geulah. The Rebbe said that it was specifically of the Geulah from Egypt that one could say, “Had he been there, he would not have been redeemed.” But in the future Geulah, with Hashem’s help, there will be no one who is not redeemed. All of this will be to the credit of the teachings of the inner dimension of Torah, the teachings of Chassidus, spoken with “the Torah of kindness upon her tongue.” May it be the will of our Father, our King in Heaven, that this wonderful gathering on Shabbos the fifteenth, which also alludes to the Rebbe’s birthday on the eleventh of Nissan... The Rebbe, too, is connected to this aspect of eleven that was present with Moshe Rabbeinu: the eleven chapters that Moshe recited at the erection of the Mishkan, and the eleven signs in the Torah concerning the annulment of death and decrees against the Jewish people. And corresponding to the eleven days of a woman’s purification, and to those eleven [unclear] that connect to eleven. The holy Chida writes that this was the radiance of Moshe’s face; may that radiance reach [unclear] with a manifest revelation, and may we be redeemed, with Hashem’s help, through Moshiach, who will be revealed amid joy and contentment, tranquility and great mercy. Amen, may it be so.

08:01 Speaker 4 Thank you, and yasher koach to the great scholar and chossid, Rabbi Yoram Abergel shlita, whose strength lies in his words, but even more in his deeds. This is the place to tell the honored audience that the largest Chassidus class in Israel—the largest class in Tanya—takes place in his beis midrash, in Rabbi Abergel’s kollel, with three hundred people participating every single day. Thank you, and yasher koach. One of the great foundations—or rather, one of the great disseminators—of the wellsprings of Chassidus in Netivot. May he long continue his work in health and joy. Ladies and gentlemen, when we gather together, especially on this great and holy day, it is important to repeat and review, to remember and not forget, and to ask how we do it. The Rebbe said: “If all the Jewish people, great and small alike, were to plead and cry out, ‘Father, enough already! Have mercy on us and send us our Moshiach,’” then, the Rebbe says, “Moshiach would certainly come.” Ladies and gentlemen, let us cry out. But how do we do that? To speak about this cry and plea—“Father, enough already! Have mercy on us; send us our Moshiach”—I am honored to invite the eminent Rabbi, the chossid Rabbi Binyamin Cooperman shlita, rabbi of the Great Synagogue in Ramat Gan, head of the Chabad yeshiva ketana in Bnei Brak, and a dayan on the Chabad Rabbinical Court, to speak about the news that Moshiach is coming.

10:21 Speaker 5 Honored rabbis, dayanim, shluchim and directors of Chabad Houses, esteemed and distinguished audience. I want to turn to a parsha. There is some connection to our own parsha, but I want to go specifically to one we read about half a year ago: Parshas Vayigash. It follows the whole story of Binyamin and the goblet. Yehudah asks Yosef to release Binyamin, and that passage ends with the Torah telling us that Yosef could no longer restrain himself. He sends everyone from Egypt out of the palace, and then he says one sentence: “Yosef said to his brothers: I am Yosef. Is my father still alive?” And, the Torah says, “His brothers could not answer him, for they were dismayed before him.” His brothers could not answer because they were dismayed. The Midrash says—and this appears in several Midrashim and also in the Gemara—Abba Kohen Bardela says: “Woe to us on the day of judgment; woe to us on the day of rebuke.” He first speaks about how Bilam’s donkey rebuked him, which relates to the parsha. But he continues: “Yosef was the youngest of the tribes”—the youngest among the brothers who sold him, apart from Binyamin—“yet they could not withstand his rebuke. As it is written: ‘His brothers could not answer him, for they were dismayed before him.’” So he says: If Yosef’s brothers could not answer him when he rebuked them, then when Hakadosh Boruch Hu comes and rebukes each person according to who he is, as it says, “I will rebuke you and set it before your eyes,” how much more so! When Hakadosh Boruch Hu comes to rebuke us, how will we stand before Him? And the Gemara in Tractate Chagigah says that Rabbi Elazar would always cry when he reached this verse, for the same reason. If Yosef’s brothers could not stand when he rebuked them, how will we stand before the rebuke of Hakadosh Boruch Hu? But this raises a question: If we look at the verses, we will not find even one word of rebuke from Yosef. Yosef did not rebuke his

12:59 Speaker 5 brothers. Where do we find Yosef rebuking them? All he said was, “I am Yosef. Is my father still alive?” And his brothers could not answer him, for they were dismayed before him. Did he rebuke them? He merely identified himself and asked how their father was. In fact, look at the verses that follow: he tells them not to be distressed; it was not they who sold him, but Hakadosh Boruch Hu. He only comforts them. There is not a single word of rebuke in any of these verses. Where did all the Tannaim and Amoraim get the idea that Yosef rebuked his brothers and that they were dismayed before him? Incidentally, if you look at the commentators on these verses, they give other explanations: they were dismayed, ashamed, afraid that perhaps he would punish them or take revenge. But no one says that he rebuked them. Where do the Midrash and the Gemara get the idea that Yosef rebuked his brothers? What was the rebuke? We must say that there was rebuke in the words “I am Yosef. Is my father still alive?” Where is the rebuke in that? Perhaps we can explain it. When we look at what Yehudah says as he stands before Yosef, what is he trying to persuade Yosef of? How is he trying to persuade him to send Binyamin home? His central point is this: There is a father, an elderly father, whose soul is bound up with this child’s soul. He loves this child. And so I cannot—he did not want to let him go, and I took responsibility for him. If, G-d forbid, the boy does not return, our father will die. “For how can I go up to my father if the boy is not with me, lest I see the evil that will befall my father?” Clearly, our father will not survive. The whole focus of Yehudah’s speech is: Father, father, father. Father cannot survive without Binyamin. I am ready to be the slave, and so are all the brothers, all of us. Binyamin must be sent home, because this is not about me. I am worried about our father, our elderly father. So what is the whole point? On whose behalf are you speaking? Who are you

15:10 Speaker 5 worried about? Who are you worried about the whole time? Father. Yosef says one sentence: “I am Yosef. Is my father still alive?” I am Yosef. The very fact that I am standing before you contradicts everything you have said. You have been saying all along that you are worried about Father. Here I am, Yosef, proving that you did not think about Father for a moment. When you said, “Let us throw him into one of the pits,” did you think about Father? When you said, “Let us sell him to the Yishmaelites,” did you think about Father? When you took the coat, dipped it in blood and brought it to Father so that he would think, “Yosef has surely been torn apart,” did you think about Father? I am Yosef. I prove that everything you have said is untrue. If you care so much about Father, how could you—how could you sell me? Yosef did not deliver a rebuke; Yosef did not say a word about it. It was enough for him to say, “I am Yosef.” It was enough for him to ask, sincerely and simply, “Is my father still alive?” That is the greatest rebuke. How can you talk about caring for Father when I myself am proof that you never cared for him? For twenty-two years, Father has mourned a son who was alive, a son he could not forget. Where was your concern for Father? And now you stand here talking about Father, father, father—I am Yosef. This is what our Sages tell us: Woe to us on the day of judgment; woe to us on the day of rebuke. Yosef’s rebuke was in a single word: Yosef’s very presence proved that everything they had said was untrue. Along these lines, our Sages speak of what will happen when Hakadosh Boruch Hu comes in the time to come. We are used to saying that we believe in Hakadosh Boruch Hu: “With Hashem’s help,” “if Hashem wills it.” And where is Hakadosh Boruch Hu? He is everywhere, and everything is nullified before Him. And we know how things work: He exists and brings everything into existence at every moment; everything is G-dliness, nothing has an independent existence, and there is nothing besides Him. Bittul hayesh, bittul bimetzius at the highest level. In the time to come, Hakadosh Boruch Hu will come

17:13 Speaker 5 and say nothing more than: “I am Hashem. Here I am; you can see Me. Here I am.” You spoke; you said you believed. Here you sinned, though you believed, though you said that I am Hashem. You said there is nothing besides Him, yet here you did this deed. I do not need to say anything: here is that same Hakadosh Boruch Hu in whose name you were speaking all along, to whom you turned, to whom you prayed and asked for help. But when it came to your actions, where was that belief? That is the greatest rebuke. And I do not want to elaborate on this. Why is it relevant to us, to our situation today? We are living in a time when everyone agrees, without exception, that this is a time of darkness, a time when we do not see the Rebbe. And, bli ayin hara, within Chabad Chassidus there are many opinions about the Rebbe’s situation: whether he is alive and well, or “more than in his lifetime,” or even more present, or here, or there. But, gentlemen, if, with Hashem’s help—here, Moshiach is coming!—the Rebbe suddenly appears, and each person has to pass by him, and the Rebbe says, “It is I. I am Moshiach. Here I am,” and each person has to come up and say, “Shalom aleichem”—what will he say? Did you believe I was here? Did you believe I was alive? Did you believe I was “more than in my lifetime,” that I was even more present? In everything you did in my name, did you think you could see me right there? Did you think you represented me? Did you think you were about to meet me? If it crossed our minds for even a moment that, in another minute, the Rebbe would appear here and we would have to approach him, and he would say, “Here I am,” would we remain as we are? Would we dare do some of the things we do? Would we dare leave undone some of the things we leave undone? If each person were to stand and truly think, deep in his soul, that he

19:23 Speaker 5 He thinks the Rebbe is with him, and he stands and reflects, as the Rebbe writes about the Frierdiker Rebbe: sit down, picture the Rebbe’s face, and say, “Here I am, standing before the Rebbe.” So before doing something, if he thought, “After this, I’m going to meet the Rebbe,” would he dare do it? And would he dare do it in the Rebbe’s name, no less? That will be the harshest rebuke. No words will be needed. “I am the Rebbe. I am here. Moshiach is here.” Woe to us on the day of judgment! Woe to us on the day of rebuke! Anyone who truly thinks he sees the Rebbe here should surely behave differently. How much the Rebbe spoke, asked, cried out, pleaded, called to us: Do something to bring Moshiach. There is only a little left to do. I’m telling you Moshiach is already here. Moshiach is about to come; we only need to draw him in, open the door and let him in. Just do one small thing. Will we be able to come and say, “Rebbe, we did what you told us”? Will we be able to stand before the Rebbe and look him in the face? Did we carry out your shlichus? Will each of us be able to stand there? Eleven years have passed. During those eleven years, did we go out on mivtzoim every week, spread the message of the Geulah as we should, daven as we should? The Rebbe said to increase our Torah study. Someone once calculated, based on what the Rebbe said at farbrengens, that if every Chabad chossid had added one minute of Torah study after every farbrengen at which the Rebbe asked us to add to our learning, it would have amounted to twenty-four hours. Did we increase our Torah study? Did we practice the ten mivtzoim ourselves? Did we set aside time every day? Between Minchah and Maariv, instead of standing around talking, did we do what the Alter Rebbe says and study Ein Yaakov? Did we make use of the minutes before Moshiach comes? That is the rebuke, and that is

21:19 Speaker 5 the truth. Anyone who says he thinks he lives with the Rebbe should think for one more minute: you see the Rebbe right before your eyes. If you think, “In another minute, here I am with the Rebbe,” your conduct, all your deeds and actions—and of course, the things you refrain from doing—will be completely different. That is certainly something we can learn from this Gemara. Woe to us on the day of judgment and the day of rebuke. May it be Hashem’s will that, since everyone truly is a chossid, each of us reflect on how devoted the Rebbe was, how he gave himself to each and every person. And even today, however we may be, even someone who is not behaving properly knows whom to turn to when he needs help. He knows how to receive answers and how to receive blessings from the Rebbe. If each of us does a little, reflects on the Rebbe and thinks, “How do I understand what the Rebbe wants?”—because today, today we see the Rebbe here before our eyes.

22:15 Speaker 5 Then we will indeed merit to have the Rebbe, Melech HaMoshiach, come here and redeem us speedily, in our days, literally. Thank you very much, and yasher koach to the distinguished Rabbi Binyamin Cooperman, rabbi of the Great Synagogue in Ramat Gan, head of the Tomchei Temimim Chabad yeshiva ketanah in Bnei Brak, and a dayan on the Chabad Rabbinical Court, for his appeal, for his cry, for telling us what is required of him and of us: not just to cry out, but to add even a small measure of action—and to truly act. There is a story the Rebbe relates in one of his sichos. One of the non-Jewish officials who presented the indictment against the Alter Rebbe said that the Alter Rebbe was collecting money. What for? He told them: Since his chassidim believe in the coming of Moshiach, they are collecting money to build the Beis Hamikdash when Moshiach comes. The Rebbe remarked: Even a non-Jew knows what a chossid is—a chossid believes in the coming of Moshiach and works to bring it about. I would like to invite to the microphone one of the Rebbe’s shluchim, who does so much and has accomplished great things: the rabbi of the Chabad community in Ofakim and chairman of the splendid institutions he founded and built there, Rabbi Yisroel Hershkowitz. Please. L’chaim. L’chaim. Once, at the end of a farbrengen here in Kfar Chabad, after a 19 Kislev farbrengen, they took President Shazar to show him something. In those days, what they could show him was the artist Reb Zalman Kleinman, a"h, sitting in a house working on a painting. It was a painting of a chassidic farbrengen. When President Shazar arrived and looked at it, he said, “I see that right now you’re painting a scene of the farbrengen we’ve just come from.” Reb Zalman told him, “Mr. President, you’re mistaken. The painting I’m working on shows what the farbrengen looks like after all the distinguished rabbis have left, and we chassidim are sitting alone among

25:32 Speaker 5 ourselves, making a cheshbon hanefesh over a cup of mashke. That is exactly the scene I’m painting now.” Presumably, he meant after the day’s events, at the end of the farbrengen. And presumably, what I’m about to say will be in that same spirit. After roughly seventy-two hours in which hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Ofakim residents have heard about the Rebbe at various farbrengens, allow me to speak informally, in the manner of a chassidic farbrengen. Since time is very short, I’ll start in the middle. Boruch Hashem, as part of the Rebbe’s shlichus, we have a school with eight hundred students. Most come from homes that do not yet observe Torah and mitzvos, and they receive a Chabad education. To bring an atmosphere of Chassidus into the school, young women from Beis Rivkah College come as shluchos, rotating every few months, to bring chassidic vitality into the school. When they finish, we hold a farewell ceremony, and I attend whenever I can. The last time I attended, one of the shluchos stood up and said, “I want to say that on shlichus I gained a much deeper perspective on the Rebbe than anything I gave. Shlichus gave that to me.” She related: “I came back from Tishrei full of enthusiasm. I gathered the boys and told them what Simchas Torah had been like, and spoke excitedly about the joy we felt and how we truly felt that the Rebbe was with us.” As she continued, she told the students, “We actually saw the Rebbe.” A child, of course, takes things literally. Then one of the boys stood up and asked her, “How could you have seen the Rebbe there at 770? I keep hearing here in Ofakim that the Rebbe is here, so how could you have seen him there?” On shlichus, everything looks different. From the perspective of shlichus, we don’t live only with the Rebbe’s legacy and the Rebbe’s teachings; we simply live with the Rebbe. We live with that as a plain reality. Every shliach lives with the Rebbe, who will, with Hashem’s help, come at any moment

28:22 Speaker 5 and redeem us. The Rebbe relates that once the Alter Rebbe entered the sukkah after the Maggid, and the Maggid turned to him and said, “Without excitement—hurry into the sukkah. The Rebbe is coming; the Baal Shem Tov is coming.” That is what the Maggid told the Alter Rebbe, and the Alter Rebbe indeed merited to see the Baal Shem Tov while awake. The Rebbe explains why he merited to see him while awake: the Alter Rebbe was a shliach, so completely devoted and nullified to his Rebbe, the Maggid, that he was like Yehoshua, Moshe’s attendant. That is why he merited it. The Rebbe goes on to ask: It is a tradition among our Rebbeim that the Alter Rebbe spent only thirty-two months with the Maggid, while the Maggid was nasi for more than ten years. If he was with his Rebbe for only thirty-two months altogether, can we call that devotion like “Moshe’s attendant,” like the youth who “would not depart”? The Rebbe answers: Where was he during all the other years? He was traveling throughout Russia to spread the teachings of Chassidus, the teachings of the Baal Shem Tov. He was therefore like Yehoshua, Moshe’s attendant, because when someone is on the Rebbe’s shlichus, he is quite literally with him, to the point that he is called Moshe’s attendant. On Erev Shabbos, I heard a story from one of the shluchim, who had heard it from a shliach of the Rebbe in the United States. One day, that shliach came home utterly broken. Nothing had gone right. That day, it seemed to him that his institutions were collapsing. There were financial difficulties, as there are everywhere, and he felt that his entire shlichus, G-d forbid, was in doubt. He was simply in despair. He came home, reached his front door, and there by the house, in the mailbox, he saw the kind of letter that hundreds and thousands of us used to wait for, the kind that always lifted our spirits. He saw a letter from the Rebbe in the mailbox. The shliach opened it

30:37 Speaker 5 On that difficult day, he received a letter from the Rebbe and saw that the Rebbe had written him a blessing and a few words. Among those words was: “Surely you will publish in a book the articles you write to me.” This shliach spent some of his time delivering talks and articles on Judaism to students, and he wrote up the articles he delivered and sent them to the Rebbe. So on that difficult day, the Rebbe made a point of sending him encouragement about the importance of those articles. The Rebbe told him—I correct myself, not “surely”; he told him it would be worthwhile to publish those articles in a book. The shliach says it lifted his spirits. During Gimmel Tammuz, I thought to myself that this speaks to these moments, when we have still not merited it, though the day has passed and the great and terrible concealment remains, and we are still crying out, “We want to see our King with our own eyes.” I thought the Rebbe meant something much, much deeper here. The Rebbe tells the shliach—and all of us are, in fact, the Rebbe’s shluchim—this: “It would be worthwhile to publish in a book the articles you write to me. After all, you have spent years on shlichus, writing me reports. You write me about the enormous difficulties, and then about the miracles and wonders that take place. You write me about an institution that is about to close, and then you write about how another one opened. You are constantly writing me about wonder upon wonder that follows the difficulties. Since you are going through a difficult moment, it would be worthwhile to decide,” the Rebbe tells him, “to publish those accounts you write me in your letters about your shlichus. Publish them in a book, and keep that book before your eyes. Then, at a difficult moment on shlichus, you will open it and discover that the one doing everything is the Rebbe, while we, the shluchim and chassidim, are only following along behind him. If you publish it, you will discover this. It will lift your spirits to know that the Rebbe is the one carrying out

32:58 Speaker 5 everything, and our job is only not to get in the way.” On 28 Nissan, the Rebbe gave us this charge; the Rebbe made all of us shluchim. “Do everything in your power” was said to each and every one of us. Each of us is a shliach to bring the Geulah. And with the great faith in which we were raised—that we are the seventh generation, with the leader of the seventh generation—we were taught, first and foremost, that the Geulah will come in the seventh generation. We were taught, and we believe with complete faith, that the leader of the seventh generation is the one who will bring the Shechinah down below. And we all believe with complete faith that the leader of the seventh generation, the Rebbe, Melech HaMoshiach, is the one who will redeem us. Now, at the close of this day, as we all awaken to a deep bond with the Rebbe, let us strengthen in our sons and daughters and those close to us the clear recognition that there is a Rebbe, quite literally, among the Jewish people. There is a Rebbe who will soon come and redeem us, quite literally, as Melech HaMoshiach. And with Hashem’s help, very soon, all of us together, in true unity—first and foremost unity among chassidim, and then unity among the entire people—will go out to greet the Rebbe, singing, “Yechi Adoneinu Moreinu VeRabbeinu Melech HaMoshiach Leolam Vaed.”

34:33 Speaker 6 We haven’t done a gematria yet this evening: Yisroel Hershkowitz, may he live, has the same numerical value as “We want to see our King.” Thank you very much, and yasher koach to Rabbi Hershkowitz, the Rebbe’s shliach in Ofakim. Ladies and gentlemen, my brothers and friends, one of the greatest and most renowned institutions in the history of our Rebbe is undoubtedly the worldwide institution of shlichus. There is hardly a corner of the globe without a shliach. Clearly, ladies and gentlemen, the concept of a shliach is not merely something external or technical. It holds great depth, as does every concept touched by the Rebbe’s distinctive teachings. We see the depth of this, all the more so with this precious concept of shlichus. To speak about all this and more, it is my honor to invite our guest, the great scholar and eloquent speaker, Rosh Yeshivah of Yeshivat HaKotel, Rabbi Mordechai Elon shlita. Please.

36:14 Speaker 7 Honored rabbis and great scholars, shlita. Ladies and gentlemen. Whoever possesses these three traits is among the disciples of Avraham our father. And whoever possesses three other traits is among the disciples of the wicked Bilam. What is the difference between the disciples of Avraham our father and the disciples of the wicked Bilam? This particular comparison between Avraham our father and the wicked Bilam needs to be understood. To distinguish between them, they are both teachers. Both travel with two young men. Bilam goes with his two young men, and Avraham goes with his two young men. Both bring ways of thinking into the world. Both depart from the ordinary course of things. With Bilam, hatred disrupts the ordinary course: he gets up in the morning and saddles his donkey himself, teaching his young men how far hatred can drive a person beyond that course. And Avraham rises early in the morning and saddles his donkey, teaching his young men how far love can drive a person beyond it. An entire passage concerns the angel of Hashem, whom the donkey sees three times while that wicked man cannot see him. Suddenly the great speaker turns violent, striking once, and again, and again. “Why have you struck your donkey these three times?” But the remarkable thing is the ending. Everything is the same, and everything is the opposite. Just as Avraham sees the place from afar, and Yitzchak sees the place from afar together with him, so too, by contrast, the donkey sees what Bilam does not. But where are the young men? At the end of the Akeidah... after Avraham and Yitzchak ascend to the loftiest, highest levels, “Avraham returned to his young men, and they rose and went together to Be’er Sheva.” What a distance—what an infinite distance—there is between the young men, who see only what the donkey sees and sit with the donkey, and Avraham and Yitzchak, who walk together from atop the altar. And the culmination of the Akeidah is that Avraham our father comes down the mountain, bringing the mountain with him, and returns to the young men with the donkey. He puts his arms around those two young men with the donkey, and the “together” of “the two of them went together” now continues as a togetherness with the young men, who see as the donkey sees. “Avraham returned to his young men, and they rose and went together to Be’er Sheva.” The wicked Bilam goes with his two young men. But that is it; afterward we never encounter them again. “Bilam returned to his place,” and Balak, too, went on his way. Where are the young men? They were there for one-time use, discarded afterward. Avraham our father, with his good eye, humble spirit and modest soul, sends Yitzchak from the mountain to continue ascending on his mission, higher and higher, while he descends to the foot of the mountain to continue his own mission lower and lower, to the lowest reaches of the earth, among the young men with the donkey. For him, there is no contradiction between being together with Yitzchak above the altar—twice it says, “The two of them went together.” That togetherness speaks not merely of being together, but of being together alone, where no one else can even begin to comprehend their level. And then that same togetherness, beyond all comprehension, becomes a togetherness with the young men, with the donkey. We are living through difficult times. Today, on this holy day of passing, we know that we continue to walk together, guided by that great leadership and faced with that great question. Everyone who becomes even a little attached is asked: What do you see there? As Avraham asked Yitzchak: What do you see? Sand? Or do you see a cloud bound to the mountain? I know that today, if two Jews were walking with two other people and asked them, “What do you see there?” and they said they saw clouds, they would send them somewhere that treats such problems. The realists are the ones who saw nothing but sand. Sometimes it takes climbing an entire Mount Moriah, an entire world, until reverence becomes vision and everyone understands what the tzaddik saw from afar. “He saw the place from afar.” But through that, we continue to see—and to be asked what

40:39 Speaker 7 we see. And we must know that we have to bring it even beyond the three camps. We must know that we have to bring it out beyond all the kelipos. Along the way there are harsh decrees, seeing sand and sowing sand, and attempts to sever ties, to break away, to expel and to be driven apart. And we continue to be asked from the highest heavens: What do we see? Every day, and all the more so on this day. We must hold fast: ascend higher and higher, above the altar and above the wood, and descend lower and lower, beyond all the camps. And continue that togetherness the Rebbe taught all of the Jewish people. Yitzchak our father does not return down the mountain with Avraham. Anyone who looks at the verses knows that when Avraham our father said, “We will bow down and return to you,” he spoke the absolute truth. It is precise. He returns when he comes straight down the mountain. That is the level of Avraham our father: chessed. Avraham our father, the Rebbe. Yitzchak our father goes on, and the next time we encounter him is at Be’er Lachai Roi. We do not encounter him in between. And there he goes to bring Yishmael and Keturah.

44:08 Speaker 7 You see? And we must know that we need to bring this even beyond the three camps, beyond all the kelipos that exist. Along the way there are harsh decrees, the sight of the mundane and the sowing of the mundane. There are attempts to sever ties, to break away, to drive people out and to be driven apart. And from the highest heavens, we continue to be asked: What do we see? Every day, and on this day all the more so. We must hold fast. We must rise higher and higher, above the altar and above the wood, and descend lower and lower, beyond all the camps. And we must carry on this togetherness that the Rebbe taught all of the Jewish people. Yitzchak Avinu does not go back down with Avraham. Anyone who looks at the verses knows that when Avraham Avinu said, “We will bow down and return to you,” he spoke the absolute truth. It is precise: he returns as soon as he comes down from the mountain. That is Avraham Avinu’s level—chesed. Avraham Avinu, the Rebbe. Yitzchak Avinu goes on, and the next time we meet him, he is at Be’er Lachai Roi. We do not meet him in between. And there he goes to bring Yishmael and Keturah.