Farbrengen of Gimmel Tammuz 5768, Kfar Chabad

00:00 Speaker 1 Oh, oh.

00:31 Speaker 2 A good week. I’ve been asked to announce that the rolls will arrive in a few minutes, and we’ll be able to wash our hands for the Melaveh Malkah meal. In the meantime, you can have a taste, say l’chaim, and begin the farbrengen. My brothers and friends, chassidim of the Baal Shem Tov, honored and esteemed gathering, welcome to the central farbrengen marking the great and holy day of Gimmel Tammuz. The purpose of this gathering and farbrengen is to strengthen our connection to the Rebbe, the leader of our generation, the shepherd of the Jewish people, who continues to lead us with even greater strength. As we saw in the sicha published by Vaad Hanachos B’Lahak for this Shabbos—I think it’s from 5744—the Rebbe speaks there about Melaveh Malkah. He discusses the extra soul that departs from us after Shabbos, as it says, “He rested on Shabbos.” Our Sages explain the word “vayinafash” as “vai, nefesh”—woe for the soul that leaves us. That is why the Shulchan Aruch rules: “A person should always set his table after Shabbos and prepare a meal, even if it is only an olive-sized portion,” just as one escorts a king, to escort the extra soul. But, the Rebbe says, it is not so when we speak of the leader of the generation. Then it is not a matter of escorting the soul; on the contrary, the soul is with us even more than during his lifetime. I was asked this week how we educate children to feel connected to the Rebbe, especially the younger generation, who did not merit to see the Rebbe in person. Among other things, I told a story I had heard about the Rebbe’s head shliach in England, Reb Nachman Sudak. When he was still a young man, he became engaged to a woman from England. This was in the period when the Rebbe was still officiating at weddings. So, when he went into yechidus, he pleaded with the Rebbe for the privilege of having the Rebbe officiate at his wedding. And the wedding... Of course, the Rebbe did not leave Crown Heights. So he asked for the wedding to be held in Crown Heights, at 770. The Rebbe replied that the custom is for a wedding to take place where the bride lives, and therefore it should be held in England. Well, Reb Nachman, being a chossid, followed the instruction and printed invitations for a wedding in England. But before he left 770 to travel to England

03:49 Speaker 2 for the wedding, a few days before it was to take place, he went into yechidus with the Rebbe again and said, “Rebbe, at least be at my wedding in spirit.” The Rebbe answered, “And why not physically?” That was the answer. The words speak for themselves, and each person can take the Rebbe’s answer to heart: the Rebbe is with us everywhere, at every time, with each and every one of us and our families, always with us physically. We do not merit to see him in a physical body. But our eyes see the... the transformation of the world over the fourteen years since Gimmel Tammuz. It goes from strength to strength: the number of Chabad Houses added in Israel and around the world, the number of chassidim who have joined Chabad Chassidus, the Jews who have been brought closer, and more resources than ever devoted to spreading the wellsprings. The answer, then, is that he is with us even more than during his lifetime, and the Rebbe is with us physically. And there is that well-known ruling of our Rebbeim that this day is especially suited to connecting to the Tree of Life, to strengthening our connection still further. Not merely saying, “I am connected,” but a real connection. Then we merit to receive Hashem’s blessing, in the words of our Rebbeim, with abundant life, a good livelihood, and nachas from your children, which Hashem, blessed be He, will bestow upon us all, through the arousal of mercy that the Rebbe, the leader of our generation, stands and arouses for all of us. And then the Rebbe proclaimed: “Stand ready.” Yes, the Rebbe says, stand ready, all of you—your wives, your sons, and your daughters—to receive the blessings he draws down for us all: blessings, success, and deliverance, up to the fulfillment of the greatest blessing of all, the true and complete Geulah. We will begin with one of the practices, one of the things we do to express our connection: reciting the Rebbe’s chapter of Tehillim, chapter 107. I have the honor of inviting one of the Rebbe’s shluchim to the Holy Land, the director of the Or Simcha yeshiva, Rabbi Zev Slavin, to recite with us the Rebbe’s chapter 107. Rabbi Slavin,

06:34 Speaker 2 please. Well, it’s not... the Dvar Malchus. Someone, the Dvar Malchus. Oh, here’s Rabbi Slavin. Here we have the Rebbe’s chapter. I ask everyone to stand.

07:30 Speaker 11 Give thanks to Hashem, for He is good, for His kindness endures forever. Let those redeemed by Hashem say so, those whom He redeemed from the hand of the foe, and gathered from the lands, from east and west, from north and sea. They wandered in the wilderness, on a desolate road; they found no inhabited city. Hungry and thirsty, their souls fainted within them. They cried out to Hashem in their distress; He saved them from their troubles. He led them on a straight path, to reach an inhabited city. Let them thank Hashem for His kindness and His wonders for mankind. For He satisfied the longing soul, and filled the hungry soul with good. Those who sat in darkness and the shadow of death, bound in affliction and iron, because they rebelled against the words of G-d and spurned the counsel of the Most High—He humbled their hearts through hardship; they stumbled, and there was no one to help. They cried out to Hashem in their distress; He saved them from their troubles. He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death and broke their bonds. Let them thank Hashem for His kindness and His wonders for mankind. For He shattered doors of bronze and cut through bars of iron. Fools suffered because of their sinful ways and their iniquities. Their souls loathed all food, and they reached the gates of death. They cried out to Hashem in their distress; He saved them from their troubles. He sent His word and healed them, and delivered them from destruction. Let them thank Hashem for His kindness and His wonders for mankind. Let them offer sacrifices of thanksgiving and recount His deeds with song. Those who go down to the sea in ships, who do their work upon the great waters—they saw the works of Hashem and His wonders in the depths. He spoke and raised a stormy wind, which lifted up its waves. They rose to the heavens and descended to the depths; their souls melted in peril. They reeled and staggered like a drunkard, and all their wisdom was swallowed up. They cried out to Hashem in their distress, and He brought them out of their troubles. He stilled the storm, and its waves fell silent. They rejoiced when the waters grew calm, and He guided them to their desired haven. Let them thank Hashem for His kindness and His wonders for mankind. Let them exalt Him in the assembly of the people and praise Him in the gathering of elders. He turns rivers into a wilderness and springs of water into thirsty ground; a fruitful land into a salt waste because of the wickedness of its inhabitants. He turns a wilderness into a pool of water... My teachers and friends, here we are turning to the words of the King, spoken by the King himself: a sicha

10:22 Speaker 11 of the Rebbe. We will now watch and listen to a sicha from the Rebbe himself. Please.

10:35 Speaker 21 When people gather together on the occasion of a histalkus, which is seemingly the very opposite of life, it is also seemingly the very opposite of joy. And yet it is precisely this occasion that is associated with various customs that express joy. People gather together so that they should have still more strength, still more encouragement, and still more joy. This is clear from the teachings of the one whose hilula we are marking, and it is founded on a number of statements in the Gemara and Midrashim, and even verses of Scripture. In the words of the Mishnah: “Everything that Hakadosh Boruch Hu created in His world, He created only for His glory.” In the words of the Gemara: “This too is for the good.” And in the words of the verse: “He makes light out of darkness.” But that emphasizes that, at first glance, it really is darkness. And we do not merely use it to make light. On the contrary, because the light comes from darkness, it has an even greater advantage, a stronger brightness. From this we understand that, since the Almighty directs all affairs, the histalkus and hilula were certainly not outside His plan. At the same time, the Almighty’s instruction remains in full force: “Serve Hashem with joy.” We must serve the Almighty constantly, since “I was created to serve my Creator.” Every moment that a person lives is given to him for that purpose. And since he is a person of understanding, he...

13:27 Speaker 21 A person was created to serve his Maker. And to serve his Maker, the Torah tells us, must be done as it says, “Serve Hashem with joy.” This is a good indication, a proof, that even at a time of [unclear], one must understand what follows. At the time of histalkus, too, it is not, G-d forbid, that the soul ceases to fulfill its purpose. The soul is eternal. All the more so, it is self-evident that for every person, and particularly for a Jew, the soul is eternal. In the words of the Gemara: “Just as there he stands and serves, so here he stands and serves.” The leader of the Jewish people, even after his histalkus, continues his mission in this world: to find and help each person discover their mission in the world, so that they can continue to be a conduit for what comes from Hashem. When the soul ascends above, it is not that it is now above and has departed from below. On the contrary, as the Alter Rebbe brings in Igeres Hakodesh, “A tzaddik, after his histalkus, is present in all worlds more than during his lifetime.” After the histalkus of a tzaddik, and particularly of a leader, he is present even more than when he was in the place where the leader had been before—more than during his lifetime as a soul in a body. For in a body there are limitations: the body can be in one place and not in different places at once. After the histalkus, on the other hand, when [unclear] gather together—

16:11 Speaker 21 On Yud Shvat, the soul of the one whose yahrzeit we mark is present in every place where people gather and repeat his words and some of his teachings. They draw from them a new lesson about what to do in actual practice, in accordance with his instructions: to increase goodness, uprightness, joy and holiness throughout the world, beginning with ourselves. This also answers the question of how a day associated with the opposite of life can be a day of celebration. When one understands that the essence of a person is the soul, while the body is a garment, one understands that the soul has even more power to carry out its mission when it no longer has the limitations of the body—more than during its lifetime. We need only remain connected by following his instructions in our daily lives. Then, instead of seeing histalkus as the opposite of life, we see a hilula, which can bring joy—joy made even greater, like the superiority of light that comes from darkness. And we use that joy to “serve Hashem with joy.” [unclear] The leader of the generation is the entire generation: “The leader is everything.” [unclear] His teachings and the directives he left for the people of his generation [unclear].

19:10 Speaker 21 His various directives, and particularly his maamarim and teachings, continue to reach people. They study them and carry out his mission. This itself emphasizes that he is alive: his influence continues, and people become his shluchim. As it is said, “A person’s agent is like the person himself.” In this sense, “he is everything” is even more alive and more powerful. And the Rebbe said more than once that on a day like this—particularly for us chassidim, on Gimmel Tammuz—we need to go into yechidus with the Rebbe. And the way to go into yechidus, the Rebbe said, is to study his Torah, hold a farbrengen, and, third, sing the Rebbe’s niggun. We have heard some of his Torah and will hear more as the farbrengen continues. We are sitting together at a farbrengen; we will say l’chaim. And now let us all join in the Rebbe’s niggun. We will complete that third part of going into yechidus, which the Rebbe said is even stronger than before, together with Rabbi Gil Akibayev, Rabbi Mordechai Brodsky and Rabbi Yechiel Fleischman. But they are not here to put on a performance. They are here only to help everyone sing the Rebbe’s niggun together. We ask everyone to join in. [unclear] “I will sing sweet melodies and weave songs, for my soul longs for You. I will sing sweet melodies and weave songs, for my soul longs for You. My soul yearns for the shelter of Your hand, to know every secret of Your mysteries. My soul yearns for the shelter of Your hand, to know every secret of Your mysteries. For my soul longs for You. I will sing sweet melodies and weave songs, for my soul longs for You. My soul yearns for the shelter of Your hand, to know every secret of Your mysteries. My soul yearns for the shelter of Your hand, to know every secret of Your mysteries.”

25:13 Speaker 22 Thank you, Rabbi Mordechai, Rabbi Gil and Reb Yechiel. My friends, a chossid’s bond with the Rebbe is, on the one hand, an extremely close bond. Who among us does not feel that the Rebbe is like a father? He cares about everyone, attends to every small detail, and each of us knows this from our own life, right up to this day. On the other hand, there is a sense of immense exaltedness—that the Rebbe is on an entirely different plane. How did Reb Levi [unclear] put it? “The cat and I understand exactly the same amount about the Rebbe.” How do we bring these two things together: such a great sense of closeness and, at the same time, such transcendence? To shed light on this subject, I have the honor of inviting the mashpia of the Tomchei Temimim yeshiva in Kiryat Gat, Rabbi Zushe Alperovitch. Please. To those standing at the back: there is plenty of room up front. Please come in; there is plenty of room in the middle and along the sides.

26:52 Speaker 23 L’chaim, l’chaim. Have a good week. The Rebbe taught us in his sichos that every special day is connected to the weekly parsha. This is especially so regarding Gimmel Tammuz, which the Rebbe connects in his sichos both to Parshas Chukas and to Parshas Korach. So we will begin with a point related to the weekly parsha and see how it is expressed in relation to Gimmel Tammuz. Chassidus asks why the Torah says “This is the statute of the Torah” in connection with the red heifer. Seemingly, it should have said, “This is the statute of the heifer.” The explanation is that the mitzvah of the red heifer reflects a general principle connected to the entire Torah. The red heifer involves ashes and water; ashes come from fire. Fire and water represent ratzo and shov—rising upward and returning. This dynamic of ratzo and shov is a foundation of the entire Torah. It is expressed in positive mitzvos and prohibitions, and in the mind and heart. The heart is ratzo; the mind is shov. One might say that this dynamic of ratzo and shov is also expressed in our connection to the Rebbe. Gimmel Tammuz is a time to refresh even things that seem obvious. Each of us needs to renew our awareness of them. Let us begin with the aspect of shov—of ratzo. We need to remember who the Rebbe is. What the Rebbe writes in the introduction to the kuntres for Gimmel Tammuz 5710 is well known. Many seek to explain the greatness of a Chabad leader, and the Rebbe begins by saying that a Chabad leader has many qualities: self-sacrifice, genius, exemplary character, righteousness, ruach hakodesh, the ability to perform miracles, and much more. The Rebbe says that despite the greatness of all these qualities, they still do not reflect or express the essence, the true greatness, of a Rebbe. What, then, is the Rebbe’s principal quality? The Rebbe says it is what the Alter Rebbe explains in Tanya, chapter 2: the Rebbe is the head of the Jewish people, the head and brain from which all the other Jewish souls receive their vitality. And the Rebbe elaborates on this.

30:18 Speaker 23 Among the nesi’im themselves, there are those whose leadership is expressed mainly in the revealed dimension of Torah, or in its inner dimension; in Torah, avodah, or acts of kindness; or in spiritual or material blessings. The Rebbe says that what distinguishes the Chabad nesi’im is that their leadership is expressed in every area, from the Alter Rebbe onward, through all the Rebbes who followed. What does it mean that a nasi is the “head of the Children of Israel”? As is known, the nasi is the collective yechidah of the entire Jewish people. As the Rebbe explains, the nasi is everything; he encompasses the Jewish people as a whole. So when we speak of a Chabad nasi, it is similar to what Chassidus explains about a king: the king is the essence of all the Jewish people. The Chabad nesi’im are, in this sense, like a king, whose kingship is visible to the eye. The king’s exalted position over the people expresses his intrinsic exaltedness, as Chassidus explains. That is why the Rebbes’ leadership encompassed every area. We are not speaking of just one particular area, which would still be measured and limited. When we speak of the collective yechidah, of a king, his influence extends to every area—material and spiritual, and within the spiritual realm itself, to every area. There is a letter the Rebbe wrote in 5710 to a chossid who asked the Rebbe to accept the leadership. The letter is well known. In response to his words, “We feel it incumbent upon us” that the Rebbe accept the leadership, the Rebbe writes: “For that, one needs yechidah, essential faculties, potential faculties, revealed faculties, and perfection in thought, speech, and action.” Let’s start from the bottom up, specifically, even though the Rebbe lists them from the top down. Perfection in thought, speech, and action: we all know that this is a beinoni. Of course, perfection in thought, speech, and action can go much further, but a beinoni would be enough—if only we were beinonim! Perfection in thought, speech, and action. But the Rebbe does not stop there; he goes further: perfection in the revealed faculties,

33:24 Speaker 23 meaning that the revealed faculties too—the intellect and emotions, will and pleasure—are all directed toward G-dliness. And the Rebbe does not stop there: the potential faculties. What are the potential faculties? They express the soul’s boundlessness. These are the faculties before they have differentiated, while they are still in a boundless state. In other words, the Rebbe is connected to G-dliness without limit—not only within the measure and limits of the revealed faculties, but in an unlimited connection to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. The potential faculties. But the Rebbe does not stop there; he goes further: the essential faculties. What do the essential faculties add beyond the potential faculties? Although the potential faculties are boundless, they have already emerged from the soul, so even within them there can be different levels of boundlessness—one level above another. The essential faculties, by contrast, are complete, absolutely complete. As Chassidus explains, bringing proof from the fact that even a blind person can have a child with complete vision: even someone whose faculty is lacking in its revealed form can nevertheless have a child without that lack. Why? Because birth draws from the essential faculties as they are contained within the soul, and there is no deficiency there. All the faculties are present there in their fullness. So when we say that the Rebbe has the essential faculties, it means that the Rebbe has all the faculties in their most complete, unlimited form. There is also the well-known sicha in which the Rebbe speaks about the Frierdiker Rebbe and says that the Frierdiker Rebbe was complete and lacked nothing. The Rebbe adds that a Rebbe does not lack understanding or comprehension: any understanding or comprehension he wants, he has or can have. That is because the Rebbe has the essential faculties as they are contained within the soul. But the Rebbe does not stop there. He goes as far as yechidah. Anyone who has learned Chassidus knows that yechidah is connected to the essence of the soul. The Rebbe says

35:49 Speaker 23 that a Rebbe is someone in whom the essence of the soul is revealed. In simple terms, even the Rebbe’s yechidah is openly connected to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. To put in simple terms what Chassidus explains: a Jew cannot be separated from Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Why? Because a Jew is connected to Hakadosh Boruch Hu through the very essence of his soul. And that, the Rebbe says, shines openly in a Rebbe; even his yechidah is not subject to change. There is the well-known explanation in Chassidus concerning Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, who said, “I do not know by which path they will lead me.” Chassidus asks: How is that possible? Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai was so great, yet he did not know by which path they would lead him? Chassidus explains that Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai was uncertain about the state of the essence of his soul. He knew that his revealed faculties were in order. His doubt was about where the essence of his soul stood. And when the Alter Rebbe said to one of the chassidim, “What are you counting on? You won’t know the way to my chamber in Gan Eden,” the Tzemach Tzedek said that the Alter Rebbe’s level was higher than Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai’s. Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai had said, “I do not know by which path they will lead me,” whereas the Alter Rebbe was certain by which path they would lead him. That means the Alter Rebbe was connected to the essence of the soul. In him, the essence of the soul was revealed, and so he had no doubt: when the essence of the soul is revealed, there is no doubt about which path one will be led along. The Rebbe used a rare expression at the farbrengen on Shabbos Parshas Korach, 5734, on Gimmel Tammuz. The Rebbe spoke then about someone who had said that the Rebbe was upset with a particular person. The Rebbe expressed himself this way: “Never has an unfavorable thought about

38:20 Speaker 23 a Jew emerged from my four cubits.” And the Rebbe added, “And one never will.” The Rebbe then added: “But it says, ‘Do not trust yourself’—my father-in-law will protect me from that.” But it says, “Do not trust yourself”! My father-in-law, the Frierdiker Rebbe, will protect me from that. What does this mean? That is precisely the point. “Do not trust yourself” applies on the level of the revealed faculties. But when we are speaking of a Jew in whom the essence of the soul is revealed, that is why the Rebbe says, “My father-in-law will protect me from that”—because of the Rebbe’s connection to his father-in-law, the Frierdiker Rebbe. As is known, all the Rebbes are in the category of a luminary. The difference between one Rebbe and another is only in the light: each Rebbe revealed a different light and added a different light. But as for the luminary—and what is the luminary? The essence of the soul—in that point, all the Rebbes are the same, at the same level, in the same regard. And that is what the Rebbe is saying: “Never has an unfavorable thought about a Jew emerged from my four cubits, and one never will.” In other words, the Rebbe is certain that no unfavorable thought about a Jew will emerge from his four cubits. So what is a Rebbe? A Rebbe is someone in whom the essence of the soul shines openly. There is no need to explain how utterly beyond comparison the Rebbe is to us, to each and every one of us. Consequently, when we say that we must be connected to the Rebbe, that must be expressed first and foremost in complete bittul. We must recognize that we are speaking of someone beyond comparison, whom we cannot comprehend at all. Fundamentally, the only way to connect with him must be through simple faith, through simple bittul. Only through that can one relate to the Rebbe; someone who lacks this has not yet connected to that dimension of the Rebbe that is beyond comparison. I want to

40:30 Speaker 23 I want to tell a story here. After all, this is a Melaveh Malkah. There’s a story you may know that expresses the... the wonder of the Rebbe. There’s no shortage of miracles, but this is something very special. It was on 11 Nissan 5732, the Rebbe’s seventieth year, when many guests came to the Rebbe from all over the world. Among them was a Jew from Arizona who was not a Chabad chossid but was close to Chabad. He went in to see the Rebbe the day after 11 Nissan, on 12 Nissan, and planned to fly home to Arizona the next day, 13 Nissan. As he was about to leave, the Rebbe asked him, “Would you be willing to carry out a mission for me?” Of course. The Rebbe told him, “If so, when you leave here, please go in to Rabbi Chadakov, and he’ll tell you what it is.” The man went in to Rabbi Chadakov. Rabbi Chadakov handed him a package of matzos and said, “There’s a Jewish couple in Taylor, Texas. Taylor, Texas. The Rebbe asks you to deliver these matzos to them.” The man raised an eyebrow and said to Rabbi Chadakov, “I’m going to Arizona, not Texas. I don’t understand.” Rabbi Chadakov said, “So do you want me to go to the Rebbe and tell him that you can’t carry out the mission?” The man was quite alarmed and said, “No, G-d forbid.” All right, so Rabbi Chadakov handed it to him, and he left the room. When he came out, he was completely confused and didn’t know what to do. He tried to change something about his flight, but nothing worked. He was going to Arizona, not Texas, and didn’t know what would happen. The next night would already be the night of 14 Nissan, and there was no time. In any case, he boarded the plane for Arizona with the Rebbe’s matzos. Whatever would happen would happen. He got on the plane, it took off, and he dozed off. Partway through the flight, they announced that because there was a malfunction

43:06 Speaker 23 on the plane, they were going to make an emergency landing. Where? In Taylor, Texas. Now, they landed there, and he still didn’t know what to do. They brought all the passengers into a hall, and there a couple approached him and asked, “Do you have matzos for us from the Lubavitcher Rebbe?” He said yes and gave them the matzos. A short time later, they fixed the malfunction, and he had carried out the mission. What happened here? This story can be understood in two ways. One way is that the Rebbe has ruach hakodesh; the Rebbe is a prophet. When this man came in to the Rebbe for yechidus, the Rebbe saw what was going to happen: he would fly to Arizona, and there would be a malfunction on the plane along the way. So the Rebbe chose him to carry out the mission. That’s one way. It can also be understood differently, and it seems that this is the more likely explanation. Certainly, the Rebbe can see everything. The Rebbe brought him down in Taylor, Texas. The Rebbe wanted to get the matzos to this couple and looked for a shliach by natural means. And once the man took the matzos for the Rebbe, the Rebbe saw to it that he would land in Taylor, Texas. There’s a well-known saying: What’s the difference between a Rebbe and a prophet? A prophet says what will happen; with a Rebbe, what he says is what will happen. Since the Rebbe wanted those matzos to get there and chose him, he landed there. This shows us how much simple faith and absolute confidence we must have: when the Rebbe says a word, nothing will go unfulfilled. What weight does a word of the Rebbe carry? The Rebbe explains that “the nasi is everything”—but the nasi is everything not only for the Jewish people, but for the entire seder hishtalshelus. The nasi is everything, because the world was created for the Torah and for the Jewish people; and within this, the souls of the Jewish people preceded

45:34 Speaker 23 the Torah, and the Rebbe himself openly embodies the essence of the soul of the Jewish people. So the Rebbe governs the entire seder hishtalshelus. But that’s the Rebbe’s side. On our side, the question is how complete our bittul to the Rebbe must be. Yet there’s also a need for integration here. We must know that to receive the Rebbe, to grasp and internalize what the Rebbe gives us, there has to be integration. And what does integration mean? Measure and limitation. Korach’s argument against Moshe Rabbeinu was that a transcendent connection is enough. Korach argued that a tallis made entirely of techeiles is exempt from tzitzis, because the tallis represents what encompasses us, while the tzitzis represent what is internalized. Korach claimed that since the encompassing level is higher than the internal level, there is no need for the internal. In truth, that was a mistake, because the ultimate purpose is specifically internalization. And to reach the inner dimension of the encompassing level—a higher level within it—there must specifically be internalization. The Rebbe explains that Moshiach has the numerical value of shliach plus ten, with a yud added. The defining quality of a shliach is complete bittul to the one who sends him, and that must be joined with the yud, with the ten powers of the soul. In other words, it isn’t enough for the shliach to have complete bittul to the one who sent him; the shliach must internalize his connection to the Rebbe and be connected with all ten powers of his soul. This has several benefits. First, the intention is that there be a dwelling place for Hashem in the lower realms. If the shliach is only batel to the one who sent him, something is still missing from the nature of the lower realm, because “lower” means the ten powers of the soul. So when is the ultimate purpose expressed? When the shliach is not only batel to the one who sent him, but also connects to him with all ten powers of his soul. Another benefit is that as long as the shliach is only batel to the one who sent him and hasn’t internalized it within the ten powers of his soul, something is also lacking in the level of the infinite. As we said earlier, that is only the external dimension of what encompasses. To reach its inner dimension, the true

48:05 Speaker 23 infinite, the infinite must connect with the finite. But there are several more benefits here that matter in practice. Chassidus explains that the external forces can also draw sustenance from what encompasses—from its external dimension—because what encompasses is without limit. And when the avodah is only in the realm of the unlimited, that boundlessness may go in an undesirable direction. There’s a well-known explanation in Chassidus: What’s the difference between recklessness and mesirus nefesh? A non-Jew, too, may sacrifice his life, but Chassidus describes that sacrifice as recklessness. There’s an enormous difference between recklessness and mesirus nefesh. Recklessness means losing oneself. A person who acts recklessly loses his sense of direction. He’s prepared to do anything because he has no direction. Mesirus nefesh is something done consciously. The person directs himself toward giving his life. Mesirus nefesh comes from the essence of the soul, from a Jew’s complete unity with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. When the avodah comes solely from the soul’s boundless aspect, it is still only the external dimension of what encompasses. And as we said earlier, everyone can receive from that external dimension, because it is boundless, without direction. For the boundless to serve the true purpose and fulfill the Divine intention, it must be connected to a descent into the finite—to the powers of the soul and to Torah. Although the Torah descended below and is revealed through the intellect, it is specifically through Torah that we connect to the true Ein Sof. And there’s another benefit here. Chassidus explains that there is the bittul of a people to their king—which is what we discussed earlier when we said that the Rebbe is a king. But there is also the bittul of a son to his father. The advantage of a son’s bittul to his father is that the people do not understand the king. The people do not feel the king. The people are batel to the king. The advantage of

50:32 Speaker 23 A son also understands his father. A son also loves his father. A son is united with his father, and that is the practical difference. There are many things the Rebbe deliberately left open; the Rebbe did not tell us what to do in every situation. As we said earlier, the Rebbe wanted the shluchim themselves to understand and know how to act. The Rebbe gave general guidance in the spirit of “Give to the wise, and he will grow wiser.” The Rebbe wanted the shluchim, using all ten faculties of their souls—“Send for yourself, according to your own judgment”—to understand on their own how to carry out the shlichus. To reach that point, our connection to the Rebbe cannot be based only on bittul, or only on faith. Our minds, through studying Chassidus and the Rebbe’s teachings, must also connect with the Rebbe’s mind and the Rebbe’s will. Then there is a chance that a shliach will understand the Rebbe’s way even in matters the Rebbe did not address explicitly, because the shliach is connected to the goal, to the inner intention. When you are connected to that inner intention, you certainly will not take actions that do not serve it. When someone is connected only to boundlessness, you cannot know where that will lead. He might arrive at results that do not serve the underlying purpose. But when someone internalizes Chassidus and studies it, and his mind connects with the Rebbe’s mind, there is less chance—less concern—that he will fail to grasp the Rebbe’s thinking, because he is connected to the inner intention. And then, although he is utterly devoted—and indeed, because he is inwardly devoted to the Rebbe without limit, truly and at his very core—he will surely act in accordance with the Rebbe’s will in every matter. This is very, very important today, especially at a time when we do not see or hear, and so doubts can arise about all sorts of things. So clearly, on the

52:41 Speaker 23 one hand, there must be absolute bittul to the Rebbe. But absolute bittul to the Rebbe does not mean not understanding or not feeling. We see plainly that a lack of understanding and feeling can lead to mistakes even when a person’s intentions are good and he has simple faith. Simple faith can still lead to results that are completely contrary to the Rebbe’s purpose. For simple faith to bring about the desired results, it must be joined to an inner connection involving the mind and the emotions, which comes specifically through studying the Rebbe’s teachings. Then we ourselves connect to the Rebbe inwardly, absolutely and genuinely, and our influence on others also emerges in a focused, genuine way—one that brings about the desired result: another Jew draws closer to the Rebbe, and another Jew draws closer to the Rebbe. After all, that is the result and the inner intention: that as many Jews as possible draw closer to the Rebbe. And that is what the Rebbe told us: our shlichus today is to welcome Moshiach. That means working so that as many Jews as possible will accept Moshiach in the proper way, so that as many Jews as possible will recognize the Rebbe’s greatness and connect to the Rebbe. Through this, the world becomes ready to welcome Moshiach Tzidkeinu. May it be Hashem’s will that by internalizing this union of ratzo and shov, which is expressed both in Parshas Chukas and in Parshas Korach, we merit, very soon, immediately, to see the Rebbe here below, a soul in a body, and he will redeem us. Yasher koach! The chossid Reb Zusha Alperovitch, mashpia at the Tomchei Temimim yeshivah in Kiryat Gat. Now, Reb Saadya, after those words, what’s called for is a Chassidic nigun together with, uh, Gil Akivayev, Reb Mordechai Brotsky, and now Reb Avraham Jacobs is joining us too. And surely we all remember how, at the dollar distribution, the Rebbe would address children he saw and say, “Take another dollar,” and tell them,

54:54 Speaker 23 “Yasher koach, [unclear] come to the farbrengen and sing.” The Rebbe always acknowledged those who helped him sing, especially children. So, Reb Saadya, we’re at the Rebbe’s yechidus, at Geulas Olam, at a Chassidic farbrengen, and everyone is joining together in the nigun for the farbrengen. L’chaim, l’chaim.

55:15 Speaker 24 L’chaim, l’chaim. Before we begin, l’chaim, l’chaim.

55:18 Speaker 25 Life and blessing.

55:21 Speaker 24 I’ll tell a short, true story, a story from life. What is the power of a nigun? Uh, can’t you hear me? More? Turn the volume up a little. As part of our performances—you may know Ovadia Hamama from the song “Ana Bekoach”—we go to all kinds of places. And Rabbi, uh, Rabbi Eliyahu from Tzfas called—Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu called Ovadia and asked us to come visit Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu in the hospital, to sing for him. All right, we went together: Ovadia Hamama, Nissim Mulgan[?], a Chabad chossid and a gifted musician. We all went to the hospital together, with three guitars. To tell the truth, I didn’t know exactly where I was going, but we arrived at none other than the intensive care unit. They seated us about six meters from the rabbi’s bed. We sat down and began playing “Ana Bekoach” for him. From where I was sitting, I could see the monitor. The rabbi was, of course, in intensive care, connected to every sort of tube. It was quite a sight. He wasn’t opening his eyes; he was in very serious condition, with his children beside him, and the Rebbetzin, and everyone. We were singing “Ana Bekoach” when suddenly I noticed out of the corner of my eye that the monitor showed his condition was unstable. He had become a little emotional because of the song and the occasion and everything. They asked us to stop singing. We took a break of about ten minutes, then went back to singing and continued. We sang a few songs, and then the Rebbetzin said, “Do a song about Jerusalem, something about Jerusalem.” We weren’t really practiced at that, because we don’t perform at events. Most of our work is in the recording studio, with original material. We tried to find something—“Shabchi Yerushalayim,” a sort of Sephardic song—and we sang, and something called “Kar Li Bach,” and more or less exhausted our repertoire. Then they said, “Do something else.” I felt something in the general atmosphere there, something

57:46 Speaker 24 wasn’t rising; it felt stuck. I said to Rabbi Eliyahu, to his son, “Could we do a Chabad nigun?” He said, “What? Gladly. Do a Chabad nigun.” Spontaneously, we picked up the guitars and simply began playing... and continued with “Ufaratzta.” And in less than—this is a true story—in less than half a minute, all of Rabbi Eliyahu’s sons there in intensive care began dancing as though they’d been saying l’chaim for half an hour. They began dancing. The Rebbetzin began beaming with joy. The monitor showed that his condition was completely stable. Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, in his serious condition—and anyone who was there saw it—simply began clapping along to the nigun, with all the tubes attached to his hands and everything. It was an unbelievable sight. Honestly, my overall feeling was: What does it mean to be shluchim? We came there; the Rebbe came to visit him. He sent shluchim to visit him. That was how I felt. That is the power of a Chabad nigun. I mean, it isn’t... A Chabad nigun is more than good music; it’s something G-dly. It’s—it’s—it’s the Shechinah. We need to use the nigun and make the most of it. Actually, when we had finished everything, finished all the nigunim, the rabbi—uh, the Rebbetzin said, “One more thing, but give us something about Moshiach. Give us another nigun.” So that’s the story. Now, please, let’s sing the nigun “Shuvah Shuvah,” one of the nigunim composed for the Rebbe’s birthday, with everyone singing together. “Return, return, Hashem—how long? And have compassion on Your servants. Satisfy us in the morning with Your kindness, and we will sing and rejoice all our days. Return, return, Hashem—how long? And have compassion on Your servants. Satisfy us in the morning with Your kindness, and we will sing and rejoice all our days. And we will sing and rejoice, rejoice all our days. And we will sing and rejoice, rejoice all our days. Let Your work be seen by Your servants

1:00:26 Speaker 24 Your work to Your servants, and Your glory to their children; may the pleasantness of Hashem our G-d be upon us. Let Your work be seen by Your servants, and Your glory by their children; may the pleasantness of Hashem our G-d be upon us. Establish the work of our hands for us. Establish the work of our hands for us. Establish the work of our hands for us. Establish the work of our hands for us. Yai rai ram, yai ra ra ra ra ram. Hey da da dai da da da da dam. Yai rai ram, oy, da da da da da da da, hey da da da da da da dai da. Return, return, Hashem—how long? Have compassion on Your servants. Satisfy us in the morning with Your kindness, and we will sing and rejoice all our days. Ay, return, return, Hashem—how long? Have compassion on Your servants. Satisfy us in the morning with Your kindness, and we will sing and rejoice all our days. And we will sing and rejoice, rejoice all our days. And we will sing and rejoice, rejoice all our days. Let Your work be seen by Your servants, and Your glory by their children; may the pleasantness of Hashem our G-d be upon us. Let Your work be seen by Your servants, and Your glory by their children; may the pleasantness of Hashem our G-d be upon us. Establish the work of our hands for us, establish the work of our hands for us, establish the work of our hands for us, establish the work of our hands for us, establish the work of our hands for us, establish the work of our hands. Ay, ay, ay. Tiram damam damam damam. Ay, ay, oy, oy, la da la la la, mai da da, mai da da. What? Ay, ay, ay. Everyone together, everyone. Return, return, Hashem—how long? Have compassion on Your servants. Satisfy us in the morning with Your kindness, and we will sing and rejoice all our days. Oy, let Your work be seen by Your servants, and Your glory by their children; may the pleasantness of Hashem our G-d be upon us. Let Your work be seen by Your servants, and Your glory by their children; may the pleasantness of Hashem our G-d be upon us. Establish the work of our hands for us, establish the work of our hands, establish the work of our hands

1:04:07 Speaker 24 for us, and establish the work of our hands. A blessed Shabbos.

1:04:16 Speaker 26 Yasher koach, yasher koach. Once again, Reb Gil and Mordechai, and Reb Avrum, who joined us. “[unclear]” We are still here on Shabbos, and we have no day as great and holy as this for a moment of hiskashrus—to awaken together, strengthen one another, and forge a connection with the Rebbe in actual practice. I have the honor of inviting the local rabbi and member of the Chabad Rabbinical Court, the distinguished chossid Rabbi Mordechai Ashkenazi, to inspire us, strengthen us, farbreng with us, and say l’chaim with us. Rabbi Ashkenazi, please.

1:05:09 Speaker 3 L’chaim, l’chaim. L’chaim, l’chaim. A good week, and l’chaim and blessings. We have gathered for a Gimmel Tammuz farbrengen, the fourteenth one. It is something each person asks himself: What will be? “His vigor has not diminished.” He asks himself: What is Gimmel Tammuz? What does it mean? There are extreme views on either side, but there is also a middle path. As the Rambam writes, the middle path is the straight path. We won’t get into all the arguments and fine distinctions, but when chassidim sit at a Gimmel Tammuz farbrengen, at such a serious time, when we have all gathered together, each person thinks to himself: This is not 19 Kislev; this is not 12 Tammuz; this is Gimmel Tammuz. It is not Yud Shvat or 24 Teves either. “The sun rises and the sun sets,” and the sun rises again—but Gimmel Tammuz is Gimmel Tammuz. There is no need to dwell on the doubled and redoubled darkness this day has brought upon us. So where does that leave us? We ask ourselves: What situation are we in? Who am I, and what am I, to explain it? But we can share our thoughts and words together, and that is what a chassidic farbrengen is about. At farbrengens there weren’t speeches or sermons. Each person spoke what was on his heart. And in the end, good things came of it. I want to tell you about a personal feeling I had. I’ve told this before, but I want to tell it again, because it has stayed with me; it gave me renewed strength. I travel to the Rebbe every two weeks, baruch Hashem, and have done so for more than thirty years. This was the fourteenth time after Gimmel Tammuz. I arrived in New York—this year Shavuos fell on Monday—and I arrived on Thursday. The first thing I do, generally, when I get to New York is go to the Ohel to ask the Rebbe for a blessing that my time there should be

1:08:30 Speaker 3 successful. Before I leave, I go again to ask for a farewell blessing. Then I leave. I arrived at the Ohel on Thursday, and it happened to be one of those times—something that almost never happens to me—when I was alone. No one else was there. I wrote a pan, with requests and blessings, personal and communal, for the residents of Kfar Chabad, [unclear], for their material and spiritual needs, that Kfar Chabad should be as the Rebbe wishes. He devoted himself to it so that it would be, as the Rebbe once expressed it, [unclear]. I went in and read the pan. I wrote the response [unclear]. Before I left, I looked at the stone and pictured the Rebbe. I tried to picture him as I remembered him standing, whether at yechidus, at kos shel bracha, or when people were taking leave, giving each and every person a blessing—whatever the Rebbe intended for each person according to what he needed. That was what I pictured. I said to the Rebbe: I want some indication, some sign that my words are being received, that my requests are being received. And I left. I went into the room there to wash my hands. Two bochurim were standing there. Suddenly one of them called out to me, “Rabbi Ashkenazi, Rabbi Ashkenazi, come quickly! The Rebbe is calling you to say l’chaim.” At that very moment, a video was playing there of a farbrengen from some years earlier, apparently a farbrengen on 12 Sivan. I don’t even remember what year it was, and... it was a little hard to see from a distance. The Rebbe called to me and told me to pour—no, he didn’t pour for me; he indicated that I should say l’chaim over a cup, a full cup. I could hear the Rebbe saying to me, “L’chaim, l’chaim and blessings.” My friends, I came out—I didn’t know what to do with myself. I felt what every chossid should feel: that the Rebbe is here. Not only is he here; he is here, blessing and giving. But that also places a responsibility on you.

1:11:08 Speaker 3 That is what you think. Listen, you asked, you asked. But when you feel that the Rebbe is giving you his blessing now, giving you encouragement, closeness and devotion, that places a responsibility on you. I tell you, in all fourteen years, I had never experienced a Shavuos with as much feeling as the Shavuos that followed. I felt I had been granted something, a special closeness. But that also places a responsibility on you. Well, at that moment my heart felt good. I felt as though I was back at Shavuos years earlier. But afterward, when you return to Eretz Yisroel, move a little farther away, and reach the day of 12 Ta—of Gimmel Tammuz, you stop and think: If so, why? If it was all so good? The situation was so good, so bright. What were we lacking? And suddenly we find ourselves in such doubled and redoubled darkness. I spent many hours thinking about this. But when you reflect on the history of Lubavitch from its founding, from the days of the Alter Rebbe, on the one hand there were revelations that no other chassidic movement in the world experienced. Such a spread of Chassidus—of Chassidus, and, as was mentioned earlier, song; brilliance in the revealed Torah and in Chassidus; serving Hashem; spreading the wellsprings. But on the other hand, everything came through concealment and hiding. From the Alter Rebbe’s first arrest—his first arrest, which was precisely what had to lead to the blessing of 19 Kislev, when the Alter Rebbe’s life was, G-d forbid, in danger. The chassidim then did not think there would be such a 19 Kislev. They could not imagine it. They thought it was over, over. And it was precisely from that trouble, from the imprisonment, that the true and complete redemption emerged. And then there were the days in Russia of the Yevsektsiya, when Jews from among our own people rose up and tried to uproot Chabad Chassidus entirely. Whether through the arrest of the Frierdiker Rebbe, or through

1:14:25 Speaker 3 The arrest of [unclear] and the [unclear] of Chabad Chassidus. To kill, to murder, to cut down, to send to Siberia, to close the Talmud Torah schools and the cheders, the mikvah. To destroy, to uproot. Back then, Yankel, people thought the world was dark. Some even said: “What was, was, and what was will never be again.” And it was precisely out of that darkness that the Geulah came afterward. The self-sacrifice of the chassidim and of the Rebbe later brought about the true and complete Geulah, as we see every single day. Apparently this is how Hakadosh Boruch Hu orders things in the world: precisely out of darkness comes the revelation of light. This is explained at length in Chassidus and in the Rebbe’s holy sichos. If we look at Gimmel Tammuz by that same measure—but there is something even harder. It says: “Our forefather Avraham was tested with ten trials.” The last trial was the Akeidah, and the Rebbe explains in his holy sichos, based on a maamar of the Alter Rebbe, why we mention the trial of the Akeidah every morning. After all, there were ten trials. Avraham was a three-year-old child in Ur Kasdim. Which is greater self-sacrifice: that of a three-year-old child, or that of a man of 137, after serving Hakadosh Boruch Hu for 134 years? If so, we should be mentioning Ur Kasdim. Why do we mention the Akeidah? The Rebbe gives a wonderful explanation: the trial of Ur Kasdim had a purpose. Avraham took upon himself the mission of making Hakadosh Boruch Hu known throughout the world. It was a mission with a particular goal, and for such a mission, a person will give his life to advance what he believes in, the approach he has pioneered. We have seen this even among the nations of the world, though the comparison is utterly different. That was self-sacrifice with reason and understanding.

1:17:10 Speaker 3 From Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s perspective, too, there was reason and understanding: for the message to be accepted, self-sacrifice was necessary. And from Avraham’s perspective, he was making the name of Hakadosh Boruch Hu known for the sake of an ideal. People literally give their lives for an ideal. But the Akeidah was a trial without reason or understanding. Who stood to gain anything from Avraham taking Yitzchak and binding him on the altar? It brought no publicity. Nobody knew. Avraham even left the two men who accompanied him at a distance, and said, in effect, “Yitzchak and I will go, bind him on the altar and kill him.” What benefit was there? What reward was there from this self-sacrifice for Hakadosh Boruch Hu? There was no ideal here, no goal—just a simple command: Will you listen to Me or won’t you? This self-sacrifice, without reason or understanding, is the highest form of self-sacrifice. That is why this trial of the Akeidah is remembered for all generations and mentioned in our prayers every day, more than the trial of Ur Kasdim. The trial of Gimmel Tammuz is far greater and far harder than the trial of 19 Kislev or the trial of 12 Tammuz, of the Yevsektsiya in Russia, of the Iron Curtain, of all those things—because those were for a purpose. Here, who gains from this trial? Us? Certainly not. The Rebbe? I am sure the Rebbe does not want to be in the higher worlds now. He wants to be here with us below, literally. He has no need for the Leviathan, or the wild ox, or Gan Eden and all those things. As for what it says there, “They will go from strength to strength,” according to the interpretation of the Arizal that the Rebbe cites—I am sure that is not—just as

1:19:35 Speaker 3 we know the Rebbe, to the extent that we can know him and remember him, he was not seeking the World to Come, and he was not seeking Gan Eden for himself. He wanted to be together with chassidim. That is what he accustomed us to over forty—forty-two years. Forty-four years. [unclear] We were used to it: we could not be without the Rebbe, and the Rebbe could not be without us. The Rebbe gave us this approach. The Rebbe educated us this way. So who has gained from these fourteen years? It can only be that this is one of the hardest trials, like the trial of the Akeidah. And so, when we look at it this way, as we say every day in prayer, “Do not bring us to a trial”—and “do not bring us to disgrace”—chassidim explained: Do not bring us to a trial that could bring us to disgrace, G-d forbid, if we fail to withstand it. And there is no doubt that the Rebbe gives us the strength to withstand it, every single one of us. There are shluchim who spend all day spreading the wellsprings, but there are also members of Anash who sit, thank G-d, more or less—without the evil eye—each man beneath his vine and beneath his fig tree. But the greatest danger is despair. If, G-d forbid, the few chassidim who remained in Russia had fallen into despair, we would not have come this far. Likewise, at the time of 19 Kislev, the chassidim did not lose heart. They did not give in to despair and say, “That’s it, it’s over.” G-d forbid that we should entertain such a thought. If the Maggid promised us that Chabad Chassidus would continue until the coming of Moshiach, there is no doubt that those words remain alive and true. But what does that mean? We are facing a trial, and we have to withstand it. It is hard, because sometimes the yetzer hara puts all

1:22:33 Speaker 3 kinds of alien thoughts into our heads. Who says you are right? Maybe the House of Israel really is like all the nations? That is the most terrible thing. We must know that on one side stands the Rebbe, and on the other stands the yetzer hara, the Satan, trying to slip all kinds of thoughts into our heads: Maybe you can do whatever you want? Maybe—who knows what will be? I do not want to think about all the nonsense that sometimes runs through our minds. But that is what a chassidic farbrengen is about: chassidim gathering together with one heart, as one person. The Rebbe is here at this farbrengen, here with us. We see it and feel it, and, with Hashem’s help, we will see it. But first we have to get one thing into our heads: this is only a matter of trials. “For a brief moment I forsook you, but with great compassion I will gather you.” L’chaim, l’chaim. L’chaim, l’chaim. May this be the last Gimmel Tammuz on which we gather like this. With Hashem’s help, we will gather for many farbrengens together with the Rebbe, here below, below ten tefachim, in a physical body. “Your eyes will behold the King in his beauty.” L’chaim, l’chaim. Thank you very much. Yasher koach to the local rabbi, the scholarly chossid Rabbi Mordechai Shmuel Ashkenazi shlita. May he long continue to lead his community in health and joy. Ladies and gentlemen, there were years when we would go out into the street and see a tefillin stand, or meet a Jew on his way to help someone put on tefillin. We all knew who they were: the Chabadniks. Today, thank G-d, when we go out into the street, we encounter the Rebbe’s influence on every corner. There are stands spreading Yiddishkeit, campaigns for the mitzvah of Shabbos candles, and many other initiatives—not necessarily run by Chabad chassidim. This is the continuation of the Rebbe’s work and influence. The man responsible for this revolution among the religious Zionist community is someone we are honored to have with us here: Rabbi Yehoshua Shapira, head of the Ramat Gan Hesder Yeshiva. He has brought about a revolution among those he influences, encouraging them to go out into the street and help Jews fulfill

1:25:34 Speaker 3 mitzvos, put on tefillin, and the like. But it is not only in action that Rabbi Shapira carries out the Rebbe’s holy wishes. Rabbi Shapira also studies the Rebbe’s teachings and maamarim, and more than once he has repeated and taught a maamar of the Rebbe to his students in the yeshiva. And in recognition of all these merits, I have just been told that tonight, the eve of Gimmel Tammuz, a grandson was born to Rabbi Shapira. So on behalf of everyone here, we wish him mazel tov. Mazel tov on the birth of his grandson. May his father and mother merit to raise him to Torah, chuppah and good deeds. He merited to be born on this great and holy day. It is our honor to invite Rabbi Shapira to speak to us about the remarkable joining of opposites that he finds in the Rebbe’s teachings. Rabbi Shapira, please.

1:26:42 Speaker 4 With the permission of my esteemed rabbis and teachers. A few days ago, in Hayom Yom, I think on 24 Sivan, it spoke about hiskashrus when there is no face-to-face meeting. And the guidance was that through the maamarim, instructions, and guidance, there is an inner connection even when one cannot see the other person. Just as those words were said about physical distance, they certainly apply to distance in time, and also to distance between souls. When speaking of the Rebbe, that distance is beyond what we can grasp. Even to say, “His little finger is thicker than our waists,” is not enough. And yet there is a way to connect, even across that distance. I want to speak about one maamar of the Rebbe’s that I think can shed some light, from one angle, on his unique greatness. The spirit of Moshiach that shone through with such penetrating force, with such strength and such sublime power, in every chamber of his heart, his deeds, and his work—it is a wondrous light that calls for endless study. In one maamar, the Rebbe explains the nature of Moshiach. The Rebbe asks about the verse, “The spirit of Hashem will rest upon him, a spirit of wisdom and understanding,” and so on, “and he will judge the poor with righteousness.” The Rebbe asks: We know that Moshiach will be on the level of “he will sense with the fear of Hashem,” which is beyond reason and understanding. Yet the verse speaks of a spirit of wisdom and understanding, on the basis of which he judges. If so, his judgment would be based on reason and understanding. The Rebbe answers, initially, that the spirit of Hashem encompasses reason and understanding too. Therefore, even Moshiach’s judgment based on wisdom and understanding will be illuminated by the spirit of Hashem and by “he will sense with the fear of Hashem,” which is beyond reason and understanding. But to explain this, he goes into greater depth, and perhaps we can learn from it something about the Rebbe’s approach in general. The Rebbe cites the teaching of our Sages that “the light of Ein Sof extends upward without end and downward without limit.” And the Rebbe asks: How can there be “upward” and “downward” in the light of Ein Sof? There is no edge there, no boundary, no direction. Perhaps one could say

1:30:48 Speaker 4 that “upward” and “downward” are defined by the worlds: the light of Ein Sof shines into the worlds, upward without end and downward without limit. But this does not seem right, because then it should have said, “There is no place devoid of Him”; from the perspective of the light itself, there is no upward or downward. The Rebbe explains this through a maamar of the Rebbe Maharash about the difference between Atzilus and Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah. In Patach Eliyahu, there is a distinction between bodies and garments. The Alter Rebbe explains that “bodies” are an inseparable garment, while “garments” are a separate garment. An inseparable garment cannot be taken off and moved elsewhere; it is always there. A separate garment, though, can belong to Reuven today and Shimon tomorrow. So in Atzilus, everything is completely attached to G-dliness; it is G-dly light. But Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah are separate worlds. The Rebbe goes on to explain more deeply what an inseparable garment and a separate garment mean. The Rebbe says that the essential quality of an inseparable garment is that it is completely nullified to the inner life within it, just as the body is nullified to the soul. We can actually see life in the body, despite its physicality, because the soul shines within it. That is not the case with external, physical garments: we do not see life in them, because they have an existence of their own as something separate. So when something takes place inwardly, there is no need for it to pass across to the body for the body to act on it: the body is one with, and nullified to, its inner life. This is what “upward” and “downward” mean. “Upward” means being nullified to one’s source; “downward” means standing as a separate existence. On this basis, the Rebbe Maharash explains that there is an aspect of upward and downward not only in Atzilus and Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah, but also in their source, even before the tzimtzum. For the light of Ein Sof before the tzimtzum itself has two aspects: one that is entirely beyond the category of worlds, and another from which worlds are destined to emerge. The aspect of the light of Ein Sof from which worlds are destined to emerge is the potential and flow within it for there to be, later,

1:34:14 Speaker 4 separate worlds that exist in their own right. But in the light that is utterly beyond the category of worlds, everything is nullified; everything is absorbed in its source. So even in the light before the tzimtzum there is an aspect of upward and downward: upward without end and downward without limit. The Rebbe adds that even in the Essence of the Luminary, before the light, there too is an aspect of upward and downward. For the Luminary’s ability to shine into worlds, even separate worlds, is not some particular capacity that it possesses. Rather, it is because He is omnipotent. There is no limit whatsoever to His ability. He can therefore bring forth worlds, and He can also choose not to create them. From the perspective of His all-encompassing omnipotence, the ability to create worlds and the ability not to create them are entirely one, because these are not two separate capacities. He is simply omnipotent, able to do both. Thus, within the Essence of the Luminary, the ability to create worlds and the ability not to create them—the aspect of “upward without end,” the ability not to create worlds so that everything remains nullified in its source, “all is considered as nothing before Him,” and the ability to create worlds that exist as separate entities—are all in the very same place. It is therefore correct to say not only of the light, but even of the Essence of the Luminary, that it contains “upward without end and downward without limit.” The Rebbe concludes that this is the spirit spoken of in the verse, the spirit of Moshiach: “The spirit of Hashem will rest upon him,” a spirit that always encompasses both sides. “A spirit of wisdom and understanding”—opposites within a single spirit—and “counsel and might.” And then, “The wolf will dwell with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the kid.” Furthermore, the Rebbe says that even in the worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah, and Asiyah there is, in truth, “upward without end and downward without limit.” For the encompassing light that surrounds even these worlds nullifies them completely within their source. That encompassing light

1:37:13 Speaker 4 is hidden and concealed; it is not revealed within them, but it surrounds them. So even “downward without limit” contains “upward without end.” That is why the verse concludes, “The earth will be filled with the knowledge of Hashem as the waters cover the sea.” Even the physical earth will be filled with the knowledge of Hashem as the waters cover the sea. This unity of the two extremes, “upward without end and downward without limit,” is the spirit of Moshiach. We find this as well in a sicha on our parsha, Parshas Chukas. “It is a decree that I have decreed” is beyond reason and understanding, even beyond His wisdom. It comes from His will, and even from beyond a will that has a reason—from a place where the will has no reason. And it is precisely this “upward without end” of “a decree that I have decreed” that descends “downward without limit,” to purify those who have come into contact with the dead, to purify someone who has contracted the most severe form of impurity. Immediately afterward, in our parsha, before the entry into Eretz Yisroel and its conquest, we find that, unlike when they left Egypt and Moshe Rabbeinu was commanded to strike the rock, he was commanded to speak to the rock—as though it had the understanding to hear the words of Moshe Rabbeinu, the faithful shepherd. “The earth will be filled with the knowledge of Hashem.” I think this was the Rebbe’s way. On the one hand, throughout the maamarim and throughout the study of the inner dimension of Torah, you can hardly find a single maamar that does not lead you upward and upward, and higher still, without end, all the way to the Essence itself. On the other hand, from that very height of “a decree that I have decreed,” beyond reason and understanding, beyond even a will that has a reason, it descends lower and lower, until even someone who has contracted the most severe form of impurity emerges from his impurity. And as we said at the outset, through the power of the Rebbe’s guidance, we too have merited to take part both in studying the maamarim of Chassidus and in going out into the world, in the generation of the footsteps of Moshiach—a time of “footsteps” on the one hand and of Moshiach on the other, downward without limit and upward without end. And through the power of “upward

1:40:24 Speaker 4 without end,” to descend downward without limit and purify even the heels; to bring the Jewish people back to their Father in Heaven. Through this, may we soon merit the light of Moshiach in actual revelation. “Your Teacher shall no longer be concealed,” speedily in our days, amen.

1:40:54 Speaker 5 Thank you, Rabbi Yehoshua Shapira, head of the Hesder Yeshiva in Ramat Gan. Pearls flow from his mouth. Someone once told me in the name of Rabbi Yoel Kahn that he had read Rabbi Shapira’s article about the Rebbe’s teachings. Rabbi Yoel said, “I wish that many of our fellow chassidim would understand the Rebbe’s teachings and live by them as Rabbi Shapira does.” So after hearing these wonderful words, let us wish that for ourselves. Thank you. And now, ladies and gentlemen, “My soul thirsts for You,” together with the Rebbe. Together with the Rebbe, “My soul thirsts for You,” and then, of course, together with the musicians.

1:41:46 Speaker 4 My soul thirsts for You; my flesh longs for You in a dry and weary land without water. So I have beheld You in the Sanctuary, to see Your strength and Your glory.

1:42:41 Speaker 6 So I have beheld You in the Sanctuary, to see Your strength and Your glory.

1:42:48 Speaker 4 “So I have seen You in the sanctuary, to behold Your strength and Your glory. My soul thirsts for You; my flesh longs for You, in a dry and weary land without water.” I ask everyone here to join in, to join in. You can turn on the light. Ladies and gentlemen, this evening is Gimmel Tammuz, fourteen years since Gimmel Tammuz 5754. More than half a generation has passed. There are many Temimim, and many others, who have connected and bound themselves to the Rebbe without having merited to see our Rebbe, our king, in person. At the same time, we see thousands upon thousands of chassidim, thousands upon thousands of people, who have connected over these fourteen years to Chabad, to Chabad Chassidus, and to Chabad’s work throughout the country and the entire world. We see the same among the girls and women: many, many have joined. In this second part of the farbrengen, we’ll focus on hearing from people who encountered or saw that great light and formed a close bond with the Rebbe. I’m honored to invite Rabbi Meir Levinger, a chossid and one of the leading teachers at Mayanot, to tell us about how he connected, and about the great light he saw in the Rebbe’s teachings and in Chabad Chassidus. Rabbi Levinger, please.

1:48:04 Speaker 7 L’chaim. L’chaim, l’chaim.

1:48:25 Speaker 8 I was asked to speak as someone who became close at an older age. People often ask me, “Who brought you close to the Rebbe?” The answer might sound a little strange, but what I usually say is: the Rebbe Rashab. The Rebbe Rashab brought me close to the Rebbe. What can I do? That’s how it happened. I grew up in Boro Park, in the United States, and went to a cheder associated with circles very close to the kana’im. Where I grew up, we didn’t just lack sympathy for Chabad—there was fierce opposition to Chabad. There was really very strong opposition, and it even came out in the way people spoke. The subject of the name and Moshiach was very... I came from a slightly more open home, so sometimes we went for kos shel bracha or for dollars, but we were very, very far from that whole world. So much so that, as we got a little older, we took an interest in learning more about what was supposedly wrong with Chabad. We would collect articles and books, and we went at it with all our might. Then once, by Divine Providence, I found a kuntres that was also against Chassidus and against Chabad. But it said, “If you really want to know what Chabad Chassidus is, you need to study Kuntres Eitz Hachayim, Kuntres Ha’avodah, and Kuntres Hatefillah. Once you study those kuntreisim, you’ll understand how Chabad doesn’t follow that path at all, and how they have absolutely no connection to any of it.” So I said to myself, if you want to know your enemy, you have to go and study a little. That very year, in 5755, Heichal Menachem opened in Boro Park. I went in and said, “I want to study Kuntres Eitz Hachayim.”

1:51:48 Speaker 8 The man looked at me and said, “Kuntres Eitz Hachayim? Kuntres Eitz Hachayim deals with lofty concepts. It starts with desire and the essence of existence, matter and form, chochmah and malchus. You can’t start there. Start with sichos and simpler things.” I said, “Excuse me, I don’t want you to draw me in. I specifically want to study Kuntres Eitz Hachayim.” So there I was, a kid insisting on it. I wandered around the place until someone was kind enough to sit down and explain what Kuntres Eitz Hachayim said. I heard the librarian giving a class—it was before Pesach—on a letter of the Sfas Emes about Pesach, and he explained the letter using a maamar of the Rebbe Rashab. I now know that it was [unclear]. I heard a parable about throwing a stone. Suddenly, hearing a parable like that really shook me. I remember going back to the chassidic community I came from and saying, “Guys, you don’t know what’s going on over there. They speak with such... there’s such clarity. I’ve never heard anything like it in my life.” But I still kept my distance, until someone was kind enough... Bein hazmanim was ending, and I had to go back to yeshiva. I bought a copy of Kuntres Eitz Hachayim, and I had someone to help me. The yeshiva was in a remote place, so someone volunteered to call me once a week and answer all the questions I’d had that week about Kuntres Eitz Hachayim. At that pace, I could get through maybe five lines a week. I had no background in Chassidus, but I insisted. From Pesach until Rosh Hashanah, I worked through the entire kuntres, and suddenly it was a different world. The Rebbe Rashab explains there why we need to study Chassidus and why

1:54:08 Speaker 8 we need it, and what Chassidus is in the first place. By Rosh Hashanah, I was already a different person. I still went to that chassidic court for Rosh Hashanah. Among the rebbes of Poland, the custom on Rosh Hashanah night is for everyone to approach the rebbe, who blesses each person with “May you be inscribed and sealed for a good year,” and adds more and more blessings. The lines are very, very long, and I didn’t want to push my way in. So I wandered a little between the tables and benches. Suddenly I spotted a young married man from the chassidic community I belonged to, sitting there learning Chassidus—a maamar. He had no problem sitting there learning a maamar, because it was so far-fetched that anyone would understand what he was reading. He could sit right there in the middle of the shul and nobody would have any idea. I went over and said, “Well, I’ve caught you red-handed! Here you are, in the middle of our chassidic community, learning a maamar!” He asked, “How do you even know it’s a maamar?” I told him I’d been learning Kuntres Eitz Hachayim for six months and was drawn to it in an extraordinary way. He said, “I’ve been here for a year and a half, two years”—he had married into that chassidic community—“and I’ve been hiding it from everyone. I have no one to talk to about Chassidus. Come, let’s start learning.” He began learning Chassidus with me freely, and that Tishrei my parents couldn’t understand what had happened. I’d become such a fervent chossid, constantly traveling to that court. We simply sat and learned Chassidus until I realized I couldn’t go on like that. So that was it. I came here to Eretz Yisroel, and here I started going to the yeshiva in Kfar Chabad and to Toras Emes at night. And in that chassidic community, to this day, there’s a large group

1:56:32 Speaker 8 of young married men who learn with him. He had kept it hidden, but once he started learning with me, others joined. To this day, there’s a large group there who learn Chassidus and truly live with it. What’s the point of this whole story? Some people claim that we’re a different people, that we’re different, and I think that’s true. We really are different. The clarity we have, the truth we have—not that it isn’t found elsewhere; there’s no need to say others don’t have it. But they simply don’t have the tools to understand what we have. Almost everyone knows that we have such a great Rebbe, something beyond comparison, but they don’t even have the ability to understand what that means. Someone who hasn’t studied Chassidus doesn’t know what to make of it, doesn’t know how to approach it. I remember when I was a bochur studying here in Eretz Yisroel, I would fly once or twice a year. We’d be on the plane back, and everyone would sit down and want a little peace and quiet. Sometimes you’d even be seated beside someone who perhaps didn’t keep mitzvos. You’d say hello and then want to rest quietly. Suddenly the Chabad bochurim would start pestering him, driving him crazy: “Put on tefillin.” “Why not?” “Maybe you will.” I remember sitting there—and I’m a little embarrassed about this—but I’d think to myself: I’m a religious Jew too. Not just religious; I’m chareidi. I’ve never gone a day without putting on tefillin, but that’s what I do. The Jew next to me doesn’t really want to put on tefillin, doesn’t know about it. Why are you pestering him? You won’t leave him alone. What do you want from him? Suddenly, when I began to study

1:59:03 Speaker 8 Through Chassidus, I began to get a little sense of what it means, of how the Rebbe looks at it. Tefillin are something real. A Jew has a G-dly soul, and that is something real. It really is real. If we boarded a plane and, an hour later, they announced that they had accidentally forgotten to bring food, and I had ten loaves of bread in my bag, would I be embarrassed to hand out bread? I wouldn’t. Why? Why is bread different from tefillin? Because bread is real to me. Tefillin—well, I really do put them on, and I’m very afraid of missing a day. But for them to be just as real to me as bread? Without learning Chassidus... After all, we want to bring Jews close to the Rebbe. We want the whole world to know the Rebbe. But they don’t have the tools for it. There’s the well-known letter the Frierdiker Rebbe wrote to the Rebbe, saying that the Baal Shem Tov explained where one must strive to reach, and the Alter Rebbe showed how to get there. I don’t know other circles that well. In the circle I come from, and in what I work with today, there’s a center for the study of Chassidus in Jerusalem where Polish-style yeshiva students learn Chassidus. Every young man is educated with the message, morning and evening, constantly: You need holiness and purity; you need love and awe; you need to taste Shabbos; you need to experience the festivals and the seasons. They’re given all these concepts all day and all night. “You need this, you need this, you need this”—and they truly long for it. But how do you get there? What is love? What is awe? What is emunah? What is bitachon? They simply don’t have that knowledge. When they want to understand the Rebbe, to get to know the Rebbe, to understand what the mitzvah campaigns are about in the first place—why? Why? Why is Moshiach something the Rebbe cares about at all?

2:01:43 Speaker 8 Why does he care about the campaigns? What? What? They have no idea. When they start learning Chassidus, suddenly—after all, I had friends; everyone knew I was the expert on every argument against Chabad, all the controversies and so on. So one of them asks me, “Well, you had so many questions. What happened to all those questions?” The simple answer is what the Alter Rebbe said after the debate in Minsk: When you learn Chassidus, you don’t get answers; all the questions fall away. Today, when a young man encounters Chassidus Mevueres, he can’t approach a festival without learning a maamar. Before he learns Chassidus, he doesn’t understand at all what the Rebbe wants. But once he’s encountered the teachings of Chassidus, every word the Rebbe says is sacred to him. That doesn’t mean he becomes a Chabad chossid, and I... Everyone has... There may be other obstacles too. But a word from the Rebbe? The Rebbe represented the greatest clarity there is in the world. Some people claim it’s our fault, that we aren’t publicizing the Rebbe’s teachings. I don’t know; I’m not here to preach. But I think it’s simply not that we aren’t spreading them, or that we... It’s that we live with them, so we take them for granted and don’t realize how much... It’s like a fish: a fish would never offer someone a glass of water, because it’s surrounded by water. But if we knew—and perhaps we need to start with even a little emunah—if we understood that someone on the outside, who has never learned Chassidus or a sicha of the Rebbe, lives with such a lack of clarity, with real darkness... I remember, about five years ago, a few years after my wedding, I was walking down the street in Borough Park and met an old classmate. We had learned together in yeshiva. We meet and say, “Shalom

2:04:20 Speaker 8 aleichem.” “What are you doing?” “What am I doing?” We get to talking. I tell him, “I work at Mayanot; I’m involved in shlichus.” “What are you doing?” Well, he’s already dealing in millions. He’s built factories in India and China and is very, very successful. But during the conversation I sense that he’s broken, that he feels like nothing. He’s broken by it. He says, “What? At least you’re involved in things that are real. Where am I?” So I simply told him, “Listen, the Lubavitcher Rebbe says...” And I repeated to him the sicha about Chana’s prayer. I told him that the Rebbe explains that when a Jew wants money, it’s because his animal soul wants what is good: he wants to reveal G-dliness in the world. Suddenly his eyes lit up and he said to me, “Azoy zogt der Lubavitcher Rebbe? That’s what he says?” He couldn’t believe it. How could such a thing be? It’s simply... And things like this happen every day. Anyone exposed to this light is simply overwhelmed by it. We just don’t grasp how much light we’re living in, or what we can do with one little insight. I have friends who, whenever they give someone a ride, make sure there’s a recording of a sicha playing, or someone explaining something in Chassidus. And hardly a time goes by without the person saying, “What? The Lubavitcher Rebbe says such wonderful things?” It’s unbelievable! When I’m sitting at the Shabbos meal and my little son repeats a sicha, then aside from the usual things I want—I want to see whether he understands the sicha or not—it almost always strikes me: Does this child have any idea how many questions, uncertainties and doubts he already has in life at the age of nine, and how, when he repeats this sicha, his heart is being given answers to all those questions? So. May Hakadosh Boruch Hu help us,

2:07:12 Speaker 8 that we should be a help to him in life. Life. It says in Chassidus—I’m just finishing—that Moshe said “Hear, O Israel, Hashem is our G-d, Hashem is One” of his own accord. It doesn’t say that Hashem told Moshe, “Say to them: Hear, O Israel, Hashem is our G-d, Hashem is One.” Chassidus explains that it’s precisely through Moshe Rabbeinu that one can understand “Hashem is One.” If we go out and give everyone this “Hashem is One,” this taste of Chassidus, they’ll automatically understand that to grasp “Hashem is One,” they need Moshe Rabbeinu. So, with Hashem’s help, by doing what is asked of us—engaging in the Rebbe’s campaigns and spreading the wellsprings—may we merit... L’chaim.

2:08:27 Speaker 9 Thank you very much; yasher koach. Rabbi Meir Levinger, I was looking for words of appreciation, but I came up with an even better gematria: “Rabbi Meir Levinger, may he live long, in the great light of Chassidus”—1,090. So we have heard, and seen with our own eyes, the great light Rabbi Meir Levinger found in Chassidus, took to heart, and now spreads as one of the great disseminators of Chassidus in our generation. Thank you, and yasher koach. And now we’ll ask the musicians and the crowd once again to sing a chassidic niggun, say l’chaim, and wish a complete recovery to Moshe Rachamim ben Chaviva and Naomi bas Chaviva. And let us say amen. Gentlemen, before the niggun, I just want to tell you that we have two more guests, each with a remarkable personal story, right after the niggun. So please, it’s worth waiting to hear them.

2:10:15 Speaker 10 Ai, ai, ai, dadalaidam, ai, daidam. Ai, ai, dadalaidam, oy, oy, oy. Mmm, ai, ai, ai, ai, ai, ai, dadadadam. Dadalila, dala, dida, dada. Kolar, kolam, kolam. Ah, ai, ai, ai, ai, ai, mmm, ai, ai, dadalaidam, dadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadada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dadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadada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2:12:40 Speaker 12 Hundreds of thousands of Jews have surely already read the story of our next guest in Sichat HaShavua over Shabbos. A young Israeli travels to the Far East, studies the teachings of idol worship, and becomes a teacher and guide to hundreds of young people searching for a path. Then, through Divine Providence, he finds his way to a Chabad House, and on Gimmel Tammuz he begins putting on tefillin. That is where the journey back begins. Today he is a Chassidic young man, connected to the Rebbe, who spreads Yiddishkeit and Chassidus at the Ascent Institute in Tzfas. Let’s welcome our guest, Rabbi Eyal Binyamin Crochi, director of the visitors’ center at the Ascent Institute in Tzfas, to tell us his personal story. Shalom aleichem.

2:14:03 Speaker 13 Good evening, everyone. This is the meal of David, King Moshiach—may he come and redeem us at this very moment. And to such a large gathering... The Baal Shem Tov said: When two Jews meet, what does a third Jew gain from it? So I hope that from the story I’m going to tell... It’s very difficult. They’ve given me fifteen minutes to fit eleven years into, but I’ll try. With Hashem’s help, another Jew should gain something from this entire farbrengen. Briefly: I finished my matriculation exams successfully. The whole family thought I was going to be a doctor. My grandmother pushed me to become a doctor. I disappointed everyone and enlisted in the IDF. In the army, I tried to get into the paratroopers’ reconnaissance unit. On the third night, I told the commander, “If you wake me up one more time, I don’t know what I’ll do to you. Leave me alone.” When the end of my service came, the battalion commander called me in and said, “Well, Crochi, you know why you’ve been summoned. Don’t... don’t play games with us. You know why you’re here.” I said, “No. Why am I here?” “Well, we’ve decided we want you to stay on as a career soldier, and so on and so forth. Besides, nothing better is waiting for you outside. Here you’ll have a salary, here you’ll have a secure environment, and you’ll have this and you’ll have that.” He laid out a whole framework for me to fit into. Luckily, luckily... luckily I had a slightly different plan, and I ask you, dear audience, not to judge it. What did I tell him? “Sir, I’m just not sure, but I’ll tell you the truth.” “Go on, Crochi.” “I don’t know. I want to grow my hair long.” And so on—“Get out of here. Come back to me in six months; we’ll see what you say then.” We went down to Eilat, saved money, worked, and went abroad. The first leg of the journey was... We started in India. I said goodbye to my parents, telling them I was

2:16:36 Speaker 13 really going away for six months to see cultures and landscapes, and then I’d come back. Those six months turned into eleven years. For the first two years I didn’t come back to Israel at all. I had experiences, traveled, and after that I would return to Israel for a month each year. On one of those visits I came to Ramat Aviv. In the middle of that journey, I gave the Holy Land a try, to see if I could settle here. It spat me back out, but I almost took over a profitable business. I checked the figures: five thousand dollars cash at the end of the month. A 4x4. A phone provided. At the time I had a motorcycle. Where was it? Tagore Street. Ring a bell with anyone? Ramat Aviv. There was a restaurant there where, whatever happened with inflation, the customers always had money to leave a tip. I almost took over that restaurant, Marilyn Monroe, but I backed away. Why? Because this head of mine had its own idea: to open its own business. I couldn’t take something someone else had built. I had to be original, had to be original. I was going to reinvent the wheel, and so I went back out on my journey. That’s the broad outline. So we start in India. I started out with three good friends—the best friends you could have. Really the best. We’d sleep over at each other’s homes and go to the beach together, skip chemistry class together. The closest of friends. After a month and a half, we split up. Our parents were worried. Why? Because when Crochi finished a trek, he had to put his socks in their place. They couldn’t stand me. “Why do you have to be so tidy? Why do you have to be so organized?” I said, “But I haven’t told you how to live. This is how I am. I haven’t told you how to live.” In short, they couldn’t stand that side of me, and we had to part ways—but in peace and friendship.

2:18:53 Speaker 13 Each of us flew somewhere else: I went to Japan, one friend to Australia, and the third to the Philippines. I arrived in Japan. Oh, the gold train. I went out into the streets—a young man from Ashdod, from a Moroccan home. My father, of blessed memory, made sure the fridge was full, but he also had a Volkswagen Beetle in the driveway and always kept spare pocket money ready, so I could come home whenever I was in trouble. After the first three months, I paid off a debt I owed. They urged me to stay. I said, “I don’t know. Yes, maybe. I don’t know.” I stayed, and within six months I had my picture taken with my first million yen in my mouth. L’chaim, l’chaim. Money. Tra-la-la. Money. Ah, what a pleasure. Dreams coming true. Money. Remember, I’m from Ashdod, right? And I saved the money and saved it, put it in the bank, and my father was excited, everyone was—and no one asked me when I was coming back. No one was worried. I was making money. I’m shortening the story. Oy, oy, oy, how much happened there. So many acts of Divine Providence that I didn’t see or hear at the time, but I have to stay with you, dear brothers. With apologies to the organizers, I hope I don’t reach eighteen minutes. I was hitchhiking in Japan, and hitchhiking on Japan’s highways is about as likely as a spaceship landing here right now. “Who’s that?” They look at you like this... But someone stopped for me, and then another did. I was on my way to the northern part of Honshu, called Aomori. There, I heard—in terms you’ll understand now, because while I was in the middle of the journey I made no connections; the connections only came afterward—I heard the words “father” and “mother.” When I came down from there by hitchhiking, I rode with a truck driver who brought me into Osaka, right into the streets, from such a remote place to almost my doorstep. And what did I see in his window? A Star of David. I said, “Excuse me, sir, what is that?” Now, understand: I knew half a sentence of Japanese, and he didn’t know English. I thought I knew it, and that’s how we communicated. Then he told me a story about tribes arriving on the island of Honshu, and all of Japan preparing for war. I’m shortening it. When the moment of truth came, a man suddenly appeared, dressed in a way that showed he came in peace. They recognized him as belonging to that tribe. “Isuraeru,” he called them, “Isuraeru-jin.” “Isuraeru” means Israeli. All right, that’s a little story. I spent two years going in and out of Japan, and as I went out into the world, I experienced things. What sort of challenges? Skydiving. The story that appeared in Sichat HaShavua is very condensed. One tiny correction: that non-Jewish woman was not a local woman. In short, I went out and experienced skydiving, scuba diving, yachts, bungee jumping. I met wonderful people—so many friends, so many wonderful people. In 1994, though I wasn’t someone who normally read books—I’d worked hard at school—a young woman who was becoming more observant approached me on the beach in Koh Phangan and gave me a book. She said, “You sound like a book I’m reading.” The book was called The Celestine Prophecy. The Celestine Prophecy talks about the journey of the world’s science and psychology, and how it goes hand in hand, supposedly, with Christian teachings, with no difference between them. The patterns in it—not the Christian religion—simply fascinated me. I said, “Wow, other people think the way I do.” I read the book, and from then on, alongside my journey through the physical world, I began a spiritual journey, starting with an exploration of Native American wisdom. For those familiar with it—and forgive me, I mean no disrespect; I don’t know who’s sitting here with us—the Earth Medicine Wheel. I got into its astrology, the cycles of the moon, the movements of the winds, and so on and so forth. I was fascinated. From there I

2:21:38 Speaker 13 I speak half-Japanese; he doesn’t know English. I think I do, and that’s how we communicate. Then he tells me a story about tribes arriving on the island of Honshu, and all of Japan preparing for war. I’m giving you the short version. When the moment of truth comes, a man suddenly approaches them, dressed, with a peaceful expression. They take him in, that tribe. “Isuraeru-jin,” he calls him. “Isuraeru” means Israeli. Anyway, there’s a little story there. Over two years in Japan, on and off, I’m going out into the world and having experiences. What kinds of challenges? Skydiving. The story that appeared in Sichat Hashavua was very condensed. Just one tiny correction: that non-Jewish woman wasn’t a local. Anyway, I go out and experience skydiving, diving, yachts, bungee jumping. I meet wonderful people—so many friends, so many wonderful people. In 1994, though I wasn’t someone who used to read books—I was a hard worker in school—a young woman who was becoming more religious comes up to me on the beach in Koh Phangan and gives me a book. She says, “You sound like a book I’m reading.” That book was called The Celestine Prophecy. The Celestine Prophecy talks about the journey of science in the world, of psychology, how it... how it goes hand in hand, supposedly, with Christian teachings, with no differences between them. The patterns in it—not the Christian religion—simply fascinated me. I said, “Wow, there are other people who think like me.” So I read that book, and from then on, alongside my material life, I began a spiritual journey that started with exploring Native American wisdom. For anyone familiar with it—sorry, no offense intended, but I don’t know who’s sitting here with us—The Earth Medicine Wheel. I got into the astrology of it, the movements of the moon, the movements of the winds, and so on and so forth. I was captivated. From there I...

2:24:02 Speaker 13 I move on to two years in Buddhism. Why? Because I met someone who practiced meditation, contemplation, and it drew me in. I study there for two years, until one day, during one of my sessions, I’m sitting there contemplating some subject, trying to find a gap between my thoughts. Wow, poor people—they torture them there. What idiocy. After all, the Rebbe said this mind is meant to think. It depends what you attach it to, where you put it. Wake up! Where do we put our heads on Gimmel Tammuz? And no, this is something between us today, here this evening. It’s part of my life story, including being hosted by Rabbi Brod. I received so much, and in any case, first of all, I’m speaking with an alcohol test, with Tal still here with me. Anyway, there I am for two years, sitting and struggling to find a gap between my thoughts, and then—bam. It’s a feeling you can’t argue about, gentlemen, and if you’ve never sat down to meditate, let go, let go, listen and take it in. Eyes are looking back at you, but they have no form. As the Rambam says, don’t imagine that Hakadosh Boruch Hu has a nose, a form like “in our image, after our likeness.” Rather, eyes are looking at you, and boom, I jump. I call over that monk in the temple. “Tell me, tell me what I saw. What—what is it?” He says, “Oh, this is what you call G-d; we call it Dhamma.” No, the opposite: “What we call Dhamma, you call G-d.” What is Dhamma? “It’s the laws of creation. It’s nature itself.” It’s nature, and nature has certain laws. Interesting. It’s not that I immediately folded, but all right, interesting. Meanwhile, I’m also involved with yoga, movement and breathing, and I decide to delve into their writings after two years of following a follower of what they call the Buddha himself, a man named Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, who sat himself under a tree for six years and practiced a form of meditation. It’s a little hard to believe, but yes, there was a time when I was

2:26:20 Speaker 13 quiet in my life. And... and I... Wait, we’ll get to... And I go on to the philosophy of Hinduism. For seven years I study it, delving into the philosophy, not the religion, not its religion. Its philosophy, its ideas, its sages and philosophers. In the course of this life story, there is a day you could call a day of hiskashrus. To truly connect to something, I feel there has to be some disappointment with where I am. In my life story, there was an incident in Japan with good friends. At the beginning of January, at the famous festival where a million people pass by the stalls every day, my best friend comes, takes my spot, drives me out of there and tells me, “If you set up here, you’re wasting your time. I’ll destroy you.” What a lump I had in my throat. Crash! That whole idea of true friendship collapsed for me. It simply collapsed, but I had to move forward. On my journey, when I decided to leave Japan, walk away from the money, not open a business in Australia, and stop in Thailand, I was told, by hashgachah pratis, that a plot of land was urgently available for rent on the island of Koh Tao in the Gulf of Thailand. I decided to take it, and on the day I was signing the contract with the Thais, communicating in broken language, suddenly everyone left me and ran around the house with clubs and flashlights. Then they all converged on one spot, and there was a snake the size of this table... It looked at the light, and everyone went boom, boom, boom, beating it. I thought, wow, a snake is a bad sign, isn’t it? A snake—for us, Adam and Eve. What do I remember? He ate the—what is this? Then suddenly a voice from someone there pipes up and says, “Do you know that in Buddhism—do you know that in Buddhism a snake is a sign of money?” Well, I didn’t know Gemara then. But I was afraid of it. I felt that maybe it was a sign I shouldn’t go into this. But when that voice told me there was

2:28:57 Speaker 13 money there, I thought about success. I thought that as an artist I could sit on that island, teach people, gather people together and—so to speak—spread love and unity in the world. So it happened, and I sat there on that island for three years. Then a Jewish soul from Australia came to me with a tape. With the tape—oh, sorry, she came and called her brother, and her brother arrived, excitedly listened to me teaching, and told me, “You have to hear this tape.” The tape was by Rabbi Laibl Wolf, a chossid who received a great blessing from the Rebbe to teach. He teaches and lectures in fifty-one countries. He teaches what you might call an introduction to Jewish meditation, guided visualization. That tape stayed in my bag for two years. And every year when I came back to Israel for a month, my mother would empty my bag, clean it, and ask me, “What about the tape?” “Leave it in the bag. I’ll listen to it sometime.” Only when I got to Australia for skiing, and had already begun, somehow, to understand what Judaism is and to try to keep Shabbos... I was sitting there on Friday, chopping a salad, and decided to put on the tape. And then I heard someone guiding you through meditation in Judaism. Unbelievable. I traveled from Perth to Melbourne and met him in the community. That day was a Friday when I was arguing with myself: get up and go to the mikveh, don’t get up and go to the mikveh, get up and go, don’t get up and go. It was my first time. In the end I got up and ran, and they told me, “Relax, it’s all right, the minyan is starting soon.” So I sat there and began Birchos Hashachar, and I saw this short fellow. I told him, “Wait, don’t come near me—you’re interrupting me, and I’m saying Birchos Hashachar.” So I said to him, “Yes, sir.” He goes, “Wow, where are you from?” I told him, “Eretz Yisroel.” He goes, “What is your good name?” What’s your good name? Eyal

2:30:46 Speaker 13 Eyal Krotchi. “Okay. Would you like to come to my place for Shabbos?” I said to myself, wow, the way he said that to me—and what an invitation it was! In a moment I’ll touch on how I came to know Chabad, but I simply thought: “A person’s emissary is like the person himself.” What does it mean to be a shliach who lives with the Rebbe through his eyes? If the shliach standing before me lives with the Rebbe, I find it hard to believe that I, as someone drawing closer, couldn’t live with the Rebbe and connect to him. But dear brothers, it may just be that if I don’t live with the Rebbe, what will become of the people we bring closer? Great people stood here and spoke about the greatness of Chassidus and hiskashrus, and going out on these mivtzoim. We are his shluchim. And who was it who approached me? I asked him, “What’s your name?” Rabbi Laibl Wolf himself. On my journey in India, after I had already come to know the Chabad House and put on tefillin, but was still practicing and studying the wisdom of the world, I arrived at a cave very close to the Himalayas, near the source of the Ganges. I sat there with a man—truly by hashgachah pratis—who didn’t pressure me or cast a shadow over anything. Together we simply developed our path toward the One, toward the light. Then one day he said to me, “Do you want to see something?” I said, “What?” And he asked me a question: “Do you know who the wisest man was?” I said, “I don’t know,” and then I started reading Tehillim. I didn’t want to make him uncomfortable or offend him by saying, “Shlomo, of course. Who’s the wisest man?” He took out a box and opened it—a box I had thought couldn’t be opened—and took out an ancient scroll, really ancient. He opened it and said in Sanskrit, “This is the writing of King Solomon, the way we got it from our ancestors,” from our sages. I heard it, but it didn’t sink in, didn’t strike me, friends. Do you know what’s funny? That only I

2:33:04 Speaker 13 I think it was last year or this year. When I read Rashi—let the scholars here correct me if I’m getting the wording wrong—but in my own words, Rashi says: There is one people that doesn’t look at its scriptures the way the other nations do. That’s us. That’s us. Interesting. A whole journey of people looking at the scriptures. Why did I come to the Chabad House, and how did I find them? When the time came to get married, I was sitting on my island, people were already gathering around me, the kingdom was ready, and I felt it was time to get married. Yes, to a non-Jewish woman who wasn’t from there. I said, “Fine, to get married we need to arrange a visa. A passport. We’ll find a rabbi to marry us, and off we go.” I had no idea about Jews and non-Jews. I found it very hard to deal with Judaism at all—to be in a crowd of three hundred people, to come in here. Barbarism. What is this? Coarseness. If that’s what I’m thinking, the problem isn’t with you; it’s with me. And I thought I had it together. It was very hard for me to come into a huge crowd. Anyway, I arrive in Thailand, and out comes this sweet redhead, Rabbi Nechemia Wilhelm, along with his family and all the shluchim—may they live and be well! Thank you. He catches hold of me and says, “Listen, I want to tell you something about intermarriage. Many have tried, but it hasn’t worked. Even between Jews, making a connection is hard. I want to tell you something: You’re going to miss everything you know here—the language, the communication, the jokes. Try saying ‘Come on!’ in English; you’d need half a page to explain it.” What, I said to myself, what does this redhead know? I’m planning to bring peace to the world. It’s going to start in Thailand, on my island. I’m planning to unite kingdoms. Fine. I leave, try the Thai local authorities, and they won’t accept us; they throw us out. I said, “Fine, no problem, we’ll stay together.” A year and a half later, I come back with my tail between my legs. “Excuse me, is there a Shabbos meal here?” And then begins

2:35:17 Speaker 13 a journey. I would sit there all the time. I’d sit with people, and just look at the strength of that shliach: he sees someone at his table speaking about foreign wisdom—a Jew, G-d forbid, not a stranger—and he doesn’t send him away. I’m talking about Hinduism and Buddhism, and the shluchim gently say, “Eyal, you know, that’s in Tanya too. Eyal, you know, that’s in Tanya too. Eyal, did you know that?” It is. Yes, yes, yes. Yes, yes, yes. After a year and a half, I began studying Tanya. Slowly, whenever I came on business, I would visit the Chabad House and grow stronger. At Nechemia’s, I had the privilege of meeting two dear shluchim who helped me shatter the wisdom of the nations. Why shatter it? Because it’s a very tough kelipah. Rabbi Yechezkel Sofer and Rabbi Yair Kalev, may they live and be well, came as faithful shluchim. We had conversations deep into the night, with tears, hearing the Rebbe’s words from their own mouths. There was a dear family there—the first family I visited in Kfar Chabad, at that shul—the Hadad family: the father, Menashe Hadad, and the shluchim Davidi and Moshe. Through them—oh, what did Nechemia give me? “It’s not me, it’s the Rebbe.” Every time you see someone with such tremendous Ahavas Yisroel: “It’s not me, it’s the Rebbe.” Back then I didn’t yet have any concept of Gimmel Tammuz, or anything like that. You see the Rebbe living through his shliach. What did the Hadad family, Davidi and Moshe, give me? Joy in serving Hashem. Joy—simply doing things with joy. I continue on, I go up to India, and by then I’m slowly growing stronger and helping out at Chabad Houses. The first shliach I meet is Zohar David, who was a shliach in Rishikesh. Zohar David taught me the power of silence and listening, and of saying when I don’t know something. He referred me to Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh.

2:37:34 Speaker 13 He gave me a parable that simply helped me deal with the moral challenge in my life: leaving what I had, all the beauty I had in my life, and drawing closer to the truth. In short, to get from one peak to another, there’s a valley in between—and a hint is enough for the wise. I move on and meet Rabbi Shimi Goldstein, may he live and be well. Ah, what a family! Shimi Goldstein says, “If it’s the truth, well, let’s see. If you think it’s the truth, let’s see you live by it. Go on, walk up to the ark and spit on it,” he says to a Jew. “No, of course not! I can’t.” Shimi touches the point of truth. He says, “If you think it’s the truth, then live by it. If not, don’t just talk.” Leave it, leave it—don’t just talk. Shimi says—I’m finishing up—Shimi always says, “Moshiach is coming this year. He’s arriving this year.” I continue on with Dror Shaul, to deep meditations at four in the morning. We immerse in cold water and sit in meditations that left every meditation I knew behind. What does a third Jew take from this farbrengen? Dror reflected the Rebbe in this way: There’s no such thing as rest. Ah, those non-Jews. Don’t be satisfied with yourself, Eyal. Rabbi Kantor in Thailand told me, “A chossid’s entire being is the Rebbe.” You don’t have to say “the Rebbe, the Rebbe” all the time. Do you think these are your own ideas? These shluchim—and us, each of us in our own place of work—are individual parts that together build the one, the unity. And the beauty is that each of us has something precious that Hakadosh Boruch Hu gave him, and he’s meant to use it to shape reality. Rabbi Alperowitz said here: “Moshiach”—“shliach” plus the ten powers of the soul. But these shluchim must, with Hashem’s help, be directed by the head. According to alternative medicine, health means that all the organs are directed by the head, in proper order

2:39:58 Speaker 13 and exemplary coordination. These shluchim, thank G-d, created that unity for me. Each of them gave me the Rebbe’s tools. Then, when I finally arrived in Israel, Sholom Ber Marzel said to me, “Eyal, nu?” I said to him, “What? What do you mean, ‘nu’?” “Nu, aren’t you moving forward?” Sholom Ber Marzel—I studied Chassidus in a way you wouldn’t believe. I said to him, “All right, nu.” Then I went to a yeshiva to look into the yeshivos. I came to Ramat Aviv, and Sholom Ber taught me seriousness, while the Ramat Aviv yeshiva taught me how to put into actual practice what it means to be a soldier of the Rebbe. With Hashem’s help, may we all merit to connect on this day. Thank you for your time, and forgive me. Long live our master, teacher and Rebbe, King Moshiach, forever and ever. Yasher koach.

2:40:58 Speaker 14 “It’s not me, it’s the Rebbe.” In gematria, that’s “chossid Eyal Binyamin.” Three hundred and thirty-three—“It’s not me, it’s the Rebbe.” Work it out. Yasher koach, Eyal Binyamin Croci, director of the visitors’ center at the Ascent Institute in Tzfas. There are surely thousands upon thousands more like him who move us. And now for the next story, which will close the evening. By profession, he’s a director, cameraman and editor of multimedia programs. In recent years he’s worked extensively with Chabad institutions and organizations, but in the past he did entirely different things, until he too merited to see the Rebbe’s light. He is our friend Reb Amram Rafael Perry, now a resident of Amirim in the north. Please come and share your experiences and the insights you’ve reached. Thank you very much.

2:42:19 Speaker 15 It’s not working. Good evening, everyone. I’m very moved. Um, my name is Omri, not Amram. Sorry for the correction. I currently live in Amirim. I was born in Haifa.

2:42:38 Speaker 14 We can’t hear you.

2:42:40 Speaker 15 Can’t hear me? Should I come closer? Oh my goodness. Let’s do this. I grew up in Haifa and studied at WIZO, a school for the arts. After the army, where I was a military photographer in the navy, I traveled around South America for a year and a half. I wasn’t doing business; I just traveled. Mostly I stared—at the trees, the sea, the sky. I met people, looked around, tried to understand what I was doing here. I was searching, as they say, searching for myself. Baruch Hashem, I have a good, healthy, lovely family—siblings, parents, everything was fine—but I was searching. And when I tried to think how I could explain to the people of Kfar Chabad—allow me to call you holy people—what it means to search, what it means not to have something, I thought of an exercise. I’d ask you to close your eyes. I’ll tell you what the exercise is, and I’ll tell you what its results are. You don’t have to do it. Just close your eyes. Try to picture your life: father, mother, siblings, family, work. Take just one link out of that story. Remove just one detail. Take the Rebbe out of your life, G-d forbid. Take him out and try to imagine what your life looks like now. I imagine that’s impossible to do, but if you managed it, you’d discover that suddenly you have nothing to do, nothing to live on, no meaning. That’s more or less how I went around. I was a happy person, a nice person, but my life had no meaning. And then something happened to me, an interesting incident. I was in Ecuador, on the beach, alone. Sometimes I traveled with friends, sometimes alone. At that point I was alone, and I had an internal rule for the trip: I had to keep my promise to come home safely to my mother. For that to happen, I had to set myself a few rules. One was that you don’t lose focus, you don’t get completely drunk, you don’t go places if you don’t know how you’ll get back

2:45:29 Speaker 15 from them afterward. You take care of yourself. I was on a beach in Ecuador. There was a bonfire. An Italian couple had opened a new place there on the beach and invited everyone. Welcome, have a drink. We didn’t call it “l’chaim” then; we just drank. And I passed out on the beach, lying there unconscious. Can I have something to drink? Sorry. Turn it up again. L’chaim, l’chaim. Anyway, I’m lying unconscious on the beach, not aware of it, of course, until suddenly there are two faces above me shouting, “Ayuda, Israel! Ayuda, Israel! Ayuda, Israel!” Ayuda means “help” in Spanish. “Help, Israel! Help, Israel!” I open my eyes. Help, Israel? What do you want? What happened? I look left and see the Italian who hosted us—the reason I passed out on the beach—standing there and hurling fierce, aggressive curses, the way a drunk Italian man can. Can I say “Black guy”? Is that okay? A huge Black man with a gun is holding it against that Italian. The Italian is cursing him, and he’s just standing there, cool, with the gun. And everyone is over me shouting, “Ayuda, Israel!” Help him, save him. And then I had an experience—out on the street they call it a metaphysical experience. Today I understand it as the very beginning, for me, of understanding mesiras nefesh. What is it when a force that isn’t you acts through you? In honor of Gimmel Tammuz, we just learned the maamar “Ve’atah Tetzaveh.” We’ll talk about the matter of the soul’s powers: the power of mesiras nefesh, the revealed powers, and the difference between them. And here I am experiencing a situation in which the force moving me is absolutely not me. That force enters me, moves me, brings me to the scene, and I look that huge Black man with a gun in his hand in the eyes, trying to defuse the situation. “Tranquilo.” Calm down, everything’s okay, nothing happened, it’s all calming down. Behind me, the angry Italian is jumping up and down and cursing. And I try—not me,

2:48:18 Speaker 15 but this thing tries—to calm him down. “Tranquilo, calm down.” I hold his gaze, send him off, and he turns around and walks away. And the Italian keeps jumping on my back and cursing. That’s it; that’s what happened. Somehow I make my way to my room, go to sleep, wake up in the morning and say, “Wow, what a wild dream I had.” When I come out of the room, the Italian’s brother comes over—they were two brothers—hugs me and thanks me. And, horrified, I realize that what I thought I’d dreamed wasn’t a dream. Then it dawns on me that I broke rule number two: if you see a gun, run. Because South America isn’t a place where people play around with guns. It’s the third world. The reality there is very, very different. I was very angry with myself, and I left. It took me about six months to understand what happened there. And the detail that amazed me was, of course, “Ayuda, Israel.” Apart from the fact that some force could move me and it wasn’t me, and I wasn’t even aware of myself acting—that what I think of as “me” isn’t me, that I’m actually a conduit for all sorts of things, a medium, all sorts of things—apart from all that, those two words, “Ayuda, Israel,” got stuck in my head. I tried to understand how, when an Italian is standing in front of a man with a gun, the people around him choose to wake up the drunk who’s passed out beside the bonfire and expect him to save the day. It makes no sense. It isn’t logical. And then suddenly I understood: I’m from Israel. That’s how they reminded me. Let’s put that story aside. We have to keep it short. I return to Israel, study film in Jerusalem, and I’m still going around with a life that has no meaning. Literally. I constantly feel something is missing, and I don’t understand what I’m supposed to do when I feel absolutely, absolutely, absolutely no connection to religion. I’ll go further and say I couldn’t stand

2:50:38 Speaker 15 religious people. The last thing I would have believed could happen to me was that, in my third year, I’d go to the Kosel and ask Hakadosh Boruch Hu to do something with these film studies of mine, because I didn’t know what I was, why I was there—what was I? Because everything was fine, but the essential thing was missing. What was missing—today I understand—was the Rebbe, a connection, a connection to the Infinite. All the words people were using here earlier. So I prayed what I prayed, finished my film studies, arrived in Tel Aviv, and through a meeting with a friend came to know my—the Rebbe. The subject of the farbrengen, as it was presented to me, is hiskashrus after Gimmel Tammuz. In other words, hiskashrus when I can’t meet the Rebbe face-to-face, for whatever reason, and so I meet him through his shliach. Baruch—baruch Hashem, and thank you to the Rebbe for sending me Rabbi Gerlitzky of Tel Aviv. Or, more precisely, a friend who brought me to Rabbi Gerlitzky. And suddenly I see something amazing. I don’t remember the name of the chossid who spoke here earlier, but it’s so hard to explain to people like you what it’s like to see you from the outside when you don’t know what you are, what the Rebbe is, what Chassidus is, what meaning is, what connection is, what conviction is, what joy is. These are the most basic terms we toss around here at the tables. There are people in the world who don’t know any of this at all, and they’re fine. They’re normal. They live, they travel, they have families and children; everything seems fine. But they don’t know it. They don’t know the depth, the subtleties, the terms, the concepts. Rabbi Gerlitzky showed me a beautiful Jewish home. He showed me what it means to live with dignity, what it means to know how to accept

2:53:09 Speaker 15 And what it means to know how to give, what it means to know how to be part of something, and above all, what it means to have an impact. This afternoon we held a farbrengen at 770 in preparation for Gimmel Tammuz. As at every farbrengen, people spoke, and of course I took away a great deal. One thing that struck me especially was this matter of the point. There’s a point. You know, people talk and talk, but what’s the point? What do you want? Bottom line, what’s the point? And the point I’m trying to convey to you is that after Gimmel Tammuz, our connection to the Rebbe is through his shluchim. And for this purpose, his shluchim are you. Maybe I can say, in some sense, that I too have become a little connected to the Rebbe. After learning alef, I know how to say alef too, so perhaps I’m also a shliach for something myself. The Rebbe is alive and present within you. You are parts of the Rebbe. That’s how I see it. Forgive me for daring to say it, but that’s how I see it: you are parts of the Rebbe. The Rebbe is multimedia. Today the Rebbe can move Rabbi Ashkenazi through a video. The Rebbe wrote, the Rebbe sang, the Rebbe played music, the Rebbe was photographed. The Rebbe is multimedia, inwardly and outwardly; the Rebbe is a whole system because he is a Rebbe. And these parts, this multimedia, divide into many smaller media, and those smaller media are you, are us. Today, by Divine Providence, I read in Igros Kodesh a sicha—no, a letter. Someone writes to the Rebbe about the difficulties he’s having at a certain educational institution: it’s hard, things aren’t working out. From the Rebbe’s reply, I understand that things not working out isn’t the end of the world. He writes about how difficult it is and raises the thought of closing the institution. Apparently, he had written that things were so difficult that perhaps they should consider whether to keep it going at all. The Rebbe says: How do we know whether the institution is worthwhile, whether

2:55:40 Speaker 15 to keep it going or not? By the results. Did it teach children to say Shema? Did it teach children to put on tefillin? Did it teach them—are there children in the world who learned because of this institution? Then it’s worthwhile. Difficulties or no difficulties, it’s worthwhile. Someone once told me: How, how, how do you know whether a woman is the right woman for you? It’s not a simple question. But there’s a simple answer to that, too: if you advance in your service of Hashem when you’re with her, then she’s a good woman for you. If you don’t advance in your service of Hashem, apparently she isn’t. After Gimmel Tammuz, I assume it’s hard for people who knew the Rebbe not through multimedia, but through the direct presence of the Rebbe, without it being spread across different media. But judging by the results, there’s no doubt it’s worthwhile. It’s happening. People like me walk the streets of Israel and South America and Ecuador without meaning, without knowing. They have it inside them; they just don’t know it. Someone has to reveal it to them. I’ll end with that. That’s the point: may we all be strong and wise enough to understand that we’re connected to a multimedia presence that has given us so many tools and means to reach people, bring them joy, and connect with people who don’t have that connection, so that, with Hashem’s help, immediately, we’ll have what we’re all waiting for, hoping for, and talking about: the true and complete Geulah, for each of us and for all of us together. Thank you very much, and all the best. Is there a table?

2:57:38 Speaker 16 Oh—sorry. Sorry.

2:57:42 Speaker 15 Forgive me, but you’ll be glad about this. I stopped before mentioning something important. Over the past year, I worked on an amazing project with an amazing man, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Kaminetzky, a well-known figure in Kfar Chabad. Applause. I’d appreciate it. Yes, thank you. I had the great privilege of working with them for a full year on a film called “A Journey Through Chabad History.” It’s the second part, covering the Rebbe Maharash, the Rebbe Rashab, and the Frierdiker Rebbe. And in a direct connection to Gimmel Tammuz, we’d be very happy to share a short clip from the film itself. It tells the story and, for the first time, shows footage never before seen by the public from inside the Shpalerka prison, where the Frierdiker Rebbe was held. We’ll watch a short clip from the film and thereby also connect Gimmel Tammuz to the beginning of the Frierdiker Rebbe’s liberation. Please.

2:59:01 Speaker 17 The verdict had been fixed in advance. At the end of the interrogation, the investigator told the Rebbe: “Within twenty-four hours, you will be executed by firing squad.” The Rebbe endured terrible suffering in prison. He described everything he went through in dramatic detail in the diary he wrote. “The tefillin remained in my hand. The soldier escorting me sets down his weapon and looks at me with pride and a tiger’s ferocity. He opens the door for me, and we walk through a dark passageway lit by small lamps. I begin to plead with the soldier—not merely to ask, but truly to plead—that he allow me to put on tefillin. I also tell him that it is hard for me to walk quickly. ‘No,’ says the soldier. ‘I will not let you put on tefillin, and if you insist, I will take you to solitary confinement.’ We walk on, he ahead of me and I behind him. When I saw that he would not permit it, I decided to put on the tefillin as I walked. I put on the tefillin shel yad but did not manage to put on the shel rosh before he struck me and pushed me onto the iron stairs leading down, and I fell down the entire staircase. Thank G-d I did not break my arms or legs. With great effort, I climbed a few steps. My pain is intense. I feel that when I fell, the metal part of my belt broke, and the metal apparently tore the flesh of my stomach. My heart contracts with pain. Any moment now, I will faint. ‘You’ll see,’ the soldier shouts at me, ‘when you lie for three or four days among rats, in darkness and gloom, in filth and mud. Then you’ll understand that you cannot turn Shpalerka into a Jewish house of prayer.’ I suppress my pain. Gripping the iron rails of the staircase, I climb heavily from step to step. ‘Petya,’ the commander says to one of the guards, ‘take the goods and get to work.’ The man—or beast—called Petya comes out of one of the cells and approaches me. When he sees me up close, he mutters to himself, ‘Well, look at that. They’ve started bringing rags like this in here. No doubt about it, a fine parasite, a bearded Jew. Off you go, old man, to be searched. Don’t worry, we’ll clean you up properly here.’

3:01:56 Speaker 17 “‘They’ll break your bones one by one.’ ‘Why is your face so white?’ Petya asks. ‘Are you sick too? After the search, you can die. It’s very quiet here. No one will know about you. They won’t know a thing at home either. The doctor will put his stamp on it, they’ll make an entry in the office ledger and close the file. They’ll throw the carcass into one of the pits below.’ I cannot say that his words made no impression on me. It has been more than forty hours since even water has passed my lips—hours of pain and physical torment and, worse still, anguish of the soul. Tefillin. Tefillin. Night. The announcement rings out: ‘Lie down and go to sleep.’ I have already davened Maariv and am lying in my place. We are seized by trembling when we hear footsteps approaching our room. A moment later, officers unlock the doors and shine a light into the room. We prisoners look at one another in astonishment and mortal fear. The officers look at me with contempt. ‘You’re coming with us,’ one of them tells me. I see my fellow prisoners weeping, tears streaming from their eyes. I step out into the corridor. One officer walks ahead of me, and four men carrying swords walk behind me. ‘Take off your hat and arrange your clothes so your tzitzis won’t show!’ one of my escorts shouts at me. ‘No. I will not take off my hat.’ ‘I order you, once and for all, to take off your hat. Otherwise, it will end badly for you.’ I will not take off my hat. ‘Do you know who I am?’ ‘Who?’ ‘The Rebbe of Lubavitch.’ ‘So what?’ ‘The Rebbe of Lubavitch is neither frightened nor shaken by threats.’”

3:04:21 Speaker 18 Thank you very much, Rabbi Omri Raphael Peri [?], who produces good fruit and succeeds. Thank you and yasher koach to the leadership of Tzeirei Agudas Chabad for organizing our farbrengen this evening. Thank you to Reb Mendi Brod for arranging the varied and beautiful program. Thank you to the musicians, Reb Mordechai Brodsky, Reb Gil Akabiov, and Rabbi Avraham Jacobs. Reb Yechiel Fleischman, thank you and yasher koach. Thank you to the distinguished, holy audience who were with us. Thank you to the photographers. And, of course, don’t forget bentching. The bus to Nachlas Har Chabad is leaving right now, and the musicians will close with chassidic niggunim. Have a good week, with blessing and success. May we merit to see the Rebbe very soon, fully and [unclear].

3:05:32 Speaker 19 My soul thirsts, thirsts, thirsts, thirsts for You. My flesh longs, longs, longs, longs, longs for You. [unclear]

3:05:54 Speaker 18 And many thanks to Avi Malka for the—[unclear]. Yasher koach.

3:06:00 Speaker 19 [unclear] Rabbi Greenblatt, please take the microphone.

3:07:19 Speaker 20 Gentlemen, let us bless. May the name of Hashem be blessed from now and forever. With your permission, our teachers and my esteemed gentlemen, let us bless our G-d, of Whose bounty we have eaten. Blessed is our G-d, of Whose bounty we have eaten and through Whose goodness we live.