Lech Lecha - what it means to live a Jewish life

00:00 There was a well-known chossid of the Alter Rebbe named Reb Yekusiel Liepler. The Rebbe told many stories about him, and this was the point of one of them. Reb Yekusiel Liepler was a simple man. Once he traveled to the Alter Rebbe and heard a short Torah teaching from him. As is known, in the early years the Alter Rebbe would deliver short teachings. That teaching concerned what is written in Tanya: every Jew has two souls, a G-dly soul and an animal soul. The G-dly soul is in the right chamber of the heart, and the animal soul is in the left chamber. What the Alter Rebbe said stirred him deeply, and he climbed up to the window. Since they would not let him enter for yechidus, he climbed in through the window, came before the Alter Rebbe, and said, “Rebbe, uproot the left side from within me.” In other words, he asked the Alter Rebbe to help him rid himself of the animal soul. The Alter Rebbe told him to sit down. The Alter Rebbe went with him to daven and entered [unclear]. And the Alter Rebbe said, “Master of the universe, You give life to them all.” From this, his heart was awakened and he became an entirely different person. It aroused in him a feeling of love for Hakadosh Boruch Hu. And from that time, he began

01:40 a new order in his service of Hashem. Years later, he embraced Chassidus and became one of the great chassidim and one of the great minds in Chassidus, as is known from his story in the chronicles of the chassidim. One of the stories told by our Rebbeim, which the Rebbe once related at a farbrengen, concerns a time when he was in yechidus with the Alter Rebbe. The Alter Rebbe told him that he wanted to give him a blessing. He said he wanted to bless him with wealth. But Reb Yekusiel Liepler said, “I don’t want wealth.” He said, “Why? What do I need wealth for? Would it be for [unclear]? I don’t want [unclear] Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Let a chossid speak in peace.” The Alter Rebbe said, “If so, I give you a blessing for long life.” Reb Yekusiel Liepler said, “Long life—on one condition.” What was the condition? “That they not be a peasant’s years.” What are a peasant’s years? A peasant is someone who works the land, a non-Jew who works in the fields. In other words, a coarse person. They would speak of “a peasant’s years,” meaning years of coarseness. “I don’t want coarse years, a peasant’s years, when ‘they have eyes but do not see, ears but do not hear.’ They have eyes, but they do not see G-dliness,

03:16 and ears, but they do not hear G-dliness. In other words, they neither see nor hear G-dliness. I don’t want a life like that. If I am to have long life, let those be years in which one can see G-dliness and hear G-dliness.” And the Alter Rebbe did indeed give him that blessing. As is known, Reb Yekusiel Liepler lived many years after the Alter Rebbe and the Mitteler Rebbe. He lived during the time of the Tzemach Tzedek, and was even still with the Rebbe Maharash in the first years after the Tzemach Tzedek’s passing. About this story, the Rebbe once asked a simple question at a 19 Kislev farbrengen: I don’t understand this. When someone receives a blessing, he says amen. A blessing, after all, is like a gift. When a person buys an item, he can bargain. He pays good money for it, so he says, “I want to buy this, I want to buy that, I want this, I want that, I want something such-and-such”—he can choose. But when it is a good gift, it is a gift, and someone who gives does so generously. It comes from the giver; the recipient has not paid for it. So, the Rebbe says, when someone gives you a good gift, do you set conditions for him: “This is how I want it, and this is how I don’t want it”? Don’t do me any favors. A gift—you either accept it or you don’t.

04:40 What does this mean here? He starts setting conditions: I don’t want this, I do want that, but I also want it with this and that... Where have we heard of such a thing? He is setting conditions on a gift. That was the question. The Rebbe asked at a farbrengen: What was happening in this story? In truth, with Reb Yekusiel Liepler, there were no questions or conditions attached to a gift. What he said meant something else entirely. The point is that Reb Yekusiel Liepler was a Jew in whom the soul’s innermost truth shone. In other words, the yechidah of his soul shone within him. Chassidus explains that the soul has several levels. There are the levels of nefesh, ruach, neshamah, chayah, and yechidah, and these are different levels in the service of Hashem. There is service of Hashem from the level of nefesh, which is service through accepting the yoke of Heaven. Nefesh means serving Hashem in practice, because you accept the yoke upon yourself. [unclear] There is the service of ruach, which is serving Hashem out of love and awe of Him. It comes from feelings, from an inner sense. A person feels love and warmth, which bring vitality into his service of Hashem. There is the level of neshamah, which in Chassidus is associated with the intellect: by contemplating the greatness of Hashem, he comes to recognize His greatness, and the inspiration he feels from Hashem’s greatness awakens within him [unclear] the desire for

06:18 Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Then there is service that is above reason, the level of chayah, the level of will, which is above intellect. A person has chayah within him, a powerful will, and that will is above reason. He wants to be connected to Hakadosh Boruch Hu and does not want to be separated from Him. This will is so strong within him that [unclear] to Hakadosh Boruch Hu with the greatest devotion, the greatest vitality, and the full force of his will. Those are the four levels: nefesh, ruach, neshamah, chayah. But there is a fifth level, yechidah, and that is something else entirely. With yechidah, it is not a matter of understanding, feeling, will, or any other reason. The meaning of yechidah is “the one that is united with Your Oneness.” There is a point in every Jew’s soul where the Jew and Hakadosh Boruch Hu are one single thing. The Jew and Hakadosh Boruch Hu are one single thing. That is what the word yechidah means. Yechidah comes from Hashem’s being yachid, the One. That is, Hakadosh Boruch Hu is called yachid, one and unique: “The One, life of the worlds, is King.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu is yachid, and the soul receives from that One. Yechidah is a feminine form, and the feminine denotes a recipient. In other words, the soul receives from the One. Its entire concern, its entire essence, is one single thing: that it is connected and united with the One. From this comes the deepest and strongest bond, the connection

07:52 of a Jew with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. A Jew not only does not want to be separated from Hakadosh Boruch Hu; he cannot be separated from Him at all. From the level of chayah, he wants to be connected and does not want to be separated. But “wants” is, ultimately, on the subtlest level, something additional: I want to—I could be otherwise, but I want to, I want to very much, I want to with all my might. That is will, but we are still speaking of a pull, of the power of will. With yechidah, it is not a matter of will. Yechidah means that it cannot be otherwise. At the level of yechidah, a Jew’s soul grasps that G-dliness is the one and only reality, and life without G-dliness is not life. G-dliness is life. That is the only understanding. The only meaning of life is G-dliness, and nothing else. A life unconnected to G-dliness—not only does he not want it, he cannot live it at all. It is simply impossible. [unclear] That was Reb Yekusiel Liepler’s level; that was who he was. Reb Yekusiel Liepler, in his devotion and self-sacrifice, when he threw himself into the teachings of Chassidus—he learned, acted, and worked on himself until he revealed the reality of G-dliness. For, as is known, the teachings of Chassidus revealed the yechidah. We see that before Chassidus, people hardly spoke about the yechidah. As is known, the Zohar does not mention it at all

09:18 The concept of yechidah is mentioned in the Midrash only once. And even in the Midrash, apparently, it is not explained this way. Only in the teachings of Chassidus is yechidah explained in detail and in the finest detail, with practical guidance and explanation. The yechidah of the soul is an entire subject in Chassidus. And by revealing the yechidah within Torah, Chassidus revealed the nature of G-dliness as it is disclosed through the teachings of Chassidus, particularly Chabad Chassidus: the meaning of “there is nothing else besides Him,” the fact that G-dliness is the only reality and that apart from G-dliness there is no reality at all. So when Reb Yekusiel Liepler heard that point, even when the Alter Rebbe came to give him a blessing, he made no move. He wanted to understand what life truly means. When the Alter Rebbe comes to give a blessing, an ordinary person, a human being for whom this point does not shine, understands it like this: He is a person, a created being of flesh and blood. He has life. In addition, he has a purpose, he has Torah; he lives to serve Hakadosh Boruch Hu, yes, and he does things for Hakadosh Boruch Hu. But there is himself, and then there is something else. There is my own life, and there is my purpose: I am a created being, I serve my Creator. I need to serve

10:51 Hakadosh Boruch Hu. But apart from that, my very existence is also there. So in his eyes, a long life can be a good thing, and wealth is a good thing. In addition, he also wants to live a spiritual life, to know Hakadosh Boruch Hu. But it is possible to have one without the other. [unclear] Heaven forbid, heaven forbid, if the ability to see G-dliness and hear G-dliness, and the pleasure he takes in G-dliness, were taken from him, he would still have life, wealth, longevity, and material things, but he would lack a connection with G-dliness at the highest level. Even then, he is alive. Reb Yekusiel Liepler wanted the Alter Rebbe to understand that, for him, life did not have two meanings. There was no other meaning to life. The meaning of life, its one and only meaning, was being able to see G-dliness and hear G-dliness. A life not connected with seeing and hearing G-dliness was not life either. This was so obvious to him that he simply wanted the Alter Rebbe to understand that this was what life meant. And that is the story of Reb Yekusiel Liepler, who lived by the principle the Rebbe also explains, as we can see plainly in Modeh Ani: A Jew begins the day with “I thank You.” We see in the wording of Modeh Ani that we say, “I thank You, living and eternal King,

12:20 for You have returned my soul to me with compassion; great is Your faithfulness.” A Jew thanks Hakadosh Boruch Hu for life. That is the whole point of Modeh Ani. The first thing a Jew does, even before getting up, is to thank Hakadosh Boruch Hu for life. But here we see something interesting: We do not say, “I thank You for returning a soul to me,” but “for returning my soul to me.” Seemingly, first of all you should thank Hakadosh Boruch Hu for the very fact that you are alive: You returned life to me; You returned a soul to me. No. What does a Jew say? “For You have returned my soul to me.” What does “my soul” mean? A Jewish soul. In other words, life means Jewish life. Life that is not Jewish life is not life at all. For him, this was so strong, so deep, and so deeply engraved within [unclear]. And that was the story; that was the principle revealed by the teachings of Chassidus: For Jews, through studying Chassidus and internalizing the teachings about Hashem’s oneness revealed by the Baal Shem Tov—the true oneness of Hashem, that “there is nothing else besides Him” and no reality apart from Hakadosh Boruch Hu—the point becomes clear that life means G-dliness. Life without G-dliness is not life at all. Moreover, this appears in the book Hayom Yom, which the Rebbe compiled more than eighty years ago, in 5703. Hayom Yom contains

13:56 sayings for every day of the year. And the Rebbe once said that the sayings in Hayom Yom are connected to the dates on which they appear. No saying is placed where it is without a connection to that day. When a person reflects and delves into it, he sees that each saying is precisely placed. Looking in Hayom Yom, we see that the saying—the story it brings during the week of Parshas Lech Lecha, on 6 Cheshvan, in the parsha studied then—expresses the point of this story: what Jewish life is. In fact, if I am not mistaken, it is even on the very day for which the saying in Hayom Yom was written. That is, on 6 Cheshvan, in the daily Chumash portion as determined by the day of the week on which 6 Cheshvan fell in 5703, when Hayom Yom was first published. What does the parsha say? Hakadosh Boruch Hu promised Avraham Avinu great blessings: “Do not fear, Avram; I am your shield; your reward is exceedingly great.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu tells Avraham Avinu: Do not be afraid. I will protect you and give to you. Hakadosh Boruch Hu blesses him with wealth, blessings, and success. Then Avraham Avinu comes, and Avraham Avinu

15:27 begins to complain. That is what it says in the Chumash. Look in the parsha and you will see that Avraham Avinu raises an objection. Avraham Avinu cries out to Hakadosh Boruch Hu: “What will You give me? ... The heir of my household is Eliezer of Damascus, and I am going childless.” Avraham Avinu argues before Hakadosh Boruch Hu: What will You give me? Who will inherit from me? Avraham Avinu had no children yet, and he had Eliezer, Eliezer of Damascus, who was his servant. Avraham Avinu cries out to Hakadosh Boruch Hu: What good will all the wonderful things You want to give me do? What will I gain from everything I receive if I have no child to inherit my possessions? “The heir of my household is Eliezer of Damascus.” All the commentators ask: How could Avraham Avinu ask such a question? Hakadosh Boruch Hu is giving him blessings—he should accept them. And the question is even greater: Hakadosh Boruch Hu had already promised him, as it says in the earlier verses, “I will make your descendants like the dust of the earth.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu promised Avraham Avinu descendants like the dust of the earth. So when the blessings come, he already knows this—what was Avraham unsure about? All the commentators ask this; see the Ramban and several others. And see an interesting explanation by the Ohr Hachaim Hakadosh, who writes that Avraham Avinu was certain, it was clear to him, and he believed that Hakadosh Boruch Hu would give him children as He had promised.

17:07 In other words, the Ohr Hachaim Hakadosh writes here that when Hakadosh Boruch Hu told him, “Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth,” Avraham Avinu was alarmed and thought they would be no more than dust of the earth. In other words, he would have children, but earthly children, “dust of the earth.” There would be children, but earthly ones, immersed in worldly matters, in coarse material concerns. In other words, he would have children, but not [unclear] as befitted Avraham Avinu’s level. And that was Avraham Avinu’s objection. He argued before Hakadosh Boruch Hu: What good is all this wealth to me? What good are all these blessings, all these things? I want a child who will be a child of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, a G-dly child, a child who will follow in Avraham Avinu’s ways. A child who will also be connected with G-dliness. I do not want earthly children, children who are “dust of the earth.” And the Ohr Hachaim explains that Hakadosh Boruch Hu immediately told him: Do not be alarmed; they will be like the stars of the heavens. Immediately afterward it says: “He took him outside and said, ‘Look toward the heavens ... So shall your descendants be.’” In other words, Hakadosh Boruch Hu made him understand that his children would be like the stars of the heavens. They would be G-dly children, heavenly children, children connected

18:34 with G-dliness. But why did He specifically say “like the dust of the earth”? The Midrash actually says the opposite, something beyond that: No, he says, they would be G-dly, heavenly children, like the stars of the heavens, and He wanted them also to have the special quality of the dust of the earth. What is the special quality of the dust of the earth? The Midrash gives several explanations. The dust of the earth—when you water it, it produces fruit. And there is another quality of the dust of the earth: It does away with things that are not as they should be and ensures that those things do not come about. The dust of the earth has qualities and advantages, and the Rebbe connects these, too, with the blessing of “the dust of the earth.” As it says in Midrash Eichah, the expression “dust of the earth” also applies to the most difficult times, when we are in exile, and then they are in the category of dust of the earth. Nevertheless, we see again and again that the Rebbe urges us to pay attention to this. And “you shall spread out westward and eastward”—later it says of Avraham Avinu: “Your descendants shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread out westward and eastward, northward and southward; and all the families of the earth shall be blessed through you and through your descendants.” So for Avraham Avinu, this was the point. That is, Avraham Avinu could not come and tell Hakadosh Boruch Hu something new. But Avraham Avinu had one single point: His entire being was G-dliness. Avraham Avinu was one. “Avraham was one.” And they cite an explanation of “Avraham was one” in the name of the Tzemach Tzedek: that Avraham

20:05 Avraham Avinu was a man of “one.” What does the verse in Yechezkel mean when it says, “Avraham was one”? On the simple level, as the Midrash says, he stood alone: the whole world was on one side, and Avraham was on the other. He stood alone with Hashem against everyone else, when everyone else worshipped idols. But the Tzemach Tzedek explained “Avraham was one” this way: Avraham was a man of “one.” The “one”—the oneness of Hashem—permeated Avraham Avinu so completely that his entire being, all 248 limbs and 365 sinews, all his desires and all his concerns, were one single thing. The “one” was his entire being. This is also brought in a letter the Rebbe wrote in the early days, immediately after the passing of the Frierdiker Rebbe. One of the Frierdiker Rebbe’s last sichos was printed then, alongside a letter the Rebbe sent to the chassidim—one of the first letters he sent after the passing of his father-in-law, the Frierdiker Rebbe. There he quotes this saying of the Tzemach Tzedek: the “one” shone within Avraham Avinu, and Avraham Avinu was a man of “one.” The Rebbe explains this point in the letter.

21:33 What is the foundation of this? What is new here? What is the depth of this saying? It is not only that the “one” shone within Avraham Avinu. That is true, but it is still something shining upon him: there is the source of the light, the “one,” and it shines within him. The “one” is something entirely distinct—Hashem. Hashem, the One and Only of the world, the Master of the world, shone within Avraham Avinu. But he says something more: Avraham was a man of “one.” It was not something from outside shining within him; it was his entire essence, his whole concern, his very life. They were not two things at all. You cannot separate him from his “one”; they were one single thing. What was Avraham Avinu’s entire essence? G-dliness. Apart from G-dliness, there was nothing. And so, when Hashem came and blessed him with every blessing, Avraham Avinu said, as the Midrash relates: “Blessings are all well and good, but let there be G-dly children. Children who will continue along that same path, in whom the ‘one’ will shine, who will be children of ‘one’; children like stars, children who shine, who know what is worthy and what the purpose is, who illuminate the world and the darkness of this world.” That was... And so, sixty years ago, during...

22:57 the month of Cheshvan, there was a regular practice: at the beginning of the year, after Tishrei, a group of activists connected with the Tomchei Temimim yeshivos, Chabad yeshivos around the world, would come. They would discuss the funding the yeshivos needed. The group would go in to the Rebbe and speak about the various efforts they had undertaken to support the yeshivos, and the Rebbe would give them a sicha. That year, 5724, the Rebbe spoke about a verse in the parsha. There is an interesting principle here. He asks a simple question. The verse says that Avram complained to Hashem: “What will You give me, when I remain childless, and the heir of my household is Eliezer of Damascus?” Rashi explains: What does “Eliezer of Damascus” mean? There are several explanations. One is that he came from Damascus, and that is the plain meaning. But Rashi then brings further explanations. What are they? One is that he “drew from his master’s Torah and gave others to drink.” Another is that he ran the entire household. In other words, Eliezer had wonderful qualities. Eliezer was not just an ordinary servant. He was a servant with many virtues, even in material matters. All of Avraham Avinu’s affairs were entrusted to him, and

24:34 according to Yitzchak, he managed everything with great faithfulness. And not only that—in spiritual matters, too, he “drew from his master’s Torah and gave others to drink.” What could be better than that? Yet Avraham Avinu comes and says: No, this is not what I want. “I remain childless”—what good does this do me? Until Hashem tells him: “Only one who comes from your own body will inherit you”—a child of my own will arise, and he will be the one who [unclear]. And the Rebbe asks a simple question. Avraham Avinu is standing there complaining that he has no children and that the person set to inherit him is a servant. What do the servant’s virtues have to do with it? On the contrary, why mention Eliezer’s virtues now? You are trying to say that you do not want Eliezer. Why talk about his virtues? On this the Rebbe made a wonderful point, a powerful principle. It follows very well from what we discussed earlier. Avraham Avinu’s argument to Hashem was: True, Eliezer is a good, faithful, devoted servant, and he does such good things, both materially and spiritually. But I cannot rely on him. Why? Because he is not my own child. And since he is not my own child, I cannot know how long that devotion will last. Perhaps right now everything is pleasant and good, and he is a good, sensible person, but this

26:19 is not intrinsic; it is not his essence. These are things he acquired. After all, he grew up with a Jew like Avraham Avinu—what could be better? Where does he get his Torah? Where does he get his knowledge? Where does he get his good character traits? Where does his desire to succeed come from? He does all these good things for his master. But what will happen the moment Avraham Avinu is gone? What will happen after Avraham Avinu finishes his life in this physical world and Eliezer is left on his own? Since none of this is intrinsic, since it is not part of who he himself is, and he is not my own child, I cannot rely on it being essential to him and never changing. I want a child of my own. A child of my own means that this will be his entire essence, and it cannot be otherwise. When it is my own child, this is passed on intrinsically, as part of his very essence: Yiddishkeit will be his own, and it cannot be otherwise. That is the essence of a Jew. And this is what the Alter Rebbe explains in Tanya: Jews inherited from Avraham Avinu their love for Hashem, their self-sacrifice for Hashem, and their faithfulness to Hashem. All these things that Jews inherited—including the oneness of Hashem, which he explains

27:37 in chapter 33 of Tanya that Jews inherited from Avraham Avinu—this is true faith: that deep within us there is nothing else; all reality is G-dliness. It cannot be otherwise. A Jew neither wants nor is able to be torn away from Hashem. That was Avraham Avinu’s argument to Hashem. Indeed, Eliezer is full of virtues, and that is very important, but one cannot rely on that. What do I want? I want a child of my own. And so the Rebbe spoke at length about education. This is the lesson for education—education in Tomchei Temimim in particular, and in every area of education in general: what education must be like, how we must devote ourselves completely to it and sacrifice of ourselves for it. This continues into the rest of the parsha, where the Rebbe explained the reason for the offerings. He illustrated it through the animals, as the Midrash says that through the merit of the offerings would come all these things: inheriting the land and having children. The offerings teach us that we must sacrifice of ourselves. We must give of ourselves—our money, our time, and our strength—for our children. And above all, a Jew’s outlook must be—not, G-d forbid, that the Rebbe did not bless everyone here with success in every area, with wealth, abundance, health, and long life—but

28:54 the basic assumption must be that all this will be passed on to our children. That our children will be Jewish children, devoted to the same tradition, the same goal, the same purpose as Avraham Avinu: “For I have known him, so that he will command his children and his household after him, and they will keep the way of Hashem, doing righteousness and justice.” And when we want to devote ourselves to education, to raise Jewish children, and for those Jewish children to be G-dly children, children in whom the “one” shines, in whom the oneness, G-dliness, shines—those are true lives. Life without G-dliness is not life at all. True life is only a life connected with G-dliness. Then we will bring about an illuminated world, [unclear], in which G-dliness will shine. This is how we will make this a world in which “Blessed be the name of the glory of His kingdom forever and ever” will shine, a world filled with light. And the true light for which we are all waiting—the light of the true and complete Geulah, while we are here in a time of concealment, a time of darkness—that is what Jews must ask for, rather than asking for small salvations. We must ask for the “one” to be revealed here, the “one”; for “Hashem is one and His name is one” to be revealed. For Hashem Himself to shine in the world. Then there will be the true victory, the true light of

30:21 the true and complete Geulah: “For eye to eye they will see when Hashem returns to Zion”; “The glory of Hashem will be revealed, and all flesh together will see that the mouth of Hashem has spoken,” speedily in our days, amen.