Parshas Ki Teitzei 5786 - Returning a Lost Object - Bringing back the lost soul

00:00 Speaker 1 It is told that the Alter Rebbe once sat at a farbrengen with his friends, fellow students of the Maggid. [unclear] Rabbi [unclear] told this story. They were sitting at the farbrengen, talking together, and one of the things that came up was this: Each had his own approach, his own way of leading people. What was the difference between the Alter Rebbe’s way and that of his fellow students of the Maggid? The Alter Rebbe once said, “Each of us is a shepherd. Each tends his flock, leads them and makes sure they have what they need.” In those words, he is a faithful shepherd who cares for every member of his flock. But sometimes this happens: Imagine a shepherd with a whole flock of goats and sheep. One of them becomes a little too unruly, runs off and wanders away from the group. The Alter Rebbe said, “Among [unclear], you care for the whole flock. But one has gone off, disappeared, wandered away. The shepherd looks after his group, his community, his circle. And the one who left—he left; he no longer belongs with us. But with us,” said the Alter Rebbe, “that is not how it works.”

01:46 Speaker 1 “If a little sheep strays from the flock, we go after her and enter the forest. And when we see wolves seize her and try to tear her apart and devour her, we fight the wolves, drive them away and run after her until we save the sheep, pull her from between their teeth and bring her back [unclear] to her place. And what will happen to the rest of the sheep in the flock? In the flock, each looks after the other—‘Each man shall help his fellow, and say to his brother: Be strong.’ They will stay together. But we think about that one lost sheep. We devote ourselves to her, care for her and bring her back [unclear].” This is one of the things we see in the way Chabad Chassidus is conducted. The Rebbe writes in a letter, as the first point he makes there about the approach to education and guidance in the way of Chabad Chassidus: This is Chabad’s approach, unlike that of the other students of the Maggid. So the point here is that we must think about those who are far away, those who have been lost; awaken them and bring them back [unclear], and make sure they are safe. And not only will this not cause

03:15 Speaker 1 any weakness among those who are already within. On the contrary, when we work with another person, save him, draw him close and help him find his way out, then—as the Alter Rebbe says, using the familiar words of the Torah, when we do a favor for Jews—“He will bless you a thousandfold.” This is the idea of returning a lost object. In our parsha, among its mitzvos, we find the mitzvah of returning a lost object. The verse says: “You shall not see your brother’s ox or sheep straying and ignore them; you must return them to your brother.” When you find your brother’s ox or sheep after they have strayed and become lost—“you must return them to your brother.” “And if your brother is not near you,” then “you shall bring it into your house,” and so on, with all the laws of returning lost objects. “And so shall you do with his donkey, and so shall you do with his garment, and so shall you do with any lost thing of your brother’s that he loses and you find; you may not ignore it.” In other words, you may not close your eyes and pretend you do not see the lost object, because you must help return it. That is the mitzvah of returning a lost object. And this mitzvah applies to physical things, literally, as a matter of halachah.

05:00 Speaker 1 But as with everything in the Torah, beyond the plain meaning there are spiritual dimensions, and so it is with a lost object. We find this explained in the Rebbe’s sichos as well. You encounter a Jew in a state described by “and you find it,” by “your brother’s ox or sheep”—referring to the animal soul. As is well known, the animal soul is called an ox or a sheep; these are different kinds of animal soul. A goring ox is a coarse, unruly and powerful animal soul. A sheep is a softer, calmer and gentler animal soul. There are explanations of this in Chassidus: Each of these kinds of animal soul can cause a Jew to become lost and stray from the right path. A donkey—of which it is said, “A donkey feels cold even in the season of Tammuz”—represents the coldness the animal soul casts over a person. And so on. A garment—Chassidus explains that this refers to the garments of thought, speech and action that are not directed toward Hashem; not fitting and proper thought, speech and action, but garments of kelipah, garments of sins and transgressions. All of these can cause a person to become lost. And about this the Torah says: When a Jew sees another Jew whose animal has been lost, Heaven forfend—who himself has become lost, pushed away and cast aside, wandering down strange paths,

06:37 Speaker 1 through fields and forests—he must search for him and find him. Yes, “you must return them”: You must return him “to your brother,” bring him back as though he were your brother, bring him back to himself. And even if “your brother is not near you,” you must bring him out of exile and search for him from afar, going into public places of every kind, to utterly distant places, into strange and distant forests and fields. You must go there and search, “until your brother seeks it,” until you restore his soul to him and bring him back to the right path. This is returning a lost object in the spiritual sense. Along these lines, as discussed in maamarim of Chassidus, this concerns not only another Jew but the person himself. This is explained in the maamarim of the month of Elul, in the avodah of “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine,” and in the Alter Rebbe’s well-known maamar on that verse in Likkutei Torah. There the Alter Rebbe gives the familiar analogy for the month of Elul: The king himself goes out to the field. And when the king is in the field, everyone can come to him: “Anyone who wishes may go out to greet him, and he receives everyone graciously and shows a smiling face to all.” The king [unclear] each person graciously and with a smile, with a radiant, lively expression, and accepts the requests of everyone who approaches him. The very possibility of drawing near to the king, and especially

08:18 Speaker 1 [unclear]. As he discusses later in the maamar, there are three kinds, three categories, among the Jewish people. There are Jews called city dwellers: Jews who serve Hashem, whose lives are made up of Torah and mitzvos, of holiness, and whose entire being is devoted to serving Hashem. These are the city dwellers. The city dwellers follow the path of Torah, mitzvos and serving Hashem; they live in holiness. And there are also people of the field. The field is not a city; it is a place where people engage in material affairs. Not in anything forbidden—on the contrary, it is a field where bread grows. But it is not a state of holiness. This is the field, the weekdays. The king comes to the Jews in the field too: businesspeople, people involved in worldly occupations, people engaged in the affairs of the world. The king comes to them so that they can meet him, even while they are in the field. But the third category, the maamar says, is the wilderness, “where no man dwelt.” The Supernal Man, the king, is not there. A wilderness. The wilderness is a place described by the verse as “the great and terrible wilderness, with venomous serpents and scorpions, and thirst where there is no water”; “where no man dwelt.” It is a kind of opposite of holiness, a realm of kelipah and the sitra achra, and a Jew, Heaven forfend, has fallen there, into the wilderness. He is, Heaven forfend, in exile. The Alter Rebbe brings the good news: When the month of Elul arrives, the king comes to the field—but he is not in the wilderness. The king does not come there; “no man dwelt there.”

10:22 Speaker 1 The King comes to the field. But the point of the King coming to the field is that, by being there, He reaches the Jews who are in the desert. A Jew does not belong in the desert, G-d forbid. He has fallen into the desert, but he does not remain there. That is why the King comes to the field: so that even a Jew who has fallen deep into the desert hears that the King is here, hears His voice, and can be brought back to the King. The Rebbe says in the maamar that this is the idea of returning a lost object. Returning a lost object—the Rebbe puts it this way: “Who is a fool? One who loses what he has been given.” What does the fool do? He loses things. That is what the Gemara says. The greatest folly is to lose a privilege. A Jew fails to appreciate the privilege he has, and “loses what he has been given.” The Alter Rebbe explains this as a teaching in Chassidus. What does it mean in Chassidus? A loss is like this: “Who is a fool? One who loses what he has been given.” The Rebbe asks: What is the soul given? “And what are we?”—the faculty of mah, of chochmah. A Jew has the power of mah, of self-nullification. “What does Hashem your G-d ask of you but to fear Him?” This mah, this self-nullification—the Jew’s sense of being nullified before Hakadosh Boruch Hu, asking, “Who am I, and what am I?”—is the source of the fear of Heaven within Jews. It was there all along; this mah is present in the soul. But when it is lost, that is “a fool who loses what he has been given.” The Jew loses the mah given to his soul. “My G-d, the soul You have given me is pure.” But because of things that happen in this world, he has fallen into improper thought, speech, and action.

12:18 Speaker 1 And through this he fell into a pit, and [unclear].

16:15 Speaker 2 What is superfluous? We can learn it on our own from other cases. The Gemara initially considers that it might be there to teach that identifying marks can be given, but the Gemara says, “No, identifying marks.” The purpose of presenting identifying marks is to have the lost object returned. The law that an object can be returned on the basis of identifying marks is learned from “garment,” since a garment can be returned on that basis. But when the Gemara gets to “sheep,” it says, “The sheep in the law of lost objects remains a difficulty.” And the Gemara leaves it at that. It discusses the matter because the verse says “sheep,” but it has not managed to derive anything from it. The Tzemach Tzedek offers a wonderful explanation: what the Gemara is hinting to us is that when Hakadosh Boruch Hu comes into exile and searches for the Jews—the Jews have become lost in exile—the Owner, Hakadosh Boruch Hu, comes looking for them. There are several ways to find them. One is through identifying marks. These marks allude to Torah. “Set up signposts for yourself,” says the Midrash: Torah and mitzvos are signposts. These are the identifying marks that testify that someone is a Jew. When a Jew is careful in his observance, he has tefillin, he has tzitzis, he has a mezuzah. Those are the marks that show he is a Jew; through them, people can see it. But then the Gemara speaks of a “sheep”—the Jews in exile are called “I have wandered like a lost sheep”—because with a lost sheep, you can no longer see even a single identifying mark. And

17:39 Speaker 2 from the verse, “Seek Your servant.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu finds us; He searches for us and finds us. Why? Because a Jew’s very existence is beyond identifying marks, says the Tzemach Tzedek in his commentary on Tehillim. A Jew, the essence of the soul, the very reality of a Jew in exile—the mere fact that he is a Jew, even when there are no identifying marks—this itself calls forth “Seek Your servant.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu looks at a Jew and sees his essence: a Jewish soul in a Jewish body. And “the recognition of their faces testifies about them.” The Tzemach Tzedek cites the halachic concept of visual recognition: as the halachah rules, a lost object may be returned to a Torah scholar on the basis of visual recognition alone. And so it is Above—visual recognition, “the recognition of their faces testifies about them.” One looks at him and sees that he is a Jew, and that itself already brings him out of exile. “I have wandered like a lost sheep,” and that is what the Gemara means when it says, “The lost sheep remains a difficulty,” because there are not even any identifying marks. Nevertheless, the lost one must be returned. That is “I have wandered like a lost sheep; seek Your servant.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu searches for us and calls to us, and when a Jew searches for Hakadosh Boruch Hu in the depths of his heart, “I have not forgotten Your commandments” is fulfilled in him. A Jew

19:01 Speaker 2 holds on to the fact that he is a Jew, and that awakens in him a desire to keep mitzvos. One mitzvah leads to another, and that is how we leave our inner exile, and how we leave exile itself. When the Rebbe explained at a farbrengen “I have wandered like a lost sheep,” and “Israel is a scattered sheep”—the central claim concerning the Jewish people in exile is that they are a “scattered sheep,” a little lamb lost and wandering among the nations. This is the state in which a Jew is ashamed before a non-Jew, ashamed before the one in charge. The Rebbe explained it at a fervent farbrengen—it was on Simchas Torah [unclear]. I heard about it from older chassidim who were there. He spoke at length about the Gemara and explained it in terms of serving Hashem. He spoke about how Hakadosh Boruch Hu searches for a Jew in exile. That is “a scattered sheep” and “I will seek the lost one”: the soul returns to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. But when the Gemara cries out, “The lost sheep remains a difficulty”—“I, Hashem, have not changed, and you, children of Yaakov, have not perished.” [unclear], that even when we are sheep, there are [unclear] who want to devour us. The Great Shepherd protects us; the very fact that our Great Shepherd [unclear]. [unclear] to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, but who brings us to Hakadosh Boruch Hu? [unclear] the lost one; we are entangled among non-Jewish men and women.

20:26 Speaker 2 We are ashamed before the non-Jew, and would like to be [unclear] with the non-Jew, “who is in your midst.” Where is the pride? Where is the [unclear] over which the Rebbe cried out and wept? Where is the [unclear] that wants to be different? [unclear]. This is the meaning of the verse in the parsha that comes during the month of Elul. We must know that Hakadosh Boruch Hu concerns Himself [unclear] with every Jew. And in the month of Elul, Hakadosh Boruch Hu awakens us. He awakens the [unclear] in every Jew; He awakens “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine” in every Jew, and the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy that reach every Jew. We must take ourselves in hand and leave the [unclear], leave the state of being lost: “Seek Your servant.” We must reveal the good hidden within a Jew, concealed within every Jew. Through this, we can once again stand with pride, face to face—[unclear]—“I am my beloved’s.” Through this, we merit the shining countenance of “and my beloved is mine”: may Hakadosh Boruch Hu grant us that we be inscribed and sealed for good, a good year, a sweet year, a joyful year, a year of [unclear], a year of Geulah. May we be inscribed and sealed for a good and sweet year, a year of Geulah and salvation.