U'Foratzto - The History, Content, and Deep Meaning of the Chassidic Slogan | Parshas Vayeitzei

00:00 “Ufaratzta”—“you shall spread out”—is a magic word for Chabad chassidim, a word synonymous with every Chabad chossid. We all know the anthem, the song Chabad chassidim sing enthusiastically wherever they go: “Ufaratzta, ufaratzta, ufaratzta, ufaratzta—westward and eastward, northward and southward. Ufaratzta, ufaratzta, ufaratzta, ufaratzta—westward and eastward, northward and southward. And-and-and ufaratzta—westward and eastward; and-and-and ufaratzta—northward and southward.” This song goes with every chossid wherever he goes—when he arrives in all sorts of places to put on tefillin with Jews, to bring them the joy of a Yom Tov, to bring them the mitzvah of lighting Shabbos candles. Everywhere, in every corner, you’ll find Chabad chassidim, always with a chossid’s characteristic enthusiasm and joy, dancing to “Ufaratzta.” What is it about this word? What does it mean? Why is it a key word, a word that wins people over, a magic word that lifts and inspires and leads the way? Today, let’s talk a little about the depth of the message in this word, “ufaratzta.” It appears in the weekly parsha, Parshas Vayeitzei. What is its connection to Chabad chassidim? We’ll discuss the depth of this message as the Rebbe spoke about it over the years. We’ll also tell a little of the history of “ufaratzta,” and look at what the word means for us in practice—what is in its message, especially in our time. How does this word give us drive, vitality, energy, a sense of excitement, and strength for everything we’re meant to do—for the special mission of our generation in this special time? First of all, “ufaratzta” is part of the words Hakadosh Boruch Hu says to Yaakov our forefather at a very, very fateful moment. The Torah tells us in Parshas Vayeitzei that Yaakov our forefather leaves Charan—Be’er Sheva. “Yaakov left Be’er Sheva and went toward Charan,” and there, in the middle of the journey, Yaakov “lay down in that place”—the place that, as we later

02:52 learn, is the holy site of Mount Moriah, where the Beis Hamikdash was built. In his dream, Yaakov our forefather sees “a ladder standing on the earth, its top reaching heaven, and angels of G-d ascending and descending on it, and Hashem standing above him.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu appears to Yaakov in the dream and says these words to him: “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.” These are the words Hakadosh Boruch Hu gives Yaakov our forefather. With them, He gives him the strength, drive, joy, and enthusiasm with which Yaakov sets out on his difficult journey to Charan, a place of Divine anger in the world. There Yaakov encounters Lavan, and we all know the rest of the parsha’s story. Yaakov spends twenty years in Lavan’s home. They are not easy years: he faces challenges, and his father-in-law Lavan puts every obstacle in his way. But Yaakov stands firm. There he establishes the House of Israel and fathers the tribes. Together with the holy matriarchs—Rachel, Leah, Bilhah, and Zilpah—they establish the House of Israel, the very foundation of the Jewish people. That is the story of “ufaratzta” in the weekly parsha. Now let’s talk about “ufaratzta”: what exactly is its story and history in our generation? The story begins in 5718—“Tashchai,” as the Lubavitcher Rebbe would call it. It began that summer, in the month of Tammuz, on 12 Tammuz. The 12th of Tammuz is the day of the Frierdiker Rebbe’s liberation. The Frierdiker Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak, showed self-sacrifice in Soviet Russia. Despite all the terrible decrees that closed the synagogues and schools and forbade Jewish education and so on, he stood firm as a rock. With extraordinary courage and self-sacrifice, he carried on and urged his chassidim

05:21 to continue strengthening and sustaining Yiddishkeit, keeping its flame alive in Russia during those difficult years. The authorities persecuted him until he was imprisoned. On 12 Tammuz, the great miracle happened. His imprisonment had been extremely harsh, with a sentence so terrible that it is hard even to say the words—a sentence that was the opposite of life. Nevertheless, the miracle happened, and the Rebbe was freed on 12 Tammuz. Since then, it has become a chassidic festival, a celebration of the victory of Yiddishkeit, the victory of holiness, and the victory of Jewish self-sacrifice. Every year, the farbrengens on 12 Tammuz are filled with joy. In the years that followed, the Lubavitcher Rebbe would hold a large, joyous farbrengen on 12 Tammuz, with great joy and enthusiasm and holy sichos. At that farbrengen in 5718, the Rebbe also delivered a maamar of Chassidus. I want to explain this briefly. A maamar of Chassidus was part of the farbrengen. When the Rebbe held a farbrengen, part of it was a maamar. A maamar was an occasion unlike any other. There were the sichos the Rebbe gave—talks about the times, current events, the parsha, the state of the world, and all kinds of very beautiful guidance from the Rebbe. Those were the sichos. The maamar of Chassidus was a different kind of occasion, one with a special holiness. The atmosphere during the maamar was different. The Rebbe would close his eyes; his holy face was always pale during the maamar. Everyone stood, and only the Rebbe sat. It was a very, very special experience. For those privileged to be present, it was unforgettable. The way the Rebbe spoke, even the tone of his voice, was very distinctive and lofty. The atmosphere was deeply uplifting, holy, and sublime, and the subjects were deeper too.

07:42 At that farbrengen, the Rebbe delivered a maamar of Chassidus in which he discussed these verses at length. He explained Yaakov our forefather’s role—what his mission was in general—and focused particularly on the verse, “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.” The Rebbe quoted the Midrash on the words “Your descendants shall be like the dust of the earth.” The Midrash says that when Hakadosh Boruch Hu spoke to each of the forefathers about the Jewish people and how numerous they would be in the future, He showed it to each one in a different way. To Avraham our forefather, it was like the stars of the heavens; to Yitzchak, like the sand on the seashore; and to Yaakov our forefather, like the dust of the earth. The Midrash explains the message of the stars of the heavens, the message of the sand of the sea, and the message of the dust of the earth. One thing the Midrash says is that Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s message to Yaakov was that a time would come when the Jewish people would be brought down to the dust: “Your descendants shall be like the dust of the earth.” The Jewish people would be brought down to the dust of the earth, and then “you shall spread out westward and eastward, northward and southward.” In other words, here in the dream Hakadosh Boruch Hu shows Yaakov our forefather the Jewish people in their most difficult periods—when they would enter exile, and within exile itself, in its darkest, lowest, most degraded times: “Your descendants shall be like the dust of the earth.” Yaakov can see this. As the Midrash says, it also describes what Yaakov saw in the ladder. The whole image of the ladder showed Yaakov all the exiles as well. He saw the first exile, the second exile, and the third exile. He saw the Babylonian exile, the Persian exile, the Greek exile, until he

09:56 He saw the exile of Edom—which is really Esav—the long exile that is part of Yaakov’s entire story. After all, it is the story of Yaakov and Esav. But in this dream, Yaakov Avinu also sees Esav in the final exile, the longest one, lasting thousands of years. And Yaakov Avinu saw that a time would come when “your descendants will be like the dust of the earth.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu tells him: Know that precisely at that time, when they are like the dust of the earth, “you will spread out westward and eastward.” That is when the Jewish people will break forward, flourish, grow, and become stronger, spreading throughout the world—“westward and eastward, northward and southward.” That is the Midrash. The Rebbe explained this Midrash at length, in a wonderful way. Its deeper meaning is not just the straightforward reading: that although there will be a state of being like the dust of the earth, nevertheless, “you will spread out.” Rather, it means the opposite. The deeper, inner meaning Chassidus gives this verse is that precisely when “your descendants will be like the dust of the earth,” from within the dust of the earth itself—from the darkness, from the dust, from the very depths of lowliness and descent—that is where the greatest, deepest, most wondrous growth of the Jewish people comes from. That is where they achieve their greatest breakthrough. The Rebbe explained that the word “you will spread out” is also connected with Moshiach. As we know—and we will learn this in the coming parshiyos—Yehudah, Yaakov Avinu’s fourth son, had several children, one of whom was Peretz. Peretz was one of Yehudah’s sons. The entire royal line of King David later descended from Peretz. King David was a descendant of Peretz. Megillas Rus recounts the precise line of descent, father to son, from Yehudah to Peretz, Chetzron, and so on, until King David, David the son of Yishai,

12:17 who was a direct descendant of Peretz. From King David came the entire royal House of David, down to Moshiach, who will be a king from the House of David. So he, too, is associated with the name Peretz, as a descendant of Peretz, a son of the Peretzite line. We say this in Lecha Dodi, which we sing at Kabbalas Shabbos: “the son of Yishai, the Peretzite”—he comes from the house of Peretz. And about Moshiach, the verse says, “The one who breaks through will go up before them.” In other words, Moshiach is the one who breaks through, because he will break through all the barriers, all the boundaries, all the things that, during exile, make it hard for a Jew to move forward. That is the meaning of “the one who breaks through will go up before them”: he will break through all the barriers and walls of the darkness of exile, and then the true and complete Geulah will come, with expansiveness. “Expand the place of your tent”; “Jerusalem will dwell as an unwalled city.” The Jewish people and Eretz Yisroel will spread out into all lands, breaking through without limits. So this is the message Hakadosh Boruch Hu gives Yaakov Avinu. “Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth”: precisely from the dust, precisely from this darkness, precisely from the lowest place—that is where they break through. That is where the deeper, more wondrous strengths of the Jewish people burst forth. And we see this tangibly: precisely in the darkest periods for the Jewish people, “the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and spread.” Rashi cites that verse here. When Rashi wants to explain what “you will spread out” means, he says: “And so it says, ‘The more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and spread.’” Rashi brings this verse because that is exactly what is being discussed here: the greatest breakthrough comes out of the darkness. That is the strength the Jewish

14:30 people have: precisely in the darkest periods, when decrees and difficult times came, when it seemed as if they could go no further, the Jewish people broke through and flourished in an extraordinary, unparalleled way. The Rebbe explained this subject very broadly, beautifully, and wonderfully. He also applied it to every single soul, citing the words of the holy Ohr Hachaim on the weekly parsha. The Ohr Hachaim explains that all the verses of the parsha, beginning with “Yaakov went out,” apply to every Jew. Every Jew, every Jewish soul, is an aspect of Yaakov. Be’er Sheva represents the higher world, Gan Eden, the place where the soul is before it descends into this world. From Be’er Sheva, the soul descends to Charan, which signifies divine anger—the lowest, most fallen place. A soul enters a body with an animal soul and a yetzer hara, in a dark world, a world full of kelipos and the sitra achra, a world full of impurity. And in that very place, the soul undergoes this wondrous process: out of that darkness, it reaches the highest, deepest place. As Chassidus explains, the greatest descent is what leads to the greatest ascent. That was the message. That is how it began. From there, in farbrengens over the following weeks, the Rebbe went on to bring this deep and wonderful message of Chassidus into practical steps. The Rebbe began to speak about the fact that we are now in a period of “your descendants will be like the dust of the earth.” We are in a long, terrible, dark exile. We have to bear in mind that he was speaking only a few years after the Holocaust, when the Jewish people had reached their lowest point and were just beginning to rebuild. That was when the Rebbe came forward with this message. Many communities were rebuilding, trying to rebuild after the devastation, and they were closing themselves in,

16:44 trying to protect themselves. But here comes the message the Torah gives us, the message Hakadosh Boruch Hu gives Yaakov Avinu: On the contrary, “your descendants will be like the dust of the earth”—out of the dust of the earth. “And you will spread out.” Our goal is not to shut ourselves within our own four cubits and preserve our own world behind barriers. Quite the opposite: as Jews, we now need to break out, go out, and reach the world with the strong, steadfast message of Judaism—eternal Judaism, in all its strength. To go out into the world and speak, without embarrassment, about the pride of Yaakov. To speak without embarrassment about tefillin, kashrus, Shabbos, and Shabbos candles, and to carry that message throughout the world. “You will spread out westward and eastward, northward and southward.” That is the task of every Jew in our generation. Now, something interesting: accounts of that time tell us that when the Rebbe first began speaking about “you will spread out,” in the first few months, he began with the yeshivah students. He did not immediately turn to the world at large. First, the Rebbe called on the yeshivah students—both those studying near the Rebbe in the New York yeshivah and those in Chabad yeshivos throughout the world—to break through in Torah study. Very interesting. In that initial period, he spoke a great deal about how breaking through had to begin, first of all, with Torah. What does it mean to break through in Torah study? Here are some very practical examples: he asked them to study beyond the scheduled hours. After all, yeshivah students, the bochurim, have set hours in the yeshivah schedule: when learning begins, when it ends, the breaks, the designated times. So he spoke about breaking through in Torah study: a bochur must break through the barrier of learning only from one set hour to another and saying, “There’s a break now; this is my time.” Instead, he should break through it and study during breaks as well. Even from the designated times, to take from the times that are

19:04 Even during times that are ostensibly my own, when I eat and rest and do my own things, I should set aside time to learn. Not watch the clock to see when the hour is over, but break through the limits of that time and learn more. That was how it began. In those days, the Rebbe also called for a group of students to be chosen from each yeshiva. He asked that they stay in the evening to learn for additional time beyond the regular hours, and that from time to time they share Torah thoughts with the other students, develop new Torah insights, and publish booklets of Torah teachings. That is how it began, first of all, with Torah. The Rebbe said then that for a Jew, Ufaratzta—“you shall spread out”—must begin with Torah. The Rebbe also spoke to those who were not yeshiva students: businesspeople, people who worked all week. He spoke about Ufaratzta in Torah study for businesspeople, saying they should “steal” some time from their business, take a few more minutes from that time to establish a regular Torah class, to learn Torah even when, ostensibly, they should already have left for work, or when it means coming home from work a few minutes earlier. Every kind of Ufaratzta in Torah study, both for yeshiva students who devote themselves to learning and for businesspeople. A few months later, Ufaratzta out in the world began. That was when the Rebbe began sending shluchim. By then it was 5719. A few months later, in Kislev, the Rebbe sent out the first shluchim. Everyone knows the Chabad shluchim; today there are Chabad Houses throughout the world. That year, the Rebbe began the initiative of Chabad Houses around the world: in every country and every city, there should be a house from which Yiddishkeit and Chassidus would be spread. The first shluchim who went out into the world then, who were sent during that period, were truly what you might call the

21:21 pioneers. And it was all bound up with that word, that magic word, that keyword: Ufaratzta. That is how the whole undertaking of shlichus and building Chabad Houses began. Today, sixty-five years later, we can see its wonderful success—the tremendous success of the institution of shlichus that the Rebbe established at that time, with Chabad Houses everywhere. There is no place, no neighborhood, no city, no place in the world where there are Jews without a Chabad House and a shliach of the Rebbe who moves there with his family to live until the coming of Moshiach. They know they are not going for a limited period, for a few days. They settle there to spread Yiddishkeit, to fulfill “Ufaratzta—westward and eastward, northward and southward,” and ultimately to prepare every place in the world for the coming of Moshiach. That is essentially the role of every shliach. It is essentially the role of every chossid, wherever in the world he may be. There is something very interesting here, and also a very deep point we can take for ourselves: the message of Ufaratzta, with the depth the Rebbe explained during that period. He taught us a number of details that we learn from Ufaratzta. I will focus on two points. The first is something the Rebbe spoke about that is very interesting. On the one hand, Ufaratzta symbolizes and expresses breaking through barriers, conventions, and limitations. It means breaking out, because human nature is to be afraid, to keep calculating and saying, “Maybe not,” to worry about what people will say or think. A person is constantly living with all kinds of plans and considerations that impose limitations. So Ufaratzta means: break through the barriers. First of all, your own barriers. Go beyond the limitations of your own nature, your fears, your worries, and

23:26 what people will say or think. Because sometimes you need that kind of movement—a breakthrough. That is really the point. And as we said, sometimes it means breaking past the limits of your schedule; sometimes it means breaking out of other constraints in order to fulfill your role, to bring Yiddishkeit everywhere, to approach another Jew. Sometimes you say, “How can I approach him and say something? Will he want to listen or not?” Don’t make so many calculations. Ufaratzta. That is the basic message of Ufaratzta. But there is another very important point here. When we say Ufaratzta, a person might think, “Well, Ufaratzta means that’s it—no limits, no boundaries, no restrictions.” Then you do everything without any plans, and it becomes chaos. So the Rebbe always emphasized that within Ufaratzta, the verse says, “westward and eastward, northward and southward.” In other words, the verse itself emphasizes that there are directions: east and west, north and south. There are boundaries, and within those boundaries you must practice Ufaratzta. What is the message? It is very important: Ufaratzta does not mean disorder. Ufaratzta does not mean breaking things down with no limits, no boundaries, and no structure at all. A Jew must know that there are boundaries. We live in this world and must do things according to a plan—an orderly, detailed plan. A person needs to know what he is investing and what he is doing. There has to be order. There must also be the boundaries of halachah, of course, of the Shulchan Aruch. You cannot act as though the goal justifies any means, doing things without regard for halachah and the Shulchan Aruch. What are the boundaries? There are things about which the Shulchan Aruch says: this is how it must be; this is permitted and this is forbidden. So there must always be this principle:

25:20 on the one hand, Ufaratzta, but Ufaratzta must be carried out in an orderly, planned way. What, then, is the breakthrough? It is the inner drive, the feeling, the enthusiasm—the enthusiasm of Ufaratzta to break through limitations, while at the same time bringing that energy into “westward and eastward, northward and southward.” As the Rebbe expressed it in Chassidic terms: bringing the unlimited, the infinite, into the limited, into reality, into the world. That is the right way to work. That is one point. Another very deep and wonderful point that the Rebbe once discussed at a farbrengen also expresses something profound in the message of Ufaratzta. It is interesting: when we look at the verse, it says, “You shall spread out westward and eastward, northward and southward.” In today’s terms, that is west, east, north, and south. It is surprising. Why isn’t it in the usual order we use when speaking about the ends of the earth, when we want to speak about every direction? You would either start with east, which is considered the primary direction—the direction of the rising sun—and go from there to west, or go around in order: east, south, west, north, and so on. What is this order: west, east, north, and south? Now, in Jewish thought, when we speak of the four directions, east is considered the front and west the back. East is what is in front of us, where the sun rises, while west, where the sun sets, is considered the back, the end. So if east is the front and west is the back, south is considered the right and north the left. Right and left correspond to south and north, and front and back to east and west. Based on this, the Rebbe explained something wonderful. After all, this verse speaks about a situation of Ufaratzta. In other words,

28:03 Here we’re not talking about the ordinary situation, where you have to start from the dust of the earth, from the lowest place, and from there make the leap to the other extreme. That is the power of teshuvah. There’s a tzaddik, an ordinary person: everything is fine. He gets up in the morning, serves Hashem, fulfills mitzvos in a normal, orderly way. Everything in his life follows a daily routine; he does each thing at its proper time. But when we speak of a baal teshuvah, he has this ability to leap. He comes from a place of darkness, and the power of teshuvah is, as the Zohar says, that it can happen in one hour, in one moment. It’s a leap from one extreme to the other. That’s the meaning of “westward and eastward.” From behind, from the west, from the darkness, from where the sun sets, from the very lowest place in galus, he jumps and leaps to the other extreme: the east. A baal teshuvah doesn’t proceed according to a precise, orderly plan—what comes first and what comes next. He has this power to go straight from behind to the front, from the lowest place to the highest. This leap represents our generation and our time: out of the great darkness, we leap into the great light. That’s the first leap, “westward and eastward.” Then comes the next stage: “northward,” the left side. Why northward? The left represents gevurah. As is known in Chassidus and Kabbalah, right and left: the right is chesed, and the left is gevurah. When a person makes a tremendous leap from the lowest place to the highest, sometimes, in the excitement of that leap, he’s so fired up that he doesn’t pay attention. He does many things without

30:19 thinking them through. There has to be gevurah. The north represents the attribute of gevurah: putting things in their proper place, looking in halachah and the Shulchan Aruch, and recognizing that he needs this gevurah to know how to serve Hashem in an orderly way and safeguard himself. Only then comes “southward.” The south is the right side, the place of chesed, of warmth and light. That’s the goal: to give, to have an impact, to illuminate, to warm, to expand and to share. Every Jew has the ability to give, to have an impact and to bring light to his area, his surroundings, and the whole world. That is the process of “you shall spread out.” We go from west to east, and then northward: we take on gevurah, learning to recognize the boundaries of what is permitted and what is forbidden. And together with that comes “southward”—expanding, spreading out, bringing light and warmth, and illuminating the world with the light of Torah and mitzvos. That is the goal. That is how, especially in these final moments of galus, a Jew makes this world a place of light and holiness. So that is the message of “you shall spread out.” For our days, especially now, at this late stage, it is an empowering, powerful, and vitally important message that applies to every one of us. Each person needs to know: you can be part of this spreading out, and you need to be part of it. Every Jew in our time, in this period when “your descendants shall be like the dust of the earth”—it is precisely from that dust that growth comes. And we see this spreading out, this growth, in a truly wonderful way. So let each of us be part of it: break through the barriers we have within ourselves, break through the barriers outside, break through the barriers that sometimes exist in the Jew

32:38 standing before me, and go beyond my own four cubits, beyond my limits, to go “westward and eastward, northward and southward.” Perhaps travel to places I’m not used to, find the spark there, and bring the light of Yiddishkeit and the light of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. We can learn from Yaakov Avinu, who left Eretz Yisroel, left his home in Be’er Sheva and the place where he was accustomed to living, his father’s house. He went to Charan, and it was there, specifically, that he was able to spread out and build the House of Israel. So too, each of us can reach what it says later in the parsha: “And the man prospered exceedingly.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu gives every Jew the ability to break through boundaries in material matters as well, with abundance, livelihood, and wealth, as Yaakov Avinu had. Then we will merit what it says at the end of the parsha: “And Yaakov went on his way, and angels of G-d met him”—at Machanayim. Those were the angels who came to accompany him, and he returned to Eretz Yisroel. May we all merit to return to Eretz Yisroel, with the true and complete Geulah through Moshiach Tzidkeinu, speedily in our days. Amen.