Not Only on Holidays: How to Live with Holiness in Everyday Routine Too – in Light of Chassidus

00:00 Baruch Hashem, we’ve come through the month of holidays—the wonderful days of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkos, and Simchas Torah. Now we’re at the point of entering the new year, returning to everyday life—returning to a routine at a time that is anything but routine. Times are not normal right now. In this whole period, a time when the world is in travail, a time of darkness, we are all waiting for deliverance. But each of us is also looking for a word of strength, a word of encouragement—something that will give us the desire to return to everyday life and turn it into a springboard for light, action, and activity. So today we’ll draw a few words from this time, from the weekly parsha, from the period we’re living through—words of strength that will give us the power to enter daily life. First, there is a well-known custom that existed throughout the generations in Chabad. In Lubavitch, this was the practice with the Rebbe after Simchas Torah. I remember that in the years when I was privileged to be with the Rebbe, after Simchas Torah or after Shabbos Bereishis, around this time, the Rebbe would always repeat the words of the verse, “And Yaakov went on his way.” Those words are a key that gives us direction: where are we headed, where are we going? So first, let’s look a little more deeply at the words “And Yaakov went on his way.” Each of the three words—“Yaakov,” “went,” and “on his way”—has a message for us. Three messages, really, about what a Jew’s path in daily life should be. We’ll also talk about the weekly parsha. At this time, after Simchas Torah, we begin Parshas Bereishis, Parshas Noach, and Parshas Lech Lecha—those wonderful parshiyos in which the Torah tells us about the creation of the world. And we know that the Torah is not

02:41 a book of stories. The Torah is a book of guidance. Torah comes from the word hora’ah, instruction: it shows us the way; it is a Torah of life. The Torah gives us a path and lessons for life. And if a Jew wants to draw strength, the best place to draw it from is the parshiyos of the Torah. So first, let’s look at the words “And Yaakov went on his way.” What does each word tell us about daily life? We’ll start with the name Yaakov. We all know that Yaakov Avinu had two names. The name he was given when he was born was Yaakov; his second name was Yisroel. The root of Yaakov is akev—a heel. As the Torah says, “His hand was holding Esav’s heel.” In other words, Yaakov Avinu was connected with heels—and not just any heels, but Esav’s heels, since Esav came out first. We all know that Yaakov and Esav were twins. Esav came out first, and then Yaakov came out holding Esav’s heel. On the face of it, a heel also represents something very lowly. It is the lowest part of the body, the place with the least vitality, the least energy—the heels, the lowest part of a person. And not only that: these are Esav’s heels, representing what is most negative, and Yaakov Avinu is holding on to them. But on the other hand, the first letter of Yaakov is yud: yud and akev. Here, Chassidus explains that the name Yaakov gives a Jew the power to understand his purpose in the world. The yud represents Hashem’s name, Yud-Kei-Vav-Kei. Yud is the first letter of Hashem’s name. The word Yehudi, too, is rooted in the letter yud. We all come from Hashem: “For Hashem’s people are His portion.” A Jew is literally a part of G-d Above, part of the Divine Name, part

04:59 of the Yud-Kei-Vav-Kei of Hashem’s name. So when we say Yaakov, we are speaking about the strength we possess. A Jew has the yud, the power of Hashem’s name—the first letter, the holiest and loftiest letter of His name—and it reaches even into our heels. The emphasis is specifically on the heel, on the heels, because when we go out into the world, we need heels; we need healthy feet. There is the head, and there are the feet. It’s interesting that this is the difference between the names Yaakov and Yisroel. The name Yisroel contains the letters of rosh, “head”; Yaakov refers to the heel. Yisroel expresses wisdom, the mind, intellect, spirituality, the soul. The heel represents the exact opposite: feet, action, activity, the ground, stability, the earth. These are the two ends of a Jew’s life. There is the aspect of Yisroel: a Jew’s higher, loftier faculties—his soul, his spirituality, the Torah he learns. But there is also a time when a Jew needs heels, simply good, healthy feet to go out into the world. These are two stages in a Jew’s life. There is the time when a Jew davens and learns Torah, when he is at the level of the head: “Yisroel” can be read as “li rosh,” “a head for Me.” And there is the time when a Jew goes out into the street, goes out into the world, deals with the world and with physical, material things, with business. He deals with the things of this world, with everyday life—eating, drinking. All of that is the aspect of the heels. More generally, you could say that this is also the difference between the month of Tishrei and the month of Cheshvan. In Tishrei we are at the level of the head. A Jew is connected with the head, with Torah and prayer: the shofar, the fast of Yom Kippur, Sukkos, Simchas Torah in shul. All of these are connected with the head, with the soul’s higher spiritual levels. When the month of holidays ends and we return to everyday life, that is called the feet.

07:19 That’s when we need heels: to go out into the world, fulfill the task Hashem has given each of us here in this world, and make the physical world a dwelling place for Hashem. For that we need heels, healthy feet; we need to know how to come down and walk on the ground. We receive that strength from the name Yaakov: yud and akev, heels. You are in the world. You need good feet to walk through it and deal with the most physical things. But remember that you are not alone. The yud—the yud of Hashem, the soul that is literally a part of G-d Above and is connected with Hashem—is with us even in those heels. We all know that many people have a custom to sing the refrain “Do not fear, My servant Yaakov” among the songs for Motzaei Shabbos. It follows the order of the alphabet, with a verse for each letter: “Hashem said to Yaakov,” “Hashem chose Yaakov.” It goes through the alphabet and ends, “Do not fear, My servant Yaakov.” This refrain is said specifically on Motzaei Shabbos, and there is an explanation for that. The Alter Rebbe explains that this is the whole point. On Shabbos, a Jew is removed from the world. On Shabbos, a Jew is at the level of Yisroel, apart from the world. He lives in a spiritual world, a holy world, a world of Torah and prayer. That is a Jew’s Shabbos world. On Motzaei Shabbos, a Jew has to go out into the world again. We return to an ordinary week, and the Jew begins to feel afraid: What do I have to do with the world? Must I deal with it again, get muddied by physical and material things? So we tell him, “Do not fear, My servant Yaakov.” A Jew is “My servant.” He is Hashem’s servant, and he knows that he is going forward and is not going alone. “Do not fear, My servant Yaakov.” And the same is true of the year as a whole. After we’ve come through the holidays

09:34 A Jew needs to take the message of “Do not fear, My servant Yaakov.” It’s in the name Yaakov: akeiv, a heel. With our feet, we go out into the world with the strength of the yud, which stands for Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Then we are told, “Yaakov went on his way.” Went. What is the message in that word? First of all, going means not standing in one place. A Jew needs to move forward. This is a very, very important point for us to understand about everyday life. When a Jew enters the daily routine, sometimes the days turn gray—ordinary, day-to-day days. Sometimes we fall into a kind of fixed pattern, a kind of rigid box. You stay in one place; every day is the same, with no difference from one day to the next. And sometimes we also fall into a kind of freeze. A person freezes. The winter days are cold, the nights are long, and that can sometimes bring a person to a standstill. He stops. He stands in one place. The message tells us: Yaakov went. A Jew does not stand in one place. A Jew must always be someone who moves forward. Chassidus explains at length the concept of going: it does not mean merely walking slowly, what the Gemara calls walking heel to toe—that is, a person walking very slowly. Truly going means a kind of leap, a jump, moving on completely, breaking entirely from the place you were before. A person must constantly strive for a fundamental change, so that the next day will be different from the day before. It is told that chassidim had a practice of making a personal accounting at night before going to sleep, before reciting Shema at bedtime. A chossid thinks and takes stock: How did my day go? What did I do? What didn’t I do? What could I have done? What didn’t I do? And then, before going to sleep, he makes a firm decision. Chassidim had an expression they would say: Tomorrow will be completely different,

12:04 even if today was not a bad day—even if it was a day of doing and activity. But if tomorrow I remain in the same place I was today, then I am standing still. That is not serving Hashem. A Jew must be someone who moves forward: to go, to leap, to advance, to demand of himself that tomorrow be completely different from today. So we are living, healthy people who have received new energy and renewed vitality from the month of Tishrei. That gives us the strength to keep moving forward, so that things happen each and every day of the year—to renew ourselves and receive fresh, invigorating vitality every day. Then comes the third word, a most important word: “And Yaakov went on his way.” What does “his way” tell us? There are two very important things here that the Rebbe spoke about often. Excuse me. First, there is a way. The usual way, of course, is the way of Torah and mitzvos. What is written about Avraham Avinu? We will learn it in the coming parshiyos: “For I have known him, so that he will instruct his children and his household after him, and they will keep the way of Hashem.” There is a way—the way of Hashem, the way of Torah and mitzvos. But here is something interesting. It says “way,” but it says “his way”: the particular way of this particular Jew. In other words, it is not just the general way. If this were speaking only about the general way of Torah and mitzvos, it should have said “on the way”—the way of Hashem, which is the way of the entire Jewish people. There is one way, not many ways. But no: we are also told “his way,” the unique, specific, original, personal way of each and every person. So first we will look at the word “way” and understand deeply what it tells us. Why is a Jew’s life called a way? And why is the emphasis here not simply on “the way,” but specifically on “his way”? So regarding

14:24 a way, there is something interesting. In the Torah, a way is something like what we call a road today. Roads are for going from place to place—a place where a person travels from city to city, village to village, town to town, country to country. There are roads. Now, there are many kinds of roads. But the deeper meaning of a road is that it connects not only two streets, two towns, two villages, or two countries. In its truest sense, it connects places that are far apart in their very nature: the very highest place with the very lowest. In other words, a road connects the most extreme opposites. To use the example of a country, imagine that the road begins at the king’s palace in the capital. It winds and branches out, going all the way to the most remote place in the country. We see this with roads today, too: there are numbers, kilometer markers, and so on. There is a central place, the capital city, and the roads lead out from there and wind toward all sorts of places in the country, right down to the most remote towns and villages. As you get farther away, the kilometer numbers increase accordingly. So a road means a connection between the two most distant points: from the loftiest place to the lowest, from the most important place to the farthest and most remote. What does this mean in a Jew’s life? It is the point we were discussing: on Rosh Hashanah and throughout the month of Tishrei, we are in the King’s palace. We are with the King, in the King’s chamber. On Rosh Hashanah, a Jew crowns Hakadosh Boruch Hu. He stands face-to-face with the King of kings, Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and says, “Reign over the entire world in Your glory.” That is the coronation of the King. In fact, throughout the month of Tishrei we are with Hakadosh Boruch Hu all the time. The festival of Sukkos, as is well known, is the festival when Hakadosh Boruch Hu

16:53 embraces us. There is a wonderful closeness between a Jew and Hakadosh Boruch Hu. On Simchas Torah, a Jew dances with the Torah scroll, and he dances together with Hakadosh Boruch Hu, as it says in the Zohar. These are wonderful days when we are with the King inside the royal palace. Simchas Torah ends, the month of Tishrei ends, and we set out on the road. And the road takes us to the opposite extreme: we do not remain inside the royal palace. The purpose, the Divine will, what Hakadosh Boruch Hu wants, is that a Jew should not remain inside the palace, but should bring the message, bring Hakadosh Boruch Hu—“and they will keep the way of Hashem”—as he goes from place to place. As it says of Avraham Avinu, the first Jew: “And there he called in the name of Hashem, G-d of the world.” He went from place to place, and everywhere he made the name of Hakadosh Boruch Hu known. That is a Jew’s task. Yaakov Avinu: “And Yaakov left Be’er Sheva and went toward Charan.” He leaves Yitzchak’s home, his parents’ home, that holy home, and goes to Charan—a place of burning anger in the world. Even afterward, when he returns, he has the whole episode with Esav and their meeting. This means that wherever a Jew goes, he has a task, and his task is to connect the farthest place with the royal palace. Chassidus gives an entire parable about this: a king sends away his only son, whom he loves so dearly, who is always with him and to whom he gives the most wonderful and best things in the royal palace. At a certain point the king tells his son: The time has come for you to try and reveal your true strengths. That will not happen in the royal palace. Go specifically to the other extreme, to the most distant place, and there you have a special task. There your task is to make that remote place into a place that will be

18:51 Connected to the king’s chamber, to the royal palace. To teach the people of that place, to uplift them, refine them, elevate them, and bring them to a higher place. That is, in essence, the role of every soul when we descend into the world, and the role of every Jew. When we reach this point in the year, leaving the month of holidays for everyday life, each person goes on his own path. It is a way to connect the extremes: to take the most distant place and make it part of the royal palace. But here comes the wonderful message of “his own path”—the particular path each of us has. Sometimes we think it is all the same. There are millions of Jews, and they all have one task, Torah and mitzvos, which they all need to observe. But the verse tells us here: No. “His own path.” Every Jew has a unique mission. Every Jew has a particular task that only he can carry out; no one else can. This is a tremendous, empowering, wonderful message that we must understand. On the one hand, we all have one Torah. True, there are 613 mitzvos, and there is no difference: Moshe Rabbeinu was obligated to fulfill the 613 mitzvos, and the simplest Jew is obligated to fulfill those same 613 mitzvos. We know that in Judaism there is no more or less; all Jews are obligated in the same Torah and mitzvos. Moshe Rabbeinu put on tefillin every day, and the simplest Jew needs to put on tefillin every day. Shabbos, the laws of Shabbos, violating Shabbos, the kashrus of our food—there is no difference between one person and another. We all have one Torah and one Shulchan Aruch. That is one side of the picture. But on the other side, the Mishnah in Sanhedrin tells us: “Just as their faces are not alike, just as no two faces are the same, so their minds are not alike.” In other words, Hakadosh Boruch Hu created each person with the same stamp. That is what the Mishnah says. We were all created with the stamp of Adam Harishon. We all have the same basic form, the same limbs,

21:11 sinews, and face. In general, we are all the same: human beings. On the other hand, there are no two identical faces in the world; no two faces are alike, and no two minds are alike. No two people think exactly the same way. There is a halachah that when a very large number of people are gathered together—six hundred thousand people—one must say a special blessing. What is the blessing? “Blessed is the One Who knows all secrets.” The great wisdom of Hakadosh Boruch Hu is that there are six hundred thousand people with different opinions and thoughts, and Hakadosh Boruch Hu knows each one, bears with each one, and is present with each and every one. That is what “his own path” means. That is how it should be. We are not supposed to be all the same. Each of us is supposed to know that we are unique. Each person has particular strengths, talents, sensitivities, and a particular task. Each person needs to look within himself, find what makes him unique, bring it out, and do the most he can with it. No one asks us to be someone else. There is a well-known saying attributed to the tzaddik Rabbi Zusha of Anipoli, one of the great disciples of the Maggid of Mezritch and the brother of the Noam Elimelech. As the saying goes, he said: “When I come to Heaven, they will not ask me, ‘Why were you not like Avraham Avinu? Why were you not Moshe Rabbeinu? Why were you not the Baal Shem Tov?’ They will ask me, ‘Why were you not Zusha?’” That was his name. In other words, who are you? Your own uniqueness—that is what you need to try to develop, uncover, and put into action. Hakadosh Boruch Hu gave each and every one of us particular strengths, a particular task, a particular mission. That is the unique personal task every Jew must carry out in the world, each on his own path. That is the particular path you need to take. And this begins specifically after the month of Tishrei, after the holidays, because during the holidays, each

23:27 of us—all of us—are together, broadly speaking. On the holidays we are in shul, in the community, with family; we spend a great deal of time together. And the things we do are, more or less, done together too. We all take the lulav, sit in the sukkah, dance, and so on and so forth. We are together. But when we go out into everyday life, each person has a particular task. Some sit and learn Torah in yeshivah; others work, business owners in all kinds of businesses. Each person has his own task, his own work, his own way of doing it. That is the particular mission that Divine Providence, Hakadosh Boruch Hu, gives you and each person individually. And that is the wonderful message in the three words “And Yaakov went on his way.” Remember: first of all, Yaakov—healthy heels, feet—to go down into the world, not to remain only in your head and in the clouds, with spiritual things. Now the task is to have heels, sturdy feet, to go into the world and make a dwelling place for Hakadosh Boruch Hu out of the world’s physicality. You are not alone. “Do not fear, My servant Yaakov.” You have the yud that gives you strength. “Went”—do not stand in one place; do not fall into kiba’on, rigidity with a b, or kipa’on, freezing with a p. Instead, ask yourself every single day: How can I change, improve, rise, grow, and develop more and more? And “on his way”: the path that connects the most remote place to the holiest and most wonderful place. Do this in the particular, specific, individual way that Hakadosh Boruch Hu has given you, with your own particular strengths. And here come the weekly parshas, giving us strength in moments of darkness. As we said, there is a complaint any of us might have, especially at a time like this: I have no strength left. After a long, exhausting, grueling year, with so much darkness, so much pain, so much bitterness, so much bloodshed—and we are still in the midst of a difficult,

25:43 heavy war, and the Jewish people are suffering, people who are our own flesh and blood, and so on and so forth. Simchas Torah has already passed. How do I go on? So we read the Book of Bereishis; we began the weekly parsha. Every word can give us comfort if we look at it the right way. Take a simple example: In one of the verses at the beginning of Parshas Bereishis, the Torah tells us, “And the earth was formless and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the spirit of G-d hovered over the face of the waters.” The Midrash says, in Bereishis Rabbah—Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish, Reish Lakish, one of the great Amoraim, says: What is this verse telling us? This verse speaks of the exiles and the Geulah, as though made for our times. He says that “the earth was formless and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep”—these words allude to the four exiles of the Jewish people. “Formless” is the Babylonian exile; “void” is the exile of Persia and Media; “darkness” is the Greek exile; and “upon the face of the deep” is the exile of Edom, the long exile in which we now find ourselves. The Midrash explains from the verses why “formless” refers to Babylonia, why “void” refers to Persia and Media, why “darkness” refers to Greece, and why “the deep” refers to our long exile. It says that it is like the depths: you cannot find the end. It seems like an exile that never ends. But here comes the good news: “And the spirit of G-d hovered over the face of the waters.” The Midrash says that “the spirit of G-d” is the spirit of Moshiach. Already at the beginning of Creation, even before Hakadosh Boruch Hu created the formlessness, the void, and the darkness, the spirit of G-d was hovering over the face of the waters. The spirit of Moshiach was already there at the beginning of Creation. Even before the world was created, the Midrash says, Hakadosh Boruch Hu had already determined that the purpose of Creation was the spirit of Moshiach. “Over the face of the waters”—Reish Lakish says, the Midrash says, that water refers to teshuvah. “Pour out your heart like water before the face of

28:04 Hashem.” The power of teshuvah. Who hasn’t done teshuvah during this time? After all, as is known from the teachings of Chassidus, our Rebbeim said: A Jew’s sigh is teshuvah. How many sighs—with an alef—how many thoughts of teshuvah have the Jewish people had during this time? “Pour out your heart like water before Hashem.” That has already been fulfilled in the fullest possible way. So the Torah tells us: Know that “the spirit of G-d hovered over the face of the waters.” The spirit of Moshiach is among us. “And G-d said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” It is precisely out of this darkness that the declaration and the power of “Let there be light” must come. Light refers to Torah. A Jew needs to set aside regular times for Torah study. Especially in these days, each and every one of us needs to make a firm decision: “Let there be light.” Set aside time every day, so that not a day goes by without regular Torah study. And if you already have regular Torah classes, add more—both in the revealed Torah and halachah, and in the inner, hidden dimension of Torah, in Chassidus—to illuminate the darkness. We illuminate it with the light of Torah. And “there was light” is what will bring us the light of the Beis Hamikdash. As the Midrash there continues, “And G-d said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” refers to the building of the Beis Hamikdash, as the verse says: “For darkness will cover the earth, and thick darkness the nations, but upon you Hashem will shine.” That is the light of the building of the Beis Hamikdash; may it be built speedily in our days. So let us use these lofty and wonderful days, each and every one of us, to make a firm decision of “Let there be light”—to devote ourselves and grow stronger, each according to our abilities. Let us take the message of “Yaakov went on his way” and set aside regular times for Torah study. Together, we will illuminate all this darkness, and soon we will merit to see the complete Geulah through Moshiach Tzidkeinu, with the building of the Third Beis Hamikdash. May we merit to see it today.