How Do They Stay in the Most Remote Places in the World? The Secret Behind the Army of Shluchim

00:00 What is the secret behind the great revolution of the Rebbe of Lubavitch’s shluchim? Today we’re going to look a little deeper, to understand what lies behind the Rebbe’s mighty army—the army of shluchim spread across the ends of the earth, in cities and countries everywhere. They build Chabad Houses and settle there with their families, intending to stay. Ask any shliach, “How long do you expect to live here?” It may be a faraway place, cut off from family, friends, and everything familiar. “When do you think you’ll finish here?” And he’ll answer, “What do you mean? Until the coming of Moshiach Tzidkeinu.” Every shliach will tell you that, wherever he is, even in the most remote places. The question is: what’s the secret? What lies behind it? What gives them the strength and the drive? What lies behind this great revolution, the revolution of shluchim around the world? So I want to take you back to a farbrengen forty years ago. It was the night of Simchas Torah 5746. Simchas Torah with the Rebbe was the happiest day of the year. Chassidim came to 770 from all over the world. The large, spacious hall of the Rebbe’s shul was so packed you couldn’t fit a needle into it. Chassidim stood back to back, on tiered platforms, on anything they could stand on; wherever there was room for a toe, someone was there. It was packed from every direction, with people from every part of the spectrum. Everyone had come to rejoice, and at the heart of the celebration stood the Rebbe. The Rebbe danced at the hakafos and rejoiced with a joy beyond description. Despite the Rebbe’s advanced age—he was well into his eighties then—when Simchas Torah came, he danced like a young man. It was something impossible to grasp. One part of this was the night of Simchas Torah. The Rebbe would begin the evening with a farbrengen lasting several hours,

02:16 with words of Torah. It was a joyous farbrengen, at which the Rebbe would pour forth words of Torah and explanations about the meaning of the festival, with dancing and rejoicing during the farbrengen, as is the custom of chassidim. After the farbrengen, it was already past midnight. Then they would go to hakafos, which were, of course, something special. That year, at the farbrengen on the night of Simchas Torah, the Rebbe unexpectedly asked all those present who belonged to the group of shluchim chosen to serve in various countries to say l’chaim. There really weren’t many of them. You have to understand that nearly all the shluchim, on Simchas Torah as on every other festival, are at their posts, scattered around the world in Chabad Houses. But apparently there were a few exceptional individuals who, for one reason or another, were there on that occasion. The Rebbe asked the shluchim to say l’chaim. Then the Rebbe began a wonderful sicha, one that gives us a unique, revolutionary perspective and helps us understand the depth of what lies behind a shliach, what gives him his strength, and what his role actually entails. Later I also want to tell you about another farbrengen that I had the privilege of attending, during a Kinus Hashluchim in one of the years when I was privileged to be present at the Rebbe’s farbrengen. Especially now, when we are also celebrating the annual Kinus Hashluchim, held at the center, at 770, within the Rebbe’s own four cubits. As is customary each year at this time, thousands of shluchim gather from around the world. But let’s go in order. First, let me tell you what happened at that farbrengen. The Rebbe began by saying that if we take the word shliach and look at it, we find that adding ten gives us the numerical value of Moshiach. Shliach has a numerical value of 348; Moshiach has a numerical value of 358. So there’s a difference of ten, and those ten represent the ten faculties of the soul.

04:46 So the Rebbe says that when a shliach puts his ten faculties of the soul into his shlichus, we get Moshiach. What exactly does that mean? It’s a beautiful numerical correspondence, but what is it hinting at? What’s the story? What is contained in these words? Here the Rebbe gave a truly wonderful explanation. First we need to understand the idea of a shliach. Then we’ll understand the idea of Moshiach, and after that, the connection between the shliach and Moshiach, and the ten faculties of the soul that the shliach devotes to his shlichus. To begin with, when we speak about shlichus and a shliach, there is the halachic concept of an agent. The Gemara in Tractate Kiddushin and elsewhere in the Talmud discusses it, as does the Rambam in his laws of agents. It’s an entire subject in halachah, addressed in the Shulchan Aruch too. The halachic definition is: “A person’s agent is like the person himself.” The Gemara says that a person can choose someone else and send him to carry out very significant halachic acts: an agent to betroth a woman, to perform certain mitzvos, or to make certain acquisitions. An agent has considerable power. In halachah, the condition is that the agent must be like the person who sends him. Not just anyone can be an agent. According to halachah, he must be capable of understanding what he is doing. That is, he must be someone who has reached that stage; you can’t send a small child or an infant. There are other conditions too: “Just as you are members of the covenant, so must your agents be members of the covenant,” and the like. There are several conditions that qualify someone to be an agent. Once those conditions are met, the person sending him has the power to place his own authority in the agent’s hands. What the agent does is considered as though the sender himself did it. It’s a remarkable thing: “A person’s agent is like the person himself.”

07:00 Like the person himself. Following on from this, there is an idea the Alter Rebbe explains in one of his maamarim of Chassidus: every Jew is, in fact, an agent of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, just as we speak of an agent in halachah. Every soul is an agent of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Hakadosh Boruch Hu takes a soul from the treasury of souls, from Gan Eden. Before souls descend into this world, the soul is in the higher world, enjoying the radiance of the Shechinah. Then Hakadosh Boruch Hu takes the soul and says to it: “You have a mission to descend into this world, to a distant, physical, material place—our world—and to enter a physical body, with a yetzer and an animal soul. In this world, you have a mission to make it a purer, cleaner, more refined place: to transform the world into a dwelling place for Hakadosh Boruch Hu.” So every Jew is a shliach, and of every Jew we can also say, “A person’s agent is like the person himself.” Adam—“I resemble the One Above.” The early sages, the great Kabbalists, write: “Adam—I resemble the One Above.” A person is called adam because he resembles Him. “Let us make man in Our image, after Our likeness.” Hashem created man in His image and likeness. So when we say, “A person’s agent is like the person himself,” we’re talking about the Jew, about the person: the soul of every single Jew who comes down into this world with a special mission to illuminate it, to turn a dark world into a world of light, to make the world a dwelling place for Hakadosh Boruch Hu. And among the Jewish people there is a group chosen by the leader of the generation. As it says in the Zohar, in every generation there is a Moshe Rabbeinu of that generation—and in our generation, that is the leader of our generation, the Rebbe. He chose particular Jews and gave them, entrusted them with, the special mission of traveling to distant places and opening

09:11 a Chabad House, and there to bring Jews closer, to kindle something in the Jews throughout that area, to illuminate the light of their souls and ignite the spark within them. That is really the shliach’s essential, primary role. The shliach has the power to do it. Beyond the fact that every Jew has the power of Hakadosh Boruch Hu—“a person’s agent is like himself”—a shliach also has, in a unique way, the power of the Rebbe, the power of the Moshe Rabbeinu of the generation, the power of the leader of the generation. He receives it through the Rebbe’s official appointment, or through the Rebbe’s shluchim: an agent can appoint another agent. I’m mentioning this because sometimes the Rebbe did not personally authorize a shliach. According to halachah too, one agent can appoint another agent to carry out the mission. “An agent can appoint an agent,” the halachah says. So the shluchim also have the power to appoint other shluchim to this task. This is the special task of our generation, the last generation of exile and the first generation of Geulah. Our task is to prepare the world for the moment, the place and the time of the complete Geulah—to prepare the world for Moshiach. That is why shluchim were sent to every place in the world. By igniting the spark, they awaken the local Jews to recognize Hakadosh Boruch Hu, connect with Him, illuminate themselves and their surroundings, and turn the place where they live into a thriving center of Jewish life, Torah and mitzvos. Slowly, one person at a time, we make the entire world a place of light, a place for the Shechinah. And consequently it will also be a place of Geulah, where Hakadosh Boruch Hu will be revealed in the era of Moshiach, when all of us stand ready to receive him.

11:08 And there is an even more important and deeper point here: the spark of Moshiach within each person’s soul. When we speak of the Jewish spark, we mean the “actual part of G-d above,” the Jewish soul. But there is something special that the Baal Shem Tov revealed. There is a sefer called Meor Einayim, written by one of the great disciples of the Baal Shem Tov, the tzaddik Rabbi Menachem Nachum of Chernobyl. He was among the great disciples of the Baal Shem Tov and the Maggid, and his sefer is a profound work, one of the foundational books of Chassidus. He quotes the Baal Shem Tov as saying that every Jew has a spark of Moshiach in his soul. A spark of Moshiach is hidden within every Jew. This is essentially what Chassidus calls the yechidah, the level of yechidah. The Midrash says that the soul has five names: nefesh, ruach, neshamah, chayah and yechidah. Chassidus explains that yechidah is the deepest, most essential and innermost level. It is the Divine spark called yechidah after Hakadosh Boruch Hu, the Yachid, the One: the yechidah belongs to the Yachid. The yechidah is united with the One, with Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself. That is where a Jew’s most essential power of connection with Hakadosh Boruch Hu lies, and that is the spark of Moshiach within every one of us. This is what we mean when we say that the shliach should reveal within himself the spark of Moshiach, the spark of Geulah, the spark of Moshiach in his soul. How do you reveal it? By carrying out your shlichus with all ten faculties of your soul. In other words, it isn’t enough for the one who sent you to tell you to go and give you the strength, after which you go to bed and leave that strength hidden within you. You actually have to act. Our task is to work with the ten faculties, with the ten

13:23 faculties of the soul: to reveal them, to work and exert ourselves with our intellect, with chochmah, binah and daas, with our emotions, with chessed and gevurah—the ten faculties of the soul, as explained in Chassidus. I have to reveal my abilities and exert myself with them wherever I am, reach out to one Jew and then another, and speak with them through intellect, through feeling, through thought, speech and action. I have to put all ten faculties of my soul into my shlichus. When a shliach brings all ten faculties of his soul into the place and the area where he serves, and approaches one Jew after another to ignite the Divine spark within them, to awaken the soul within them—and not only within Jews. In fact, everything in the world has a Divine spark. According to the Baal Shem Tov’s teachings, a Divine power exists within everything. The Baal Shem Tov revealed to us the Divine power within creation: the word of Hashem, the Divine spark, which brings creation into being, gives it life and sustains it at every moment. So this Divine spark is hidden within everything in the world. When a shliach, wherever he is, connects with the spark of Moshiach in his own soul, he connects with his inner Geulah. He frees himself from his inner exile and connects with the light of the inner Geulah in his soul. He connects with Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and the truth becomes clear to him that apart from Hakadosh Boruch Hu, there is nothing. That is Geulah within the soul. Geulah within the soul means freeing ourselves from the feeling that there are things in the world holding us back—the difficulties, the concealments, the problems and the challenges. When a Jew is connected in the depths of his soul, through its yechidah, with the Yachid, with Hakadosh Boruch Hu, the truth shines within him: “There is nothing besides Him.” When that shines within me, nothing shakes me. I can be anywhere in the world

15:27 and look at each person with an eye for the Divine spark, reveal it and awaken it. Then I can turn the place where I am into a place of Geulah, and awaken the spark of Moshiach in the soul of the Jew with whom I am connected. This is the essential role of the shliach. “Shliach” together with the ten faculties of the soul has the numerical value of “Moshiach.” When we carry out our shlichus, we will reveal the Moshiach for whom we are all waiting—that man from the House of David whom the Rambam writes will come, David the son of Yishai. “May You speedily cause the scion of David to flourish.” A man from the House of David will arise, whom we are all awaiting and anticipating. When each of us works to reveal the spark of Moshiach within our own soul, we will merit the revelation of Moshiach himself. This brings me to the farbrengen on the Shabbos of the Kinus Hashluchim in 5748. I had the privilege of being with the Rebbe then. It was a truly wonderful farbrengen. The Rebbe was in exceptionally high spirits that Shabbos. It was deeply moving to see the Rebbe farbreng, the Rebbe’s joy, and the dancing and rejoicing. It was Shabbos Mevarchim Kislev, as it is this Shabbos, but the atmosphere around the Rebbe was like Simchas Torah—tremendous, extraordinary joy. The Rebbe returned to the subject of a shliach and explained it in greater depth. He explained the halachic distinction between a shliach and a servant. A servant, too, is devoted; he, too, belongs entirely to his master. But a servant is more subordinate, with more self-nullification and awe. A shliach is a person with understanding and abilities, a person who resembles the one who sent him. With a shliach, the emphasis is not so much on self-nullification but, on the contrary, on the wonderful abilities you have. The Rebbe specifically wanted to put it this way: we are shluchim, not servants. The strength of a shliach is that he goes with full confidence, with all his abilities

17:36 The wonderful powers he has make him like the one who sent him, and so he has the ability to transform his place and make it a holy place, a wonderful place, a place of light. Then the Rebbe went on to give wonderful blessings to the shluchim. The Rebbe spoke about the first shlichus in the Torah where one Jew sends another as a shliach: when Avraham—sorry, when Yitzchak sends Yaakov. In this week’s parsha, Avraham sends Eliezer, but Eliezer is called a servant. Eliezer, too, had the status of a shliach. We won’t go into all the details, but where does the Torah use the expression of sending someone as a shliach? Later, when it tells us that Yitzchak sends Yaakov to find a wife in Charan, it says, “And Yitzchak sent Yaakov.” That is where we see this shlichus. And when Yitzchak sends him, he pours blessings upon him. First, “May G-d give you of the dew of heaven and the richness of the earth”—the most wonderful blessings in the Torah that Yitzchak gives Yaakov. That is even before the shlichus. Then it says that he calls him again and tells him to travel to Paddan Aram, to the distant place of Charan, where, with Hashem’s help, he will establish his family, the tribes of Yaakov. And he gives him more blessings: “May G-d Almighty make you fruitful and multiply you and give you,” and so on and so forth. Wonderful blessings. Then again, when Yaakov is already on his way, he has his dream: “Behold, a ladder stood on the earth, and its top reached the heavens, and behold, Hashem stood over him.” And once again he receives wonderful blessings: “You shall spread out westward, eastward, northward, and southward.” Blessings upon blessings upon blessings—before the shlichus, as he sets out on his shlichus, and when he is already on his way. So the Rebbe said that the same is true of every person in our generation who takes upon himself the

19:30 task and is ready to devote his life to it, to say: I want to be a shliach, to bring the word of Hashem into the world, to kindle a Jewish spark wherever I am in the world. In fact, the Rebbe says that every Jew today, in our generation, has the ability and the strength to be a shliach. We only need to choose “and you shall choose life,” to accept the shlichus upon ourselves. Then we have Yitzchak’s blessings, the blessings of the leader of the generation, who gives blessings before the shlichus, during it, and after it. I remember as if it were today the Rebbe’s radiant face as he gave blessing upon blessing: that everyone should be blessed with children, livelihood, health, good matches for their children, and nachas from their children and grandchildren. The Rebbe gave an abundance of material blessings, and on top of those, spiritual blessings—extraordinary success in the shlichus. This is the strength; this helps us understand the power of these shluchim who devote themselves to this task, to the role of a shliach. Shluchim with the power of mesirus nefesh, shluchim empowered by the one who sends them. A shliach with the ten powers of the soul has the same numerical value as Moshiach. May Hakadosh Boruch Hu help us merit to see this fulfilled this year, to see the one who sends us, to see the wonderful revelation of Moshiach Tzidkeinu, for which we all long and wait, and for which we can already see the world preparing. May Hashem help us merit the complete Geulah now, through Moshiach Tzidkeinu. Amen, may it be His will.