The Chassidus of Our Generation: How Did the Rebbe Explain the Unexplainable? | Yud-Tes Kislev

00:00 Today we’re going to talk about the great revolution in the teachings of Chassidus in our generation, the most recent generation. Over the past few weeks, we’ve discussed the Alter Rebbe’s remarkable innovation in Chabad Chassidus. We spoke about the Alter Rebbe’s works of Chassidus—the Tanya and the other books connected with it, in which he develops Chabad’s distinctive approach to the inner dimension of Torah. We spoke about the Mitteler Rebbe, the Alter Rebbe’s son, and the special innovation, the particular revolution he brought about by expanding on his father’s teachings—“the breadth of the river.” He turned the spring into a river, as we discussed, through the distinctive way he explained, publicized, revealed, and spread Chabad teachings. In recent weeks, we’ve also spoken about other Rebbeim of Chabad. Today we’ll focus on what is distinctive about the understanding and deep study of Chabad teachings in our generation, the generation of the Rebbe, the leader of our generation. Everyone knows Chabad chassidim today, and they’re known above all from the street: the Jews standing on every corner offering you the chance to put on tefillin, offering Shabbos candles, bringing Jews closer to Judaism, and handing out all kinds of things connected with the holiday. They’ll warmly and lovingly invite you into a Chabad House. In fact, we find them everywhere in the world. But perhaps we place less emphasis on Chabad’s teachings, on the remarkable, revolutionary innovation within them. The profound and expansive teachings of Chabad began with the Alter Rebbe. Through seven generations of Chabad Rebbeim, each generation developed, built on, expanded, and explained those teachings in its own distinctive way—and, most remarkably, most deeply, and most extensively, in our own generation. This week we celebrate and mark the great day of Rosh Hashanah of Chassidus, 19 Kislev, one of the most widely known special days and celebrations in the world today. It is the day the Alter Rebbe, author of the Tanya and the Shulchan Aruch, was released from imprisonment. That day became the Rosh Hashanah of Chassidus and its revelation.

02:49 It was the day the great revolution of “your wellsprings shall spread outward”—the spreading of the wellsprings of Chassidus—began. As is well known, around this time we also celebrate the Rebbe’s wedding anniversary, with the hundredth anniversary already approaching. The wedding took place on 14 Kislev 5689. So this year we’re celebrating 97 years since the marriage, since the wedding. It’s worth telling a story now that expresses the connection between these two occasions. It isn’t a coincidence. Nothing in life is a coincidence; nothing in the world is a coincidence. All the more so, nothing is a coincidence when we’re speaking about great tzaddikim and Torah leaders, and the Rebbeim of Chabad: the wedding of the Rebbe and the Rebbetzin took place so close, in the very same week, to the great celebration of 19 Kislev, the Rosh Hashanah of Chassidus. The first to point out the connection between the two days was the Frierdiker Rebbe, the Rebbe’s father-in-law. The story, as I heard it from people who were actually at the celebration and recounted it, is that after the Rebbe’s wedding in Warsaw, Poland, there were sheva brachos celebrations. Some of them took place in Riga, Latvia. 19 Kislev was the last day of sheva brachos. The Frierdiker Rebbe had already returned to Riga, together with the bride and groom and the family, and there they celebrated the final sheva brachos with great splendor. It coincided with the Festival of Liberation, 19 Kislev, which was celebrated with all the excitement and publicity that entails. It was a tremendous celebration, a double and redoubled joy. The Frierdiker Rebbe was overjoyed. He spoke at length and in depth about Chassidus, delivering a wonderful maamar that explains fundamental ideas in Chassidus and discusses the Jewish people’s self-sacrifice in exile. It is a truly remarkable maamar. Afterward, there was a farbrengen that lasted until dawn. During that farbrengen, the Frierdiker Rebbe stood up and said, “My mechutan”—he meant the Rebbe’s father—

05:22 “was not able to come to the wedding.” As is known, the Rebbe’s parents unfortunately remained in Ukraine, at their place of shlichus, where they were serving in the rabbinate. It was the difficult period when the Communists were first coming to power, and they were not able to be physically present at the wedding. They celebrated the wedding in great style with their community, but far from the wedding itself, far from the bride and groom. The Frierdiker Rebbe said, “My mechutan”—meaning Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson, the Rebbe’s father—“is a Kabbalist.” That is, he was a man of Kabbalah. As is well known, he studied Kabbalah and the Torah’s hidden teachings and was among the great Kabbalists of recent generations. So he is a Kabbalist, and he explains everything according to Kabbalah. He certainly explains the wedding, the names, the dates, and every detail of the wedding according to the secrets of Kabbalah and its mystical teachings—why each thing happened, why each detail is as it is, and how to understand it. “I,” said the Frierdiker Rebbe, “want to say just one thing: the wedding is in the third month.” Kislev is the third month counting from Tishrei. We know that our calendar has two beginnings. There is the month of Nissan, and there is the month of Tishrei. The Torah says, “This month shall be for you the first of months.” Nissan is the first of all the months of the year. On the other hand, Rosh Hashanah in Tishrei is the beginning of the year. The Jewish year has two beginnings, two heads. So Sivan is the third month counting from Nissan. It is the third month, in which the revealed dimension of Torah was given. As is known, the Torah says, “In the third month after the children of Israel left Egypt, on this day they came to the Sinai Desert.” That was the month of Sivan, and in that same week, on the sixth or seventh of Sivan—as the Gemara discusses at length—was the day the Torah was given. The Frierdiker Rebbe said: Just as in the third month counting from Nissan we received the Torah, its revealed dimension, and Moshe Rabbeinu brought us the Torah—“Moshe received the Torah at Sinai”—so too,

07:47 Kislev is also the third month. Sivan is the third month of the summer months, and Kislev is the third month of the winter months. It too is a third month, and so this was the month in which the inner dimension of Torah was revealed: the teachings of the Baal Shem Tov, revealed through the Alter Rebbe and Chabad Chassidus. Around this time, the Tanya was printed for the first time, and after the Alter Rebbe was released from imprisonment, he began to spread Chabad teachings far and wide. So Kislev, too, is the third month. He also said: the third month means a wedding. As is well known, the wedding between the Jewish people and Hakadosh Boruch Hu took place when the Torah was given. That was the wedding of the month of Sivan. In the same way, there is now a wedding in Kislev, in the third month. That, more or less, is what the Frierdiker Rebbe said at the Rebbe and the Rebbetzin’s final sheva brachos on 19 Kislev 5689. Now we need to unpack this a little. What did he mean? What is he saying here? What is the message? If we think about it, we’ll see that the message is truly remarkable and profound. It gives us some understanding of the great revolution that the Frierdiker Rebbe foresaw with his ruach hakodesh: the revolution his son-in-law, the Rebbe, would bring about in the world through the revelation of the inner dimension of Torah, the teachings of Chassidus. Let’s examine the subject a little. I won’t go into too much depth, but I do want to explain, in a few brief points, the depth of this idea of the third month. Why, in fact, was the Torah given in the third month? The Torah says so and emphasizes it: “In the third month after the children of Israel left the land of Egypt, on this day they came to the Sinai Desert,” and then we received the Torah. What is significant about the number three? So much so that the Gemara in tractate Shabbos, in its well-known discussion of the giving of the Torah, says that everything is three: the Jewish people are threefold, the Torah

09:55 It is threefold. On the third day, in the third month—everything is connected with three. The Gemara lists several things connected with the number three, with the Jewish people and the giving of the Torah. What is it about three? Why the third month? Chassidus explains that this points to something profoundly distinctive and essential about what was new at the giving of the Torah. When Hakadosh Boruch Hu created the world, He made a partition between heaven and earth. As the verse says, “The heavens are the heavens of Hashem, but the earth He gave to mankind.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu made a divide, a separation, a very clear partition: there are the heavens, the spiritual and the transcendent Divine, above; and there are the earth, the ground, the material and the physical, down here below. They are two worlds completely disconnected from one another. So much so that, as the Midrash says, after the creation of the world there was, so to speak, a decree: Hakadosh Boruch Hu decreed that the higher realm would not descend below and the lower realm would not ascend above. In other words, the boundaries between heaven and earth, the physical and the spiritual, the higher and the lower, would not be crossed. Until when? Until the giving of the Torah. The giving of the Torah is the third: “Let the third verse come and decide between them.” The third comes and completes the triangle; it connects the two extremes. The third—the third month—symbolizes peace, unity, the power to unite heaven and earth, to unite the spiritual and the physical, the higher and the lower; to unite and connect Hakadosh Boruch Hu with the Jewish people as they are here below, body and soul. To unite—that is the whole point of the giving of the Torah: to bring about unity. That unity, that connection between the physical and the spiritual, between the Divine and the world—that connection is our task. It runs through the entire history of the world and the Jewish people. It began at the very first moment of the creation of man, and it continued generation after

12:02 generation, year after year, era after era. Our purpose is to make the world a dwelling place for Hakadosh Boruch Hu. To unite, unite, and unite. The Torah creates that connection, and that is why the Torah was given in the third month, which symbolizes connection, oneness, and peace. Moshe Rabbeinu brought this quality of three, this peace, into the revealed part of Torah: halachah and the practical observance of mitzvos. For generations, for thousands of years, the Jewish people have lived by the Shulchan Aruch, the Rambam, the halachos—by guidance that tells me what to do, how to do it, and when to do it. Every detail of a Jew’s life has its place in the Shulchan Aruch, a book of halachos that tells you how, what, and when. So that is the connection between the physical and the Divine. But that is the outer connection. Beyond that is a deeper connection, a more inward bond. Action alone is not enough. Chassidus came and said that, in addition to action, there must be substance. There must be depth. We must serve Hakadosh Boruch Hu with all our faculties, not only with the outward power of action. How do I bring my mind, my heart, all my feelings, the whole rich world inside us, into the service of Hashem too? How do we do that? The answer is precisely this point: we can make peace, connect the spiritual and the physical. That is the task of the giving of the Torah—to connect the physical and the spiritual, the world and Hakadosh Boruch Hu. At first, this was only in the revealed part of Torah. Then the time came for the revelation of the inner dimension of Torah. Gradually, after so much pain and at the heavy cost of so much suffering, the Jewish people reached the end of the exile,

14:05 and in the deepest darkness, the light of Kabbalah began to glimmer through the great sages of earlier generations. This continued until the Baal Shem Tov came and began preparing the world for the revelation of Moshiach. Then the same theme began to emerge: connecting the higher realm, the transcendent secret, with the lower realm—with the person, with reality, with the more concrete, worldly side of our lives. This is the great innovation, the great revolution, begun above all by the Alter Rebbe in Chabad teachings. In Chabad teachings, we see how, on the one hand, the most subtle, abstract, and profound subjects of Kabbalah are taken up, and at the same time they are illuminated with explanations and beautiful analogies, so that each person can connect with them and understand them, and through them understand the deepest subjects of the inner dimension of Torah. So here you have this wonderful example of the tremendous connection brought about through Chassidus. How did we arrive at this wonderful connection? This is what the Alter Rebbe accomplished on 19 Kislev through his release from imprisonment. That is why he wrote in his letter, “On the third day, on which ‘it was good’ was said twice.” Look at something remarkable: as in this year, the Alter Rebbe was released from imprisonment on a Tuesday, the third day, on which “it was good” was said twice. Once again, the number three, because that is the very essence of the Alter Rebbe’s teachings. If Moshe Rabbeinu broke down the partition between the higher and lower realms, between the Creator and the created, in the practical, halachic realm of mitzvos performed through action, the Alter Rebbe broke down that partition in the inner, spiritual bond between a Jew and Hakadosh Boruch Hu. A Jew knows that in everyday life, I have the ability to draw close to Hakadosh Boruch Hu with my whole self and everything that makes up my life. And that is what the number three is about: connecting and uniting things that seem to be opposites.

16:19 Body and soul seem to be opposites. The G-dly soul and the animal soul seem to be opposites. And the work of Chassidus is to connect them, to reveal the inner Divine dimension through which Hakadosh Boruch Hu shows us that everything serves one purpose, that each complements the other, and that it is precisely this way that we reach complete unity. This applies to Torah and to mitzvos. It is the wonderful innovation of Chabad Chassidus, revealed by the Alter Rebbe and developed generation after generation by our Rebbeim. Because what happened with Chassidus is really the same thing. At first, the inner dimension of Torah was revealed through the secrets of Kabbalah—in sparks and hints. But enabling a person to truly understand the G-dliness that emerges from the subjects we study, to see the Divine power in every word of Torah, to understand Torah from a more Divine and spiritual perspective, and to bring that into the world, into our reality—that is a wonderful innovation brought about by the revelation of Chassidus, especially through the Alter Rebbe. You can see it in his books. He takes ideas from Kabbalistic works and explains them so wonderfully that you say, “Wow, this is life itself.” The point is, it began with the Alter Rebbe, but now we come to what we are discussing today: the one who did this work in the most wonderful and complete way and brought it to our generation—to this particular generation, in our time, seemingly one of the most difficult periods in the history of our people. And precisely now, a Jew can use his own mind to contemplate, think, understand, and grasp these ideas. He has all kinds of ways to make it easier for himself to get a better initial grasp, and so on. All of this is available today, ready for us. It is on the table. We only need to bend down and pick it up. Sometimes we do not even

18:31 To bend down, but to take it and make it part of life. And that is why this is the time, as we find ourselves in such momentous days: the days of the Rebbe’s miracles, beginning with 10 Kislev, the day the Mitteler Rebbe was released from imprisonment, and 19 Kislev, when the Alter Rebbe was released from imprisonment. These became days of celebration, praise, and thanksgiving to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. We should take to heart the wonderful message these days give us about bringing things together. Our task in studying the inner dimension of Torah is also to bring together our spiritual, abstract side—the power of faith—with our most practical side, with actual deeds, with what we do in real life. It is to transform our reality and our bodies into vessels for the Divine light. That is how we will prepare ourselves and the whole world for the revelation of Moshiach. And this is something we have seen, and continue to see, tangibly in the Rebbe’s maamarim and sichos. The Rebbe took subjects in Chassidus that had been tucked away in a corner. They were profound, abstract, and difficult to understand. And with his great ability—it is hard to know where he found the time for all this—he brought these subjects into a form of discussion and explanation that went completely beyond anything imaginable. So that is the point we need to take from this day, 19 Kislev, the Rosh Hashanah of Chassidus: to grasp the depth of this unity, the unity between the revealed and hidden dimensions of Torah, between the soul and the body. To unite, to unite faith with the intellect, and to arrive at the understanding, through reason as well, that there is nothing besides Him