5 Teves: The Hidden Treasures the Rebbe Revealed to Our Generation

00:00 Let’s talk today about the great revolution in the printing of Chassidus books that took place in our generation, this last generation—something the Rebbe himself worked on day and night, for hours on end, in an extraordinary way. Today we’ll tell a little of how it unfolded. This week we celebrate the great holiday of 5 Teves, the festival of the books, known among chassidim today as “Didan Notzach”—“ours prevailed.” This was the day of victory for the books, the books of Chassidus, after a period of litigation and accusation, as the Rebbe called it at the time. And, boruch Hashem, on this day, 5 Teves 5747, there was a victory. Since then, we have celebrated this holiday of the books. The Rebbe himself said that this is the day of the books: to buy books of Chassidus, print books of Chassidus, and expand one’s library, each and every one of us. So today I want to devote our class to telling a little about this great revolution in Chassidus books that took place in our last generation. We’ll begin with the roots of the matter. The spread of the wellsprings of Chassidus, as we know, was a process. We see that the Baal Shem Tov and the Maggid of Mezritch did not even write down their teachings. The teachings of the Maggid and of the Baal Shem Tov were written down by their students, and of course they were not printed at the time either. Only after some time did people begin printing bits of their teachings here and there. The first to both write and print was the Alter Rebbe. The author of Tanya wrote the Tanya and printed it as well. There’s a long story behind that, which we won’t go into now, but in 5557 the Alter Rebbe printed the Tanya. It was, in fact, the first official book, you might say, written in an orderly and remarkably precise way by a student of a student of the Baal Shem Tov

02:27 and the Maggid of Mezritch—by the Alter Rebbe himself. That book is Tanya. But the Alter Rebbe delivered many more maamarim of Chassidus, thousands of them, and they remained in manuscript. The Alter Rebbe did not want to print them. Even in the revealed part of Torah, in halachah, we know that the Alter Rebbe wrote his Shulchan Aruch, but that too was not printed in his lifetime—certainly not all the maamarim of Chassidus. The first to begin printing maamarim of Chassidus was his son, the Mitteler Rebbe, as chassidim call him. The Mitteler Rebbe did begin printing them. He printed the Shulchan Aruch immediately after the passing of his holy father, the Alter Rebbe. The very next year, he was already working to print the Shulchan Aruch, which had lain in storage for forty years. For forty years it had been kept away and untouched. Only after the Alter Rebbe’s passing was what remained of it printed—for, as we also know, a large part was unfortunately destroyed in the great fires in Liozna and Liadi. What remained is the Alter Rebbe’s Shulchan Aruch that we have today. The same was true of the Chassidus manuscripts. The Mitteler Rebbe began printing some of the Chassidus works here and there. The Tzemach Tzedek, of the third generation of Chabad Chassidus, gave us a wonderful saying that the Rebbe often repeated and loved to quote: “Something in print lasts for generations.” In other words, the importance of printing—of printing books of Chassidus, books in general. Here we’re speaking about Chassidus books, the wellsprings of the Baal Shem Tov. So the Tzemach Tzedek said: “Something in print lasts for generations.” Once something goes to print, it becomes a book passed down from generation to generation, with a wonderful influence for generations. That is why the spread of the wellsprings is expressed primarily through printing. Despite the difficulties at the time, the government decrees, and many other problems whose details we won’t go into now, the Tzemach Tzedek also spent hours on end working

04:43 on the writings of his great grandfather, the Alter Rebbe. From those writings he produced and printed books of the Alter Rebbe’s maamarim—not all of them, but those he had worked on, edited, prepared, and sent to the printer. That is how Torah Or was printed, containing the Alter Rebbe’s maamarim on Bereishis, Shemos, and the festivals of the winter months: Chanukah, Purim, and Megillas Esther. The second part, printed several years later, was Likkutei Torah, containing the maamarim on Vayikra, Bamidbar, Devarim, and Shir Hashirim, as well as the festivals of the warmer months: Pesach, Shavuos, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkos, and Shemini Atzeres. This, then, is how the printing of Chassidus books began to develop. There is a wonderful story about Likkutei Torah that the Rebbe very much liked to tell, and we’ll tell it now. Likkutei Torah is a remarkable, foundational book containing essential maamarim of the Alter Rebbe and teachings of Chassidus on the parshiyos, as we said—Vayikra, Bamidbar, and Devarim—and on Pesach, Shavuos, the month of Tishrei, and Shir Hashirim. The book was printed in 5608. Years earlier—forty years before that—the Alter Rebbe had said in one of his maamarim that, according to one calculation concerning the time of the Geulah, 5608 was to be a year connected with the culmination of the exile and the coming of Moshiach. When 5608 arrived, the chassidim who remembered that year, had studied about it, or had heard from the Alter Rebbe that it had a special potential for the Geulah, naturally waited with intense longing for it to happen—for us to merit the complete Geulah with Moshiach Tzidkeinu. Who wouldn’t wait? Especially when it had been said that this year had a special potential for the coming of Moshiach. So the chassidim waited

07:02 for it. The year passed, and Moshiach still had not come. The Rebbe Maharash, the youngest son of the Tzemach Tzedek, approached his great father, the Tzemach Tzedek, deeply distressed. The year had passed. All year we had waited for the words of our great grandfather to be fulfilled, for Moshiach to come in 5608, and now the year had passed and he had not arrived. The Tzemach Tzedek said to him: “Didn’t you notice? This year we printed Likkutei Torah.” Likkutei Torah is the Torah of Moshiach. The teachings, the secrets, the things the Alter Rebbe reveals in his maamarim—that is where you find the secret of the Geulah. The Torah of Moshiach is in Likkutei Torah. It teaches us about the Geulah, about life, about a Jew’s life in a time of Geulah. It awakens the soul and redeems it from its inner exile. When you study Likkutei Torah, you are in an atmosphere of Geulah. So through Likkutei Torah, we have the Geulah. And the Rebbe Maharash, his son, said to his father: “But we want Moshiach in actuality too—Moshiach himself.” The Rebbe would often tell this story, and of course the Rebbe would always say that, despite what the Tzemach Tzedek had said, his son’s response was certainly true and right: we also want Moshiach in actuality, the physical Moshiach for whom we are all waiting. So the printing of Chassidus books had already begun in the early generations. But as we said, it was a little here and a little there—one book, then another, on a very limited scale. The great majority of the Chassidus writings produced by our Rebbeim, the Chabad Rebbeim, and by the chassidim who carefully recorded, word for word, what they heard from their Rebbeim—thousands upon thousands of Chassidus manuscripts—remained in the private collections of the Rebbe’s family and were not printed. And so the generations went by. A little was released here, a little was printed there, but by and large, for some reason, there was no

09:29 There was a kind of goal: to print books of Chassidus in a way that would make them accessible to every single person. This began in the time of the Frierdiker Rebbe, even before the war. The Frierdiker Rebbe began gradually printing his maamarim, as well as maamarim of earlier Rebbeim. The printing began to gather momentum again. Today, looking back, we discover something that was not widely known at the time: who was behind the Frierdiker Rebbe’s efforts to print his maamarim. Every so often, for each Yom Tov, a kuntres would come out—a booklet containing a maamar or a sicha for the occasion. Only a few years ago, with the publication of Igros Kodesh, did the correspondence between the Frierdiker Rebbe and his son-in-law, our Rebbe, become known. And there we discover the secret: the one who was constantly pushing, encouraging, and urging the printing of books of Chassidus was none other than the Rebbe, our Rebbe, the leader of our generation. In other words, the young son-in-law was the one with the drive, with that vision of the power of printed books, and he was the one who encouraged his father-in-law to undertake all of this. So we see that, although everything was done quietly and behind the scenes in those years—the Rebbe’s activities in general were conducted very, very quietly and with the utmost modesty—it suddenly emerges that he stood behind everything connected with the printing, even before the war, back in Europe. The Frierdiker Rebbe arrived in America during World War II, in 5700, 1940. A year later, the Rebbe too was saved and, through Hashem’s kindness, arrived together with the Rebbetzin in 5701, 1941. A few—

11:51 A few weeks or months after the Rebbe arrived in America, the Frierdiker Rebbe, who was then the Rebbe of Chabad chassidim throughout the world, established this wonderful institution called Kehot, the institution for printing books of Chassidus. The Frierdiker Rebbe founded the institution and appointed his son-in-law, the Rebbe, as its director and chairman. The Rebbe remained its director and chairman, the leader of Kehot, the publishing house from which thousands upon thousands of books of Chassidus would later emerge. So, as we said, this Chabad publishing house, Kehot, was established in the midst of World War II. Why was it called Kehot? Kehos was one of Levi’s sons, and his descendants were charged with carrying the Ark containing the Tablets. That connects it with Torah and the inner dimension of Torah: the Tablets contained the Torah, and all of Torah is contained within them. The Tablets also represent engraved letters, which symbolize the whole subject of the inner dimension of Torah. There are other explanations too. The letters of Kehot are also the letters of the year in which the Alter Rebbe was born, 5505. So Chabad’s publishing house began in that period, and we see how much time, energy, and money the Rebbe invested in getting it started—on a scale that is hard to comprehend. We have to understand that it was a very difficult time financially, and it was difficult to obtain materials and find the original texts. Nevertheless, the Rebbe devoted his energies to beginning to print books of Chassidus in America and in other countries around the world. And that is how many books of Chassidus began to be published. After the Rebbe assumed the leadership following Yud Shvat 5710,

14:24 the Rebbe devoted even more attention to it. Despite his many responsibilities—having become a leader for the Jewish people throughout the world, guiding so much on a global scale—the books and their printing were always central to the Rebbe. The Rebbe invested hour after hour in this, and increasingly so over time. It was remarkable to see how the Rebbe regarded the printing of books of Chassidus as central to the goal of “your wellsprings spreading outward.” The Rebbe explained on many occasions that the Baal Shem Tov received a message from Moshiach: when the wellsprings of Chassidus spread throughout the world, “the Master will come”—Moshiach will come. In other words, the coming of Moshiach depends on spreading the wellsprings of Chassidus. A most important part of that is printing the books and manuscripts of Chassidus that had lain hidden in archives and collections, generation after generation. Now the time had come to bring them out and print them. Especially in the later years—and I remember this from my younger days, in the 1980s, from 5740 onward—it happened on an extraordinary scale. The Rebbe began investing in the printing of books of Chassidus to a remarkable degree. Every few weeks, another book of the Alter Rebbe’s maamarim would appear. What had been two or three books suddenly became a set of dozens. The Mitteler Rebbe, the Tzemach Tzedek, the Rebbe Maharash, the Rebbe Rashab, the Frierdiker Rebbe—and, of course, that is without even speaking of the Rebbe’s own books, the vast sea of volumes of maamarim and Likkutei Sichos. The printing of books of Chassidus became something truly remarkable. Year after year, it kept growing, and the Rebbe addressed it. He spoke very much about why he invested so much of his time, his money,

16:46 his very self and his energies in printing books of Chassidus as a preparation for the coming of Moshiach. Because we are approaching the Geulah, the time has come to bring everything out, so that we will have the means to prepare for the coming of Moshiach. It is very interesting how the Rebbe always paid attention to something in the last maamar that his father-in-law, the Frierdiker Rebbe, left before his passing on Yud Shvat 5710. It is the famous maamar beginning “Basi Legani, Achosi Kallah.” This maamar is foundational for Chabad chassidim in our generation. The Frierdiker Rebbe said it, wrote it, and had it printed, and it came off the press just before the Shabbos of his passing. That is, it was printed on Friday, the eve of Yud Shvat 5710, and on that Shabbos, Parshas Bo, Yud Shvat 5710, the Frierdiker Rebbe passed away. The maamar contains twenty chapters. Part of it was printed before Shabbos, Yud Shvat, and the next part was printed after his passing. The Rebbe printed it for Purim and for 2 Nissan, the anniversary of the Rebbe Rashab’s passing. The entire series of maamarim that the Frierdiker Rebbe had prepared for printing at that time was printed. The Rebbe said that this wonderful maamar was, in a sense, a testament for our generation: the Frierdiker Rebbe left us a profound and wonderful message, giving us the path and direction for our work. What exactly is the task of our generation—the last generation of exile, as the Rebbe calls it, and the first generation of the Geulah? There, in that maamar, the Frierdiker Rebbe addresses this subject. He gives the example of a king waging war for the sake of his country and explains that a king can go to war for many reasons. He might fight to conquer territory, or to gain something—there are all sorts of things he might wish to gain. But there is a deeper, more essential kind of war: a war fought for victory itself.

19:00 When the goal of a war is not so much a financial gain or a gain of territory, or getting something specific, but rather to win—there is a kind of war we go to so that our truth will prevail. So that our approach, our truth, our way will prevail. When a war is fought for victory itself, it touches the deepest part of the king. So when it comes time to win the war, the king will invest everything he has, including the treasures he and his fathers and forefathers stored away—treasures he never revealed, never showed anyone, and never used. They lay hidden in his storehouses, among the most secret and wondrous things. When the moment of victory arrives, the king puts aside all his calculations and, in the words of the maamar, lavishes those treasures without limit. The main thing is that goodness, truth, and righteousness should prevail—the victory of holiness. And this, the Rebbe says, is the central point of our time, as we stand at the end of the era of exile. This is a time of victory, the victory of holiness. And as the verse says, “The Eternal One of Israel will not lie or relent, for He is not a man that He should relent.” Netzach Yisroel: netzach in the sense of victory, and netzach in the sense of eternity. The endurance of the Jewish people is being put to the test. So all calculations fall away; all calculations are set aside. And then the King, Hakadosh Boruch Hu, through His servants the prophets, through the tzaddikim of every generation, through those the maamar calls the officers of the troops, the army commanders—the tzaddikim of the generation—lavishes the most hidden and concealed treasures. And lavishing these treasures means revealing the secrets and the writings of Chassidus that our Rebbeim, the Nesi’im, had guarded so carefully and had been afraid to publish. In our generation, everything has come out, everything has been printed, everything is available, so that we can truly illuminate the world, prepare the

21:10 world for the time when “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of G-d as the waters cover the sea.” Because with the coming of Moshiach, there will be an unlimited revelation of G-dliness, of Torah and its inner dimension, the Torah of Moshiach, and “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of G-d.” The world will be full of that knowledge. As the Rambam writes at the end of his book of halachah, when Moshiach comes, the sole occupation of the entire world, including the nations of the world, will be to know G-d. All the nations and the entire world will be occupied with just one thing: knowing G-d. So the preparation for this is printing books of Chassidus without limit, which is what the Rebbe did in our generation in a remarkable way. This was also connected with the Tanya. One of the remarkable things the Rebbe worked on was printing the Tanya in every city and every neighborhood. We saw the Rebbe’s involvement in this: thousands upon thousands of editions of the Tanya were printed in those years. It began in 5738, and then, in 5744, the Rebbe launched a campaign to print the Tanya in every city, every neighborhood, every place, so that the wellspring itself would be present everywhere in the world. The Rebbe spoke about this. “Your wellsprings will spread outward”—the wellspring itself, the teachings of Chassidus, the Tanya, the Rebbe’s writings on Chassidus. It is as though the wellspring itself is here, not just water flowing from it. Printing the Tanya in every city and neighborhood means that the wellspring itself emerges from that place. And when the people there study from that book, that is the deepest, most wonderful realization of “Your wellsprings will spread outward.” And indeed, the Tanya has been printed in—I think it is the book printed in the greatest number of places, and in terms of editions too, thousands upon thousands. All this tells us how significant it is to spread the wellsprings of Chassidus and print books of Chassidus, something the Rebbe spoke about

23:14 so much and invested so much energy in, as part of preparing the world in our generation for the complete Geulah. And so, when that forty-year period arrived, I remember the Rebbe’s sichos. The Rebbe spoke with such pain when the matter of the court case over the books arose. There were people who wanted to make a business out of the writings of Chassidus and earn money from them. Heaven forbid. It was something very, very painful; we won’t go into the details of the story now. But during that period, from the sichos we heard from the Rebbe and the way the Rebbe addressed this point, we felt in a very tangible way just how deep, personal, and vital the matter of the writings and books of Chassidus is. In fact, the entire Jewish people and the complete Geulah with the coming of Moshiach depend on it. And so this celebration, as 5 Teves now approaches, the celebration of the revelation of the victory, is a time for each of us to strengthen ourselves in everything connected with studying from the books. First of all—and this is certain—the books were given to us to study. The Rebbe spoke about this so much. Yes, the victory of the books means, first and foremost, studying from them. But along with that, everyone who can should, in their own way, print books, publicize them, distribute them, and see to it that every Jewish home is a home filled with books, that there are sefarim in every home. And each of us should actually make an effort to buy books, especially during these days, and throughout the year as well, to enrich our library at home, so that our home will be a home of books. The Jewish people are known as the People of the Book. We should have more books, study from them, and live by them, so that they are books of life. That means they should not just sit on a shelf; books are made for us to learn from them. As

25:12 the Rebbe would say, when a book gets torn, that is what is meant to happen: a person uses the book and studies from it until it gets torn, and then he needs to buy another copy. That is what the book itself asks for. It is not, G-d forbid, a sign of disrespect. On the contrary, that is what the book wants. The book seeks, anticipates, and hopes that you will come and study from it until it gets torn and you need to buy another copy. So in these days, let each of us make an effort to enrich our home with more sefarim, to take part, each in our own way, in spreading the wellsprings, distributing books of Chassidus, and studying from them. And may we already merit the fulfillment of that wonderful blessing the Rambam gives us: when Moshiach comes, the sole occupation of the entire world will be to know G-d, and “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of G-d as the waters cover the sea.” Amen.