What Is Chabad Chassidus Really? The Answer That Will Change Your Understanding

00:00 A lot of people ask: What exactly is Chabad Chassidus? It’s a little confusing. On the one hand, who doesn’t know Chabad chassidim around the world? People you find on street corners everywhere, warmly offering a fellow Jew: Come put on tefillin; Shabbos candles; mitzvos and good deeds. They show up for the holidays and hand out things connected with each holiday—doughnuts on Chanukah, mishloach manos on Purim, matzos for Pesach. Everywhere, in every corner of the world, there are Chabad Houses that open their hearts and their doors to everyone, wholeheartedly, and give you what you need with a warm smile. So what exactly is Chabad Chassidus about? Because on the other hand, Chabad is an acronym for chochmah, binah, daas—wisdom, understanding, and knowledge. That means Chabad is an intellectual approach, a teaching of great depth. There are so many Chabad books, books that go very deep into an understanding of the Divine. Lengthy prayer, prayer with contemplation. So what exactly is it? What exactly is this thing? Around this time, we have two very important days close to one another: 24 Teves, the yahrzeit of the Alter Rebbe, author of the Tanya, and a few weeks later—exactly two weeks later—Yud Shvat, the yahrzeit of the Frierdiker Rebbe and the day the Rebbe began his leadership. These are two points in the history of Chabad Chassidus, from its beginning to its most recent generation. 24 Teves is the yahrzeit of the first Rebbe, the founder of Chabad Chassidus, Rabbi Schneur Zalman, author of the Tanya and the Shulchan Aruch. He passed away on 24 Teves 5573. On Yud Shvat 5710, the Frierdiker Rebbe, the sixth Rebbe, passed away, and a year later, in 5711, the Rebbe accepted the leadership. And when we take a first look—a somewhat superficial look—when someone begins to study, to look and read the books and the teachings, he encounters this same confusion. On the face of it, these seem like two different approaches. What

02:36 exactly is the connection between them? In the Alter Rebbe’s books, we see how he calls for inner spiritual work, contemplation, and awakening love and awe of Hashem. The Alter Rebbe’s maamarim stir the heart, awakening the inner feeling of pouring out one’s soul in prayer in the most wonderful way. And we know from chassidic stories what the Alter Rebbe’s early chassidim were like: extraordinary Jews, righteous people, holy and pure, serving Hashem with love and awe. But when we look at our generation, what is the main thing you see today when you look at Chabad Chassidus? As we said: shluchim everywhere in the world, mitzvah campaigns, outreach, action. How exactly does that connect with the essence of Chabad Chassidus? So today we’re going to talk about it, go a little deeper, and uncover the secret, the inner essence. If we understand the inner essence of Chabad Chassidus, we’ll see that not only do these two things not contradict one another; on the contrary, they’re two sides of the same coin. It is all one single essence of Chabad Chassidus. It goes much deeper than it seems. And precisely when we understand that depth—what Chabad Chassidus is essentially about—we’ll also be able to understand what the Alter Rebbe developed, what the basis and foundation were, and how, as a natural and direct continuation, we arrive at our generation, the seventh generation, as the Rebbe called it. Seven generations of Chabad Rebbeim brought the message of Chabad Chassidus into the most practical, most concrete world of actual deed—as the Rebbe would say, “in actual practice.” It all really begins with the Baal Shem Tov. We all know that the Baal Shem Tov came into the world and brought with him the message of Chassidus. If we look at the essence of the Baal Shem

05:01 Tov’s teachings, we know that it all begins with the message the Baal Shem Tov received: “Your wellsprings shall spread outward”—that through spreading the wellsprings of Chassidus, we will merit the coming of Moshiach. In other words, the Baal Shem Tov came into the world to prepare the world, to prepare the Jewish people in a real, inward, and profound way for the Geulah. This tells us that at the very center of the Baal Shem Tov’s teachings is the Divine revelation that will come with the arrival of Moshiach. This is what Chassidus calls Divine unity. We know that when Moshiach comes, the true unity of Hakadosh Boruch Hu will be revealed here in our world: what we mean when we say, “There is nothing besides Him.” We already know that at the beginning of creation, when Hakadosh Boruch Hu created the world, He created it for a purpose. The Alter Rebbe tells us in Tanya, chapter 36, that the purpose of the world’s creation—that the entire existence of creation, from the very beginning, was created solely for this purpose—was to reach the Divine revelation that will take place in the days of Moshiach and at the resurrection of the dead. Everything is preparation for that time: the absolute revelation of G-dliness down here in the world, when Divine unity will permeate every corner of creation. We find dozens of verses in Tanach that, when we contemplate them, point us in this direction. “Hashem will be King over the entire earth; on that day Hashem will be one and His name one.” “Hashem will reign forever and ever,” Moshe Rabbeinu says in Parshas Beshalach. “Hear, O Israel: Hashem is our G-d, Hashem is one”—Divine unity. “The glory of Hashem will be revealed, and all flesh together will see that the mouth of Hashem has spoken.” Moshiach will come, and the Divine revelation will be absolute. Flesh, the world, physical reality itself, will cry out: “There is nothing besides Him.” All of this is our goal. As we approach the end of the time of exile, the Baal

07:18 Shem Tov came and revealed and explained this subject of unity, revealing the depth of Divine unity in a wonderful way. The Alter Rebbe wrote twelve chapters in Tanya, Shaar Hayichud Vehaemunah, to explain the essence of the Baal Shem Tov’s teaching: the teaching that creation is constantly renewed, the understanding that Hakadosh Boruch Hu continuously brings creation into being. To understand that, as the Alter Rebbe writes there, if the eye could see it, we wouldn’t see creation as it appears now. We would see the Divine light in every single detail, because that is the true essence of creation: the Divine power. And that is tremendous; it is wonderful. Chassidus explains this through chochmah, binah, and daas, so that a person can not only believe it but also understand it. So the Baal Shem Tov came to reveal Divine unity within creation, to bring us to the absolute recognition that apart from Hakadosh Boruch Hu there is nothing; everything is G-dliness. With the Tanya, and then with the thousands of maamarim he delivered, the Alter Rebbe sought to instill this point in his students, in the chassidim. The Alter Rebbe took the Baal Shem Tov’s teachings and passed them on to thousands upon thousands of people. On this he built the foundations of the Tanya: to explain the secret of Divine unity, to help a person understand how every action, word, and thought of his advances this goal—bringing Divine unity down here into creation, so that the absolute truth that “there is nothing besides Him” will be revealed in the world. This is the very essence of the Baal Shem Tov’s teachings, which the Alter Rebbe revealed through the books of Chassidus, his maamarim, the Tanya, and everything we know from the Alter Rebbe’s teachings. So that is the essence of the maamarim. That is what the Alter Rebbe

09:16 The Alter Rebbe said that a Jew today reflects deeply on the oneness of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, on the greatness of the King of kings, Hakadosh Boruch Hu. As the Alter Rebbe says in Tanya, when a Jew is in the Diaspora and, in his mind, contemplates the Divine oneness—that there is nothing besides Him—then, says the Alter Rebbe, there is no greater joy than this. It is the joy of a king coming to stay with his son, as a guest in a person’s home. What tremendous joy a person should feel when he comes to recognize the Divine oneness, that there is nothing besides Him, and that the King of kings, Hakadosh Boruch Hu, is right there with him in the very same place. This is the secret of oneness revealed by the Baal Shem Tov. The Alter Rebbe brought it into the realm of chochmah, binah, and daas, so that we can study it, understand it, absorb it, and internalize it in our daily lives. A person lives with it. Your whole life changes when you know that G-dliness, that Hakadosh Boruch Hu, is the only reality—your reality and the reality of everything around you. Then everything lives differently; everything breathes differently. A person has a purpose. He lives for something. This is the purpose of creation, generation after generation. So we begin with the Alter Rebbe. Then came the Mitteler Rebbe, the Tzemach Tzedek, the Rebbe Maharash, the Rebbe Rashab, and the Frierdiker Rebbe. Each Rebbe brought the depth of Chassidus in a way people could delve into and also grasp in simpler terms, understand, draw close to, and see how it relates to their lives. Many thousands upon thousands of pages of Chassidus were written for this purpose: to bring the Divine light close to creation, to bring people close to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, to reveal the secret of existence and the secret of creation, and to see Hakadosh Boruch Hu in every step and every detail. And here we come now to the point of the innovation

11:25 of the Baal Shem Tov, which began with the Alter Rebbe and kept growing and spreading until it reached the last generation. When the Frierdiker Rebbe came to America to bring the light of Chassidus to the lower hemisphere, as he called it—to America and all the surrounding countries as well—the goal was to bring the Divine truth that there is nothing besides Him into every place in the world. The Frierdiker Rebbe’s declaration was: “America is no different.” When he arrived in America, he declared that he had come to this country to turn it into a G-dly place, a place of Chassidus, a place of the inner dimension of Torah. At the time, that seemed utterly far-fetched and detached from reality, but it became reality. The desert became a Garden of Eden. The Frierdiker Rebbe saw this wondrous thing: a place like the United States, which had been utterly alien to Jewish life, became a place bustling with Yiddishkeit, Torah, mitzvos, and awareness of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. It all comes down to that same point: to bring the absolute Divine truth into every corner, every place; to infuse every detail and every thing with the truth, with its Geulah, so that it cries out, “There is nothing besides Him,” and comes to recognize that Moshiach is coming, that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is here with us. This is what the coming of Moshiach means: that a Jew lives with it, breathes it, understands it, and takes it in. If so, in our generation we are at the culmination of this work. This is what the Rebbe spoke about in his first maamar upon accepting the nesius. It was the historic first maamar the Rebbe delivered on the day he accepted the responsibility of leading the chassidim, on 11 Shvat 5711. The Rebbe accepted the nesius after a full year in which chassidim pleaded with him and the Rebbe would not hear of it. But finally, after a year, we merited that the Rebbe accepted the responsibility of leadership. Then the Rebbe delivered his first maamar. That first maamar, “Basi Legani Achosi Kallah”—

13:40 “I have come into My garden, My sister, My bride”—is a wonderful maamar. There he speaks about the purpose of our generation, the task of the seventh generation: to bring the Shechinah down here into the world. Among other things, the Rebbe says there, in wonderful words, “And he called there in the name of Hashem, G-d of the world.” Avraham Avinu travels through the world, going from place to place, and wherever he arrives, he brings Hakadosh Boruch Hu there. He proclaims, “G-d of the world.” As the Rebbe says, it is not that there is a world and there is G-d, as though they were two separate things, two separate identities. Rather, it is all one: “G-d of the world.” The world and Hakadosh Boruch Hu are one. This is what he revealed, developed, and explained, giving us the understanding and the feeling that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is the only reality and that everything exists within Him and depends on Him. When a Jew lives with this, he is calm, happy, and at peace. There is no tension, no anxiety. He is connected Above; he does not fall below. So we see that this is one continuous process. That is what we were saying. The Alter Rebbe began bringing the light of Chassidus to the great chassidim. First, he laid the foundation for a Jew to understand and recognize the One who spoke and the world came into being: to understand the oneness of creation, the oneness of Hakadosh Boruch Hu within creation. You can study it, contemplate it, examine it, delve into it, and internalize it. Then comes the main stage: just as you want the truth to be felt within yourself, a Jew must want that truth to be expressed and revealed throughout the world. That requires me to go out into the street, find another Jew, and connect him with Hakadosh Boruch Hu—to prepare the world for Moshiach Tzidkeinu. It means that every Jew in the world must have a connection with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. That is the task of a Chabad chossid: to bring the absolute truth

15:44 that there is nothing besides Him, the Divine oneness within creation, into every corner and every nook, into every detail, so that each and every Jew becomes part of the purpose of creation. Every Jew should live with this. And that is what the connection between the Alter Rebbe’s yahrtzeit, the Frierdiker Rebbe’s yahrtzeit, and the Rebbe’s acceptance of the nesius tells us. They all fall within those same two weeks, those same days. As the Rebbe said then in the maamar, our Sages say, “All sevenths are cherished.” The seventh is cherished. Shabbos, the seventh day, is cherished. Moshe Rabbeinu was seventh from Avraham Avinu, and he was cherished. There are many other instances in halachah and Torah where we find that the seventh is cherished. But the Rebbe says that for the seventh to be cherished, there must be a first. The whole significance of the seventh is that it is seventh from the first. Without a first, there is no seventh. Who is the first here? Avraham Avinu, the beginning of the Jewish people. He began it. “And he called there”—he made Hakadosh Boruch Hu known in the world. Moshe Rabbeinu completed his work when he transformed the whole of reality and revealed within creation, “I am Hashem your G-d.” The same is true in our generation, the Rebbe says. Our generation is called the seventh generation. Just as Moshe Rabbeinu was seventh, our generation is also seventh from the Alter Rebbe, who began revealing Chassidus. So in our generation, the seventh generation in the development of Chassidus in the world, it is time for us to go out, break through every barrier, and make sure that one more Jew and then another receives the knowledge, the message, and the depth of the inner dimension of Torah, of Chassidus. To begin studying it and living with it in daily life—that is the whole point. To bring Divine oneness not only into my own life and my family’s, but into every corner I can reach, illuminating it and preparing that place for the complete Geulah. May Hakadosh Boruch Hu help us

17:53 in these great days, as we stand between the Alter Rebbe’s yahrtzeit and the Frierdiker Rebbe’s yahrtzeit and the day the Rebbe accepted the nesius, to understand and prepare as we should; to live by the words of Torah the Rebbe taught us in connection with Yud Shvat, with “Basi Legani Achosi Kallah”; to prepare ourselves and our surroundings; and to bring another Jew to recognize Hakadosh Boruch Hu. In this way, may we merit the complete Geulah very soon, in our days, when the verse will be fulfilled: “You have been shown to know that Hashem is G-d; there is nothing besides Him.” May we see with our own eyes the absolute truth that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is the only reality, and that apart from Him there is nothing at all—at the coming of Moshiach Tzidkeinu, speedily in our days. Amen.