An Introduction to Learning Chassidus - Part 6

00:01 Today we’re going to continue from the previous classes and come to the study of Chassidus. We’ll talk about how we should learn Chassidus. Until now, we’ve had several classes about the Chassidus of our Rebbeim, the differences between them, and how the teachings of Chassidus developed through each Rebbe in his own way. Today we’ll talk a little about how Chassidus should be studied. Of course, there are many details to discuss, and it’s also hard to speak about this in general terms. Each person has his own abilities, talents, and way of learning—what he likes to learn and how he likes to learn. So it’s very hard to issue a ruling that there is one way everyone should learn. On the other hand, there are some general points about studying Chassidus that apply to everyone, things written in the sichos and letters of our Rebbeim. We’ll discuss a few of those points. I also wanted to ask that if, after today’s discussion, the bochurim have questions, then, as we did once before, one of the bochurim should be put in charge of collecting them, and next week we’ll address those questions. In the usual yeshiva schedule, as is customary among the Temimim, there are three kinds of Chassidus study: in-depth study, more rapid study, and the Tanya class. As for studying Tanya, that’s a subject in its own right. Perhaps, in time, we’ll devote a separate class to how Tanya should be studied. Today we’ll talk about studying Chassidus in general. So in yeshiva, the schedule includes a session of

02:55 more rapid study and a session of in-depth study. In some yeshivos they do in-depth study in the morning and Chassidus in the evening; in others it’s the other way around. That depends on how each yeshiva is run. But the very idea of studying both in depth and at a quicker pace is one of the Rebbe’s innovations. It’s very interesting. The Rebbe Rashab, who founded Tomchei Temimim, established two Chassidus study sessions, one in the morning and one in the evening. As stated in Kuntres Eitz Hachayim, Chassidus should be studied in the morning before davening and in the evening. The Rebbe Rashab writes that there is a reason to study Chassidus specifically at those times, in the morning and at night. But the Rebbe Rashab did not establish one session for in-depth study and another for more rapid study. Some say that there was no such thing at all back then. In other words, there was no concept of studying Chassidus in depth versus studying it at a quicker pace. How would that apply to Chassidus? With the revealed parts of Torah, there can be in-depth study and more rapid study, but with Chassidus, it would seemingly have been out of the question. What, in simple terms, is the difference between the two? In-depth study means learning something deeply, trying to understand every detail and delve into the subject. More rapid study means simply going through the material, learning it on a superficial level. So chassidim in earlier generations argued that Chassidus cannot be studied superficially. If you study it superficially, that goes against the whole point of Chassidus. The whole point is that a person should learn with chochmah, binah, and daas—study, delve into it, think about it, and daven with the Chassidus he has learned. For earlier chassidim, the idea of just going through Chassidus quickly was out of the question. There are stories that chassidim tell. I once heard Rabbi Yoel Kahn tell of one of the great chassidim of the Tzemach Tzedek, known as Pette Yossele,

05:11 who would say that studying Chassidus without studying it in depth isn’t called studying at all. His reasoning was that Chassidus is called the inner dimension of Torah, while the revealed parts are the external dimension of Torah. You can grasp the external dimension externally, but how can you grasp the inner dimension of Torah externally? The inner dimension and an external approach don’t go together. If it is the inner dimension of Torah, you can grasp it only with your own inner self. If you approach it externally, you haven’t grasped it; it remains where it is, and you remain outside. So Pette Yossele would argue that Chassidus cannot be studied externally, merely by going through it; it must be studied inwardly, only with... There’s a similar story concerning the Rebbe Rashab. The Rebbe’s grandfather kept a diary that was published a few years ago, after Gimmel Tammuz. It’s a very, very interesting diary. He spent several years with the Rebbe Rashab, and among the things he records is this story: the Rebbe Rashab asked him what he had studied, and he said he had studied two maamarim. He was telling him what he had studied that Shabbos. The Rebbe Rashab said to him, “Two maamarim?” As if to say, how could you have studied two? The Rebbe Rashab couldn’t accept it. How could you study two maamarim in one day? Even one takes considerable effort. The idea seemed out of the question. In practice, the Rebbe changed this custom. The Rebbe changed many things, and this was one of them: just as with the revealed parts of Torah there should be both in-depth and more rapid study, so too with Chassidus there should be both. This, then, is one of the Rebbe’s innovations

07:12 and the idea of having a scheduled session for going through Chassidus at a quicker pace is interesting. There’s another point as well, which I’ll explain in a moment. So one innovation of the Rebbe was this idea of studying Chassidus at a quicker pace. The second innovation concerns how Chassidus is studied in depth. In earlier generations, when they said that Chassidus should be studied in depth, what did they mean? They meant studying it with the innermost part of one’s soul. The emphasis was not so much on intellectual analysis of the subject, but more on experiencing it. A chossid would study Chassidus and delve into understanding the Rebbe’s words, focusing mainly on what the maamar actually says—not so much on its proofs, reasoning, explanations, and elaborations. The focus was more on what it says and simply living with it. It’s hard to explain exactly how people used to learn, but there is a sicha of the Rebbe Rashab—there are many sichos, but one in particular is very interesting. It appears in the appendices to the new edition of Sefer Hamaamarim 5664. There, the Frierdiker Rebbe recounts a conversation he had with the Rebbe Rashab on Lag BaOmer 5664. It’s a very interesting conversation. The Rebbe Rashab complains about what was happening in Tomchei Temimim, about the way people were studying and not learning as they should. He speaks very sharply against studying Chassidus as an intellectual exercise, with elaborate arguments and novel interpretations. He strongly rejects that approach. He says that Chassidus should be studied to know the Rebbe’s words, learning them again and again and again—just the Rebbe’s words, delving into them. And if an explanation is needed, it too should be drawn from the Rebbe’s words, from another maamar, because…

09:39 Chassidus is like all areas of Torah: something may be sparse in one place and rich in another. Things explained briefly here are explained at length elsewhere. So it is all only the words of the Rebbe, G-d forbid anything more than that. He writes about this at length, and the Frierdiker Rebbe tries to ask him various questions, and again, the Rebbe Rashab is very... In 5664, actually, Kuntres Eitz Hachayim was also published around that time. It would seem that Kuntres Eitz Hachayim is connected to this sicha. In other words, what he discusses in the sicha of Lag BaOmer 5664 can, you might say, be seen later in Kuntres Eitz Hachayim. There too, at the end, in the last part of the kuntres, the Rebbe Rashab explains at length how Chassidus should be studied. He is also very emphatic there about not coming up with novel interpretations or offering one’s own theories. Rather, one must delve into the words of the Rebbe, into the Rebbe’s wording. Above all, the study must lead to avodah, to the avodah of davening and contemplation, and so on. The Rebbe Rashab discusses this at length in Kuntres Eitz Hachayim. Besides the kuntres itself, with its final sections explaining how Chassidus should be studied, Kuntres Eitz Hachayim also includes a letter. It is a letter the Rebbe Rashab wrote in 5673 or 5674, several years later, and it is very interesting. It was not written specifically to Tomchei Temimim; it was written to Anash. That letter speaks very strongly about engaging in the study of Chassidus. He laments that people are not studying Chassidus as they should, and that the emphasis on avodah has weakened, and so on. It is a very sharp letter, and among other things he also writes there that Chassidus should not be studied for the sake of debating fine points and coming up with novel interpretations.

11:47 And he is very, very... When studying, one should study only to understand—to delve into the words of the Rebbe, and so on. Nevertheless, we saw that in this respect too, the Rebbe took a somewhat different approach. We saw that the Rebbe did call for studying Chassidus in the manner in which nigleh is studied. Many times the Rebbe emphasized that the innovation of Tomchei Temimim was something the Rebbe Rashab introduced. The Rebbe attributed it to the Rebbe Rashab, but in practice we saw that the Rebbe took it much further. He always said that this was the innovation of Tomchei Temimim: Torah’s revealed teachings and Chassidus are one Torah. You study nigleh with the same vitality, love, and awe with which you study Chassidus; or conversely, you study Chassidus with the same understanding and comprehension with which you study nigleh. In other words, the Rebbe called for Chassidus to be studied in Tomchei Temimim in the manner in which nigleh is studied. There is a well-known sicha, an edited sicha in Likkutei Sichos, volume 28, about 2 Nissan. Yes, the sicha of 2 Nissan, a famous sicha. There the Rebbe explained at length the fact that the Rebbe Rashab said, “I am going to heaven, and I am leaving you the manuscripts.” And the Rebbe Rashab, of course, explained... The Rebbe—sorry, at the farbrengen, the Rebbe explained in the sicha what “I am leaving you the manuscripts” means. He did not say, “I am giving them to you”; he said, “I am leaving them to you.” So the Rebbe gives a wonderful explanation in that sicha, connecting it to the approach to studying Chassidus that the Rebbe Rashab introduced for Tomchei Temimim. What is it? That Chassidus should be studied in such a way that the person, the student, exerts himself with his own human intellect to understand Chassidus in his own style, in his own words. And there, in particular, the Rebbe very strongly rejects the view of those who mistakenly say

14:01 that Chassidus should be studied by simply reading through its holy words. And since the Rebbe said it, surely the Rebbe knows what he is saying, so one must accept it. True, Torah study must be preceded by naaseh before nishma—acceptance before understanding. But when it comes to actually studying Chassidus, the study must specifically involve the students’ give-and-take: working hard to understand, trying to raise questions and find answers, not being afraid to question what is written in a maamar, and not being afraid even to propose answers if one has them. The Rebbe really wanted the students to study Chassidus, use their minds, and study with genuine understanding and comprehension. So it is very interesting to see these two ends of the spectrum that the Rebbe introduced. On the one hand, the Rebbe introduced the approach of covering a large quantity of Chassidus through broader study; on the other hand, the Rebbe introduced an approach of in-depth study of Chassidus. So first I want to talk a little about that. What is broader study? What is in-depth study? After that, if there is time, we will discuss another aspect of study: studying Chassidus in connection with the avodah of davening. That is a third aspect. So when we talk about this in practical terms, yes? First, broader study. What does broader study of Chassidus mean? It means this: when a student begins studying Chassidus, the first thing is that Chassidus has a style—the language of Chassidus. Chassidus has a distinctive style, and one needs to become familiar with it, with the idiom of Chassidus. It has its own language. When you study a large quantity of Chassidus, you gradually learn that style. We discussed in previous classes how each Rebbe has his own distinctive style: the Alter Rebbe has a style, the Mitteler Rebbe has a style, as do the Tzemach Tzedek and the Rebbe

16:24 Maharash, the Rebbe Rashab, and the Frierdiker Rebbe. Each Rebbe has his own distinctive style. So when you study Chassidus, even if you do not yet understand every detail, you become accustomed to its style. And when you study Chassidus from several Rebbeim, you become accustomed to each Rebbe’s particular style. That is one aspect. The first thing is simply to become familiar with the style of Chassidus. Then there is a second aspect: acquiring knowledge—not so much deep understanding, but familiarity with the concepts. Besides its distinctive style, Chassidus has its own concepts. Yes, there are the concepts of Chassidus; it has a whole world of concepts. Themes, concepts—concepts of Chassidus. One needs to become familiar with them: G-dliness, hishtalshelus, sefiros, levels, and so on and so on. Chassidus has an entire treasury of concepts, and one needs to know them. So even before I get into the details of a subject in depth, I need to know the world of concepts in Chassidus. The same is true of nigleh. Nigleh has many concepts of its own. You need to be familiar with the concepts that come up in its sugyos, with its treasury of concepts. Likewise, the inner dimension of Torah has its concepts: creation of something from nothing, cause and effect, the ten sefiros, the four worlds, tzimtzum, kav, reshimu, and so on. In the tree, similarly, in the soul [unclear], and so on. This is what it means to become familiar with the concepts of Chassidus. So when a student studies broadly, one goal is to become accustomed to the style of Chassidus. A second goal is to become familiar with its concepts. Those are essentially the two main goals for a student studying Chassidus in this way. You could also say there is a third goal: simply to understand what one is studying.

18:45 I mean a simple, basic understanding. If you learn a maamar, you need to know what it says. Right? Just know how the maamar develops: here’s a question, here’s an explanation, here’s a clarification, here’s an answer. You should be familiar with its structure and understand it well enough to go over it in your own words, in your own language. You understood what the question was, what the clarification was, and what the explanation was. So we can say that for a bochur, the goal of the girsa study period should be these three things. Gradually, as I learn more and more Chassidus, I get used to the distinctive style of Chassidus. I learn its concepts. I become familiar with them. Not necessarily that I understand every concept in depth, but I learn about different concepts. Each maamar discusses another concept and another concept. And I should simply know what the maamar says: how its ideas unfold, what the question is, the explanation, the clarification, the answer. Right? You should be able to go over the give-and-take of the maamar in your own style. That counts as girsa study. What should you learn during girsa? Everything. Now, of course, there isn’t much time in yeshivos. There’s some time, but not much. The girsa study period is an hour, an hour and a half—that’s very little time. There’s so much Chassidus to learn. So, of course, each yeshiva sets a curriculum. What do they learn for girsa? They learn certain maamarim, books by the Frierdiker Rebbe or the Rebbe Rashab, or maamarim by the Rebbe. Each yeshiva and each class has its own program, depending on whether it’s [unclear], a yeshiva gedolah, first year, second year, or third year. But those are details. Right, we’ll also talk about those details later on. I’m speaking here

20:41 now about the general idea. That should be a bochur’s goal during girsa: to know as many maamarim as possible, become familiar with as many concepts as possible, and know the give-and-take of each maamar he learns. What is the iyun study period? With iyun, there’s something more. The point is not just to know, but also to understand. In other words, not just to become familiar with concepts, but to understand them. To understand means that with every single thing, I want to know why. Not just what, but why. If my main goal in girsa is to know what the maamar says, in iyun my main goal is to understand why it says it. Why does the Rebbe say this? Why do we say that such and such is the case? Why? It says so in the maamar—but why is it so? What’s the reasoning behind it? So in iyun I’m looking for an explanation. I’m trying to understand the why, the reason, the clarification. That requires delving into the subject. It requires several things. Sometimes you can think it through yourself and arrive at an explanation, and sometimes you need to see what it says elsewhere. You need to look at the source references. Many maamarim have source references, and if they don’t, you can ask someone who knows where the subject is explained at greater length. You take the explanation from there and try to understand—either by thinking it through yourself or by using the references—why the maamar says this or that. The general principle, as with everything in Torah, is that the words of Torah are sparse in one place and rich in another. An idea in Chassidus may be explained briefly in this maamar and at length in another. So that’s where the effort in iyun needs to be: understanding every detail.

23:05 Why is it that way? Right, okay, that’s one point. Another aspect of iyun study is understanding in depth how the ideas unfold. In other words, why does the Rebbe continue with this passage? What does this part add to what he said before? What does this section add to the previous section? What does this line add to the previous line? In iyun, I need to reach the point where nothing seems superfluous. Sometimes a maamar says something and you think, “Oh, it looks like it’s repeating the same thing again.” That’s a mistake. It’s a very superficial way of looking at it. When you’re studying for girsa, fine, you don’t dwell on it so much. But when you study with iyun, you don’t accept that. It isn’t merely repeating itself. There’s something added here, some depth, another detail, another point, another layer of understanding. What is it adding now? And within this, of course, there are many levels. What does this chapter add to the previous chapter? What does this passage add to the previous passage? What does this line add to the previous line? Sometimes it comes down to a word. Right—what does this word add to the preceding one? Sometimes it looks like a repetition of wording, or a line that seems to say the same thing in different words. So when a person studies with iyun, he tries to understand. He starts from the assumption that the Rebbeim did not write a single superfluous word in a maamar, and that every word has depth. So I need to try, as much as I can, to understand what it is telling us. One of the main things in iyun study is to understand well how the ideas in the maamar unfold. There’s a progression of ideas. Often the Rebbeim themselves don’t explain that progression, because they want you to try

25:11 to understand it on your own. So often a maamar introduces one idea after another, and it can seem to move from subject to subject without making the connection to what came before entirely clear. That’s where you need to put effort into iyun: understanding how the ideas connect. So we’ve spoken about three points regarding iyun: understanding why each thing is so; second, understanding what one part adds to another; and third, understanding well how the ideas of the maamar unfold. That is the main idea of studying with iyun. Now, when we learn a maamar, one of the things we need to know is that I won’t understand one hundred percent of it. Often, a bochur becomes discouraged with a maamar because there’s some detail he doesn’t understand, some passage that isn’t clear. We need to know that in the teachings of Chassidus—as with all of Torah, but especially in the teachings of Chassidus—there will always be some passage, some parenthetical point, some part. The teachings of Chassidus encompass everything, as it says in the kuntres Inyana Shel Toras Hachassidus. Chassidus is the only dimension of Torah that encompasses all four approaches: pshat, remez, drush, and sod. So the teachings of Chassidus contain many elements of pshat, remez, drush, and sod. That’s why you can be learning a maamar and suddenly come across several lines of Kabbalah. Suddenly there’s a whole passage that sounds like Eitz Chayim and this and that, and you get confused. We need to know that we don’t have to understand everything. One thing that helps a great deal in learning Chassidus, even with iyun, is knowing that I don’t have to understand every detail of a maamar. There may be a few lines in the maamar where I say, “Okay, I don’t understand this right now.”

27:54 If it doesn’t interfere with understanding the rest of the maamar. I mean, sometimes it’s a section, sometimes it’s in parentheses, sometimes it’s a passage of some kind—but I can skip it, keep going, and still manage. So there are parts of a maamar where you sometimes need to say, “All right, I’m not going to get to that now.” If I have someone to ask, I’ll ask. If I don’t, I’ll move on, provided I can understand the rest of the maamar without that passage. You don’t have to understand every single point. You need to focus. There’s a story about the Rebbe Rashab along these lines. A bochur told the Rebbe Rashab that there was a section or chapter in one of the Rebbe Rashab’s series of maamarim—either 5666 or 5672—that he hadn’t understood. The Rebbe Rashab told him that when writing Chassidus, from time to time you have to connect it with Kabbalah, to show how it fits with a particular teaching. That’s how the Rebbe Rashab explained it to him. In other words, when the Rebbe says or writes a maamar, from time to time he needs to show how it fits with what is written in various places in the writings of the Arizal. But then he told the bochur: “But you, take the Chassidus.” That part isn’t for you; your task is to learn the Chassidus. So sometimes, too, you’ll find a passage in the Rebbeim’s maamarim that tries to reconcile various things. You don’t necessarily have to understand it. It was written to show how the teachings fit together. One day, perhaps, when you know more Kabbalah and more Chassidus, you’ll come back to it and understand it better. But the main thing is

29:41 to take the Chassidus. Don’t try to—what I mainly want to say is: don’t stay preoccupied with, or get stuck on, details that aren’t really essential to working through the content of the maamar. When it comes to learning at a quicker pace in particular, there are a few practical points I want to mention. In this kind of learning, it’s very important to understand the flow of the ideas. You need to understand the give-and-take of the maamar and grasp its concepts, but you don’t have to understand every detail. That’s even more important here. There’s a line, there’s a parenthetical remark, there’s something else—if you don’t understand it, don’t stop. Keep going. That’s a fundamental point when learning at a quicker pace, even more than in in-depth study. Now, another practical matter: bochurim sometimes ask how many times they should learn a maamar. For learning at a quicker pace, this is what I generally tell most bochurim. It isn’t an instruction for everyone, but it’s a middle path, I would say. I think that if you’re learning at a quicker pace, you have to learn each maamar twice—at least twice. And if you’re learning a series of maamarim, review after every four maamarim. That’s a rule I usually give bochurim: learn each maamar at least twice, and in a series, review each set of four after you finish it. For example, they study the series from 5659, which has eight or nine maamarim. The first series from 5666 has more than sixty maamarim. So the rule is to treat every four maamarim as a unit. You finish four and then do a general review

31:58 of them. But don’t spend too much time on it. Often bochurim start reviewing and get stuck there. You need to set a time limit; that’s very important. If you want to succeed and be able to move forward, then for an overall review and the like, give it a day or two—but don’t drag it out, because then you lose track of the series. There’s another point about learning a series of maamarim. I’ll speak about that in a moment, but first I’m speaking in general terms. These are a few general points. Another very good piece of advice, especially for learning at a quicker pace—again, what I’m saying now is general advice. Every bochur may have his own character and nature. Not everything I say is necessarily absolute or right for everyone. Each person has his own nature. Some have better memories and some have weaker memories, so they need more review. It’s very hard to say the same thing applies to everyone. But one thing that helps tremendously in learning Chassidus, both in depth and at a quicker pace, is writing things down for yourself. Get into the habit of writing, especially in your first years of learning Chassidus. Writing helps enormously, both with organizing and remembering the flow of ideas, and with remembering the material itself. So those are two very important benefits, and it’s worth getting used to writing. But what does writing mean? Writing out the whole maamar? That would certainly be a waste of time. You need to develop a format for yourself. I’ve seen many approaches. Some people write a summary, an abbreviated version of the maamar. That’s one way. Others write key points: one line for one point in the maamar, another line for the next. Those are different approaches, and some people may want to write in another way. I’m just offering the advice that writing helps very, very much, both with organizing the ideas and with remembering them.

34:10 It stays with you; it becomes more firmly established. Besides, after a few years you can look back and see what you wrote, and that also gives you a lot of satisfaction and pleasure. It has all sorts of benefits, many valuable benefits. That applies to learning at a quicker pace as well. As for in-depth study, when a bochur is learning in depth, it’s worthwhile to write explanations. In other words, if you’re learning in depth and you’ve arrived at an understanding of a particular idea or subject, get into the habit of writing explanations in Chassidus—concepts and explanations. Here too, it depends on the individual bochur and what he’s accustomed to. But writing explanations in Chassidus for yourself—not necessarily to publish them in a journal—helps a great deal in seeing whether you really understand or are fooling yourself. Now, when it comes to in-depth study, our generation has been fortunate to have many things that make it easier for us. I want to pause on this point. First, of course, there are the mashpi’im and the maggidei shiur in every place. Boruch Hashem, there are maggidei shiur who teach and explain, and that’s what they’re paid for, as they say. So you should ask them, and ask that their classes be better and better prepared. A bochur also needs to make use of his mashpia for more than just telling him what the abbreviations in the Zohar stand for, or translating the Zohar. You need to make use of the mashpi’im for matters of

36:21 Understanding and grasping it—that’s the basic point. But in our generation we’ve been fortunate to have special resources: there are many books and many things that make it easier to understand. Boruch Hashem, in recent years quite a few explanations of Chassidus have been published. First, I want to emphasize the references to sources. This began in recent years even with the maamarim—the Rebbe’s maamarim certainly have references, so there are no excuses. You can look things up. With the maamarim of the earlier Rebbes, too, this gradually began, and in recent years most of the maamarim being printed include references. So that’s the first thing: there are references. But there are also explanations. One of the greatest explainers in our generation, if not the greatest, is Rabbi Yoel Kahn, the Rebbe’s chozer. He is one of the blessings our generation has merited. May Hakadosh Boruch Hu grant him long life and good years, until the coming of Moshiach. Hakadosh Boruch Hu gave this man a special gift for explanation, and he illuminates the Torah of the Rebbe, the leader of our generation, making it understandable through explanations and clarifications. Boruch Hashem, quite a few of his explanations have already been published. There are his explanations of Tanya—that’s another subject, and we’ll talk about Tanya in a separate class. There are his explanations of the Rebbe’s maamarim, and some explanations of maamarim by other Rebbes. They simply help you understand. So I think that if you’re looking for the best explanations, they’re the ones by Reb Yoel Kahn. Of course, there are other books as well. There are explanations by Reb Zush—no, not Reb Zusha, his name is Reb Zalman Gopin. Several series of maamarim have explanations by Reb Zalman Gopin, including those of 5668 and 5666. That, too, helps a great deal, so that a bochur who wants to learn in depth and at length—

38:26 —has explanations by chassidim that make things clearer and easier to understand. Today there’s also the option of listening to all kinds of audio classes, recordings of mashpi’im explaining things. Every bochur has his own preference: one likes this style, another likes that style, and someone else likes a third style. That’s one of the things that make learning Chassidus much easier today. When you want to learn in depth, with understanding and comprehension, you can use all these suggestions and resources that help. But in the end, the main thing is effort. All the explanations and clarifications are well and good, but ultimately what matters most is the effort you put in: working at it yourself, learning and then learning again, reviewing again, and delving into the Rebbe’s words. Through sustained effort, both in in-depth study of Chassidus and in girsa study—covering material at a quicker pace—you gradually train your mind to grasp the style of Chassidus, learn its concepts, and work through what it says until you understand it. The Rebbe wrote a letter, and I’ll finish with this today. There’s a letter from the Rebbe that’s very relevant to what we’re discussing now. Regarding the Rebbe’s innovation that Chassidus should also be studied by girsa, the Rebbe says that aside from all the benefits of girsa study, it’s also important for in-depth study of Chassidus to be as it should be. In other words, girsa study helps in-depth study. Quite simply, a bochur who has gained broad knowledge, who’s familiar with maamarim and series of maamarim and knows many subjects in Chassidus—when he learns a maamar, he knows when to pause, where to look more deeply, what has already been explained elsewhere, and where to look it up. So girsa study simply takes in-depth study to a whole different level. Those are a few points about the approach to in-depth study and girsa study. With Hashem’s help, next week we’ll continue—

40:32 —with this subject as well: how to learn Chassidus as it applies to us personally, for avodas hatefillah, so that it reaches us; and also how to study Tanya, which needs its own separate class. And if the bochurim have questions, we’ll have the person in charge of the Temimim—where is he?—collect the questions and send them in. That way, next week we’ll be able to focus on the details.