Livenyomin Omar • Episode 9: Rabbi Yitzchok Elishevitz on the burning issue of the earlier marriage age in Chabad

Interviewer: Hello, everyone. We’re here with a new podcast episode, and today we have a special guest: Rabbi Yitzchak Elishavitz from Kiryat Gat. Welcome.

Guest: Shalom aleichem.

Interviewer: Today we’re taking up a very pressing, very specific issue—one that affects everyone dealing with it, and anyone who isn’t dealing with it yet will be when they reach that age. We’re talking about the age of shidduchim in Chabad. I want to start with a question: How did someone like you—a longtime mashpia, as I remember, who has taught Torah to young men at the yeshivah in Kiryat Gat—come to take up such an urgent issue and spend years trying to go against the tide? I think you told me earlier that you’ve been involved in this for 21 years. Maybe I’ll start at the end: Aren’t you discouraged that people haven’t listened to you?

Guest: If we start at the end—the end is good. Boruch Hashem, people are listening, and there’s progress. It’s still not where it should be, but boruch Hashem, there’s been a lot of progress, both in practice and in people’s understanding. Today people understand many things they didn’t understand before.

Interviewer: Okay, so let’s start and lay out the issue in an orderly way. We’ve opened, as they say, on an optimistic note. Let’s try to understand: What makes someone wake up one morning and decide, “I’m going to try to educate the Chabad community. I’m going to tell them, ‘Listen, the path you’re taking isn’t good; it’s time to lower the age of marriage’”? How did you get involved in this issue in the first place?

Guest: It started simply. Boruch Hashem, I have children. My older children were approaching shidduch age, and I started asking friends how it works, what the usual process is. They said to me, “Tell me, do you have a son or a daughter? Who needs a shidduch?” I said, “What difference does it make?” They told me, “If you have a son, you’re all set. People will come running to you with one suggestion after another. You won’t have to do anything—except, of course, look into them. But if it’s a daughter, there’s a big problem.”

I said, “Why? Every boy needs a girl, and every girl needs a boy, so what’s the difference? What’s the issue here?” They told me, “You don’t know? In Chabad, far more girls are born than boys. Far more.” They gestured with their hands to show me just how many more—a great many girls. Well, it was the first time I’d heard that, and I had no way to disprove it. That’s what they were telling me, so maybe it was true.

But I started thinking. I began dealing with shidduchim, and sometimes an idea or a thought just comes to you. It didn’t seem to me that more girls were born than boys. It sounded strange, implausible.

Interviewer: Right.

Guest: It didn’t make sense to me. Then one Shabbos, when I was at the yeshivah ketanah in Kiryat Gat, I was sitting there after davening, I remember, thinking about what was going on. Suddenly an idea flashed through my mind—an idea that turned out to be right, and that offers a solution not only to the shidduch problems in Chabad, but to shidduch problems in every community, I’d say throughout the world. We’re talking about religious people, about the chareidi community.

An idea came to me. It was this: I thought it wasn’t only a question of how many children are born, whether more boys or girls are born. And as it turned out, it’s absolutely clear that throughout the world there’s a kind of rule that Hakadosh Boruch Hu established: for every 100 girls born, 105 boys are born.

Interviewer: Meaning there are more boys than girls.

Guest: Certainly.

Interviewer: In Chabad?

Guest: Throughout the world. There’s no need to check Chabad separately, because it’s true in every country, every place, every year. Just give it... I check it from time to time.

Interviewer: How do you check it? What method do you use?

Guest: Today it’s nothing. You ask a question, someone takes out their device, and a few seconds later they tell you, “Yes, you’re right.”

Interviewer: Today we have artificial intelligence to help with that, but how did you check it back then, to reach that conclusion?

Guest: Back then I had a neighbor, Itzik Bloy, Yossel Bloy’s son. He was my neighbor for quite a few years. I want to mention him with appreciation, because he helped me and knew how to search for information. There’s an organization called the Central Bureau of Statistics. He brought me data, and afterward he also helped me spread my ideas for a while.

The figures are very clear, year after year. The only thing is, if you look at older ages—40, or even 35—the numbers are already equal, because women have a longer life expectancy than men. If you go into a retirement home, you see many more women than men.

Interviewer: Women live longer.

Guest: Yes, they live longer. But if we’re talking about young people, around age 20, then between ages 20 and 24 there’s already a difference from the numbers at birth. At birth there are 105 boys for every 100 girls; at age 20 there are already 104 young men for every 100 young women. It changes gradually like that. But this is a rule that Hakadosh Boruch Hu established, a biological rule. I don’t know how it works; Hakadosh Boruch Hu made it that way.

Interviewer: If so, why did people tell you back then that girls were facing a problem?

Guest: Exactly. So what’s going on? As I said, I was sitting there before I knew the figures, before the Central Bureau of Statistics, before I knew any of that—and an idea came to me. Why did I feel moved to call my dear cousin, Binyamin Lifkin, and tell him I wanted to bring this to public attention? Because recently, on 30 Sivan, I came across something new: a sicha of the Rebbe that was new to me.

Interviewer: This year, on 30 Sivan?

Guest: Yes, this year, on 30 Sivan. Not just a recorded sicha of the Rebbe that was new to me, but a sicha delivered when I was there with the Rebbe in 5710. I’m from the 5710 group [unclear]. I was with the Rebbe; people all over the world heard the sicha on the broadcasts, as did those who were there in person—and the point didn’t register. It didn’t register. Then, for some reason, on 30 Sivan, I suddenly encountered that sicha again. Maybe we’ll talk about it later.

But what I want to say is that the Rebbe begins the sicha by saying, “There are people who do the calculations.” That’s how the Rebbe puts it. There’s such a thing as doing the math—but there are people who, even when you show them the figures, they just don’t register. The numbers don’t speak to them. I don’t know; Hakadosh Boruch Hu granted me an idea involving a calculation.

I said to myself, “Wait a minute. In Chabad, people marry at roughly the same ages.” That’s how it was: a young man of 24 marrying a young woman of 19 was considered the ideal, the norm. That was good; that was excellent.

Interviewer: A 24-year-old young man and a 19-year-old young woman—why is that excellent?

Guest: I don’t know, but that’s how it was. If he wasn’t 24, he was 23; and if she wasn’t 19, she was 20. But a three-year age difference between the young man and the young woman was taken for granted. Now, what happens? Boruch Hashem, in the chareidi community the number of births increases each year by another 4%. Or, in communities that marry younger and try to have as many children as possible, it increases by as much as 6% each year.

So if there’s a three-year age gap, let’s say 4%—4% times three is 12%. That means there’s a 12% difference between the number of 23-year-olds and the number of 20-year-olds.

Interviewer: Besides which, whole birth-year groups disappear from the comparison. Where did that group go? Where did the three years in between go?

Guest: But let’s just compare the numbers—without thinking about the years in between. Simply compare the 23-year-old young men with the 20-year-old young women, or the 24-year-old young men with the 19-year-old young women. There’s a difference of 12%, of 15%. So the 4% more boys than girls are canceled out, and you’re still left with a surplus of 8%, of 7%. And year after year after year, it starts to be felt—felt so strongly that anyone looking for a shidduch for his daughter is told, “Listen, there are no suggestions.” Why are there no suggestions? The immediate thought is: “Because there are lots of girls and not many boys.” But mathematically, that’s simply not true. Nothing of the sort.

Interviewer: The problem arose solely from that age gap?

Guest: Solely from that. Look at the Polish chassidim and the Jerusalem communities, where people marry at roughly the same age. They have the opposite problem: there’s a bit of a problem for the boys. It’s well known; everyone knows it. There are certain chassidim...

Interviewer: All the chassidim?

Guest: Generally, Gerer chassidim marry at around 18—18 or 19, something like that. The exact age doesn’t matter so much. Look, here’s the thing: if people marry young, the bride and groom are roughly the same age. If a young man marries at 24 and the girl is 18 or 19, her parents already want to find her a match early, especially when they know there aren’t matches available, so you end up with a big age gap. But if the young man marries at 19, what’s he going to do—marry a 15-year-old girl? That doesn’t happen. He marries a girl his own age.

And in fact, this creates a bit of a problem for the boys in their community, because more boys are born and they don’t know how to manage this age gap... There are matchmaking organizations I’ve sent my booklets and this information to. Maybe they make use of it; I don’t know exactly. It could be that some of them do.

But that’s the evidence. You see that only in Chabad, among those who marry... Not only Chabad—there are also the knitted-kippah communities, where there’s an age gap too. Generally, the young men marry much later, after the army, after everything.

Interviewer: The later they marry, the bigger the age gap becomes?

Guest: Someone who marries at 40 might marry a woman of 30, making it a ten-year gap. But someone who marries at 20—the gap can be even bigger than that. It happened that, in the year... in the late... and early... in those years, I spent seven consecutive Shabbosim at Hadassah Ein Kerem, visiting the sick, for some reason I was there. And there are a lot of charedim there, people who don’t stay there for Shabbos but come...

In the place where they gather for meals and davening, there are charedim there all the time. Who are they? In Jerusalem, there are a few Chabad chassidim, but there are many Jerusalemites, Polish chassidim. So I got to speak with them a lot. I ask them, “Tell me, are there more boys or more girls?” They look at me and say, “We don’t know.” They’ve never heard of such a thing as there being more girls than boys.

I ask them, “Tell me, in a match, who’s younger and who’s older—the groom or the bride?” Again they look at me, and about half the people I asked said they were younger than their wives. They married at the usual young age, at 19 or 20, and their wives are a little older. For them, that’s normal, perfectly ordinary.

So there you have the two things behind this great harm. If there’s a community where the girls have a problem finding matches, it’s because they don’t know how to manage the age gap. And why don’t they know how? Because people marry at an age that creates a problem. The older the age at which people marry, the more it tends to produce a larger age gap. It increases the age gap.

Interviewer: Now, if we get practical for a moment, what are you trying to do? Are you trying to say, “Gentlemen, let’s move away from this system of three years in yeshivah ketanah, another three years in yeshivah gedolah, another year in the Kevutzah—cut something somewhere,” because you want people to marry younger? Where do you want to go with this? What are you aiming for?

Interviewer: What I’m aiming for, if you ask me, is to approach the matter from a new direction. Today, the whole approach for many people—I won’t say everyone, but many—is, “What about the way things used to be? What about the way things used to be?”

Interviewer: We carry on.

Guest: They call it “the order of creation”—“changing the order of creation.” As for the way things used to be, I say: don’t start with that. Go and look in the Shulchan Aruch. Look at the Rebbe’s sichos. Examine very carefully what the Rebbe said over the years—in farbrengens, in Igros Kodesh, and in his written responses. You’ll discover that the Rebbe and the Shulchan Aruch say the same thing. What does it say in the Shulchan Aruch? The Shulchan Aruch sets out three levels. The first level is the ideal way to fulfill the mitzvah.

The ideal way to fulfill the mitzvah is the way many of the Rebbes married. The Tzemach Tzedek married at 13; the Rebbe even writes that he may have been 12. In the first letter of the Rebbe’s that I found—letter 118 in volume one, the Rebbe’s first letter on the subject of matchmaking ages—the Rebbe brings all the views up to age 18.

What are the views? One view is that from age 13, it’s the ideal way to fulfill the mitzvah, as it says in the Shulchan Aruch. But what does “13” mean? There’s an opinion of Rashi’s that it means the beginning of the thirteenth year, so age 12 is called “13.” The Rebbe brings that in the letter. So that’s one thing—the ideal way to fulfill the mitzvah. That’s how people used to do it. The Rebbe Maharash married at 12.

Interviewer: Yes. Hundreds of years ago.

Guest: Yes, yes, not so many years ago. The Rebbe Rashab married at 14, and his Rebbetzin was a year and ten months older than him. Why? When people marry young, it often works out that way. Among the Rebbes, I even worked out an average: there are more cases where the Rebbetzin was older. It’s true of the Rebbe too.

Interviewer: But the Rebbe himself married at an older age.

Guest: The Rebbe himself, the Rebbe himself—anyone who wants to talk about the Rebbe himself can say whatever he likes, but as for what proof, what evidence, what lesson to draw from it—we need to know that the Rebbe spoke about this explicitly. When did the Rebbe speak about it explicitly? The Rebbe found the most fitting opportunity, on his twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.

Interviewer: 14 Kislev.

Guest: 14 Kislev. Well, there wasn’t supposed to be a farbrengen on 14 Kislev. So Reb Feini Althaus [?] knocked on the Rebbe’s door in the middle of the week. He went in to the Rebbe and told him that his father had been the matchmaker for the wedding and hadn’t been paid, and now he wanted payment. So the Rebbe asked him, “What do you want?” And he said, “I want a farbrengen on Shabbos.” So the Rebbe held a farbrengen on Shabbos.

And what did the Rebbe speak about? Anyone who looks at the sicha from beginning to end sees that the Rebbe spoke about marriage and matches. That’s what the Rebbe spoke about—I won’t go into it at length now. Yes, the Rebbe spoke about the soul’s descent: its source is in Hashem’s Essence, and then there are various levels until you reach the matter of the body, when the soul is already ready to descend into this world.

And there, at that farbrengen, the Rebbe said that the Rebbes—the Frierdiker Rebbe and the Rebbe Rashab, the founder—had established a practice in Lubavitch: unlike in non-chassidic yeshivos, where men marry at 25 or 30, in Lubavitch they should look for a match after 20. That’s one thing. The Rebbe said something else: he said he couldn’t elaborate on it. After all, everyone expected that if the Rebbe wants something, he’ll say it again and again. If the Rebbe wants something, he demands it; he doesn’t say it once in a single sicha.

The Rebbe said, “I cannot elaborate on this, because I myself did not marry at 20.” So the Rebbe did not present his own marriage as something people should learn from. He only said that because of it, there was a limit to how much he could speak about the subject. “I didn’t marry at 20 either”—as for me, we don’t say “lehavdil” when comparing a simple Jew and a Rebbe; I’m a simple Jew, but I didn’t marry at 20, or at 21, or at 22. It doesn’t matter when I married; it’s no secret to those who know. Nevertheless, I do speak about it, as an ordinary person. But the Rebbe had his own considerations, and the Rebbe said clearly that because he hadn’t married at 20, he couldn’t elaborate on it.

More than that, even there, when the Rebbe said it, he didn’t say it on his own authority. He said it in the name of the Frierdiker Rebbe and the Rebbe Rashab, who had established that practice in Lubavitch. Afterward, the Rebbe told a story about the Mitteler Rebbe: when matches were proposed to him, he said he wanted the one whose wedding would be soonest, because he wanted to hear the maamarim at the wedding as soon as possible.

So the Rebbe said—he was speaking to the yeshivah students—“You’re not on the level of the Mitteler Rebbe; you’re not so immersed in Chassidus, but you still need to make a match.” Some people say that a young man first needs more and more time to mature until he reaches a high level. But first of all, that isn’t what the Rebbe said. The Rebbe said, “No, you’re not like the Mitteler Rebbe, you’re not so immersed in Chassidus, but you still need to make a match.” That’s one thing.

Another thing: who says that when a young man spends another year, and another year...

Interviewer: He actually matures?

Guest: Is he maturing in a positive direction?

Interviewer: Maybe, maybe he’s only getting worse. Is that what you’re saying?

Guest: It’s not an “if,” because of what our Sages say—and the Rebbe cites those words of our Sages. There’s a letter in which the Rebbe writes about things people don’t need to be particular about: minor matters, gematria calculations involving names. The Rebbe says you don’t need to be particular about those. What do you need to be particular about? “At eighteen, for the chuppah,” from the well-known teaching of our Sages. The Rebbe refers to Kiddushin 29b and gives another source as well. And the Rebbe says there’s another teaching of our Sages. What does it say? It says frightening things. As anyone familiar with it knows, it says that Hakadosh Boruch Hu waits for a person until age twenty, and if he doesn’t marry, Hakadosh Boruch Hu says something—people know what Hakadosh Boruch Hu says. It also says there that Rav Huna says that anyone who reaches twenty without marrying will spend all his days thinking about sin.

These are certainly very compelling statements, and yet... Yes, this sicha is important, as are the letters you’re pointing to. But throughout the years, the way things worked with the Rebbe was that young men tried to join the group going to 770, came back for another year and then another, and received answers and encouragement from the Rebbe. The Rebbe didn’t tell them, “What are you doing here? Go get married now.” How do you reconcile that with a practice that kept gaining momentum? These weren’t people who, after all that exile, decided to give themselves free rein and say, “Let’s start getting married whenever we feel like it.” Young men did this regularly throughout the years. So you’re saying we should break with the established order, but that order had something to rest on. And what it rested on was nothing happy: the troubles the Jewish people went through. It was all rooted in the troubles of the Jewish people. Already when the Rebbe Rashab founded the Tomchei Temimim yeshiva, there was devastation in Jewish life, in all the towns where Chabad was present in Poland. It wasn’t...

Meaning?

Guest: Meaning that when young men wanted to find a shidduch, it was very difficult to find G-d-fearing young women. I heard this when I made a special visit to the Rebbe three years ago. I was there for about a month, from late Tammuz through half of Menachem Av and half of Elul, and I spoke with several distinguished people. One of them, Rabbi Nachman Shapiro, told me in the name of his grandfather, Rabbi Peretz Motzkin, that young men in Lubavitch used to accept shidduchim they would otherwise have considered only as a last resort.

Because?

Because there weren’t G-d-fearing young women.

No, no... Yes, there weren’t, there weren’t.

Because the girls back then weren’t educated, I think. They went out... Heaven help us, there was devastation. The fathers worked, stayed at their jobs, and the daughters went out...

As great as the devastation among the boys was, Heaven help us, the devastation among the girls was apparently greater. It wasn’t the same.

Interviewer: How does that relate to our question?

Guest: That’s why it took a young man longer to get married.

Interviewer: You’re saying they did start looking early; it just took time.

Guest: People knew from the previous generation that twenty was the latest age to marry. Among the Jewish people, twenty was always the very latest age at which one could marry, because that’s what the Shulchan Aruch says. I started to say this earlier but didn’t finish: at twelve or thirteen, it’s the ideal way to fulfill the mitzvah; at eighteen, it’s a mitzvah; at twenty, it’s an absolute obligation. Under no circumstances, the author of the Shulchan Aruch says, should a man pass the age of twenty without a wife—under no circumstances. And if he has reached that age, he really must hurry to find a shidduch and marry as soon as possible. That’s how it was among the Jewish people throughout the years, because it’s an explicit halachah. It’s in the Gemara, it’s in the Mishnah, these are halachos, and there’s no dispute about it at all. Everyone agrees.

Interviewer: There’s Ben Azzai. There’s an exception.

Guest: Ben Azzai, yes, Ben Azzai. The Shulchan Aruch puts it this way: a person whose inclination does not overpower him... How many twenty-year-olds today are there whose inclination does not overpower them? A negligible number. There’s another condition: even someone like Ben Azzai, who didn’t marry, would have been obligated to marry if he had been able to continue studying Torah after the wedding. That’s what the Alter Rebbe says in Kuntres Acharon. There’s Rabbi Shmuel, who says otherwise. He says Ben Azzai was a special case, and even if he had a livelihood, he still wouldn’t have been obligated to marry.

The Alter Rebbe brings two proofs that this is not so. In Kuntres Acharon he asks: What would exempt him? Being fruitful and multiplying is such a great mitzvah—how could he be exempt from it? So the Alter Rebbe says in Kuntres Acharon that even Ben Azzai would have been obligated to marry if he could have studied Torah after the wedding. Today, when there’s a young man about whom you might wonder whether he even has a yetzer hara—because he studies Torah all day, davens, and is a chassidisher young man—can’t he find a shidduch that would allow him to study Torah for a few more years?

Of course he can. In other words, according to halachah—and this isn’t just me saying it; the Rebbe writes it in his letters. There are letters from people who asked the Rebbe about this, people for whom it was relevant. Those who didn’t see it that way, who thought age twenty-four [?] was the earliest one could marry, didn’t ask the Rebbe. But the Jerusalemites did ask. So there are several letters in which people asked the Rebbe, and the Rebbe tells them all these things. Everything I’m saying is written in the Rebbe’s letters.

Interviewer: But isn’t it that if you ask, you’ll get an answer—if it’s bothering you, if you’re uneasy about it, then you should know? Yes, yes, but it’s not as though the Rebbe... I’m trying to ask whether that isn’t how it works. We haven’t finished what we started earlier. So there was already a problem in Lubavitch, in Tomchei Temimim. What came next? The First World War, the Second World War, Heaven help us, the Holocaust, rachmana litzlan. That affected every community—by then it was every community.

Guest: The Communists—that didn’t affect every community. The Communists, the Communist Revolution, which fought every sign of Jewish life and forcibly took people’s faith from them—that was only in Russia.

Interviewer: Okay.

Guest: And people had to fight all of that. So the circumstances simply led to the age of marriage becoming utterly unreasonable. Unreasonable. I don’t want to—I don’t want to say it. I’m talking...

Interviewer: Is this something unique to Chabad? I’m just curious—you keep talking about Chabad. What about the Litvaks, the Polish Jews, the chassidim? At what age did they marry?

Guest: I don’t follow what happens among the Litvaks closely enough to give you information. But with them, certainly—the Rebbe said that even before the war they had an approach that one should study Torah like Ben Azzai, and therefore they married at an older age. That’s what the Rebbe says. For them, it was a deliberate approach; for them, it was the preferred practice.

Let me tell you a story. As I started to say earlier, I was there for seven Shabbosos. On one of those Shabbosos, I was in Dzhnik [?] and met the great Torah scholar Rabbi Baruch Mordechai Ezrachi. He was in a wheelchair; as people know, he had suffered from a heart condition for many years and would faint from time to time. I happened to be there when he was, so I went up to him and asked if I could—I spoke to him in Yiddish. First I asked whether I could ask a question, since perhaps he wouldn’t want me to. He said, “Yes, you can ask.” So I asked him, “At what age should a young man get married?”

Guest: He became emotional about it, so emotional. He was so warm toward me: he came over, hugged me, kissed me, and said, “The Rebbe pours out blessings”—“the Rebbe gives blessings,” or “so many blessings” [?]. I don’t know exactly what he said. If we look carefully at what the Rebbe said—the Rebbe said it almost in passing, while taking a mashpia to task because he had many students and wasn’t attending to any of them. Then the Rebbe moved on to another subject, and it didn’t register. But when you play it back slowly, go over the words, make a transcript—the Rebbe is giving a blessing to every young man, nothing else.

The Rebbe isn’t presenting two options: at the latest, one marries by age twenty, and by twenty-two or twenty-three he has a wife and a household. Now, the Rebbe prefaced this by saying that some people like to make calculations: “Let’s work it out, let’s work it out.” No. As for what happened in the past, I don’t like talking about what happened in the past. Today, I estimate there are more than a thousand young men in Chabad in Eretz Yisroel, and it’s not only in Eretz Yisroel; there are...

Interviewer: At a particular age?

Guest: At age twenty.

Interviewer: At age twenty?

Guest: Age twenty.

Interviewer: More than a thousand young men, you’re saying? Yes?

Guest: Yes, yes. I’d even say two thousand, but I don’t know. Let’s not count—bli ayin hara. But we’re talking about hundreds, and more than hundreds. If the Rebbe’s blessing is put into practice, with Hashem’s help—if parents hear this, young men hear this, the administrators and yeshivos hear this—the Rebbe is giving a blessing.

Interviewer: Earlier you asked how to change the established order.

Guest: All right, we’re simply coming at it from a different direction. Here, we’ll approach it from another angle.

Interviewer: What’s the approach, practically speaking?

Guest: Yes, it has to be practical. If you want to change things... In a moment I’ll tell you a story about Rabbi Wishentsky. Remind me about the story.

Interviewer: I’ll remind you. I do want to try to be practical—if you want to get to a point where, at age 20... Soon the young men are reaching the age of marriage, not just shidduchim.

Guest: I have something practical, practical, but it’s an unusual method. It isn’t always practical—it goes in a certain direction, yes.

Guest: So let’s say to everyone, to the parents and the young men: The Rebbe blesses you that, with Hashem’s help, you’ll get married. Three years later, there’s a wife and children at home. That means that in another six years, how many will there be? 2,000 children in first grade. And another five, another 15 years—no, we won’t do the whole calculation, roughly speaking—there are another 2,000 children in junior yeshivah and senior yeshivah.

Some people say, “Do you want to close the yeshivahs? What are you doing? The young men are learning; let them learn.” I don’t want to close yeshivahs. I want to open yeshivahs. Every year, young men should get married, as the Rebbe says, as the Rebbe blesses, as it says in Shulchan Aruch, as it says everywhere. There isn’t a single place that says otherwise.

Interviewer: There are places where other things are written—distortions.

Guest: There are distortions of the Rebbe’s words.

Interviewer: Certainly, certainly—distortions?

Guest: What do you mean—how can they be distorted? No, how could it... how did that distortion happen? Ask that question. It’s a bedi’eved situation, not something to follow from the outset. Let’s not look into how it happened. The fact is that there are distortions, major distortions. And boruch Hashem, it’s been almost three years now—when I was at the Rebbe’s, as I mentioned earlier, three years ago.

Interviewer: Yes.

Guest: Almost three years, toward the end of 5783. At the time, I had a very big problem. I had written a book in 5782 and tried to deal with it. There’s a big problem with what I told you earlier—14 Kislev 5714—when the Rebbe said that after 20, one should look for a shidduch. I learned about that on the night of 1 Elul 5783. Until then, what did I know? What everyone knew: that some books say “in the early twenties.” They took “after 20, one should look for a shidduch”—in a moment you’ll see how it became that.

Interviewer: They went and distorted it? Meaning, it says...

Guest: No, they got it wrong, G-d forbid—not that they deliberately distorted it. They worked it out. After all, when you see with your own eyes that everyone gets married at 23 at the earliest, you say, “The Rebbe didn’t say anything different. ‘After 20’ means the early twenties.” That’s how it goes. It’s strange, but that’s how it happened.

Then I went looking for Rabbi Yisroel Shimon Kalmenson. Again, I know him from our group; he’s a little younger than I am. I found his phone number and called him. I told him, “Listen, there is such a thing, but the Rebbe wasn’t speaking the modern Hebrew of ‘the early twenties.’ That’s not the language. The Rebbe said something else.” What did the Rebbe say?

On the night of 1 Elul 5783, he meets me... I hardly slept that night; I was so excited.

Interviewer: He met you?

Guest: Yisroel Shimon Kalmenson, in 770. He said to me, “Why don’t you call me? You asked me a question, so why didn’t you get back to me?” I said, “Yes... So what’s the answer?” He showed me on his smartphone, yes, he showed me notes by Rabbi Moshe Levertov. All right, so there is such a thing. Afterward I met another person who had been present that night, and he had it the same way.

Interviewer: What does it say there?

Guest: There are notes by Rabbi Moshe Levertov. Rabbi Moshe Levertov was one of the chozrim in those years—one of the chozrim. If he wasn’t present, they would submit Reb Yoel’s written account to the Rebbe. He was one of the chozrim. So there are notes by Rabbi Moshe Levertov, and they say what I mentioned earlier: “After 20, one should look for a shidduch.” It also says there that the Rebbe said, “I myself cannot assess this, because in my case there was no wedding.” Because the official written account didn’t include “I cannot assess this.” We won’t get into the details; this isn’t the place to discuss distortions. There was a distortion—I’m telling you there was a distortion, several distortions. And in my booklets—you see, I have booklets here.

Interviewer: Yes.

Guest: It’s already written in these booklets. It’s been many years—three years, not many, sorry. It was there at the siyum too. The question is how widely it’s getting out. However widely you think it’s getting out, it isn’t reaching everyone. But that’s how it is—this was one of the major distortions, to that extent. Before this, I would speak to young men and say, “Listen, you need to marry young.” And one would say to me, “But in the early twenties.” Did the Rebbe say “in the early twenties”? I’m talking...

Interviewer: Did you ask Yisroel Shimon why they don’t correct it in some new edition, according to Levertov’s written account?

Guest: I don’t know. That’s not where my head is. I’m not... I can’t do everything. I’m not going to... You know, “Judgments are sweetened only at their source”—there’s such a [unclear]. I’m not going to.

Interviewer: No, but that’s exactly your issue.

Guest: All right, eventually everything will be corrected. As they say—[unclear]—slowly, but in the end it will all come out. Since it came to light on the night of 1 Elul 5783, it’s gradually getting out more and more and more, and it’s clear that it will continue to spread. Even in just the past month or two, I’ve still heard from someone saying “the early twenties,” along with a few other details I won’t go into. But little by little it’s being corrected; things are falling into place.

Interviewer: Let’s get back to the practical side. You told me you have an interesting, unconventional practical approach from Rabbi Wishentsky—we’ll get to that too.

Guest: This is the practical side. It’s connected.

Interviewer: Connected to the practical side.

Guest: There’s an idea... Rabbi Michoel Wishentsky managed a candle factory in Be’er Sheva. There’s Rabbi Sholom Fisher.

Interviewer: Did he buy the factory there?

Guest: The factory used to be in Kiryat Gat, “Ner Zion.” We all knew that factory and its owners. One of the owners used to daven with us—yes, Reb Yechiel Rubin. Later they sold the factory, and it moved to Be’er Sheva. He would travel and come to Kiryat Gat a few times, for Minchah and things like that. I’d see him, and little by little I became friendly with him. And he’s a real fountain of gems of wisdom. The way that Wishentsky family speaks!

I knew three such fountains of wisdom: the father, Rabbi Moshe Wishentsky—I knew him through Tanya classes he would give on Friday night, between Minchah and Maariv. People would wait in 770, Menachem, for him to finish the class.

Interviewer: Yes, yes.

Guest: When he finished the class there, in the front rooms, only when they came in would they start Kabbalas Shabbos. And Rabbi Sholom Ber Wishentsky—[unclear], the eldest son, who lives on Eastern Parkway. For a few years I stayed with someone near his sukkah. On Sukkos I’d meet him in the sukkah, and the way he spoke—he was truly a fountain of gems of wisdom. And Reb Wishentsky too, he was good too.

One day he told me this story: He was in Russia. All the young religious Jewish men tried to pursue academic studies—I don’t know at what level, whatever was needed. Why? Because anyone who didn’t study would be taken into the Russian army, Hashem protect us. I’ve heard from people who were in the Russian army. They could abuse someone; the non-Jews there—it was something terrible, dreadful, Hashem protect us. So there was no choice. They simply had to study. That’s why all those mathematicians...

Interviewer: Yes, the ones we know—they’re mathematicians...

Guest: How did they get into it? Why didn’t they learn in yeshivahs? Because they needed it; otherwise they would have been taken into the army.

Interviewer: Because academics were exempt?

Guest: Yes, yes, yes. That’s how it was in Russia. So he was in Tashkent, studying at some college or something—I don’t know what sort of institution of higher learning it was. He also had to show up on Shabbos, because if you didn’t come, they’d ask, “What’s this? Why didn’t you come?” Once, twice, three times—it could get complicated; they could expel him from the program. There was no choice.

But on Shabbos—this was Tashkent, a big city, a huge city. I’ve never been there, but that’s what he told me—on weekdays he would travel by bus, train, and so on. But on Shabbos he would walk for hours, literally hours. He told me his route took him through a park, a park with trees. One day he noticed something strange there: the gardeners were cutting branches. Some branches from one tree had grown into another tree, and apparently this was something they tended to. So they cut off those extra branches.

But what did he notice? Every Shabbos he saw that they had left the branches tangled together. He was puzzled: it looked so ugly. They’d cut the branches but left them tangled together.

Well, he didn’t ask questions. One Shabbos he was passing through, and suddenly he heard a noise—boom! What happened? A branch had fallen. Then he understood. These were experienced gardeners: they cut the branch and left it there, because pulling it out would be difficult and might damage the trees. They left it as it was. While the branches are fresh, each one still has its strength. But slowly they dry out and wither, grow weaker, and fall on their own.

That’s what he said. I don’t remember the lesson he drew from it, but I know what I take from it. The story stayed with me, and I’ve told it many times at farbrengens. What do I learn from it? When you sever something from its root, it gradually dries up. Everything works itself out. There’s a reason shidduchim are delayed: it became customary, because people got it into their heads that this is how it should be. But if you keep getting the message out, little by little, that this custom has no source—that the Rebbe says otherwise, that the Rebbe says to marry young, everywhere—there’s nowhere the Rebbe says otherwise, and nowhere in halachah that says otherwise.

Slowly, as that takes hold—today, some of the older mashpi’im may find it difficult. For the younger mashpi’im it’s very easy. Why? Why? They don’t have the... the...

Interviewer: They don’t have that fixed mindset, you mean?

Guest: Yes, yes, yes, exactly. They don’t have all the baggage from previous years. It’s fine. This is what the Rebbe says—here’s one sicha and another sicha and another, and one letter and another, and one story and another. Why not? Excellent. A bochur comes to them and asks whether it’s time to look into a shidduch. They tell him yes, why not? It’s...

Interviewer: So what do they tell him—that he should look into a shidduch while he’s in kevutzah? When is he supposed to do it?

Guest: Kevutzah is something that needs... There’s something here. Kevutzah in Israel—all of that is a problem. It’s a problem, it creates a problem. How do we solve it? I don’t know. This isn’t the place.

Interviewer: It is! Why not? This is exactly the place. How do we solve it?

Guest: I don’t know how to solve it. But if the Rebbe says that a person marries at twenty and by twenty-three has a wife and a family, then that’s how it should be.

Interviewer: How is that your concern? Aren’t you the one who needs to propose a formula?

Guest: Yes, a formula needs to be proposed. They can come to me, but not...

Interviewer: No, what do you mean? You’re... you’re the one speaking out about it, aren’t you? You seem passionate about this. You said it—I was embarrassed to say it—you said it, and I bought into it.

Guest: Well, if you’re so passionate about it, you have to present a plan, you have to present a formula. I spoke with a prominent rosh yeshivah—every rosh yeshivah in Chabad is prominent, yes, but one of the most prominent. We discussed these issues, and he raised an objection from another angle. He said to me: Today, children don’t learn in cheder the way they once did. I’ll give a hint and everyone will know who it is: a rosh yeshivah from France. Everyone knows who it is now.

Interviewer: Okay, and therefore?

Guest: Wait, wait. So he says: Why do shidduchim need to be delayed? Because a bochur hasn’t learned anything; he’s reached twenty and still doesn’t know enough, or doesn’t have enough knowledge yet. In other words, the problem is that first we need to—look, in the short term, leave that aside. We don’t have to solve everything right now. Fine, there are various problems. So one problem will be that bochurim get married before they’ve become great scholars. The Rebbe says that for three years after the wedding there still aren’t many burdens, so one can learn. Even with a few children, it can go together. It can go together.

So the wealthy people in Chabad should make an effort to ensure it really works—that a young married man can learn for at least three years, and, with Hashem’s help, his family grows while he’s still learning without any problem. What will happen? But how do we solve it? Simply start in cheder—take the summer camps... There are places where the whole year is like one big summer camp. Start teaching the way they used to.

Interviewer: Okay, that’s clear. Fine from that perspective, but you still haven’t solved the puzzle. What should the plan look like, in your view? A bochur finishes yeshivah ketanah, yeshivah gedolah—aren’t you proposing to reduce the number of years in those? Yeshivah ketanah, yeshivah gedolah, and kevutzah—you’re not touching any of that? Once a bochur is in kevutzah, does he finish it at twenty?

Guest: Let me tell you, let me tell you how I came across this sicha, the sicha from Zos Chanukah 5710 [?]—how I came across it.

Interviewer: I know there are books that collect everything the Rebbe said on the subject, like Yemei Temimim.

Guest: Right.

Interviewer: Letters, sichos, yechidus—everything?

Guest: And I know this book already—I won’t name it—which says nothing at all about the yeshivah track. Nothing. Why not? Because the Rebbe never spoke about it. The Rebbe wouldn’t—what, would the Rebbe prescribe a track that doesn’t fit with the Shulchan Aruch? It doesn’t fit with what the Rebbe said, with what the Frierdiker Rebbe said. There’s a letter from the Frierdiker Rebbe; remind me about it later.

Interviewer: Yes.

Guest: So I thought that perhaps in one of the booklets I’m writing—I’m planning to publish a kuntres, and meanwhile I’ve already published parts of it in booklets, with the aim of putting out a somewhat larger kuntres—I might also write there that the Rebbe never addressed the yeshivah track.

Interviewer: Which, in your opinion, needs to change?

Guest: The Rebbe doesn’t address it because it isn’t the way the Rebbe wants it, so the Rebbe doesn’t address it. The Rebbe has his ways of... how the Rebbe...

Interviewer: You know Yemei Temimim—for example, they asked the Rebbe about every little thing. They would ask the Rebbe at every step whether to do this or that, whether to admit a particular student or remove him...

Guest: There are things that came from the initiative of the administrations, of the bochurim. But was there an initiative from the Rebbe? An initiative from the Rebbe—there’s no sicha from the Rebbe, no letter from the Rebbe. There isn’t.

Interviewer: Maybe that calls for an explanation?

Guest: There isn’t, [unclear].

Guest: All they wanted was for the wedding to be in Kislev rather than Elul.

Interviewer: The Rebbe didn’t want that?

Guest: And his birthday was in the middle of Elul.

They wrote to the Rebbe, and the Rebbe answered them. We don’t know what they wrote, but the Rebbe’s answer was published in Ma’anos Kodesh. The Rebbe writes that all the reasons they give carry no weight against the principle of “at eighteen, to the wedding canopy.” Eighteen and twenty are part of the same principle.

Yes, we won’t go into that at length now; it’s the same principle. In other words, the Rebbe says there is a proper age for marriage, but the Rebbe didn’t say it to everyone. The Rebbe said it to those to whom he could say it, and the Rebbe had his reasons. I can’t go into those now. But in that letter the Rebbe mentions—apparently they told the Rebbe, “Everyone does it this way”—that it isn’t imposed on anyone.

So the Rebbe writes, “This requires serious examination.” That implies the question was valid, and that here was an exception, where the Rebbe did sometimes get involved in how the matter was handled.

Interviewer: The Rebbe told that particular bochur to learn for a few years, and there were no kollels then, so there was a yeshivah in the place where he got married.

Do we know who it was?

Guest: I know who it was, but leave it—it’s a secret.

This isn’t the place, this isn’t the place, this isn’t the place.

Interviewer: And when did he actually get married in the end?

Guest: As the Rebbe said, of course, they shouldn’t postpone it. So he got married in Elul, before he would be...

Interviewer: Is there a story behind why the Rebbe saw fit to intervene specifically with this bochur?

Guest: I don’t want to go into the details. It’s personal.

Interviewer: I can’t accept that. The practical question is simple: Was this an exception, or does it tell us something about the general rule?

The guest: That indicates the general rule—that this is what the Rebbe wants. It doesn’t indicate that the Rebbe didn’t get very involved in this. As we said, there was a situation—you know at what age people got married? I can tell you about chassidim who married at 37.

The interviewer: What years are we talking about? One of the people...

The guest: At the beginning of the nesius, in the time of the Frierdiker Rebbe.

The interviewer: The most prominent, well-known chassidim you know of who were around the Rebbe—at what ages did they marry?

The guest: Yes, they married at 25, 26.

The interviewer: Because of the hardships of the time [?]?

The guest: Certainly, certainly. Reb Shlomo Chaim Kesselman, a"h, the great mashpia—how did his shidduch come about? Apparently, at that time there was a particular difficulty for a mashpia. Why? Because a young woman, even a chassidishe one, would think: He davens all day—where will their livelihood come from? What will happen? Apparently there were several—both he and Shimshon married at an older age, I think around 26, 27. Shimshon at 27.

How did Reb Shlomo Chaim’s shidduch come about? It’s written in the books: Someone came to the Frierdiker Rebbe with a proposal for his sister-in-law, his wife’s sister, and asked the Frierdiker Rebbe’s opinion. This was already during the Frierdiker Rebbe’s nesius. So the Frierdiker Rebbe said to him, “And why not Shlomo Chaim? Why not Shlomo Chaim?” In other words, the Frierdiker Rebbe pressed for a shidduch to be made for Shlomo Chaim at age 26. That was the reality then.

So when things are like that, and as I said earlier, the Rambam says that a change in routine is the beginning of illness—it isn’t simple to change habits. Especially since the Rebbe had this consideration: The Rebbe said, “I myself cannot assess this, because I myself did not marry at age 20.”

The interviewer: I have a question. If someone asked you what you dream of as a child—what’s your dream? Is your dream that a bochur in his third year, as he reaches that age, starts getting shidduch suggestions, and at some point becomes engaged?

The guest: Well, part of what you said is already happening.

The interviewer: What is happening?

The guest: I’ll tell you—part of what you said. There are third-year bochurim today for whom shidduchim are being suggested.

The interviewer: I haven’t heard that. It sounds like a theoretical ruling to me. I talk to bochurim; I’m not making things up. I haven’t heard of a bochur who got engaged before going on kvutzah.

The guest: I didn’t say engaged. I said there are bochurim for whom shidduchim are suggested—to their parents, not to the bochur. And the parents tell the bochur about it, without pressuring him. Usually the bochur half listens and goes off on kvutzah, and it may be another few years after that, and then who knows what happens.

The interviewer: So it has no relevance at all?

The guest: No, the world is already ready for it. In the past there was no such thing; nobody even thought of it.

The interviewer: Is that the dream, in your view? Is that how it should be?

The guest: No, that’s the reality.

The interviewer: Should someone go on kvutzah while engaged, then come back and get married—something like that?

The guest: As I said before, I can’t prescribe the details. There was the kvutzah of 5730.

The interviewer: Yes.

The guest: The 5730 kvutzah.

The interviewer: A well-known story.

The guest: The yeshiva administration in Kfar Chabad wanted them to travel before Pesach—instead of traveling for Pesach, they should travel for Tishrei, another half year later. Why? Reb Shlomo Chaim Kesselman was part of the yeshiva administration there; I don’t know exactly who else was there. They all—the yeshiva administration—understood that this was what should be done.

Then, when Reb Shlomo Chaim was with the Rebbe at the beginning of the year—on Yud Shvat, I believe it was the great Yud Shvat of 5730—the Rebbe said to him, “The bochurim want to travel, they want to come to the Rebbe. Why are you holding them back?” And the Rebbe saw to it that they came for Pesach.

The interviewer: Let me ask a question: What, the Rebbe opposed what the yeshiva administration wanted? After all, the administration wanted what was best for the yeshiva and for the bochurim. So if the administration decided on another half year—it’s a little strange. It’s strange that the Rebbe intervened because the bochurim wanted to come. Fine, but the yeshiva administration, which runs everything, wanted it to be half a year later. Presumably there were considerations that made coming earlier not in the yeshiva’s best interests.

Are you leading me to the conclusion that the Rebbe wanted them to come a little earlier?

The guest: I have no other explanation. The simplest explanation is that “another half year” meant something to those bochurim who didn’t think that way, who were accustomed to marrying at 23, 24, 25. When I came to study in Kfar Chabad, I remember there were 25-year-old bochurim there as a matter of course—as a matter of course, as a matter of course. But for the Rebbe, there is the Shulchan Aruch. And more than that, this simply had never been the way among the Jewish people. It’s unnatural, unusual. We’ve somehow gotten used to it, as though it’s natural—but it isn’t natural, it isn’t usual.

There’s more to it. As the Rebbe said, a bochur marries at 20, and by 23 he has, with Hashem’s help, a wife and a household. What does it mean to say “after marriage”? You don’t make calculations. There are people who make calculations.

Now, in that 5730 kvutzah there were two engaged bochurim. One—I’ll say his name; his son had no problem with my saying it—was Reb Sholom Marozov, Rabbi Sholom, the director of the institutions in Bnei Brak.

The interviewer: Was he from Jerusalem?

The guest: No, I don’t think he was from Jerusalem, but he came from a family where that was customary.

The interviewer: He traveled at age 20?

The guest: He was already engaged.

The interviewer: And he came back shortly before the end of the kvutzah and got married?

The guest: So he was 20. There was another very, very important, very, very well-known man, but I won’t say his name because he doesn’t really want me to, so I won’t. He became engaged at 18 and traveled to the Rebbe with the 5730 kvutzah. He came back a few months—three months—before the end of the kvutzah and got married. He married at 19, just after turning 19, or at the end of 18.

The interviewer: Well, that was a rare sight. It was something...

The guest: No, I don’t know if it was...

The interviewer: Numerically, it was rare. That’s a fact.

The guest: Rabbi Yeshayahu [unclear], the well-known educator, was also engaged when he went on kvutzah.

The interviewer: I think Rabbi Koenig, the rosh yeshiva in Lod, was too—that’s exactly the person I was speaking about earlier, if that’s who you meant...

The guest: Yes, Rabbi Koenig. Rabbi Koenig—what, didn’t he accomplish anything? He’s a rosh yeshiva in Lod. What is he lacking? I’ll tell you what he isn’t lacking: kedushah. He isn’t lacking that. Why? Because it’s written that marrying young is a matter of kedushah, so that one won’t have improper thoughts.

Here I’ll say something very interesting. The Alter Rebbe’s Shulchan Aruch speaks of “Torah study in purity.” What does “in purity” mean? Without improper thoughts—that’s what it says in the Shulchan Aruch. That’s in nigleh, the revealed dimension of Torah. We’ll soon see that it’s also in Chassidus. What does “Torah study in purity” mean in nigleh? That there are no improper thoughts. Because, as we said, the Gemara states that if a person hasn’t married by age 20, he will have thoughts of sin all his days. That isn’t cited as a halachic ruling, apparently because there are exceptions.

The interviewer: Certainly, yes.

The guest: So that’s why it isn’t stated that way in halachah. It’s only someone whose yetzer is overpowering him who may not wait. If he’s a yeshiva student and his yetzer isn’t overpowering him, he may wait. Yes, according to the Rebbe’s words, this is without exception, but the halachah is addressing ordinary people.

So what emerges? What does “Torah study in purity” mean? The Rebbe cites what’s written in the Shulchan Aruch: without improper thoughts. It’s explicit in the Alter Rebbe’s Shulchan Aruch, in Hilchos Talmud Torah, at the end of halachah one.

The Rebbe, in 5707, at the farbrengen before hakafos—by the way, everything I know, all the source references, all of it—there are people who help me. When they see something that could help me, they tell me, “Listen, there’s such-and-such a sicha, such-and-such a letter.” Thank you very much; this is the place to thank them.

On Simchas Torah 5707, the Rebbe first said that the bochurim—those who weren’t yet married—should sing a niggun, and the young married men should only clap, because young people have the advantage of energy. Then the Rebbe said that those who are married have an advantage, so the bochurim should clap and the married men should sing a niggun.

The Rebbe spoke there about Torah study in purity. The Rebbe offered a tremendous insight. What is “Torah study in purity”? It isn’t merely the absence of improper thoughts, something negative; it’s something positive. The Rebbe said: “At eighteen, to the chuppah”—the chuppah, purity, is a transcendent matter. Why is it transcendent? Because if someone becomes ritually impure, what happens? Nothing happens. What, all he did was touch something? Nothing happens. There’s nothing visible to the eye.

Someone enters a place where, G-d forbid, there is a deceased person—he was under the same roof—and nothing happens; there’s no change. It’s a transcendent matter. Ritual impurity and purity are transcendent matters.

Interviewer: So the Rebbe says that when people get married, there is a drawing down of the encompassing light—the chuppah.

Guest: The chuppah.

Interviewer: Yes.

Guest: There is an element of encompassing light. It is drawn down to give them the power to have children—that is a drawing down of the Infinite Light, the power of infinity. We know that people get married and have children, and it seems simple. But it isn’t so simple; it is the power of infinity. Hakadosh Boruch Hu made it possible for that power of infinity to be present.

So the Rebbe says: What is “Torah study in purity”? The Rebbe didn’t address improper thoughts there at all; he wasn’t speaking about the negative side—that is written in the Shulchan Aruch.

In both Nigleh and Chassidus, the Rebbe says that when a man gets married, he also wears a tallis gadol. A tallis katan doesn’t encompass the whole body. With a tallis gadol, at least when saying the blessing, one wraps himself in it completely, covering the whole body. And there are those, the Rebbe says, who remain wrapped in it throughout davening. That practice exists too; the Rebbe mentioned it in that sicha.

So when people get married, there is a drawing down of the Infinite Light, the encompassing light of the tallis, and therefore there is Torah study in purity. Yes, it turns out that the Rebbe... I’ll tell you the truth.

Interviewer: You’ll say the same thing. When I was a bochur, I never heard anyone encourage us by saying, “Listen, if you get married, you’ll be holy. Your Torah study will be in purity. You’ll be doing what the Rebbe wants, what Hakadosh Boruch Hu wants.” No one ever said that. What did they tell us? “Oh, someone who gets married is leaving Tomchei Temimim”—really, to the point of...

Guest: “Fortunate is he who shows no pity.” They used to sing that, yes, yes. That slogan goes against the Shulchan Aruch. Yes, truly against the Shulchan Aruch, Hashem protect us. Exactly so.

Interviewer: Am I right or not? When you were a bochur, did you hear a different approach? Did you hear people say how good it is to get married?

Guest: It’s interesting. We had great mashpi’im—I won’t name them—so why didn’t they say it? Because that wasn’t the approach. Why? As I said, because it wasn’t the reality. It wasn’t the reality, because of all the troubles. There’s a letter from the Rebbe—not to chassidim. Someone writes to the Rebbe, saying that a person should marry at an older age. It was someone from outside; I don’t even know if he was religious. He writes that people should marry later, when they already have a stable livelihood. So the Rebbe writes back to him, and one of the things the Rebbe writes is about the successors of Hitler, those who want the Final Solution. It’s a letter translated into English, in Moreh Ledor Navoch—is that what it’s called?

Interviewer: Moreh, yes, Moreh Ledor Navoch.

Guest: Revenge against Hitler’s successors, yes, yes, yes, who want the Final Solution. And the Rebbe says they still exist today, these successors of Hitler, rachmana litzlan, who want that. So the Rebbe says that marrying young stands against these successors of Hitler, against their Final Solution, rachmana litzlan—the successors who still exist. In other words, the Rebbe is absolutely clear everywhere.

Interviewer: But how much did the Rebbe do to counter the prevailing practice?

Guest: As you say, it wasn’t so visible. But what happens when someone opens his eyes? We say the second blessing, “Who opens the eyes of the blind”—to open our eyes. Sometimes you see, but you don’t really see. You look and see things backward. Then someone tells you, “Listen, you think you see clearly, but pay attention to this, pay attention to that,” and suddenly you see something else. Pay attention to this sicha of the Rebbe, to this letter of the Rebbe, to this story about the Rebbe, to this ruling in the Shulchan Aruch, to this teaching of our Sages that the Rebbe writes we should be careful to observe. And the Rebbe concludes in that letter that these teachings of our Sages were said to all communities; they were said to everyone.

Interviewer: When we were in yeshivah, we had it in our heads that this didn’t apply to us.

Guest: [unclear], it doesn’t apply to you. It’s for those crazy people to whom such things apply, yes—not normal people. So the Rebbe says: No, this is what’s normal. A teaching of our Sages, the Gemara and the Shulchan Aruch—these are normal things, and they were said to all communities. When you simply look at it differently, you see different things. And as for what you said about the Tomchei Temimim track: Listen, if you’re being honest and you say that the Rebbe wants people to marry by age 20, and the Rebbe said this everywhere, and nowhere did the Rebbe say otherwise—

Interviewer: Yes?

Guest: Then there’s no doubt that something needs to be done here.

Interviewer: Well, Rabbi Yitzchak Elishavitz, what you’ve said has been very enlightening. I didn’t know this subject was so rich and so holy. It really was fascinating. Perhaps we’ve done our part by giving it a voice. I have no doubt people...

Guest: I just want to add one more thing.

Interviewer: Yes.

Guest: About what I said earlier. About two months ago, I met a bochur in his third year who would soon be leaving for kevutzah, and I asked him—some bochurim look older; you see them and think they’ve already come back from kevutzah—so I asked him about it. He told me he was getting suggestions, that his parents said people were suggesting matches for him, but he said he didn’t want to marry. So here’s my advice to all the male and female matchmakers: Don’t let up. If a bochur in his third year has reached the age when the Rebbe wants him to marry and the Shulchan Aruch wants him to marry, don’t go by what people are accustomed to. That’s not your concern. There is, after all, a well-known, explicit letter from the Rebbe to a father in Jerusalem who was worried that his son was approaching 20 and still wasn’t married. The Rebbe writes to him that perhaps the son says he doesn’t want to marry because he didn’t like the match that was suggested to him. So if the matchmakers suggest to the parents a match so good, so exactly suited to that bochur, that they think he in particular would be happy about it—I’m saying they shouldn’t give up on making suggestions, because this is undoubtedly what the Rebbe wants, and it’s what the Shulchan Aruch wants. Sometimes, you know, it has to come from below, not from above downward but from below upward. The bochurim themselves will vote with their feet: They’ll walk to the chuppah on their own two feet. And it will be as it was with Rabbi Koenig and Shloime Rosenberg, whom you mentioned, and quite a few others. With Hashem’s help, I see a great deal of change for the better, and it keeps progressing. With Hashem’s help, they’ll reach at least the Shulchan Aruch’s minimum. Eighteen can come later, but 20—20 is the minimum.

Interviewer: Well, we’ll end on that hope. Thank you very much, Rabbi Yitzchak Elishavitz, for these enlightening words. We’ll thank Yosef Dovid Swissa, who made the recording here, and Yossi Rivkin, CEO of COL. Thank you for being with us for this episode too. Goodbye, and we’ll speak again in the next episode.