Ears to Hear 16 | Connection to the Rebbe as King Moshiach

00:00 Speaker 1 “And Hashem did not give you a heart to understand, eyes to see, or ears to hear.”

00:08 Speaker 2 Ears to Hear. Audio programs for the students of the Temimim from Ata Haolami.

00:15 Speaker 1 We live the Rebbe, breathe the Rebbe, sit with the Rebbe, learn the Rebbe. You can’t say, “That’s going too far.” There’s no such thing. He’s our father, our father. He’s part of our very existence. We live with the Rebbe. And when we learn the Rebbe’s teachings, we have that power of Moshe, who conveyed the word of Hashem as he heard it from the Almighty. That gives this incredible strength to the entire Jewish people, together. Let us all proclaim together: Yechi Adoneinu Moreinu VeRabbeinu Melech HaMoshiach Leolam Vaed!

01:19 Speaker 2 Shalom aleichem to all the students of the Temimim in Tomchei Temimim Lubavitch yeshivos throughout the Holy Land and around the world. We’re now beginning a special program in the Ears to Hear audio series, a program permeated with a strong connection to the Rebbe Melech HaMoshiach shlita and to his central concern: bringing the days of Moshiach. In this program, we’ll speak with one of the Rebbe’s shluchim to the Holy Land, the head of the Chabad Lubavitch yeshivos in Tzfas, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Wilansky. We’ll talk about a fascinating journey filled with hiskashrus and faith, from the high point of the completion of Moshiach’s Sefer Torah on 10 Shvat 5730, through the special moments of 11 Shvat 5736, when the shluchim set out for the Holy Land, to the high point of the acceptance of the Rebbe’s kingship on 10 Shvat 5753. Running through it all like a thread, we’ll see and feel the spirit of genuine, inner hiskashrus to the Rebbe Melech HaMoshiach shlita—and, as a natural result, what our work is now. Let’s begin this special program with Rabbi Wilansky. Shalom aleichem to all the students of the Temimim. We’re here now for a special program with Rabbi Wilansky. Shalom aleichem, Rabbi Wilansky.

02:46 Speaker 1 Shalom uverachah.

02:47 Speaker 2 Baruch Hashem, we’re sitting here in these special days before Yud Shvat. But more broadly, this program is devoted to talking about hiskashrus to the Rebbe as Melech HaMoshiach. Before we begin discussing the whole course of events—especially the shlichus to the Holy Land and hiskashrus to the Rebbe as Melech HaMoshiach—we’d first like to hear about your connection with the Rebbe as a child, beginning with your first yechidus. Tell us a little about how it all began.

03:18 Speaker 1 Hello, everyone, and thank you for the opportunity. I’ll say a few words that I hope will have an effect on many of the listeners.

03:26 Speaker 2 Amen.

03:28 Speaker 1 Hiskashrus. Hiskashrus to the Rebbe. It’s a whole subject, no question. A great deal appears in the writings of our Rebbeim and our elders on the subject of hiskashrus, and a great deal has already been compiled and published in booklets and books. At its heart, hiskashrus means that a person is connected, bound to the Rebbe. Regarding hiskashrus, it says that merely seeing his face is not enough; one has to follow his conduct and instructions, and so on. At the same time, seeing his face does matter. It says it isn’t enough—meaning that seeing his face has a special significance. That applies even to a picture, as the Rebbe emphasizes with the words, “Your eyes shall see your teacher.” The Rebbe once wrote in response to a woman that when she looked at his picture, she should think, at that moment, that the Rebbe was looking at her and thinking about her. That’s the moment to reflect on the connection: the Rebbe is thinking about you. Many understand this as though the Rebbe said he looks out from the picture. That isn’t the meaning. The meaning is that you look at the Rebbe and know that the Rebbe is looking at you. That’s the moment to reflect on it.

04:56 Speaker 4 And as a child, you must have longed and waited all the time for that moment to arrive.

05:00 Speaker 1 That’s exactly the point I wanted to start with, and to draw from it a lesson we can learn. I had the privilege—at the time I was in Paris. We were there on shlichus, and my father, a”h, was the director of the Rebbe’s office in Paris. We had the privilege of traveling to the Rebbe in those years. It was 5719, and he took me along for a period from before Yom Kippur until after Simchas Torah. As was customary then, we went in for yechidus. In his usual way, the Rebbe gave special attention to the child who had come in and asked me several questions. The Rebbe asked me, “What are you learning? What are you learning in Gemara?” The chapter Hamafkid. Then the Rebbe asked me about the four types of watchmen: the unpaid watchman, the paid watchman, the borrower, the renter. We got to the third, the fourth—and there I stopped. I simply couldn’t remember. I’ll mention something curious: only when we started walking backward and the tension began to ease did I remember it, a little later.

06:32 Speaker 4 As you were about to leave the Rebbe’s room.

06:34 Speaker 1 Yes, yes. We had started walking backward to leave, and I was trying to signal to my father that I wanted to answer. I gestured with my hand, but we kept going. At that point, the Rebbe took a dollar out of the drawer. The Rebbe told me, “I’ll give you a dollar now. When you get home...” Oh, excuse me—first he asked me, “Who is your teacher? Who is your rebbe?” I said, “Reb Yosef Ber Yosef Bernitzky [unclear], the Slonimer Rebbe.”

07:08 Speaker 4 There’s a well-known picture of you learning with him when you were little.

07:11 Speaker 1 Yes, yes, that’s right. So the Rebbe said, “I’ll give you the dollar now, and when you get home, ask your teacher that question.” Which watchman was it? The Rebbe didn’t spell it out. “Ask your teacher.”

07:27 Speaker 4 You didn’t think—

07:28 Speaker 1 My understanding as a child—and it stayed with me for a long time—was that the Rebbe was saying, as it were: true, you didn’t answer, but when you get home, ask. Understand? We know of many cases, perhaps even most cases, in which a child went in to the Rebbe and was tested with questions. Almost always, the child got stuck on some question and couldn’t answer. It isn’t our purpose now to try to understand what lay behind that. In very simple terms, it gives you the feeling that you need to learn more. There’s more to learn.

08:18 Speaker 4 The lesson is that there’s always room to progress—and to ask questions.

08:21 Speaker 1 Yes. When the Rebbe gave me the—when he said, “Ask,” it was: all right, you don’t know, so ask. But there was actually a great deal in that, or at least that’s what I took from it. To my mind, there’s a lot to learn, and you have to ask. Years later, I approached Reb Yosef. We were already in the yeshiva in Brunoy, and he was also in Brunoy. I asked Reb Yosef about the four watchmen. What had that been about for me? He looked at me and said, “Why are you asking?” I said, “Yes, I want to know. What’s going on?”

09:00 Speaker 4 That’s the lesson: to ask.

09:02 Speaker 1 I told him, “Look, at the time, the Rebbe told me to ask. I’m not sure I ever came to ask you, because I already knew—or thought I did. I thought: ask the rabbi why? I already know.” The truth is, the Rebbe knows whether you know or not. That’s something you realize when you reflect on it a little more. But as a child, I thought, “I already know. What do you want?” I’m not sure I asked. So I came to ask now. Fine—he answered me. What did we actually learn from this? As we said, you always need to learn. You always need to keep learning. You finished? You knew it? “There, I know it.” But there’s more to learn. There are things you don’t know. The Frierdiker Rebbe once said, “At not knowing, we’re all geniuses.” That’s what I heard as a child. I don’t know whether it’s printed anywhere, but that was the expression the Frierdiker Rebbe used: “At not knowing, at ignorance, we’re all geniuses.” So you always have to learn in order to know, and keep learning. The Torah is broader than the sea, in every area. And baruch Hashem, we’ve merited to have it all laid out before us, accessible in every possible way—treasures that were never available before. And you have to ask.

10:28 Speaker 4 That’s really an essential introduction to our program, in which we’re asking you questions: “Ask your father and he will tell you, your elders and they will say to you.” We simply want to listen and ask someone who can tell us about Geulah and Moshiach in such a genuine, sincere, and deeply felt way. So perhaps we’ll begin with a very important point. Beyond, of course, your yechidus with the Rebbe and then your shlichus to Australia, let’s move on to the shlichus to the Holy Land, particularly in light of the date, 11 Shvat 5736.

10:59 Speaker 1 That’s true. We’re coming up to 11 Shvat. 11 Shvat is a special time in the Rebbe’s leadership, and one of the things the Rebbe placed great emphasis on was shlichus. Certainly, shlichus to the Holy Land has a very important place. But if I may, I’d like to finish the points I was making earlier. First, the point about asking questions. There are things you know for certain, and I’m taking this straight from my own story. You know? So that’s it? No. You still always have to remain in a state of asking. However much you know, you have to ask. You have to ask and share, not just be someone who knows, and that’s that. Asking is a central, essential part of educating a chossid, a Tamim, every single person—knowing that we have a Rebbe. In the Rebbe’s well-known letter published at the time in a Chabad newspaper, he explains the difference between a chossid and someone who is not a chossid in their approach to learning. The Rebbe said that a chossid always knows he has a Rebbe who knows better. He always knows there’s something he still needs to understand, and someone above him. A chossid always knows there is the Rebbe, whom he asks and needs to ask—seeking to understand what the Rebbe wants and how he wants it done. That is central to the work of doing what the Rebbe wants, doing things as intended. Among chassidim, there was a common expression: “to discern the Rebbe’s intention.” A few people have raised this in our times, and I’ve had occasion to speak about it often. Today, those words are less precise. Today, we don’t need to guess at the intention. The Rebbe says things in the clearest possible way. We don’t need to start wondering what the Rebbe would have wanted, and so on. On most matters, the Rebbe says everything quite clearly. We need to daven that we’ll know how to act, stay close to the Rebbe’s words, and do what the Rebbe wants of us, each of us—

13:50 Speaker 1 both in general matters and in personal ones. There is something that is wanted of me: what I need to do, what falls to me to do. Someone else cannot do it in my place. And if I occupy myself with what someone else can do, then my own task won’t get done. I constantly need to genuinely want to know and to ask. I need to ask myself whether I’m doing it, ask others, ask the mashpi’im, the educators and guides, ask friends and acquaintances—always conduct myself with the sense that I have something to ask. And on the subject of this work beginning in childhood, I think it’s worth emphasizing something. I once heard a story, and I’ll tell it here too. I’ll try to keep it short. In one place, they invited Reb Shlomo Zalman Hecht to speak at a very serious Chabad evening in the United States. He was well known as a gifted speaker, a"h. Reb Shlomo Zalman Hecht told a story there. What was it? Someone in his city, Chicago, had told him what happened. Reb Shlomo Zalman was already on shlichus in Chicago at the time of the Frierdiker Rebbe, who had sent him there. In those years, there was a group of Jewish supporters—apparently from the Joint or a similar organization—that helped refugees. This was when people who had fled Russia were in refugee camps in Austria and, especially, France, and later in various other places. This group supported them. They decided, together with the head of that organization’s charity committee in Chicago, to visit the refugees. They went to France and visited several of the camps where families of Anash were staying. The poverty and hardship were terrible. Children were going around barely dressed, in tattered clothes. You could see these people had escaped with nothing, and, thank G-d, had gotten out—

16:37 Speaker 1 of there. They came, met the people and took an interest in them. They were deeply impressed to see with their own eyes the people for whom they had raised the money and to whom the funds had been sent. Then they met some children. They saw a child in the street, and the children already knew these were visitors from the United States. “What would you like us to buy you?” They wanted to buy him something.

17:12 Speaker 5 Right. They asked each one.

17:14 Speaker 1 Several children they—

17:15 Speaker 5 Mm-hm.

17:15 Speaker 1 They met several children along the way and asked them. One child said, “I’d like a ticket to travel to the Rebbe in America.”

17:23 Speaker 5 Oh!

17:23 Speaker 1 That was one. Then another child said the same thing. “What would you really like?” “To be able to travel and see the Rebbe.” They heard this from several children. They were stunned. These were little children with nothing. Any child would want a toy or something, new clothes, good shoes. You could see they had nothing at all. When someone came ready to give them something, what did they ask for? To see the Rebbe. Little children. They returned profoundly impressed. Now, the head of the committee was friendly with Rabbi [unclear], and he told him, “Look, I have to see this Rebbe whom they all want so badly to see.” So they arranged a yechidus for him with the Frierdiker Rebbe. He was deeply impressed, very moved, and so on. He himself was pleased, but his children, who had grown up there in the United States, were no longer exactly heading in the right direction. He asked the Frierdiker Rebbe for a blessing that his children should be fine Jewish children. The Rebbe answered something about the grandchildren—that they would be.

18:45 Speaker 5 The grandchildren?

18:46 Speaker 1 Yes. Meaning, he didn’t say anything about his—

18:51 Speaker 5 His children.

18:52 Speaker 1 His children. So it was understood that—but the grandchildren would return. In any case, that’s the story as it relates to our subject. And let’s finish the—

19:04 Speaker 5 It emphasizes that even in childhood, that was their wish, their aspiration: to see the Rebbe.

19:09 Speaker 1 Yes, but let’s finish the story first. At the place where he had been invited to speak, there were Anash and various other people. He had come to give a serious talk. A woman there was friends with another young woman who was becoming closer to Yiddishkeit. She was very intelligent and perceptive, but had many doubts about whether to take on a frum way of life. Her friend persuaded her that it would be worthwhile to come hear him. She heard this story, and he mentioned the man’s name. And to finish the story: that grandfather whose grandchildren would return was her grandfather.

20:08 Speaker 5 Wow.

20:10 Speaker 1 She was the granddaughter of that committee head—

20:11 Speaker 5 The granddaughter of that committee head, yes.

20:13 Speaker 1 Whom Hecht had told the story about.

20:15 Speaker 5 Wow, remarkable.

20:18 Speaker 1 Of course, we live the Rebbe, breathe the Rebbe, think about the Rebbe, learn the Rebbe’s teachings. You can’t say that’s going too far. There’s no such thing. The Rebbe is our father. That is part of our very existence. We exist because we have the Rebbe. Living with the Rebbe means he is our father. But on Yud Shvat, we must emphasize his kingship. There is no doubt that once we have “our Father,” it must lead to “our King.” Alongside this, it says: “Love brings a person to cleave to Hashem, and one cannot cleave to Hashem except by fulfilling the 248 precepts, which are the 248 limbs of the King.” Love for the Rebbe must lead to fulfilling the 248 precepts. It has to, because otherwise the love isn’t genuine. That brings it all back to our subject. Yud Shvat arrives, the day the Rebbe accepted the leadership. What does that mean? It’s the day the Rebbe accepted Anash’s request. True, there were various expressions at the time, such as, “I have not yet received the instruction.” [unclear] came and asked the Rebbe to accept the leadership. We’re not going into all the details of those special days now. But what happened here? Chassidim asked, “Our Rebbe, reign over us”—they asked the Rebbe to accept the leadership. What is a nasi? A king. The leader of the generation. So this day arrives. If we always work on making our hiskashrus to the Rebbe what it should be, then certainly when this special day arrives—the day devoted to just that, the Rosh Hashanah of hiskashrus—we remember that the Rebbe accepted the leadership. And there is our part in it: we accept the Rebbe’s leadership over us. We turn to the Rebbe. At the time, it was

23:40 Speaker 1 We are called upon to accept the Rebbe’s leadership, and when we speak about the Rebbe as Melech HaMoshiach, we need to emphasize the point of kingship: Moshiach will be both a rav and a king. From the outset, the Rebbe emphasized this matter of kingship many times. In a sicha from [unclear], the Rebbe distinguishes between the kingship of a nasi and [unclear]. But in general, when we speak about the Moshiach of the generation, it is a matter of kingship. Hiskashrus—our bond with the Rebbe—is an expression of our relationship to a king. In one of the sichos from [unclear], the Rebbe says: How do we fulfill “You shall surely appoint a king over yourself” today? By accepting the Rebbe upon ourselves. That is in our words, but it is a very explicit sicha. “You shall surely appoint a king over yourself”—accepting his kingship. So Yud Shvat is a time to accept his kingship. What does that mean? Accepting his kingship means accepting his decrees. And accepting his kingship means accepting everything—even when it comes in the form of decrees, accepting them as they are and not otherwise. Working more and more on devotion born of self-nullification. And sometimes—and here it is worth noting something from these parshiyos we are living with, about Moshe Rabbeinu and the Exodus from Egypt—a person may feel the coarseness of the body, and all the reasons for using it to eat and drink or for other worldly matters, as the Rebbe says. There is a certain coarseness that we need to know how to overcome. How do we do that? How do we do that? This is the avodah of the Exodus from Egypt that we are discussing now. There is an exodus from the constraints and limitations of worldly matters, and so on. There is also an exodus from the confines of reason, which are themselves a kind of constraint, into what is beyond reason. This comes up often in the Rebbe’s sichos in this connection. A person is working on his own Exodus from Egypt, and he

26:14 Speaker 1 finds it difficult. What does he do? This is directly relevant to what we are discussing now. There is what Hakadosh Boruch Hu said to Moshe Rabbeinu, when Moshe Rabbeinu said to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, “I am of uncircumcised lips.” How could Pharaoh possibly listen to me, when I am of uncircumcised lips? What does “uncircumcised lips” mean? He cannot speak at all. Earlier, he had already said, “I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.” He spoke with difficulty. Hakadosh Boruch Hu had told him that his brother Aharon would serve as his mouth. So why does he raise it again here? The Rebbe explains: Before, he still felt that he could speak to some extent. Now, suddenly, he feels what Rashi says about “uncircumcised lips”: he cannot do it; he is incapable. So he asks, what will happen? I said to send Aharon. Fine, Aharon can go and convey everything necessary, but I am of uncircumcised lips—I cannot speak at all. The Rebbe explains that this was a state of bittul, of self-nullification. His bittul had become so great that Moshe truly felt unable to convey anything onward. He was in the position of a recipient and could not be an influencer. So what does Hakadosh Boruch Hu tell him? “You shall do all that I command you, and Aharon your brother shall be your prophet.” What does that mean? He is of uncircumcised lips, unable to convey things properly, and so on. So Hashem tells him: There is what I will command. I will command, and you will do it. Rashi says, “Each and every mission.” Rashi uses the word “mission”; he does not use a word meaning mediation. For each and every mission, you will say it only as you heard it from Me. Aharon your brother will interpret it—translate it. What does “interpret it” mean? Translate it. You will say it as you heard it from Me. In what language? The Holy Tongue. Does Pharaoh understand it? No.

28:14 Speaker 6 That is why he needs a spokesman and an interpreter.

28:16 Speaker 1 So Aharon will be his spokesman and interpreter. He will have to translate and adapt it. And what about Pharaoh? Pharaoh hears the word of Hashem as Moshe heard it from Him. What is the point here? The Rebbe says that the Shechinah spoke from Moshe Rabbeinu’s throat. Here, they needed to break the evil, the force of Egypt’s wickedness. As it says, “If you see a wicked person whom fortune favors, do not provoke him,” because you cannot overcome him—only Hakadosh Boruch Hu can. So the Shechinah had to speak from Moshe’s throat as he came to break Pharaoh. That is the meaning of “I have made you a G-d to Pharaoh”: one who rules over him. And how does Moshe convey Hashem’s word to him? Exactly as Moshe heard it from Hashem. Afterward, Aharon explains it. So Moshe stands before Pharaoh and speaks to him in the Holy Tongue, conveying the words of Hakadosh Boruch Hu exactly as they are. That breaks Pharaoh, and then he can have an effect. The Rebbe says that this applies to each person’s own avodah. Since everyone has a spark of Moshe, when a person reaches a point where he feels he must deal with this coarseness—as it says in Tanya, [unclear]—he awakens the Moshe within him to break the kelipah. How? By connecting with the Moshe of the generation. By learning the Rebbe’s Torah, we receive that power of Moshe, who conveys Hashem’s word just as he heard it from Him. Hiskashrus gives us this incredible strength through Torah study and so on. Hiskashrus.

30:16 Speaker 6 That is remarkable. It underscores just how important it is, in these final moments of galus, to connect with the Rebbe and commit ourselves completely.

30:25 Speaker 1 Exactly, precisely. The Rebbe reveals these things to us in these times, when one could certainly say there are objective difficulties—at least in the eyes of the animal soul. In truth, it only seems that way. But to the animal soul, it appears objective. There is darkness all around, a doubled and redoubled darkness, calling darkness light and light darkness, confusion in every direction. People get confused; people are confused. People do not know how to make sense of themselves or what they believe. People are capable of going out and doing the very opposite of what they should, things that are, rachmana litzlan... Just look around a little. A few months ago, you thought it could not possibly get any darker. On the one hand, we are in our own world. We are all living through this period of this extraordinary war. May Hashem help everyone: may we have a great victory, may the soldiers hold strong, may the wounded recover, and may the hostages return. We pray and act for all of these things, and the Temimim sit and learn Torah and strengthen all of this. At the same time, there is darkness: amid all this, there are people prepared to stand up and make claims and say things that are simply inconceivable. To withstand these situations—all of them—we do not go with our own strength. We go with the strength of the one who sent us. The one who sent you gives you the strength to overcome every difficulty in his shlichus, including the shlichus that begins, first and foremost—I do not mean first in a chronological sense, but particularly in what is placed upon you personally—with your own difficulties. Today, you cannot wait for one thing to begin and then for the next to begin. But a person does feel his own difficulties, the coarseness within himself that he must overcome. There, too, the one who sent us—the Rebbe, the spark of Moshe—gives you the strength to overcome yourself and break all

32:49 Speaker 1 these things. And certainly to succeed in doing what must be done, as the Rebbe told a certain shliach: “I am going; I can.”

33:07 Speaker 7 So let us focus on that. Since you are speaking about the strength of the one who sends us, we would like to hear what it felt like on your shlichus to Eretz Yisroel—the well-known shlichus of 5736. A small opening question: It all began in [unclear]. After the niggun on 4 Av, when the Rebbe spoke about sending shluchim to Eretz Yisroel, everyone immediately wanted to get on the list, and hundreds signed up. Were you certain from the outset that you would be chosen as one of the Rebbe’s shluchim to Eretz Yisroel—and you were accepted?

33:44 Speaker 1 How could it have been otherwise?

33:45 Speaker 7 How could it have been otherwise?

33:46 Speaker 1 If you were there that Purim, how could it have been otherwise? By the very next day—the crowd was not so large anymore—people were already saying... I did not hear it firsthand, but what people heard then was that about 390 people had signed up with the secretariat.

33:59 Speaker 7 Three hundred and ninety people signed up.

34:01 Speaker 1 The next day.

34:02 Speaker 7 That was even before the secretariat’s criteria reduced the number.

34:05 Speaker 1 Before the criteria. That is why—before the criteria.

34:09 Speaker 7 And after the secretariat’s criteria, you were among those selected?

34:12 Speaker 1 The Rebbe stated the criteria on Purim. It was not that the secretariat announced some criteria; the Rebbe stated them on Purim. They said that Rabbi Dan Gurary [unclear] also signed up the next day. But once they looked at the criteria, they understood afterward that it did not apply to him.

34:31 Speaker 7 Mm-hmm.

34:31 Speaker 1 The criteria the Rebbe stated were that these were people who could sit and learn in a kollel in Eretz Yisroel—not people in their first year after marriage, and not people who were already involved in [unclear].

34:46 Speaker 7 Mm-hmm.

34:47 Speaker 1 So that automatically brought the number down to—

34:51 Speaker 7 A much smaller group.

34:53 Speaker 1 Yes, very much so.

34:54 Speaker 7 You had one child at the time.

34:57 Speaker 1 By then I already had more than one, yes.

34:59 Speaker 7 An institute.

34:59 Speaker 1 I was fortunate to have this opportunity to go on that shlichus. Before then, the arrangement was to spend two years in kollel. But shortly before 5736, the Rebbe spoke about the kollel, and [unclear], and shortened it to one year.

35:19 Speaker 7 …

35:20 Speaker 1 So the rabbi said that anyone who wanted to stay another year, for a particular reason, would have to submit a special request.

35:26 Speaker 7 …

35:27 Speaker 1 My study partner at the time was Alter Yoav Friedman.

35:31 Speaker 7 …

35:32 Speaker 1 He’s here from the shlichus to Tzfas. We lived together here and there. So we submitted a request through the secretariat, and apparently it was brought to the Rebbe: we wanted to stay another year and spend more time learning. We received approval. That’s how we ended up still in kollel and not yet part of the initiative, because there had already been other shlichus assignments.

35:52 Speaker 7 And that’s what [unclear]—what gave you the—

35:54 Speaker 1 It gave us the opportunity to go. For the initiative, the Rebbe said eleven. The Rebbe had spoken about it earlier, and then said there would be eleven: eleven bochurim for Jerusalem and eleven families—

36:07 Speaker 7 For Tzfas.

36:08 Speaker 1 For Tzfas. The reason was that settlement in Tzfas was just beginning, and there would be people joining it. At that point, the initiative had only eight families.

36:18 Speaker 7 …

36:19 Speaker 1 Because there weren’t more than eight who met the criteria.

36:22 Speaker 7 Eight families, uh, going—

36:24 Speaker 1 Yes. And to make up the other three, the Rebbe said to take them from among those returning from shlichus in Australia.

36:31 Speaker 7 Ah.

36:31 Speaker 1 Three bochurim.

36:32 Speaker 7 Yes. The Rebbe’s special words on Shabbos Chanukah, when the Rebbe said, “Go up and settle there,” certainly gave us the impetus to actually make the move.

36:43 Speaker 1 There were people here who faced all kinds of difficulties during the first few years. They would always say, “The Rebbe said, ‘Go up and settle there.’ There’s nothing to worry about.” “Settle there”—it was an extraordinary expression. This whole shlichus, really—if we’re talking about Yud Shvat, I once said that Yud Shvat is “the day of shlichus.” Yud Shvat is when the Rebbe assumed the leadership. We were privileged in this generation that the Rebbe gave us this gift: we connect to him through shlichus, in the sense that “a person’s agent is like the person himself.” It’s such an investment that, according to halachah, there is this powerful connection: a person’s agent is like the person himself.

37:26 Speaker 7 …

37:27 Speaker 1 And with this shlichus—without getting into its spiritual dimensions, which Rabbi Mindel discussed for fifty minutes before the Rebbe appointed him to accompany the shluchim—

37:39 Speaker 7 I understand that, at first, you didn’t know he was going to accompany you.

37:44 Speaker 1 He kept it secret.

37:46 Speaker 7 And then it came out.

37:49 Speaker 1 No, they certainly informed us in the last few days.

37:51 Speaker 7 There had already been a discussion with him in a small group beforehand.

37:53 Speaker 1 It wasn’t only with him in that small group beforehand. They had an official group photograph taken. Often, when a shliach travels, they take a headshot. Here they took a photograph of all the shluchim, and he spoke there too, so apparently they already knew he was going to join us. But all of that seemed to come from the staff. [unclear] and so on. He said then, “You don’t know. If you heard the things I’ve heard, you don’t know.” And however much we begged him to tell us what he had heard, he wouldn’t say. In any event, there was a spiritual dimension to the things we heard at farbrengens. We heard how the Rebbe emphasized that this shlichus was for the whole Jewish people, and that therefore men, women and children would all go, representing everyone. There were words that indicated quite clearly that this was a kind of beginning of the coming of Moshiach Tzidkeinu, a gathering of the exiles as people came to the Holy Land. And he himself said that there is the desire to be there, and that it cannot happen without him. We are shluchim.

39:00 Speaker 7 The mitzvos connected with the Land of Israel—the Rebbe emphasized that.

39:02 Speaker 1 What?

39:02 Speaker 7 The Rebbe emphasized it.

39:03 Speaker 1 As part of their role—what would their role be? Here the Rebbe laid out the details. First, the substance of it: people are sent to go and live there, to study both the revealed and hidden dimensions of Torah, and so on; to work with young people; and to strengthen the observance of the mitzvos connected with the Land of Israel and the building of the land, materially and spiritually. Building the land spiritually means that they would live there, study Torah and do all these things. Materially, their living there and their everyday expenses would constitute building the land in a material sense. The Rebbe sent people to build the land materially and spiritually by being here for that period. At first the Rebbe said two years, and then they would see about the future. Later we learned that, from the outset, the Rebbe really wanted them to stay.

39:51 Speaker 7 But at the outset, the Rebbe said it would be for a year or two, and then they would decide.

39:54 Speaker 1 That made it easier, yes.

39:56 Speaker 7 When did you receive the answer? [unclear]

39:59 Speaker 1 Everyone received it, because at that time—

40:01 Speaker 7 Around Chanukah.

40:02 Speaker 1 The tenth of Tishrei.

40:04 Speaker 7 …

40:05 Speaker 1 Because of—

40:05 Speaker 7 And did you believe you would receive an answer—that it would be a positive answer?

40:08 Speaker 1 We couldn’t know.

40:09 Speaker 7 You had a sense of it, though. But surely it was an indescribable joy.

40:12 Speaker 1 The truth is, if you considered who the likely candidates were, you could understand that the answer might be yes. But from the moment we signed up, we lived with the hope that we truly wanted this and, with Hashem’s help, would merit it.

40:25 Speaker 7 …

40:26 Speaker 1 Because—

40:27 Speaker 7 Why was the shlichus actually delayed until Yud Shvat, if the whole awakening had begun on 19 Kislev?

40:33 Speaker 1 To answer your question, organizing everything took time, until the Rebbe gave his answer. After the Rebbe gave his answer, there was all kinds of paperwork to arrange, and so on. We made aliyah through the Jewish Agency. But at a certain point, the Rebbe had already announced that on Yud Shvat, [unclear] of the shluchim.

40:52 Speaker 7 …

40:53 Speaker 1 Their time would be Yud Shvat. In other words, the Rebbe connected it directly with Yud Shvat. And notice that it was Yud Shvat. As I once said, there is certainly a hint here worth noting: it was exactly seventeen and twenty-six years since the—

41:10 Speaker 7 The honored tzaddik.

41:11 Speaker 1 So there was a certain revelation here that the Rebbe was bringing down into the world—

41:16 Speaker 7 [unclear]

41:18 Speaker 1 Yes. And within this idea of bringing these matters into Eretz Yisroel—the Rebbe connected it in the clearest possible way with Moshiach. Anyone who studies the sichos can see it. [unclear] collected all the sichos from that time in the book Shliach. You can see very, very clearly that this was another action in matters of Moshiach being revealed in Eretz Yisroel. There is no doubt that bringing the Rebbe into Eretz Yisroel was one of the goals the shluchim understood to be their task, and that is what happened. The shluchim’s activities began throughout Eretz Yisroel on a large scale and in all kinds of ways. There was a special emphasis on living with the Rebbe’s teachings, living with the Rebbe’s mitzvah campaigns, living with the Rebbe. And that feeling permeated Anash in the Holy Land to an incomparably greater degree than before the shluchim arrived—

42:22 Speaker 7 I just want to go back a step. When you set out on shlichus, there was the Yud Shvat 5736 farbrengen, which was essentially your last farbrengen with the Rebbe. Afterward came the moment when you passed before the Rebbe and received the—

42:36 Speaker 1 Yes.

42:36 Speaker 7 Likkutei Sichos.

42:37 Speaker 1 Certainly.

42:38 Speaker 7 What was it like? It was the first time the Rebbe had distributed Likkutei Sichos, wasn’t it? That wasn’t something that—

42:43 Speaker 1 A book, a book of sichos—for the first time. In any case, volume eleven was about to come out then. The bound copies weren’t ready from the printer yet, so they made a special binding—

42:54 Speaker 7 …

42:55 Speaker 1 For the number of copies needed for the—

42:56 Speaker 7 Shluchim.

42:57 Speaker 1 To distribute. The rest of the bound books only came from the printer a week or two later, but these really were the first bound copies. The Rebbe distributed them to the shluchim, and later distributed them in the same way to each person in the second and third groups of shluchim. And it’s interesting: the shlichus called for eleven people, they left on 11 Shvat, and the Rebbe distributed volume eleven.

43:21 Speaker 7 Volume eleven. 11 Shvat, 11 Shvat, eleven.

43:24 Speaker 1 Yes, and there was more later. In the recorded sichos, we can hear the Rebbe emphasizing the significance of eleven. At any rate, I began talking about this shlichus and have already strayed into a few words about its special spiritual significance. It wasn’t simply a shlichus to a particular place to spread the wellsprings. It wasn’t a shlichus to a place that needed to be revitalized. It was a special shlichus: the Rebbe wanted to be in the Holy Land.

44:00 Speaker 7 The Rebbe himself.

44:01 Speaker 1 Yes, that’s how he said it. With emphasis. This is the special shlichus: to bring the Rebbe to the Land of Israel. The special shlichus is really to make the Rebbe’s presence felt in the world. And this is what I started to say earlier. There’s something special about this shlichus. Earlier, we spoke about the Rebbe’s work and about “a person’s shliach is like himself”—how, according to halachah, that creates the connection. But here it goes further. The Rebbe discusses this at length in a sicha about shlichus: first comes the appointment, and afterward the actual carrying out of the shlichus. There are different levels in shlichus. Carrying it out means doing the work in practice, actually accomplishing something. The appointment comes first. What do we understand from that? The appointment itself creates the connection between the shliach and the one who sends him. And when does that connection become apparent? When he actually acts. It all begins with the appointment, but you see it in action when you carry out the shlichus, when you go out on the Rebbe’s mivtzoim. That’s how the Rebbe expressed it regarding the mivtzoim. At that moment, you have “a person’s shliach is like himself.” You travel to a particular place on shlichus and do your work there, and all your actions at that time have that quality. But with this shlichus, it isn’t only the appointment that connects you. The shlichus itself is your very presence, twenty-four hours a day, in the Holy Land. By being there physically, you are working to build up the Land in a physical sense. Your very physical presence accomplishes what the Rebbe wants: that his representatives should be walking through the Holy Land.

46:13 Speaker 7 The Rebbe is walking through the Holy Land.

46:15 Speaker 1 Those aren’t just words.

46:17 Speaker 7 They sound like words that belong to the Geulah. I understand how deeply this connection relates to Moshiach. The Rebbe walks through the Holy Land.

46:24 Speaker 1 In other words—

46:25 Speaker 7 Moshe Rabbeinu enters the Land.

46:26 Speaker 1 You’ve been given a shlichus here, a twenty-four-hour shlichus. You’re carrying it out twenty-four hours a day. If we sat and contemplated that all the time, it could overwhelm us. But then you’d be acting against the shlichus. So eat and drink and do everything you need to do. Still, the point is that the shliach is one with the one who sends him. There are different ways of describing it—the shliach’s actions, the shliach’s capacity—but here it is the very essence of the shliach. His whole being is the shlichus.

47:11 Speaker 7 Every detail.

47:12 Speaker 1 And so it goes, because you’ve received this shlichus for every single second. So when we speak about what is special about this shlichus, it’s something unparalleled. I’m saying all this to express that same idea. You don’t have this in an ordinary shlichus, unless someone truly takes this appointment upon himself and feels that he himself has to make it happen.

47:45 Speaker 7 That his whole being is the Rebbe.

47:46 Speaker 1 All the time, completely immersed in it. Here, you were given that from the outset.

47:52 Speaker 7 That itself is remarkable, because it sheds a special light on how to be the Rebbe’s shliach all the time, and how to devote every day of your life to Moshiach, so that it becomes your whole being.

48:24 Speaker 8 The Rebbe [unclear] on Friday, 7 Shvat, Parshas Bo, [unclear] Shvat. [unclear] And especially, a few days before that, [unclear] special days, and particularly at special times.

48:47 Speaker 7 To try to connect all these threads: from 19 Tishrei 5776, perhaps we can go back and speak about Moshiach in connection with this shlichus—about 19 Tishrei 5733, when the Rebbe was present for the completion of Moshiach’s Sefer Torah.

49:04 Speaker 9 I can say it in just a few words. The feeling among all Anash then—

49:13 Speaker 7 Friday.

49:15 Speaker 9 Even before Friday, in the preceding days, among Anash... It was my first year with the Rebbe. In Shvat, I was corresponding with my friends, classmates who were on shlichus at the yeshivah in Buenos Aires. They had returned to Buenos Aires on the Rebbe’s shlichus, and we kept writing to one another. We received descriptions of what was happening there among the Jews, among the local families, and of the atmosphere. They described it as an atmosphere of Moshiach; that was the atmosphere here as well. When those representatives arrived and said they were going to bring the names to the Rebbe, and stood in the Rebbe’s presence, the atmosphere was incredible, electric. You simply couldn’t think otherwise. Twenty years—the final letter—the Rebbe completes it, and that’s it. That’s it. We have the recording, and the Rebbe himself says that he is completing the Sefer Torah. A Sefer Torah to welcome Moshiach. So that was it: we were going to welcome Moshiach. It was so clear, so clear. I’m not sure that, even in the later years when the Rebbe spoke about Moshiach with full force, people felt quite what they felt in those days.

50:39 Speaker 7 To that extent?

50:39 Speaker 9 And so on and so forth. I’m not sure the feeling was the same. Look, speaking for myself, I was a younger yeshivah student then, so of course the excitement was different. Here it was about to happen—and there you were, seeing the Sefer Torah completed, taking part in that event. It was an utterly heavenly event.

51:00 Speaker 7 Rabbi, do you remember exactly where you were standing?

51:03 Speaker 9 Of course. What kind of question is that? There’s even a photograph in which you can see me.

51:08 Speaker 7 On which side?

51:09 Speaker 9 It wasn’t my usual place. I was standing to the Rebbe’s right.

51:16 Speaker 7 Mm-hmm.

51:17 Speaker 9 Among those standing there, quite far from [unclear], a little closer to the middle.

51:23 Speaker 7 But you could see what was happening at the table in the middle?

51:26 Speaker 9 Ninety percent of it.

51:27 Speaker 7 Mm-hmm.

51:28 Speaker 9 And of course I could hear well, and so on.

51:30 Speaker 7 The maamar and everything else.

51:32 Speaker 9 Certainly, certainly. It was incredible. Incredible, incredible, incredible. Look, accounts of all this have already appeared in writings and diaries.

51:44 Speaker 7 We want to hear what it felt like.

51:45 Speaker 9 At the time.

51:45 Speaker 7 The feeling isn’t written down.

51:46 Speaker 9 At the time, Dubrovsky—

51:49 Speaker 7 Mm-hmm.

51:50 Speaker 9 My uncle wrote an entire article in Di Yiddishe Heim, a Yiddish quarterly. That article was translated and has also been printed several times in our Chabad weeklies. It gives a very, very vivid account of it all. Every time I read it, it takes me right back there. Here I’m trying to convey something of the feeling and of the subject of Moshiach. Anyone who paid attention—and many people did, throughout the years—saw that the Rebbe spoke about this point directly all the time. If you look at the Rebbe’s talks, one of the first messages is: What is emunah? What was Moshe Rabbeinu’s role? After all, it was in the merit of emunah that they were redeemed from bondage in Egypt. The Rebbe explains that Moshe Rabbeinu’s role was to instill emunah in the Jewish people so deeply that it became internal to them, part of who they were; in that merit, they were able to leave Egypt. And the same is true now, with the true and complete Geulah. This is what Chabad Chassidus does. The Rebbe connects it with Chassidus: Chabad Chassidus makes emunah something internal—not merely the natural faith inherited by “believers, children of believers,” but something that penetrates a person. That is how the Rebbe is building our emunah for today. In the merit of emunah, they were redeemed from bondage in Egypt. The Rebbe also speaks about ufaratzta, “you shall spread out.” There is a sicha in which the Rebbe explains its relevance: Yaakov’s inheritance was “an inheritance without boundaries.” When will ufaratzta be fulfilled completely? When Moshiach comes. Then “the one who breaks through will go up before us,” and ufaratzta will be complete. When the Rebbe began the campaign of ufaratzta, he began setting the course toward the complete Geulah. All the years since the beginning of the Rebbe’s leadership, we have been drawing closer to the Geulah, until the Rebbe began speaking about it in greater detail in 5738. I remember being at a farbrengen where the Rebbe—

53:51 Speaker 9 —mentioned, as people said of that year, 5738, 5738. Then, beginning in the 5740s, the Rebbe spoke about a year of Moshiach and spoke about Moshiach, and so on. The Rebbe began speaking about these matters of Moshiach, and that was exactly when [unclear]. And the Rebbe founded Tzivos Hashem, echoing the verse about all the hosts of Hashem going out from the land of Egypt. You can see the direct connection to everything concerning the Geulah. Then the Rebbe speaks about Moshiach’s coming, Moshiach’s revelation, Moshiach as king, and someone who is certainly Moshiach.

54:26 Speaker 10 That is Moshiach.

54:27 Speaker 9 Yes, the whole new development concerning Moshiach and so on. So what does that mean? Was it just some kind of attempt to hint that this is an auspicious time? It is much more than that. When the Rebbe gives the acronym for the year, that means it expresses the content of the year. And that year already saw this progress in matters connected with the coming of Moshiach. Clearly, the coming of Moshiach has various stages. As the Rebbe explains in one of his letters, in response to a question—if I remember correctly, it was Rabbi Quint [unclear] who asked the Rebbe; it has already appeared in English, though I haven’t seen it in English myself. I know it from Chabad literature. How do we say “I believe” on Shabbos? One of the answers concerns the coming of Moshiach: there are levels to it. It doesn’t mean he has already come in full revelation; rather, it begins. So there is the coming of Moshiach, a certain degree of revelation, and so on. And today we are living in such a period. We have already spoken [unclear] about this, about how one feels it, especially what is in the air, and so on.

55:31 Speaker 10 Until Moshiach actually begins to reveal himself and act in the world.

55:35 Speaker 9 These are all very well-known things. Our avodah has to take the form of a connection. There is a bond with the Rebbe. It cannot be expressed only by saying, “I love the Rebbe”; it has to be expressed in actual deeds. And that bond cannot mean doing things exactly as I did thirty or fifty years ago. If I want to act as the Rebbe wants me to—and in truth, this was already discussed at length thirty years ago, and especially in the later years—then there has to be a sense that everything revolves around Moshiach, as the Rebbe laid it out in the winter of 5752. That is hiskashrus with the Rebbe: carrying out his directives as he wants us to, as he tells us to, and following them as closely as possible.

56:42 Speaker 11 We can connect this—since we were speaking about Yud Shvat 5753 and Yud Shvat 5757, Yud Shvat 5753 was also something of a milestone in all of...

56:50 Speaker 9 What makes it different? Every Yud Shvat draws down a light—

56:53 Speaker 11 Perhaps when he accepts Moshiach—

56:54 Speaker 9 A new light unlike any before it. There are special years whose significance we have seen, and there are years when we do not know how it will be expressed. But clearly, that year was the year of the coronation. People tried, and worried, and were afraid about what would happen, and so on. Then they decided to announce that it was not a coronation, because all the newspapers were calling it that and everyone knew the truth. “It’s not a coronation; the chassidim will say...” and so on—all kinds of things they tried to insert into it. But essentially, they wanted to cancel the whole event. Then people went in to the Rebbe about it, and the Rebbe gave his approval. Here in the Holy Land, too, there were various discussions behind the scenes: would they allow a—

57:44 Speaker 11 Broadcast.

57:44 Speaker 9 A broadcast. Would they allow a broadcast or not? In the end, it was clear that if it took place at the Center, there would be a broadcast here in the Holy Land too. And this clearly had its effect on the world: the whole world knew that chassidim accepted the Rebbe. Everyone knew that chassidim accepted the Rebbe as the Rebbe of all the Jewish people and, no secret about it, as King Moshiach. There was coverage in the press about the acceptance of his kingship. I began with this earlier: Yud Shvat is the time of accepting the nesius. Accepting the nesius means accepting his kingship. They go together; they are the same thing, the same content. The question is how to put it into words, and those words express the content clearly. When you say “accepting his kingship,” it emphasizes that we mean taking it upon ourselves to carry out all his directives, and so on. It makes clear that the Rebbe is our king, and it brings about “They will seek Hashem their G-d and David their king.” Just as chassidim then asked the Rebbe to accept the nesius, so chassidim have been asking the Rebbe throughout all these years: “They will seek Hashem their G-d and David their king—come reign over us.” And the Rebbe hears our declaration of “Long live the King,” which affects all these matters, as explained regarding “Long live the King,” and expresses our acceptance of his kingship. This will surely bring us to a point where, this Yud Shvat, we will already see the Rebbe’s providence. May King Moshiach come and redeem us immediately, and may all the Jewish people, together, proclaim: “Long live our master, our teacher, and our Rebbe, King Moshiach, forever.”

59:28 Speaker 11 Thank you so much, Rabbi Eli Shemtov. Thank you very much.

59:30 Speaker 9 Thank you.

59:32 Speaker 3 Ears to Hear. Audio programs for the Temimim from World ATAH. For more programs, dial *6358. Long live our master, our teacher, and our Rebbe, King Moshiach, forever and ever.