Ears to Hear 37 | Accepting the Kingship - Then and Now!

00:00 Speaker 1 Hashem has given you a heart to know, eyes to see and ears to hear.

00:08 Speaker 2 Ears to Hear. Audio programs for the Temimim, from World ATA.

00:15 Speaker 3 There wasn’t an ordinary Chassidic bochur who thought otherwise. It was hard to take in, but the Rebbe said it so clearly. No one—no one thought the Rebbe meant it only in a spiritual sense. Maybe the Rebbe, who is in Atzilus, was speaking about how things are on a spiritual level? No. The Rebbe was speaking to me directly, at eye level: this is reality.

00:51 Speaker 2 Shalom aleichem to all the Temimim in Tomchei Temimim Lubavitch yeshivos throughout the Holy Land and around the world. We are now about to begin another program in the Ears to Hear audio series, a program permeated with a special vitality in matters of Geulah and Moshiach and in a genuine connection to the Rebbe, Melech HaMoshiach shlita, and his central mission: to bring about the days of Moshiach in actual practice. In this program, we want to discuss what accepting his kingship means in the everyday avodah of every Tomim—in thought, speech and action—and accepting the Rebbe’s kingship as Melech HaMoshiach. First, we’d like to hear from the mashpia Rabbi Shlomo Rosenblatt about the events surrounding the acceptance of his kingship in 5751, 5752 and 5753. Hearing that account will then bring us to examine how every Tomim can accept his kingship within himself. Let’s begin this special program with Rabbi Rosenblatt. Shalom aleichem, Rabbi Rosenblatt.

01:56 Speaker 3 Shalom aleichem. Welcome, dear Temimim, who want to cleave to the Rebbe and draw close to him with all your strength and all your soul. Especially now, as Yud Shvat approaches—welcome.

02:12 Speaker 2 Baruch Hashem, we’re sitting here together in the Tomchei Temimim yeshiva in Beit Shemesh, and we’re already within the thirty days before Yud Shvat. Everyone wants to strengthen their connection to the Rebbe and grow closer to him. As we understand it today, that also means accepting the Rebbe’s kingship as Melech HaMoshiach more and more. So in this program, of course, we want to discuss how to accept his kingship inwardly and in a way that becomes part of every Tomim’s very being. But first, we’d like to hear a little from your perspective—the story as you experienced it. As a Tomim in the senior yeshiva in those years, from 5751 through 5752 and 5753, before you went on kevutzah in 5754, how did the Rebbe’s words about accepting his kingship reach you? How did you receive them as bochurim in yeshiva? And how deeply did accepting the Rebbe’s kingship as Melech HaMoshiach take hold of you?

03:02 Speaker 3 All right, I’ll speak from a personal perspective. You can read various diaries and accounts by writers and journalists who recorded these things for publication. But as our host, Rabbi Sasson, said, I’ll speak from my own perspective. So I’ll begin in the summer of 5751. Actually, the beginning of this whole matter—the preparation and avodah of welcoming Moshiach Tzidkeinu, leading to the message of Geulah, the proclamation of “Yechi,” and the Rebbe’s responses—was, as we all know, on Rosh Chodesh Nissan 5751. We had come back to yeshiva at the end of Adar, perhaps a day or two before Rosh Chodesh Nissan. It may even have been Rosh Chodesh Nissan.

04:16 Speaker 2 You were a first-year Tomim.

04:18 Speaker 3 A first-year Tomim, yes. First year.

04:22 Speaker 2 Okay.

04:28 Speaker 3 And... as is well known, the sicha was on Thursday night. Nobody was expecting a sicha. In general, you could hear the sichos on the radio—“Kfar Chabad radio,” if you can call it that. Maybe not yet at that time, but you could hear the sichos in Kfar Chabad. Usually, though, these were sichos we had planned to listen to, or they were on special days when we thought in advance that perhaps the Rebbe would hold a farbrengen or speak. Rosh Chodesh Nissan wasn’t one of the days we expected that. So nobody thought to check whether there would be a sicha. In fact, at the yeshiva we didn’t hear it live. Only the next morning, when we came to the Friday morning Chassidus seder, the mashpia of our class was sitting in the zal, visibly shaken and frightened.

05:42 Speaker 2 Who was the mashpia?

05:43 Speaker 3 It was Reb Dovber Zalmano[unclear], our mashpia in yeshiva. He was sitting in his place when we came in to start the seder, and he looked completely shaken. He was the first person we heard about the sicha from. “There was a startling sicha tonight,” he said. “The Rebbe said things... things so startling that chassidim have never heard anything like them from the Rebbe.” It seemed that he could barely even speak and repeat what had been said. Once we heard there had been such an extraordinary sicha, of course we made sure to listen to the recording. By the time the bochurim came into the zal, the recording was already playing. What the Rebbe said was startling beyond words: “I have already done all that I can. There is nothing more I can do. I am handing it over to you.” It was as if the Rebbe was stepping down from his role. “I have done all that I can. The only thing I can do is give out dollars for tzedakah.” These were startling things, things chassidim had never heard from the Rebbe in this way. There had been somewhat similar things on Purim 5747, but not like this. That Friday was when this intense involvement in matters of Moshiach really began. By that Shabbos, the shluchim who had heard the Rebbe’s sicha came to the yeshiva, shaken and driven by the urgency of the Rebbe’s words. They gathered every bochur they came across. At any rate, I wasn’t in the yeshiva, and as I recall, it was simply empty. The shluchim understood that something earth-shaking was happening.

07:52 Speaker 2 Apart from the bochurim from the yeshiva who had gone out on shlichus, right?

07:55 Speaker 3 It was generally accepted for bochurim to travel on Shabbos for shlichus, especially at particular times, like before Yud Shvat or before 19 Kislev. On the last Shabbos before 19 Kislev or Yud Shvat they would go to shluchim, and at other special times they would also go out on shlichus, to communities with the mobile mitzvah tanks. Shabbos shlichus was part of yeshiva life. The shluchim arrived and gathered the bochurim—eighteen bochurim. Nobody stopped to think how they would manage or what would happen. The yeshiva simply emptied out.

08:31 Speaker 4 There was a sense of urgency. The Rebbe had to be revealed.

08:33 Speaker 3 It was a shock. Maybe you could put it in the words “the Rebbe has to be revealed,” but that wasn’t how we expressed it then. The words were: “We have to do something.” The Rebbe was giving it to us. The Rebbe could no longer—so to speak, the Rebbe could no longer do anything more, except give out tzedakah, as he put it. It was like what the Rebbe said to that woman who came to him at dollars. That was how everyone felt. Rebbe, we were counting on you to bring Moshiach, to make it happen—together with us, of course. But the Rebbe had been pulling the wagon, leading it from the front, and now he was saying, as it were, “The steering wheel is in your hands. That’s it. I’m handing it to you. Now you must make it happen.” It was earth-shaking. What? The Rebbe is relying on us? How? Where do we go from here? But that was what the Rebbe said. The shluchim, whose entire purpose was to work toward the revelation of Melech HaMoshiach, with the Rebbe as Melech HaMoshiach, understood that there was no alternative: we simply had to turn the world upside down. We had to act. First of all, we had to repeat the Rebbe’s words, say what the Rebbe had said, and do absolutely everything possible so that Moshiach Tzidkeinu would truly come—so that everything the Rebbe had spoken about over the years, and all the work he had done since accepting the nesius, would not go to waste.

09:57 Speaker 4 So you’ve given us a very moving personal account of the event—the sicha of 28 Nissan—and what it brought about at the time. Then there was the sicha of 18 Elul, and after that the “direct path” in the sicha of Parshas Tazria-Metzora. Where, within these sichos—

10:12 Speaker 3 I have to say, not everyone saw it in the orderly way you’re laying it out now. From one week’s sicha to the next, it wasn’t yet so obvious that the Rebbe was moving forward, step by step, and bringing us into the idea of living with the days of Moshiach and with matters of Moshiach. Each sicha stood on its own, so to speak, and of course each one was stirring. In the yeshiva, there were mashpi’im who knew how to point out the direction, like Rabbi [unclear] Ginzburg, a"h. He always knew how to sit down, delve into things, pay attention to the details, and try to guide us. Not all the mashpi’im approached it that way.

11:03 Speaker 4 Even then, Rabbi Ginzburg managed to convey the sicha in all its brilliance.

11:05 Speaker 3 He had already begun. He didn’t lay it all out systematically, but he did pay close attention and point out new things the Rebbe had said in that week’s sicha that hadn’t been said the week before. So we saw that things were beginning: we had to act, to do all kinds of things to bring the coming of Moshiach Tzidkeinu. The signing campaign actually began in the summer of 5751. I can’t say exactly when; I think it was around Shavuos, a little after Shavuos, maybe Tammuz, somewhere around then. I don’t remember whose initiative it was. Again, as a yeshiva bochur, I wasn’t focused on who said what or where. Bochurim in yeshiva aren’t so involved in organizing things. Who was the activist who came up with the idea, and where did it originate?

12:00 Speaker 4 Isn’t it known that David Nachshon began collecting signatures for accepting the kingship?

12:04 Speaker 3 David Nachshon. But there were others too. There was Yigal Hoshaya, who, as people said at the time, mortgaged his house, sold his house. I don’t remember whether that’s true, but that’s what people were saying then. He left everything else and devoted himself solely to accepting the kingship and collecting signatures. They traveled then to [unclear]—

12:26 Speaker 4 To the Ari z"l.

12:27 Speaker 3 To the Ari z"l. So the tables for signing to accept the kingship were already set up there. I have to tell the truth: it was hard to accept. We knew the earlier sichos and what the Rebbe had said before about Melech HaMoshiach, and it was hard to accept that this was the only thing left to do now. As if everything else had already been done, and all that remained was accepting the kingship. Not everyone accepted that.

12:56 Speaker 4 The words had been said, but it was hard for them to penetrate the heart. Because there was something new here in the way—

13:00 Speaker 3 It was something very new. The stage at which the Rebbe spoke about these matters—it was difficult. How do you really move from one state to another? It’s a state of mind, a different inner orientation.

13:12 Speaker 4 Someone gave me an interesting way of defining it; I wonder if you agree. Since this whole matter of accepting the kingship, at least at the beginning, came from the chassidim, while from the Rebbe there were only expressions of encouragement and no explicit statements, it was as though whoever wanted to got on board, and whoever didn’t, didn’t. There was an element of choice here, because the whole initiative came from below, from the chassidim.

13:34 Speaker 3 Completely. That’s how it was, and that’s how it remains to this day. It isn’t easy for everyone, especially after [unclear]. But yes, it’s true that not everyone accepted it. I’m speaking only from my personal perspective; I’m not speaking for anyone else, because I don’t know what’s in another person’s heart. But it was hard to accept. As a bochur who had been in yeshiva for only three or four years, you learn Tanya, the Rebbe’s sichos, maamarim, and Likkutei Amarim. You try to study Chassidus in an inward way, to bring it to life, to change, to awaken the G-dly soul and overcome the animal soul. And then you come to something like this—an upheaval for the entire world: the world is about to change, Melech HaMoshiach is about to be revealed, and the whole reality of the world is going to become good. That’s something very different within the soul, something altogether different. It’s very hard to move from personal, inner work to a situation in which the entire reality of the world is changing completely.

14:54 Speaker 4 It’s fascinating to hear that perspective, because often, when you speak with people who were more involved, as you said, with the side of [unclear] at the time, for them it was something they had just been waiting for. But from the perspective you’re describing—someone who had been at [unclear], or who was more [unclear]—it felt a little strange. Suddenly something was happening, and you had to somehow decide: yes, this is it.

15:14 Speaker 3 Yes. Perhaps there were bochurim from certain homes who did live with it. Maybe homes of shluchim; I don’t know. I can’t identify them, because even among my friends from shluchim’s homes, I don’t remember them feeling so strongly that here was the Rebbe, Melech HaMoshiach, that the world was changing right now, and that the ultimate purpose of all the work of the entire creation since the creation of the world had arrived. The ultimate intent of Chassidus was coming to fruition. It wasn’t quite like the mitzvah campaigns, where the Rebbe added another campaign each year. When you dealt with people outside the yeshiva, there were the campaigns. But in the yeshiva itself, you were occupied with studying Tanya, putting on tefillin, refining your character, and studying Chassidus. Suddenly, everything changes. No, this is going to transform the entire world. The world is going to reach its culmination, to be refined and purified, and the Rebbe is urging us on and saying that it depends on us and that we have to do everything. After 28 Nissan, he began, so to speak, to reveal the state of the world and the work needed to reveal what is within it. The Alef of Alufo Shel Olam, the Alef of chochmah, the Alef of [unclear]—all the sichos in which the Rebbe began revealing ways to bring Moshiach into the reality of the world, to speak of it as something tangible and alive. It was transformative. It was an enormous transformation.

16:51 Speaker 5 So bringing the sicha of Mishpatim 5752 to the Temimim in second-year yeshiva at [unclear] would have seemed rather strange.

16:59 Speaker 3 Every sicha was a bombshell.

17:01 Speaker 5 Yes.

17:01 Speaker 3 Every sicha.

17:01 Speaker 5 Certainly the sichos that spoke about the world, the world’s readiness, and Moshiach’s effect on the nations.

17:06 Speaker 3 Maybe the Rebbe really meant it, or maybe the Rebbe didn’t mean exactly that. Or maybe it was something more inward, maybe—

17:11 Speaker 5 What did it actually feel like?

17:13 Speaker 3 Again, each time there was something new. Each time there was a new development, and each time you had to make a switch in your head, so to speak: wait, this isn’t what we had last week; this is a new reality. I remember that on a Shabbos in 5751, I was going every week to [unclear] in Beit Dagan. That week, the week after Shabbos Parshas [unclear], I went with Rabbi [unclear] Feldman.

17:47 Speaker 5 Right.

17:47 Speaker 3 He was still in yeshiva, and we went together. We thought: how do you tell the Yemenite Jews of Beit Dagan that there is a prophet in our generation whose every word we must heed, and that he is announcing the news of the Geulah—that Moshiach is coming now? It was almost impossible to grasp. How do you say that, especially to people who are relatively set in their ways, a close-knit community that holds so firmly to tradition? How do you come and tell them this? Each time, it took work, inner work. First I had to accept it myself. How could I come to terms with it? How could I try to see how to live with it in my own life? Only then could I think about how to say it to others.

18:30 Speaker 5 It’s just like what Chazal explain: for a new light to come, there first has to be a withdrawal, and then the new light can enter. It was as though there had to be a moment of that—

18:39 Speaker 3 The wall.

18:40 Speaker 5 I remember that when I was a bochur in yeshiva ketanah and attended your farbrengens, you said on one occasion that each Dvar Malchus sicha from those years, 5751 to 5752, was like one link following another. If you missed a single sicha, it was like following a serialized story and missing its most crucial, suspenseful chapter. I remember that description to this day. It helped me understand why we had to study it every week: it was all one chain.

19:10 Speaker 3 Completely. Although to this day I don’t know—I’m not such a scholar. Baruch Hashem, there are many scholars who can explain exactly how each sicha built on the previous one. Personally, I’m not at that level yet. I hear what they explain, but certainly the Rebbe was moving forward step by step, Shabbos after Shabbos: another level, another point, more openly, and more clearly, until we reach the sicha of Chayei Sarah 5752. That opened an entirely new door; you can’t do anything in serving Hashem without it.

19:50 Speaker 5 Around the time of Chayei Sarah, we also had the publication of the kuntres Beis Rabbeinu Shebebavel, and [unclear].

19:54 Speaker 3 Yes, yes. 28 Nissan—that was... Every sicha like that was a bombshell. Now, I’m not saying I can speak for everyone. I can say that’s how it was for me.

20:07 Speaker 5 That’s what we were hoping to hear.

20:08 Speaker 3 For me it was a bombshell. Wait a minute—what does it mean that the leader of the generation is the one? The Rebbe says explicitly that the leader of the generation is Moshiach. It was just...

20:21 Speaker 5 [unclear].

20:22 Speaker 3 Yes, the Rebbe says it—the Rebbe is speaking about himself, declaring it about himself. And all the hints and asterisks and “Menachem Shmuel” and everything—it was so, so different from what we were used to hearing: that the Rebbe doesn’t want people to talk about it, that the Rebbe rules it out, and that it could interfere with spreading the wellsprings. But that was the reality. That was how things were, and as I saw it, there wasn’t an average Chassidic bochur who thought otherwise. It was hard to take in, but the Rebbe was saying it so clearly. Nobody thought the Rebbe perhaps meant it only in a spiritual sense, or that the Rebbe was speaking from a place in Atzilus where it’s true spiritually. The Rebbe was speaking to us directly, at eye level, and saying: this is the reality, this is—

21:21 Speaker 5 There are conclusions people came to.

21:22 Speaker 3 Huh?

21:23 Speaker 5 There are conclusions people arrived at afterward, but that’s...

21:26 Speaker 3 Yes. That’s what they call reasoning after the fact. When something doesn’t fit, people start looking for explanations afterward. But at the time, when we saw the Rebbe and heard the Rebbe, anyone who thought otherwise would be described with all sorts of labels—an outsider, or people would say what city he came from and that’s why he thought that way, or things like that. In the end, when things didn’t turn out as expected, those same people changed their minds. It was very strange to see people who, when they saw the Rebbe and the truth shone—during “the time of the Beis Hamikdash,” so to speak—found everything straightforward. Then suddenly something happened in a time of galus, and everything seemed to change: the interpretation changed, and things no longer meant quite what they plainly said. It was a little astonishing to see that, but it’s natural, because that’s the nature of galus. It’s the nature of concealment.

22:31 Speaker 5 So how do we move from this account of 5751 and 5752 to, suddenly, 27 Adar, still in 5752, and from there to 5753—when accepting the Rebbe’s kingship began to be something accepted not only among chassidim generally, but something consistently publicized to the world, and, on the Rebbe’s part, something consistent day after day? Was that another development? Did it happen naturally, or was it another bombshell?

22:59 Speaker 3 Clearly, there was a development here that was not natural. First of all, we have to remember that 27 Adar created a certain confusion. The Rebbe had been speaking about how things were progressing, step by step, about the signs of Moshiach, with all the expressions the Rebbe used—and suddenly everything seemed to go in the opposite direction. But then it became clear among the chassidim—one could say with complete certainty—that on the contrary, because the Rebbe had been saying such things, and because we had reached such a reality, a reality just, just, just before the coming of Moshiach Tzidkeinu, of course the world found it difficult to accept. Part of what was happening in 5751 was this: the world couldn’t accept it. So there was a kind of concealment, an accusation Above, expressed in the matter of the Rebbe’s health. What do you do when there’s such concealment, concerning something so great and lofty? It’s a test, and when there’s a test, you make an even greater effort and strengthen yourselves even more. So the feeling among chassidim was the opposite: everything that had been unfolding slowly and gradually was understood in light of the time and the situation we were in, right on the verge of the Geulah. So, on the contrary, we acted with even greater strength and vigor. Concealment called for greater strength and vigor, rather than hiding away in caves and saying, “Maybe he didn’t mean it, maybe he didn’t mean it.” The opposite—it strengthened us. Everything connected with spreading the message of the Geulah and the Rebbe’s prophecy grew even stronger.

24:43 Speaker 6 And then we come, in effect, to a new starting point, if you can call it that—something that touches on the very essence, something that—

24:50 Speaker 3 You could say that the starting point was already Rosh Hashanah.

24:54 Speaker 6 Of accepting the Rebbe’s kingship.

24:54 Speaker 3 Accepting the Rebbe’s kingship. That was the point, that was—

24:56 Speaker 6 You could say that until now we’ve given a sort of introduction to how accepting the Rebbe’s kingship actually began in 5752, as you already said.

25:02 Speaker 3 There were signatures, and the Rebbe received them. The Rebbe also received the responses and gave his backing to those responses.

25:09 Speaker 6 But suddenly you could see that something had begun here.

25:11 Speaker 3 In 5752 as well, the Rebbe backed all the matters connected with—

25:14 Speaker 6 The registration activities.

25:16 Speaker 3 Yes, what people did. And the Rebbe said others should learn from them how to proclaim a king. It didn’t come out of nowhere.

25:25 Speaker 6 Mm-hmm.

25:25 Speaker 3 But again, it was still internal. It still wasn’t part of the davening. It wasn’t part of... Each person did it personally, so to speak, or at a farbrengen. And then came Rosh Hashanah itself, when we crown Hakadosh Boruch Hu as King over us.

25:44 Speaker 6 5753.

25:45 Speaker 3 In 5753. Since everyone felt that we were only moving further and further forward, the ground was really fertile for this step of making it public. The thinking was: this is the day we crown Hakadosh Boruch Hu as King, and the most fitting time to accept the Rebbe’s kingship over us is now, on Rosh Hashanah, before the shofar blowing. After all, blowing the shofar is part of accepting kingship. I wasn’t there, though. I arrived only by Yom Kippur, following the events that had taken place. So—

26:18 Speaker 6 Had you heard about it by then?

26:19 Speaker 3 Yes. After Rosh Hashanah we heard about it. Personally, various things had prevented me from traveling for Rosh Hashanah. Only after we heard what had happened on Rosh Hashanah—that the Rebbe had come out to the room, that people had managed to see the Rebbe through the clear window, and that the Rebbe had come out to the chassidim—did I come to the Rebbe, right on Erev Yom Kippur. Of course, there had been that great awakening on Rosh Hashanah, when everyone stood together and proclaimed three times, “Yechi Adoneinu.” It was, so to speak, a ceremony. It’s what the verse calls “renew the kingship there.” That’s what it really was, and it gave the whole thing a very, very strong boost. Especially afterward, of course—especially on the night of Simchas Torah, when most of the bochurim weren’t there.

27:24 Speaker 6 Were you there?

27:25 Speaker 3 I wasn’t. Then the secretary, Rabbi—

27:30 Speaker 6 Simpson [?].

27:31 Speaker 3 Simpson[?]. He asked the Rebbe—I remember people were saying then, on the evening of Simchas Torah, that the Rebbe would come out for the prayers, but it wasn’t all planned in advance and they didn’t know exactly when. So he asked the Rebbe to come out only at the usual time for hakafos, when most, almost all, had returned from the procession. And from what he understood, the Rebbe had agreed. In practice, that wasn’t what happened. In practice, it was almost right on time. Most of the students who came back had already missed it. I remember coming back along one of the streets from the place Rabbi Simpson[?] had sent me, where I’d been at his Chabad House, his shul. We ran back. We said, maybe they’ll extend the prayers a little after all, and so on. And on the way back I met Rabbi Aharonov, Alperin[?], from Kfar Chabad. He said, “It’s already over. You have no idea what a revelation there was—the Rebbe encouraged it.” Drichi[?], with those lights—he’s the one who put up on Kfar Chabad that sign, the wording “Long live our master, our teacher and our Rebbe, the King Moshiach, forever,” which remained on the entrance to Kfar Chabad for a very long time. Well, we arrived afterward. But after the Rebbe came out, accepted it, knew about it and encouraged “Yechi Adoneinu,” and the Rebbe encouraged it with his holy hand and with his body, and so on and so forth, there were no questions left. It wasn’t easy, but there were no questions left about what the avodah was now. And that really continued from then until [unclear], until 13 Cheshvan, for a year and two months: the Rebbe’s sichos were telling us, “Yechi Adoneinu.” It was again and again and again and again, and twice

29:32 Speaker 3 a day, and so on. But no one had questions. No one—well, almost no one, you could say. Later it turned out that there were a few who did have questions. But yes.

29:54 Speaker 7 Basically, that’s all—

29:56 Speaker 3 All of that is up to Simchas Torah. And then came the matter of Yud Shvat.

30:02 Speaker 7 Okay, Yud Shvat 5753. You were in Eretz Yisroel.

30:04 Speaker 3 I was in Eretz Yisroel.

30:05 Speaker 7 13 Nissan.

30:06 Speaker 3 Yes. Again, I wasn’t behind the scenes. I don’t know. I don’t know how.

30:12 Speaker 7 A broadcast, and...

30:13 Speaker 3 Whether it was a broadcast. At the yeshivah, we would travel—on the special days, from 19 Kislev through Yud Shvat, we would go to all the branches. A bus would leave about an hour before Minchah, and buses went out after a late Minchah too. We would go to Tel Aviv; we traveled to Tel Aviv and davened in shuls. That was the regular practice on those special days. Everyone got a bottle of wine and a few packs of wafers, and we would go out to the shuls. So we went on Yud Shvat as well; that was the practice then too. And we got to a shul, and everyone was talking about how today was going to be the Rebbe’s coronation. It wasn’t that we told them; they told us. It was already out there. Word had already spread that there would be a special broadcast. A satellite broadcast wasn’t as simple then as it is today. Today everyone has a satellite in their pocket, but back then you had to rent the satellite link for two or three hours that day.

31:17 Speaker 7 So the people in the shuls—

31:18 Speaker 3 Knew.

31:19 Speaker 7 Knew, knew.

31:19 Speaker 3 They knew. They knew it was going to happen. Some asked questions, some shared in the joy—each from his own angle. But they knew. They knew it was going to be—

31:29 Speaker 7 The Rebbe, the King Moshiach.

31:30 Speaker 3 Yes, they knew. Again, I’m speaking from my own perspective too: it wasn’t, it wasn—you didn’t know [unclear], as they say. How can I put it? Some people knew better. Today people know less, but back then they knew very well. Today people know much less. I don’t know why.

31:52 Speaker 7 It could be simple: someone who went along with it wholeheartedly then is still there today. Someone who approached it intellectually is less there today.

31:58 Speaker 3 Back then, as they say, it was the time when the Beis Hamikdash stood; everything was clear, everything was simple. And it felt good to say, “The Rebbe is my Rebbe, my Rebbe is the King Moshiach, and I’m going to rule the world together with my Rebbe.” When things became a little complicated and, sadly, it’s taking a little longer, it became harder. But that’s how it was.

32:23 Speaker 7 So you came back from the Catskills.

32:25 Speaker 3 We came back from the Catskills. It was dinnertime, and Shaul Axelrod came storming into the dining room. “What are you doing here? Why are you sitting and eating? How did we let ourselves drag our feet? Today is the nineteenth—[unclear]. Moshiach—[unclear]. We need to turn the world upside down!” He wanted us to do it right then. Anyway, yes, he arrived. There was a whole story about his coming in with the ceremony.

32:52 Speaker 7 Ceremony.

32:52 Speaker 3 Yes, yes, yes. The story of the ceremony on Yom Tov is a story of its own, as you know. And... that’s it. I don’t remember exactly. It was probably Rabbi Menachem. I don’t remember the details. I remember the excitement leading up to it more than precisely what happened at each stage, in those moments. But then the Rebbe changed the program that everyone had heard about, and everyone proclaimed together, “Yechi Adoneinu.” And again, I say that in those moments your heart was fluttering, so to speak, and the whole world was shouting “Yechi Adoneinu.” Accepting his kingship. In another second the Rebbe, the King Moshiach, would be revealed. We knew there was also a little going on behind the scenes. I didn’t know much; I knew a little. And that’s what happened, except that...

33:46 Speaker 7 All of that behind-the-scenes business is still behind the scenes, because [unclear]. Wait, this is where I came in.

33:53 Speaker 3 The Rebbe came out despite all the delays and all those who tried to dissuade him from coming out, who explained to the Rebbe what damage it would do—as though they had suddenly become wiser than the Rebbe himself about the damage it might cause. Despite everything, and as though, as though, as though anyone could have had any control over the Rebbe’s medical condition, the Rebbe firmly asked to come out. He knew that all the broadcast and filming equipment, and all sorts of networks, were outside, and the Rebbe turned his gaze toward them, so to speak, while everyone sang and shouted and proclaimed, “Long live our master, our teacher and our Rebbe, the King Moshiach, son of David.”

34:46 Speaker 8 Long live our master and the King Moshiach, son of David.

34:52 Speaker 7 So, Arbuz[?], hearing this whole description really brings us emotionally into the events of those years—5751, 5752, and especially 5753. In your account we’ve now gone through Rosh Hashanah 5753, Simchas Torah 5753, and 19 [unclear] 5753. And surely afterward you came to the gathering in 5754 and saw the Rebbe’s extraordinary encouragement. What ties all of this together is accepting the Rebbe’s kingship as the King Moshiach. People stand before the Rebbe, proclaim “Yechi Adoneinu,” and want the Rebbe to be revealed as the King Moshiach. Now, a Tomim today finds himself many years after Gimmel Tammuz and after those events. He knows the clear truth that we must accept the Rebbe’s kingship as the King Moshiach, and that this is what brings about the Rebbe’s revelation. What, in practice, is the avodah of accepting his kingship? How do I break it down into concrete steps within myself as a Tomim in this period?

35:45 Speaker 3 Well, the truth is that this is really everything our Rebbeim and the Rebbe Melech HaMoshiach ask of us in our service of Hashem. Because what is the point of Moshiach’s coming? Hashem will reign over the entire world in glory: “Everyone who is called by My name, whom I created for My glory, whom I formed, whom I also made.” Yes, there will be chocolates growing on trees and suits in everyone’s size, and all kinds of other interesting descriptions. But when all those things are here, they won’t be what interests us. The point of Moshiach’s coming is to bring the world to its intended purpose: “For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of Hashem as the waters cover the sea.” To bring that about, each of us has what the Rebbe calls, in the well-known sicha on “He will rule from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth,” our own “primordial sea”—our inner faculties—and also our outward faculties. The work of Moshiach is to affect both the inner and outward faculties; you cannot have one without the other. In simple terms, first, as the Rebbe says in the sichos in Toras Menachem from the summer of 5751, we have to fill our heads—our primordial sea, the sea of wisdom—with knowledge about the coming of Moshiach: what will happen when Moshiach comes, what it will be like physically and spiritually, as explained at length in the sichos of 5751–5752 [?]. We need to learn those sichos and see how, in them, the Rebbe brings the matters of Moshiach from “the laws of Moshiach” into the reality of our lives. First, the mind has to understand these things. The mind

37:45 Speaker 3 has to understand, grasp, examine and delve into every new insight and every subject brought in the sichos. Once it enters the mind, it has to pass into the heart. It awakens the heart’s feelings: as the Rebbe says in the sicha, it awakens our joy, our longing, our yearning and our anticipation of the Geulah. This is what we talk about all the time. This is what interests us. We go around with it constantly. And as the Rebbe says in the sicha of Pinchas, after it fills the mind and the heart, it descends into the “garments”—thought, speech and action—until the Geulah itself speaks: a person cries out, and it comes out in our speech too. You can’t leave it at, “It’s only in my mind. I understand it. I live with the Rebbe in my mind. I understand Geulah and Moshiach, I love the Rebbe, I love Moshiach, all well and good—but it’s still hard for me to talk about it.” When a person lives with it and it is his life, it has to come out in his thought, speech and action. He talks about it wherever possible. The mitzvos he does, his deeds and his work with others all revolve around Moshiach, and talking about it comes naturally to him. Of course, spreading the news of the Geulah begins with us: we have to believe it and know it. As the Rebbe says in the sichos, any moment now the Rebbe will arrive and walk into the room. How do I make sure that all my thoughts, words and actions belong to the leader of our generation? If a person doesn’t live with the idea that everything about him should belong to the leader of our generation, he cannot demand that of someone else.

39:29 Speaker 9 Let me try to clarify what you’re saying, Rabbi. The idea of accepting his kingship is sometimes understood as though it’s less about activism—Hashem forbid—and more about what we need to do, what we need to carry out, as soldiers of a particular king. But the direction you’re taking is that accepting his kingship must take hold of the entire person: all our thoughts, all our words and all our actions, to the point that we give our whole selves to the Rebbe as Melech HaMoshiach. Is that the idea?

40:03 Speaker 3 That is what the Rebbe speaks about in the sichos when he discusses a king. The Rebbe says that the entire existence of the people—their physical and spiritual lives—is bound up with the king. Just a little story to help explain this. I heard a beautiful story from my brother-in-law, Aharon Rabinowitz, a shliach in the Neve Oranim neighborhood of Tzfas. He told me that a Jew with what you might call a Litvish face came to their Chabad House shul. A lot of visitors come to vacation in Tzfas, from all parts of the charedi world. So this man came to their shul to daven, and they called him up to the Torah: “Menachem Mendel, son of...” A Litvish-looking fellow named Menachem Mendel? What was the connection? It can happen, of course, but naturally he was curious. After things quieted down, he asked him, “Tell me, how did you come to be named Menachem Mendel?” “What do you mean? After the Lubavitcher Rebbe.” “So what’s your connection to the Lubavitcher Rebbe? Are you from a Chabad family?” “No, no, I’m not from a Chabad family. My mother is from a Litvish family. I come from a thoroughly Litvish family.” “Then why are you called Menachem Mendel?” He said, “My mother was five months pregnant. One night she had a dream. She dreamed she was with the Rebbe at dollars. The Rebbe handed her a dollar and said, ‘You’re pregnant’—I don’t remember the exact words; it was a dream, after all—‘You will have a son, and you should name him after me.’”

42:00 Speaker 9 Okay.

42:03 Speaker 3 Well, she woke up from the dream with her hand open to receive the dollar. Her husband, a Litvish Yankel, saw her wake up all excited. He said, “What happened? Why is your hand open?” First she washed her hands, and then she told him the dream. “If that’s the dream you had, we’ll name the child Menachem Mendel.” “So what’s your connection to Lubavitch?” “I’m not a Chabad chossid, but with a name like this, everywhere I go people ask me what my connection to Lubavitch is. I learn Tanya, I learn the Rebbe’s sichos, and my whole life revolves around the Rebbe.” Now I try to imagine: here is someone who didn’t grow up among chassidim, who didn’t study the Rebbe’s sichos, and whose entire connection to the Rebbe came through a dream his mother had. And we have all the Rebbe’s sichos and all the Rebbe’s declarations; the Rebbe encourages us and speaks to us. That’s what I mean when I say, “Yechi Adoneinu.” And clearly, as the Rebbe says, a directive of the Rebbe is for all generations. So of course it takes hold of our whole lives. If the Rebbe is Melech HaMoshiach, what will my life look like when Moshiach comes? How do I live with “Everyone who is called by My name, whom I created for My glory, whom I formed, whom I also made”? How is the Rebbe present in every part of my life—in my personal service of Hashem, in my work, with the people around me, with my family, with people on the street? Everything revolves around one point. We know what the Rebbe wants from us; it’s just hard for us to do it. But when we live with this, and live with the understanding that bringing about the coming of Moshiach requires accepting his kingship—and there is no king without a people—then

43:50 Speaker 3 it has to permeate all the faculties of our soul.

43:53 Speaker 9 But how is that different from just a ladder?

43:56 Speaker 3 When we speak about kingship, it’s what we mentioned before: our entire existence belongs to the king. We have no separate existence; everything is the king. A ladder has stages: another step, and another step closer to him, and a still deeper connection, involving another faculty. But here, as he called it, I begin with lechatchilah ariber—going over the top from the outset. The idea is that my entire separate existence is completely nullified; I have no separate existence at all. There is nothing but Hashem and [unclear].

44:23 Speaker 9 A Tomim sitting in yeshivah now and listening to the program wants to accept the Rebbe’s kingship in such a genuine, powerful way, and to give his whole self over to a life of lechatchilah ariber. Rabbi, to conclude, how can he translate that into practical steps?

44:36 Speaker 3 First of all, it begins with what you asked earlier. Indeed, accepting the kingship also has two levels. The sichos and maamarim about building the kingship in connection with Rosh Hashanah speak of two levels. There is the work of preparing to accept the kingship on Rosh Hashanah, which is the work of Elul: simply doing teshuvah. Doing teshuvah in thought, speech, and action. That is the first thing. One of the questions raised, I think in the kuntres, is: What is new during the Ten Days of Teshuvah? We have already done teshuvah; we have already accepted the kingship. We accepted it on the practical level. Now comes building the kingship on the inner level. So of course it begins with the mind. Here, I think, we are talking about the Rebbe’s directives to study the Rebbe’s Torah and to carry out this task of publicizing the message of the Geulah, and so on. But that is, how shall I put it, only the preparation for Rosh Hashanah. It is only the outer level of the kingship. After that comes the inner part, the inner level of accepting the kingship. As we said earlier, [unclear]: that the mind should be devoted to this, that it should be filled more and more with the Rebbe’s sichos, particularly on Geulah and Moshiach, and with the Rebbe’s Torah in general, and with Torah as a whole. The more, the better. Studying Gemara is also preparation to greet Moshiach Tzidkeinu. And studying it with understanding is also part of greeting Moshiach Tzidkeinu. Studying Shulchan Aruch in depth is also part of greeting Moshiach Tzidkeinu, because [unclear], serving with a whole heart, so that afterward it reaches the heart as well. Ultimately, the main point

46:21 Speaker 3 is this: as explained in the sichos, [unclear] the Name is not complete until the yud-hei enters and permeates the middos. Then it, too, reaches its full expression. And when the Rebbe is revealed immediately—and it will happen in the blink of an eye—we will be able to say that we have completed all the parts of the soul, the whole puzzle. Every part of the soul, individually and together, contributes to the complete picture: that our entire being is devoted to the Rebbe, Melech HaMoshiach, and to revealing the Rebbe, Melech HaMoshiach. First of all, within every faculty of our own souls. Then among our friends, our roommates or the friends at our table in the dining room. What do we talk about in the dining room, and what do we talk about at class farbrengens? And what do we talk about with our families? We talk with people in different professions. It moves from the inside outward, permeating every faculty of the soul.

47:24 Speaker 9 Thank you very much, Rabbi Avraham Bent, for that special perspective on the essence of accepting the kingship. With Hashem’s help, may we truly merit to accept the kingship as we should, with every faculty of our souls. And may we merit the Geulah immediately.

47:36 Speaker 3 Amen. Immediately, ממש. Long live our master, teacher, and Rebbe, Melech HaMoshiach, forever and ever.

47:42 Speaker 9 Thank you very much, Rabbi Avraham Bent.

47:45 Speaker 10 Ears to Hear. Audio programs for the Temimim from Ata Haolami. For more programs, dial star 6358. Long live our master, teacher, and Rebbe, Melech HaMoshiach, forever and ever.