Ears to Hear 39 | Contours of Amalek's Image in the Generation of Redemption

00:00 Speaker 1 “And Hashem has not given you a heart to know, eyes to see, or ears to hear.”

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

00:14 Speaker 4 Because for us, there’s no doubt. You can’t say, “Maybe there’s a G-d in the world.” For us, these things are certain. Our whole Yiddishkeit is certain, our whole Yiddishkeit is certain. The only question is about me: am I really here? Yes, we have very difficult doubts too, but our doubts are about ourselves. We’re the ones in doubt.

00:51 Speaker 2 Shalom aleichem to all the Temimim in Tomchei Temimim Lubavitch yeshivos throughout the Holy Land and the world. We’re now beginning a special program in the Ears to Hear audio series, a program steeped in the spirit of Geulah and Moshiach, with a special connection to the Rebbe, Melech HaMoshiach shlita, and to his central mission of bringing Moshiach in actual practice. In this special program, we’d like to speak with the mashpia, Rabbi Ofer Maidovnik, about the nature of Amalek in the generation of Geulah. More broadly, we’ll discuss how chassidim throughout the generations have regarded Amalek, especially on Shabbos Zachor: what Amalek is, where exactly he is within our souls, and how he tries to divert us from the central task of our generation—bringing Moshiach and welcoming Moshiach Tzidkeinu. We’re sitting now with Rabbi Maidovnik. Shalom aleichem, Rabbi.

01:45 Speaker 4 Aleichem shalom.

01:46 Speaker 2 We’ve waited a long time for this program to become a reality, and baruch Hashem, here we are.

01:52 Speaker 4 We need to use our capacity for waiting for one thing. Not to wait for the first of the month and our paycheck, not to wait for a podcast—to wait and look forward to the revelation of the Rebbe, Melech HaMoshiach.

02:10 Speaker 2 Baruch Hashem.

02:10 Speaker 4 That’s it. That’s all we’re waiting for. We won’t spend that capacity on anything else.

02:15 Speaker 2 So, baruch Hashem, looking forward to this podcast really is part of looking forward to instilling the subject of Moshiach within ourselves again and again. But that brings us right to the point. This burning longing for Moshiach and for the Rebbe’s revelation as Melech HaMoshiach sounds so good as a headline, and when people talk about it at gatherings or farbrengens, or at elevated moments when the excitement carries us along and puts it at the top of our list. But there’s something we all know called Amalek. Especially with Shabbos Zachor coming this Shabbos: as soon as we hear that it’s Shabbos Zachor, we’re stirred up and remember that this is a Shabbos when we have to wipe someone out—and we’re in a Chabad environment, after all. So perhaps we can take a moment to understand what exactly the problem with Amalek is, what fundamental problem lies behind the scenes. Then perhaps we’ll understand how to wipe him out, what’s wrong with him, and how to deal with him. But first, what’s so terrible about him? Why did chassidim hate him so much, more than anyone else in the world? So much so that Binyamin Katzenelson [?] came to Chabad only because he saw the intense hatred that [unclear] had for Amalek. What’s behind it?

03:24 Speaker 4 Hold on—we don’t have to rush behind the scenes. We can start with what’s onstage, and even in front of the stage. Really, I remember from my own years as a yeshiva student that Shabbos Zachor was something that shook you to the bone. Reb Mendel used to speak very forcefully about Amalek. What can I say? When Shabbos Zachor comes, they’re already agitated. Yes, already. And it’s not like a G-d-fearing Jew worrying about fulfilling his obligation. What is it? What does it mean to beautify a mitzvah? There’s one kind of beautifying a mitzvah, and then there’s a kind that isn’t Chabad’s. In the wider world, beautifying a mitzvah means fulfilling the obligation according to every opinion—making absolutely sure I can tick the box.

04:25 Speaker 2 Making sure you’ve covered every possibility, clearly.

04:26 Speaker 4 And it’s the same with Parshas Zachor. You hear a Yemenite minyan, a Tunisian minyan, a Sephardic minyan, a reading from a Sefer Torah with [unclear], without [unclear], with [unclear], without [unclear]. You spend the whole day searching for ways to fulfill your obligation. Then, when Shabbos Zachor ends, you breathe a sigh of relief: “Baruch Hashem, we got through that.” Because if we kept going, we’d never finish—with Rashi and Rabbeinu Tam, with [unclear] and the Raavad, and a few more combinations of intricate arguments.

05:07 Speaker 2 The misnaged, meanwhile, is still wondering right up until after Shabbos Zachor whether he stamped on the ground hard enough, whether he struck it hard enough with his foot to fulfill his obligation.

05:17 Speaker 4 I was just thinking about this. In the last few days, a thought came to me about the word levatim, “doubts.” What’s its singular form? Levet? Have you ever heard a word like that? No. Why? Because doubts come together. It isn’t just one uncertainty. You can have a dilemma, yes, but doubts are something that keeps coming—and that’s really Amalek. Yes, Amalek is connected to this too, because doubt is Amalek. What does that mean? You’re constantly in it. It isn’t one doubt; there are doubts. Troubles come in bundles.

06:01 Speaker 2 It comes from every direction.

06:02 Speaker 4 From everything.

06:03 Speaker 2 About everything.

06:03 Speaker 4 About everything, from everything. Yes. So you can’t really give it a singular form at all.

06:10 Speaker 2 So before we talk for a moment—

06:11 Speaker 4 That was just a bit of wordplay.

06:12 Speaker 2 A bit of wordplay. So before we actually talk about what he comes to do—

06:14 Speaker 4 Wait, wait.

06:15 Speaker 2 What is he in the first place?

06:15 Speaker 4 Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. The first thing I want to say is this: when you say “a misnaged,” you mean a misnaged in every fiber of his being, of course. As our Rebbe—

06:28 Speaker 2 A thoroughgoing misnaged [?].

06:29 Speaker 4 Yes. If I bring a verse to support that, it’ll sound even more [unclear]. What? How can you talk that way? In any case, we’ve said that too. In any case, for a misnaged, beautifying a mitzvah means fulfilling the obligation according to one more position, one more line of reasoning, one more opinion. But for us, beautifying a mitzvah means making it beautiful. It’s splendid, it’s wonderful, it’s infectious. That’s what beautifying a mitzvah means. So when we approach the danger of Amalek, it’s part of life. It’s one aspect of life. It isn’t a question of which particular stringency to follow or which knife to use. There was once a sheet that went around. Do you remember it?

07:22 Speaker 2 Go on.

07:22 Speaker 4 Some satirical sheet went around about how they’d caught Amalek, but in the end he died of old age—because they were still trying to determine what the instrument for killing him should look like, and all sorts of other things, according to every opinion of the early authorities. That sheet went around a few years ago.

07:42 Speaker 2 Okay, so that’s really getting caught up in details that—

07:45 Speaker 4 For us, the point is that this is a matter of life. We want life. We want to live, and we want our lives to be more than just not being dead; we want them to be full of vitality. You follow? There’s that saying about “life and not death.” Yes, in the prayers for rain and for dew, we say, “For life and not for death.” And people ask: Doesn’t the Shulchan Aruch say not to say “Remember us for life” because it could sound like “Remember us not for life”? So how can we say “for life and not…”? It might sound like “not for life”—like death! The answer is: No, I mean, “Remember us for life, and not for death.” We don’t want our lives merely to be an absence of death; we want them to be life. You follow? Alive and living. Now, Amalek is, in essence, something that dries out Yiddishkeit. He dries out Yiddishkeit. This happens on many levels, in many ways. At the most fundamental level, he opposes G-dliness. Wherever there’s a revelation of G-dliness—wherever there’s a revelation of G-dliness—it upsets Amalek. I often think of a phrase I heard from the Rebbe, though you also see it many times in the Frierdiker Rebbe’s maamarim: there’s being coarse like an animal, and there’s being brazen like a dog.

09:31 Speaker 5 Mm-hmm.

09:31 Speaker 4 The Frierdiker Rebbe says—what, what, what? Well, I can’t be certain, but I remember the Rebbe saying: What does it mean to be coarse like an animal? An animal walks along, and it makes no difference to it whether it steps on a pebble or on a baby’s head. That’s coarseness. It has no sensitivity at all, no refinement. And what about a dog? A dog can bark—you see it with those little dogs with the squashed noses. Someone walks past and they bark at him. And what is it? A tiny little dog. I always wonder why its nose is squashed. The last person who walked by kicked it in the nose. A motorcycle goes by and it goes wild; a car goes by and it goes wild; a truck, and it really goes wild. But the Rebbe says this about an ox: an ox walks past, and the dog barks at it. What? The ox kicks it and sends it flying.

10:33 Speaker 5 That’s the definition of chutzpah.

10:34 Speaker 4 That’s chutzpah. That’s Amalek. Amalek is a dog. He’s brazen, and G-dliness irritates him. G-dliness simply irritates him. Wherever there’s a revelation of G-dliness, it irritates him. Really, I think perhaps there ought to be something like a thermometer or a barometer: you’d put Amalek in a little matchbox, and if you saw it shaking, that would be a sign there was G-dliness in that place. And, in fact, that itself is an aspect of holiness. From the perspective of holiness altogether.

11:12 Speaker 5 But can we identify the point you’re making now not only from the maamarim given over the years and so on? If we go back for a moment to the historical account: the Jewish people leave Egypt, and before Matan Torah, at Refidim, Amalek appears. How do I identify this distinction at that moment? Was it already there?

11:33 Speaker 4 First of all, unpleasant as it is to say, there was such a nation. Now, that nation came from somewhere—but really it’s the other way around. As the holy Shelah says, people say the Torah speaks about things below and alludes to things above; but I say the Torah speaks about things above and alludes to things below. And that’s what the Rebbe says about Yankel and Eisav here in the parsha.

12:01 Speaker 5 Mm-hmm.

12:01 Speaker 4 We’re talking about the Yankel and Eisav written about here in the parsha, not that redhead who was born with teeth, but—

12:08 Speaker 5 So the account itself was already speaking about what the maamarim explain, essentially.

12:12 Speaker 4 Certainly. It was the expression—the earthly expression—of the matter. Its physical manifestation down here. But the matter itself exists in the realm of G-dliness. As it says in the maamarim, “Amalek is the first of the nations,” corresponding to “I am first and I am last.” Then there’s the way this is reflected in kelipah, as an imitation. What does “imitation” mean?

12:42 Speaker 5 Imitation.

12:43 Speaker 4 Yes, imitation. What—

12:46 Speaker 5 We’ve already mentioned several—

12:47 Speaker 4 Several animals. Yes. No, it’s like this with all the kelipos, all of them. What does imitation mean? It takes the outward aspect, the technical aspect of the thing. We see this in everything, but I won’t go on about it, or we won’t get to Amalek before Purim.

13:16 Speaker 5 But “Amalek is the first of the nations,” and from that—

13:18 Speaker 4 The imitation is this: Hakadosh Boruch Hu says, “I am first and I am last,” and kelipah imitates that. In other words, kelipah has an outward imitation of the thing. Take chochmah: chochmah is bittul, right? Chochmah is bittul. What does kelipah have? Kelipah also has chochmah.

13:42 Speaker 5 Mm-hmm.

13:43 Speaker 4 But it also has bittul. What kind of bittul? Technical bittul. When you study something intellectually, you have to be objective. Being objective means that I’m not the subject. In Chassidus, we would call that—

14:01 Speaker 5 Like the people of that school of thought had bittul.

14:02 Speaker 4 Right. A Nazi scientist trying to invent a gas to exterminate Jews—he was... That isn’t bittul.

14:10 Speaker 5 Yes.

14:11 Speaker 4 He’s operating with objectivity.

14:13 Speaker 5 Mm-hmm.

14:14 Speaker 4 So “objective” is a way of saying bittul, but in the language of the nations.

14:22 Speaker 5 Mm-hmm.

14:22 Speaker 4 So he’s imitating it. It’s only an imitation of it. He can be at the very height of self-importance, but he has technical bittul.

14:33 Speaker 5 So what, exactly, does Amalek imitate?

14:35 Speaker 4 Amalek imitates the idea of “first and last.” First of all, there’s that chutzpah, as it says, “chutzpah without a crown.” There’s nothing behind it, nothing at all. After all, it sometimes says that Amalek knows he’s lowly, that he’s lowly. The Amalek we’re dealing with—I specifically want to talk about the lower levels, although the more severe levels are very relevant to us too.

15:13 Speaker 5 You mean the levels discussed in [unclear]?

15:15 Speaker 4 Yes, those levels where the Rebbe says: I make a firm resolution, like a good resolution. I resolve not to be moved. And then the Rebbe says: If that doesn’t work, it won’t help—you’ll let out a “wow.”

15:35 Speaker 5 Can you explain that a little more? Not everyone knows the saying. Moved by what?

15:38 Speaker 4 It goes like this. Say something wondrous happens, a miracle. A miracle moves you. That’s precisely what irritates Amalek: that feeling of being moved.

15:53 Speaker 5 The fact that what happened stirs something in you emotionally.

15:55 Speaker 4 Exactly.

15:56 Speaker 5 In other words, he doesn’t mind if there’s a miracle, if Hakadosh Boruch Hu overturns the laws of nature right now.

15:59 Speaker 4 A revelation of G-dliness doesn’t just mean Hakadosh Boruch Hu is dancing here on the table. It means the world changes because of it, that I change because of it.

16:08 Speaker 5 That I’m moved by—

16:09 Speaker 4 I’m moved by it. That’s what’s called a revelation. A revelation of G-dliness means that there’s a response, that you’re moved.

16:14 Speaker 5 It’s a revelation to me, a revelation of G-dliness within me, essentially.

16:16 Speaker 4 That’s why it’s a revelation of G-dliness. What does that mean? Suppose I’m thinking things in my head, speaking to you in my mind—and I haven’t said anything. I haven’t spoken, even if I said it in my head. Now, when there’s a miracle—and there are many miracles, there are [unclear]—the point for us as chassidim is always to notice these things, to feel them, to be open, to have our antennas up so we can feel them and be moved by Hakadosh Boruch Hu. So what does Amalek do? First, he denies it. He says it wasn’t a miracle; at most it was a coincidence. Yes, an interesting coincidence, but he’ll deny the whole reality of something wondrous. Anything wondrous has to fit neatly into—

17:19 Speaker 5 The bounds of nature.

17:19 Speaker 4 Yes.

17:20 Speaker 5 And if it’s something he can’t dispute?

17:22 Speaker 4 If he can’t, then what does he do? He simply says, “So Hakadosh Boruch Hu can do that. So what?” I remember once coming to Reb Mendel and telling him that I daven on Friday night, I try to daven, and then I get to “The voice of Hashem makes the hinds calve and strips the forests bare.” So what happens? The hinds run off. What happened? What is that? That’s just what happens. “Why are you so moved by what Hakadosh Boruch Hu does?” Amalek says. “What happened? Could you do it? No. So what?”

17:59 Speaker 5 That’s Amalek.

18:00 Speaker 4 That’s Amalek. What does that mean? When he needs one, he pulls out some religious-sounding idea of his own. You see this a lot in the world too: someone can come along and reject Moshe Rabbeinu and the holy Torah, and then suddenly pull out some saying about manners: “Derech eretz precedes Torah”—some quotation like that. And now, because it sounds religious, you’re supposed to accept it. Hakadosh Boruch Hu is greater, and there’s no reason to be moved by that. So you say: What if there’s an even greater miracle? What if there’s something still more extraordinary and you see a wonder?

18:46 Speaker 5 Because then, ultimately, he can’t say there’s no miracle here.

18:48 Speaker 4 Then what does he do? He makes a firm resolution that he won’t be moved by it.

19:04 Speaker 5 Even in the end, that’s the ultimate thing he’s after.

19:06 Speaker 4 Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I want to go even further. He goes further still. He makes a firm resolve not to be affected by it. Yes, that’s possible. Why not? There’s always that option. I can decide, for example, that whatever I see you doing, I won’t be upset or angry with you. I can do that not because Ahavas Yisroel is burning within me, but because I’ve decided that I’m not Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s detective or critic. I can decide not to be affected by it. That’s possible too, but there are cases where even that can’t be prevented. Even that can’t be prevented. So what does the Rebbe say? He puts himself in a position where he will be affected, but it won’t change anything. That’s what I wanted to talk about.

20:02 Speaker 5 That’s the point at the end.

20:03 Speaker 4 That’s what I wanted to get to. He’s already given up everything else.

20:07 Speaker 5 There are miracles—be moved by them.

20:08 Speaker 4 Be moved, and then move on.

20:09 Speaker 5 Don’t budge.

20:11 Speaker 4 It shouldn’t shift anything in your soul; it shouldn’t change you. You know, sometimes that can happen. I think Amalek drags us into such a long battle, and in the end he surrenders. But what happens? He wins the overall campaign. What?

20:40 Speaker 5 It’s the essence.

20:41 Speaker 4 It’s the essence.

20:42 Speaker 5 And you don’t think one necessarily leads to the other?

20:43 Speaker 4 Being moved doesn’t necessarily mean changing.

20:45 Speaker 5 Being moved doesn’t prove anything about a person’s essence. What? No, I’m moved by a great person, I love him, and I’m moved by his deeds. That will bring me to some feeling of wanting to give him something. So where, where exactly is the dividing line between being moved and taking practical action?

21:03 Speaker 4 Look, you’re talking as though the world is one-dimensional. Boom, boom. That’s it. Things are much more complicated than that. Once I was at a wedding, and there was a father there whose sons included several boys from the yeshiva. The boys were dancing, but he wasn’t. He’s a little different, but the boys were dancing with strength, enthusiasm and fire. So he said to me, “Tell me, aren’t they a little disconnected?” As Jews do, I answered him with a question. I said, “Look, it says in Tanya that Hakadosh Boruch Hu gives my soul strength—strength the animal soul doesn’t have—the ability of the mind to prevail over emotion. ‘The mind rules the heart.’ He gives it that, and the animal soul doesn’t have it. So tell me: doesn’t that make it unfair? The two sides aren’t evenly matched. How can that be?” He said, “Well, yes, really—what do you say?” So I told him, “You see in practice that people sin. Why? Because the animal soul is on its home turf. That’s its home turf.” So I said to him, “Don’t worry. They’re all connected to G-dliness, but they’ll know how to shop at the grocery store, they’ll work, and they’ll take responsibility for their children.” There’s the home turf, and then there are these other things. You’re talking as though the moment they’re moved, that’s it. What do you mean, “the moment they’re moved”? There’s something called the constriction of the throat, the constriction of the throat. We’re all like swans with long necks: all the time there’s another stretch of throat, and another, and another. What does it mean to change? For my essence to change. The Rebbe says, “How much more so his essence”—for my essence to change. There’s a kind of improvement you can make: I improved; I broke my own record.

23:19 Speaker 4 But real change has to be something much deeper, and that’s what Amalek is aiming at. He doesn’t mind if we look good and meet every definition of good and fine.

23:42 Speaker 5 Something doesn’t quite fit for me, though. Isn’t Amalek always defined as coldness—coming at you with coldness, raising doubts?

23:49 Speaker 4 What do you mean?

23:49 Speaker 5 If, as the rabbi is saying, his main aim is to stop you from changing, then how does that definition fit?

23:58 Speaker 4 Coldness doesn’t mean Amalek is an Eskimo. What is warmth? Warmth is life. Amalek tries to—what is doubt? What is this doubt? Doubt is something terrible, because it means not really being here. When does Amalek come? On the road. What does “on the road” mean? You weren’t settled anywhere. You’re not in a fixed place. Now you’re here, now you’re here, now you’re here—within your soul, too. He puts you in a state of doubt, a state where there’s this pull in the other direction. Maybe I don’t know how this fits with all the theories, but the Rambam, in Moreh Nevuchim, cites Aristotle, who says the world has always existed. The world has always existed, and Aristotle brings proof after proof after proof. And then what? The Rambam says, “Well, can I tell you you’re wrong? How can I? All I can do is raise doubts. I can say perhaps it’s like this, perhaps it’s like that, perhaps it’s another way.” And that’s how he takes his argument apart. The moment you raise doubts—what are you doing? You’re raising doubts. So, you know—

25:38 Speaker 6 I can answer you, though.

25:40 Speaker 4 Maybe you can answer and maybe you can’t, but doubt casts something into question. What is it? It—

25:48 Speaker 6 Undermines your stability.

25:49 Speaker 4 Undermines your stability. You’re not really here. You’re not here, and we have to overcome that. In Kfar Chabad, right after Gimmel Tammuz, there was that well-known piece by Rabbi Ginzburg. He wrote a column there, and someone else wrote a column saying, “Look, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.” Rabbi Ginzburg wrote in his column about that young man from Berlin. You know, the one the Rebbe sent to… after he said that mayim acharonim was optional. I don’t need to tell the whole story; it’s well known. Chassidim were sitting at a farbrengen, and the Alter Rebbe arrived and sat there. He was enjoying it very much. And what were they saying? One of them said, “Mayim acharonim is optional.” The Alter Rebbe heard it and said that a worm was eating away at him. The young man went into the room, and the Rebbe told him that on his way to his business, he should visit Rabbi Boruch of Karlin. When he got there, he didn’t go in; he sat in the waiting room and heard the tzaddik pacing back and forth. Suddenly the tzaddik opened the door and said, “German[?], German[?], young man, young man, perhaps there is a G-d in the world?” Then he said it again and again: “Perhaps there is a G-d in the world?” After that, the young man left and went from bad to worse. Eventually, in short, he became Russia’s minister of railways. When they began building the railways, they drew a straight line between two points on the map, and it went right through the site of the Alter Rebbe’s grave. So they would have to move it.

27:46 Speaker 4 The Alter Rebbe’s chassidim were alarmed. Everyone was filled with awe and fear. They appealed to the governor and to one official after another, and eventually they were given an appointment with the minister of railways. They arrived—

27:58 Speaker 6 [Unclear][?].

27:59 Speaker 4 Ah, yes, and he recognized them. “Don’t you know me? Don’t you know me?” In the end he said, “Bring some mashke.” They sat and farbrenged. He asked, “Why have you come?” They said, “They want to move the Rebbe’s grave.” So he went over to the railway map, placed his hand over the rail line, and marked with a pencil along the curve[?] of his hand—the fingers make a kind of arch. He rerouted the railway like that. It’s a story that’s really been kept under wraps. I mean, it was risky to tell, because nowadays you can simply check a map to see where

28:42 Speaker 7 the railway runs.

28:45 Speaker 4 And ruin the story.

28:46 Speaker 7 Okay.

28:47 Speaker 4 But that isn’t the point of the story.

28:48 Speaker 7 What? What’s the point about doubt here?

28:50 Speaker 4 The point is that afterward, as they sat together on friendly terms, they asked him, “How did you end up like this? How did you get here?” He said, “The Rebbe said a worm was eating away at me, but one thing bothers me all the time. I keep thinking, ‘Perhaps there is a G-d in the world’”—what Rabbi Boruch of Karlin had said. And Rabbi Ginzburg, who tells the story, says that Reb Mendel used to tell it. I remember Reb Mendel telling it—no, that’s exactly what I heard. So why didn’t the Rebbe say that to him?

29:28 Speaker 7 Why did he send him to Rabbi Boruch of Karlin?

29:29 Speaker 4 Because for us there is no doubt. We can’t say, “Perhaps there is a G-d in the world.” For us, these things are certain. All our Yiddishkeit is a certainty. The only question is about me: am I really here? We have very difficult doubts too, yes, but our doubts are about ourselves. We’re the ones in doubt.

29:57 Speaker 7 Basically, I need to put myself in a position where I may have doubts, but I know how to confine them to the part of me that’s the problem.

30:11 Speaker 4 First of all, there’s the matter of kabbolas ol. Kabbolas ol. I’ll put it in a way that may not be quite right: it bridges the moments when we feel certain. It keeps me from being swept away by my personal problems and complications. Kabbolas ol—and joy, too. Joy also stands against Amalek. Joy breaks things apart; it undermines the whole notion of doubt. “There is no joy like the resolution of doubts.” Resolving doubts is itself a joy, and there’s nothing that resolves doubts like joy. Joy resolves doubts; it creates that certainty. That’s why we have this idea. It’s so connected to Purim, so connected to this whole subject. It fits exactly here. Speaking personally, when I was a child, I hated Purim. I hated Purim. My mother would dress us up in costumes, all three brothers together, all the same, and I would come down with a fever before Purim. A high fever. When I got to yeshiva, I suddenly discovered a different Purim. Out in the world, Purim is masks. Now, there are explanations in terms of G-dliness about masks too, but for us, Purim isn’t a fez or Cossack clothes. It’s joy, and joy comes from our certainty: I’m on the right path, I’m on the right path, I’m in the right place. That’s where it comes from.

32:06 Speaker 7 Which brings about which?

32:07 Speaker 4 Wait, wait, wait. Joy brings that about, and that brings about joy.

32:11 Speaker 7 Joy brings certainty.

32:12 Speaker 4 Of course it does, because joy—

32:15 Speaker 7 Isn’t that a kind of innocent naivety, living in—

32:18 Speaker 4 Not at all.

32:18 Speaker 7 In some sort of illusion, as it were? I’m happy about something, and I turn it from an event into a certainty.

32:23 Speaker 4 Rabbi Sasson—someone whose name means “joy”—has to be careful about that.

32:30 Speaker 7 Okay.

32:30 Speaker 4 No, what? What do you mean? Joy isn’t craziness. It isn’t craziness; it isn’t foolish. There’s the famous story of the chossid whom the Rebbe Rashab told to receive the Torah with joy and inwardly. Later they saw him sitting and crying. It wasn’t that he’d gotten tangled up in the question of whether or not he was joyful. Yes, that was how it expressed itself. Joy is identification and connection. It’s not looking at the... Joy goes together with kabbolas ol. It’s remarkable. What is joy? Two chapters in Tanya begin with “But”: chapter 41 and chapter 26. What does “but” mean? It’s a qualification. Everything was fine. Remember? Don’t you remember someone in the kitchen saying about a Russian young man, “He’s a good young man, but a little, a little crazy”?

33:43 Speaker 7 In the yeshiva kitchen.

33:44 Speaker 4 Yes, you remember him? But that “but” wipes out what came before. Everything is good, but this is how it needs to be.

33:57 Speaker 7 And joy and kabbolas ol are—

33:58 Speaker 4 Joy and kabbolas ol go together because they’re really two sides that complete the same thing. Like the palm and the back of the hand: they complement each other.

34:13 Speaker 7 And how do they become the bridges that bring Divine certainty into those parts of the soul that—

34:19 Speaker 4 There’s the certainty you can actually feel, when it shines within me. There are times when things shine within me. Yes, what am I saying? You... I... there are levels—

34:34 Speaker 7 A word about violence, or an X-ray, something.

34:35 Speaker 4 There are levels of righteousness. When you’re with the Rebbe, you might have two moments in the whole of Tishrei when you said, “This is it.” And you saw—

34:51 Speaker 7 That’s Divine certainty.

34:52 Speaker 4 Divine certainty.

34:54 Speaker 7 One second, Rabbi, I have to add something in parentheses here. The first time the Rabbi was with the Rebbe was in 5778.

34:59 Speaker 4 In Elul 5760.

35:01 Speaker 7 It was Elul 5760. Did the Rabbi have that moment of certainty, that “This is it—dos iz nit andersh”?

35:07 Speaker 4 I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you what it was like then. There was Zusha Wilimovsky [?] before davening. Half an hour beforehand, people would study Likkutei Torah. He would say, “Kinderlach, in cheder arayn”—“Children, into the classroom.” That’s what he would say. He would stand there and write down the names of whoever was there. Then, after davening, they’d study some more Shulchan Aruch, go eat, and that was it. And people wandered around. I remember—

35:51 Speaker 7 Wait.

35:51 Speaker 4 I remember, I remember. No, never mind. What is it? [unclear] At the end of Tishrei, how many times, after traveling to the Rebbe, did I ask myself: What did I come away with? What did I come away with? What did I get out of it? What did I come away with? What? I learned so much. No, no, it wasn’t like today. Today it’s Gan Eden. Today it’s Gan Eden. People don’t understand that. It’s Gan Eden. Days of light. Days of light. What do you mean, days of light? I’m just getting worked up now. I remember once coming out—I don’t remember what year it was, maybe in Elul. I came out of the farbrengen, a big farbrengen where the crowd reached almost to the Aron Kodesh, and I looked back. Wow, there’s life beyond the bimah. People are walking around while the Rebbe is speaking, giving a sicha, stirring everyone up. And people are sitting in the back, running the world, talking and laughing.

37:02 Speaker 8 Like sand on the seashore.

37:03 Speaker 4 Yes, and it was beyond comparison. In any case, I remember thinking: What did you come away with? I left, and I don’t know. But one thing I knew: I always want to be here. Maybe next time will go better, but I want to be here. I want to be with the Rebbe.

37:32 Speaker 8 That’s certainty.

37:33 Speaker 4 That’s my certainty. I want to be with the Rebbe. The Rebbe is our certainty. The Rebbe is our certainty. The Rebbe is our certainty in Hakadosh Boruch Hu. The Rambam didn’t include that, but that’s our certainty.

37:53 Speaker 8 Maybe that’s how the Rabbi said it at the farbrengen [?]. We mentioned in yeshiva, now that we’re in Parshas Tetzaveh, that there are several interpretations of Ra’aya Mehemna, “the faithful shepherd,” but our interpretation is that the Rebbe—

38:02 Speaker 4 No, I didn’t say “our interpretation.” I didn’t say “our interpretation.” I don’t say such a thing. I don’t. Earlier you said to me that I want... What does Chabad say? I don’t know what Chabad says. I can’t speak for it; I can—

38:13 Speaker 8 The Rabbi offered an interpretation.

38:14 Speaker 4 I said—

38:15 Speaker 8 You offered a drush.

38:16 Speaker 4 I said it as a drush, because I used... I even changed the spelling. I made it “ra’aya mehemna”—a trustworthy proof. I said it with an alef.

38:21 Speaker 8 Yes, yes.

38:22 Speaker 4 Even though it’s with an alef. But from Amalek itself you can also see why.

38:27 Speaker 8 That’s what I was coming to say. No, not its name.

38:29 Speaker 4 No, no, no. Look at the phrase “a holy event.” How do you translate “a holy event”? There’s a spelling with an ayin. Sometimes they write it with an alef, sometimes with an ayin, and sometimes with a hei. In other words, sometimes you can swap them. You can swap them too. But, yes, yes.

38:57 Speaker 8 What the Rambam wrote—that our proof, the Rebbe, is a proof, as it were, reliable evidence that there is a Hakadosh Boruch Hu.

39:06 Speaker 4 For everything, for everything, for everything.

39:10 Speaker 8 That’s our certainty: the Rebbe.

39:12 Speaker 4 Certainly. And now what? How do we proceed? The Rebbe said what the Rebbe said. You can come along and start saying, “Look.” So I brought a sicha—what does the Rebbe say at a farbrengen? Five sichos, six sichos. There aren’t five or six; it’s all the same point. You can come and take that—it’s not such a great feat—and compare it with the Rebbe’s teachings. The same stages. So you’ll see: it’s to strengthen faith after the Holocaust. And then gradually bring it—bring it where? Calm down.

40:05 Speaker 8 So that’s actually the ultimate point.

40:07 Speaker 4 Calm down.

40:08 Speaker 8 Turn down the volume.

40:08 Speaker 4 Turn down the volume, calm down. There’s no doubt that—

40:15 Speaker 8 I’m trying to lay out the stages here. In other words, it starts by raising a doubt in you about the whole thing.

40:19 Speaker 4 Right.

40:20 Speaker 8 The second stage, as a result of the doubt, is coldness, indifference, turning down the volume.

40:26 Speaker 4 Right.

40:26 Speaker 8 The third stage is that it’s simply obvious that nothing makes any difference.

40:29 Speaker 4 But it has to come with... it has to come with something religious as well.

40:33 Speaker 8 Yes.

40:33 Speaker 4 Because the children are religious. So, “perfecting the world under the sovereignty of Hashem,” or some such thing, or one of the Rebbe’s campaigns treated as a theoretical idea, the teachings of the Nasi—all sorts of things. It’s all true, but he has to offer you something religious. What is he going to do—take a religious child, a chossid, and sell him the idea that the professors of the world were right? He can’t say something like that.

41:22 Speaker 8 Now that we’ve understood the main points—the general outlines, let’s call them, of Amalek: doubt, coldness, and not wanting things to come to fruition—we have to ask where we stand now. This isn’t a podcast from 5665 or 5565. It’s 5780. We stand after the Rebbe’s announcement and prophecy: “Behold, Moshiach is coming.” I’ve seen a very interesting and precise statement by the Rebbe in Likkutei Sichos, volume 4: Amalek’s main aim in every generation is to cool Jews off from the central task of that generation. That’s what the Rebbe says there.

41:56 Speaker 4 Wonderful.

41:57 Speaker 8 Someone told me it’s deliberate that it’s specifically on page 90. To cool off the—the point of the tzaddik of the generation, of—

42:03 Speaker 4 It’s not just a matter of the tzaddik of the generation. I don’t know. That’s the plain meaning. Today there’s this: “The Rebbe always spoke about Moshiach.” That’s what they say [unclear]—

42:18 Speaker 8 Isn’t that sentence itself the beginning of a kind of doubt, a coldness?

42:23 Speaker 4 What?

42:23 Speaker 8 “The Rebbe always spoke about Moshiach.”

42:24 Speaker 4 Right.

42:25 Speaker 8 Nothing new.

42:29 Speaker 4 But saying “The Rebbe always spoke about Moshiach” is like saying that for Hakadosh Boruch Hu it isn’t—

42:37 Speaker 8 A miracle.

42:37 Speaker 4 It isn’t a miracle. What do you mean? I remember—going out to do mivtzoim isn’t always easy. Going up and entering someone’s life: “Sir, put on tefillin.” I remember when I was a bochur, I was never—I would always sort of keep to the side. When I was a bochur in Kfar Chabad, we’d go to the old central bus station in Tel Aviv with tefillin. I always wanted to stand outside and call out to people rather than confront them. Once I went up to someone, put my hand on his shoulder and said, “Sir, put on tefillin,” and he sort of flinched, like some kind of—

43:27 Speaker 8 Like a bird.

43:28 Speaker 4 Like a bird taking flight. It was awful, and it wasn’t pleasant. You’re entering someone’s life. And when you’re a child, and suddenly there’s an adult in front of you and you tell him what to do—it’s wonderful. It’s wonderful to see boys from a younger yeshiva. They come over, their voices haven’t even changed yet, and they tell an old grandfather what to do, and he obeys. You can see the Rebbe before your eyes.

43:54 Speaker 8 In practice, that’s the “insolence will increase” of the end of the exile.

43:56 Speaker 4 What are you talking about? What insolence? It’s the Rebbe!

44:02 Speaker 8 Yes.

44:02 Speaker 4 It’s the Rebbe. The Rebbe is older than all of them—already over 120, even. And then the Rebbe comes along. I remember when the Rebbe said to do the letters in the Children’s Sefer Torah campaign—

44:19 Speaker 8 MMS.

44:20 Speaker 4 How dreadful it was to go and ask for money! Do you know what it means to ask for money, to go into a home where there are three children and tell them to give thirty shekels? I’d never done such a thing in my life. Then it suddenly got even harder: we had to go into people’s homes and persuade them to vote for Gimel [?].

44:47 Speaker 8 MMS.

44:47 Speaker 4 I had to go and persuade people to vote without giving names.

44:52 Speaker 8 Much harder than asking for money.

44:53 Speaker 4 What is that? I said I’d sooner go collect money for the funds and try to persuade people about things like that. Yes. And then, suddenly, Moshiach began. It was one addition after another after another. These were new things, new things.

45:19 Speaker 8 And what thread connects all these things into one point? No, I’m talking about the ultimate purpose. From the perspective of your own feelings, you’re arguing.

45:26 Speaker 4 I don’t care. It doesn’t matter to me. You can simply do what the Rebbe says. What do you mean? Did I choose Hakadosh Boruch Hu? Hakadosh Boruch Hu chose me. Yes. “You brought us close to Your service.” The truth is, I remember that the Rebbe wrote me a letter. Since I wanted to go to yeshiva, and “a person should always study in a place his heart desires,” but some claimed that my desire wasn’t genuine, I should go to yeshiva for two years and then think about it again. After two years, there was no need. But I did think about it. I took stock: What happened to you? What did you go through? Are you more religious? Fine, something was added to who I am. I bowed my head. I recognized what it was about. That’s it. What had I done? It was “You brought us close to Your service.” He brought me close; He brought me there. It wasn’t this or that, and especially not me. I was carried along by it. “Brought close”—that’s what the word means. Yes, “You brought us close to Your service.” Maybe that’s a sort of argument for the other side. Okay, fine, so what can I do? He didn’t bring me close? If you really say that, you’re saying He didn’t bring you close. That’s it. Are you prepared to stand by that? Nobody will say it. Nobody will say it. Everyone wants to claim Reb Mendel as their own precisely because he couldn’t be claimed by anyone. He couldn’t. Reb Mendel had nothing to do with factions or any of that. He was an old man who sang “Yechi.” He said, “Go where there’s joy, where there’s joy, where there’s joy.” A place full of doubts cannot be joyful. It cannot be joyful. I just want to say—

47:53 Speaker 4 Something. Forgive me. Look, there’s a well-known story about Reb Moshe Vilenker [?], who went to Reb Aharon of Staroselye. He went to Reb Aharon of Staroselye, as many fine people did.

48:15 Speaker 8 There was some kind of journey.

48:16 Speaker 4 Yes, yes. I remember once coming to Reb Mendel with the Frierdiker Rebbe’s sicha about an inward Chabad chossid and a Chabad chossid whose connection is more outward. With great excitement, I said that Reb Kossler [?] was an outward Chabad chossid, and Moshe Vilenker... And he said, “Yes, yes, yes. Kossler went to the Mitteler Rebbe, and Moshe Vilenker went to Reb Aharon of Staroselye.” That swept the whole distinction away. So Moshe Vilenker went to Reb Aharon of Staroselye. Now, Reb Aharon had been a fellow student of his; they had studied together under the Alter Rebbe. Reb Moshe Vilenker was a tzaddik. Yes, a tzaddik. The Alter Rebbe said that even his heels were permeated with Oneness. Reb Aharon of Staroselye, meanwhile, was a man of great fervor. He said something about the Ein Sof Light, or something like that, and in the middle of a maamar he climbed onto the table and danced. Reb Moshe Vilenker saw that the fervor had subsided, but Reb Aharon kept dancing with the same vigor and intensity. So he said to him, “Aharon, Aharon, you can come down from the table now,” and he left. I don’t know whether he went to the Mitteler Rebbe or not. It was more complicated than that.

49:58 Speaker 8 He eventually did.

49:59 Speaker 4 Yes, but wait. What about “the hearts are drawn after the actions”?

50:07 Speaker 8 There’s room for that. There’s room for that.

50:08 Speaker 4 There’s room for that. I’m not saying you put the cat in the oven and then it rains. But—

50:17 Speaker 8 If you’ve started something.

50:19 Speaker 4 But why? Why? What’s wrong with that? What do you mean? Here we are. All I’m saying is that there’s something that pulls you along. Kabbolas ol—what kind of kabbolas ol is that? It’s also a kind of externality. Yes, a kind of externality, isn’t it?

50:36 Speaker 8 And joy, too. Yes. Okay, we’ll leave that in parentheses.

50:42 Speaker 4 We’ll leave it in parentheses.

50:43 Speaker 8 Okay.

50:44 Speaker 4 So how does it fit? What would you say now? Look, really, there always needs to be complete correspondence between the Mah and the Ban of everything, between its essence and its expression. I need them to correspond, roughly speaking. Somewhere—let’s say—

51:16 Speaker 8 For the two to overlap, as it were.

51:19 Speaker 4 Like with hadassim, where they have to emerge from the same point. And if there are two and one, when does that still count? How far apart can they be? Someone—I won’t say who; this is an Ata podcast, so we won’t name one of the well-known Torah scholars—said that if the beginning of one and the end of the other overlap at some point, that still counts as the same place. Yes, so—

51:48 Speaker 8 That’s the point.

51:48 Speaker 4 Somewhere, there’s some overlap between the expression and the essence.

51:54 Speaker 8 Only when they’re far apart by [unclear] is it different.

51:57 Speaker 4 With tzaddikim, though, it has to be exact. That’s one possible way to put it. I could—but—

52:06 Speaker 8 How does that relate to our point?

52:07 Speaker 4 This Shabbos I was thinking about it, and it made me very, very happy. I thought: that’s not the point at all. The point is that with Reb Moishe Vilanker, if what he said was true, he started at the point and ran away from it. There, it’s a fake. What I’m doing—acting as though I’m already there—is meant to help me reach the point. He did it so it wouldn’t look as though he’d stayed at—that he hadn’t stayed at the point. Those are two completely different directions. Yes, what—now, I said this too—

52:51 Speaker 8 What exactly are you getting at?

52:52 Speaker 4 Huh? Yes, what do you mean? What do you mean? It turned out that he really was at that point. You have a connection to it. But me—what connection do I have to it? What connection? Do I sway in davening? What do I know of “All my bones shall say”? Where am I holding? Of course not.

53:06 Speaker 8 So Reb Moishe Vilanker couldn’t accept that, as it were.

53:08 Speaker 4 Right. You ran away from the point. That’s—it doesn’t fit together. You’re expressing more than—you’re overexpressing yourself. Overexpression is external. I’m not overexpressing myself; I’m missing the substance, and I want to bring out my substance. I’m not expressing more than I have. I want to draw it in and reach the substance. Yes. Now, why am I saying this? Why did I bring it up? I said we have the, the...

53:44 Speaker 8 Highs and lows.

53:44 Speaker 4 The highs and lows. And we want to stay at the point all the time. To stay at the point all the time, knowing that I’m not perfect. Now, again, this joy—Moshiach goes together with joy. The Rebbe says so. What else is there to say? It’s joy. The Rebbe says so.

54:13 Speaker 8 The letters of simchah.

54:13 Speaker 4 Yes, necessarily—it goes together with joy. Moshiach goes together with joy. What kind of joy? The joy of Moshiach, too. Moshiach goes together with joy, and that’s joy, the joy of the Geulah, the joy of Moshiach.

54:30 Speaker 8 Okay. From the right and the left, I’m getting points that challenge me. So how do I make sure Amalek doesn’t get into that place?

54:38 Speaker 4 Receiving light implies [?]. So we need to know—

54:45 Speaker 8 To keep that unshakable certainty of the Rebbe’s before our eyes.

54:48 Speaker 4 Yes.

54:48 Speaker 8 That’s the first point.

54:49 Speaker 4 Certainly, certainly. And we need to train ourselves. I mean, bochurim need not to be chutzpadik.

55:00 Speaker 8 What do you mean?

55:02 Speaker 4 Amalek is chutzpadik. We shouldn’t get ourselves used to—the cheap substitute for joy, you know what it is? Clowning around.

55:14 Speaker 8 Childish antics.

55:14 Speaker 4 Childish antics. Yes, all sorts of things like that. We need to be aware of them. Among bochurim there’s an expression I’ve heard, “in a spoon mood.” It’s terrible.

55:27 Speaker 8 Because that isn’t joy.

55:28 Speaker 4 It isn’t joy; it’s childish antics. We’re not little children. No, not little children. I don’t know.

55:34 Speaker 8 Cynicism.

55:36 Speaker 4 That too. All sorts of things. In general, clowning around isn’t—

55:43 Speaker 8 Clowning around and cynicism do go together in a sense, don’t they?

55:46 Speaker 4 Often. Reb Mendel used to say that one has to be wary of clowning around. He didn’t mean clowning around at all. That wasn’t what he meant. His clowning around was the kind associated with [unclear], yes. But not—disrespect. In many forms, disrespect. We have to work on this. No, I’ve gone off on a tangent. I don’t know if this is the place for it. If you want, cut it out and put it in a podcast about manners and etiquette, I don’t know. You are, after all, known and famous for it. It says—the Sages say that Hakadosh Boruch Hu did not teach the Jewish people manners, as it says, “[unclear] kings” [?], derech eretz. Yes, so maybe now there could be a podcast called “[unclear] Kings.” Right?

56:37 Speaker 9 Okay, okay.

56:39 Speaker 4 I can’t stand it when someone says, “You davened? You rolled through it? Rolled through it?” “Putting on” is “rolling through it.” What does “rolling through it” mean?

56:49 Speaker 9 You mean problematic slang. As if—

56:51 Speaker 4 That’s not it. Slang happens. I’m not pure about it myself, but there’s a way of speaking that cheapens things—that’s what I mean. I’m not looking for people to speak with [unclear], with a chossid’s [unclear], or to say [unclear] every so often, or “dernoch mit G-d’s hilf.”

57:19 Speaker 9 But rather?

57:20 Speaker 4 Look, there’s an expression now, “rolled through it.” What does “rolled through it” mean? What? Why? Why did you “roll through it”? Why did you “roll through it”? Mumbled? What? These are all kinds of expressions that cheapen things, that show disrespect. We’re getting used to making Yiddishkeit into some sort of— So I remember once—

57:52 Speaker 9 It’s an Amalek-like turn of phrase, really.

57:54 Speaker 4 Yes, it’s that sort of thing. For years and years I would travel to the Rebbe and stay at 749. I remember once traveling to the Rebbe with Kuti, perhaps before his bar mitzvah, and we slept in a room. Suddenly I heard him speaking that way, using all those “rolled through it” expressions. I said, “Kuti, how are you speaking? How can you speak like that?” So he said, “Abba, where have you brought me, among what sort of people?” And we really, really have to be careful about this. That’s not me. Again, I don’t want to found some sect of silent people, some stern-faced thing. No! You know, I’ve heard it said that the Chofetz Chaim was a cheerful person and a good conversationalist. It doesn’t sound right. It doesn’t sound right. Listen to someone for an hour, an hour, an hour—it’s not so terrible. No, they say he was a warm conversationalist, and—

59:07 Speaker 9 To be a warm conversationalist while being careful about the label one always projects—that’s hard.

59:12 Speaker 4 True. I’m not talking about—

59:16 Speaker 9 But Rabbi, you’re not talking here about speech and slang. You’re talking about an attitude within a person that—

59:21 Speaker 4 That shows disrespect—disrespect toward Yiddishkeit, toward holy things. Holy things.

59:39 Speaker 9 So if we return to that point, Rabbi, to the essential point: when we lean a little to the right or left, we really have one point to return to. When there are doubts or coldness, we return to the Rebbe. So we need to keep that direction in view all the time: how we always return to the Rebbe. It’s interesting that on Purim they explain [unclear], that this is why the mitzvah to appoint a king comes before wiping out Amalek.

1:00:00 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:00:00 Speaker 9 Because there’s a Rebbe, and then you can bring Amalek down.

1:00:03 Speaker 4 I want to interview you now.

1:00:07 Speaker 9 But here, Rabbi, I really want you to speak openly in closing about this subject, about Moshiach. We know—and there’s no need to spell it out, because we see right before our eyes how Amalek is constantly trying to cool us off—about Yechi, about the Rebbe’s message of the Geulah, about the Dvar Malchus sichos, about that supposed naivety: “What, you’re learning those sichos again? Repeating those passages about the message of the Geulah again? Dancing to Yechi again after davening? Traveling to the Rebbe again, eagerly waiting for the Rebbe to come in now and reveal himself?” He touches precisely that point, and it’s what usually touches us, because we live with the subject of Moshiach all the time, and he’s constantly trying to strike us there. What do we do?

1:00:49 Speaker 4 It’s all written in the Torah: “Remember what Amalek did to you.” You need to recognize these things and define them. Once you define them, you know what to watch out for. So it happened to you; it became clear that you—but you know how to call it by its name. Listen, what—you described it so beautifully. I couldn’t put it better than you did.

1:01:08 Speaker 9 What do you mean? When I feel a moment of coldness about Moshiach, I should identify it: there’s Amalek right before my eyes. Is that the point?

1:01:14 Speaker 4 In general, we—

1:01:15 Speaker 9 Am I done? I’ve identified it, and that’s it? I mean, what?

1:01:17 Speaker 4 Wait, wait. So many things in life are a matter of awareness. It’s not just a nice word, “awareness.” Yes, awareness. But so many things are a matter of simply being aware of them. In general, a chossid is happy; a chossid is perceptive. What does perceptive mean? It doesn’t mean he knows how to invent clever sayings. He knows how to recognize what’s going on with himself. And he knows how to laugh at himself. He knows how to catch himself at his most embarrassing. A lot of times, you know, a person can suddenly be saying, “Wow, someone said this to me, and people were saying that, and they humiliated me.” After it happens to him twice, what should he think? What should he realize? “I’m clouded. I’m clouded.” I’m not saying the coffee grounds have somehow risen to the top. Nothing like that. Recognize it in yourself and look. Look: Hakadosh Boruch Hu hasn’t become any less. The Rebbe hasn’t become outdated. It’s simply that I’ve become more caught up in material things. We can’t let schnitzels dictate our opinions. What, I ate another schnitzel, became more materialistic, and now suddenly Hakadosh Boruch Hu matters less, the Rebbe matters less? What happened? What happened? We need to understand this. Now, when you see something like that in yourself, you alert yourself. You say, “A virus has gotten into my computer—”

1:03:12 Speaker 9 Warning signals.

1:03:13 Speaker 4 It’s signaling to me. Yes. The moment you see that I’m not aligned with the truth—I’m not “aligned,” with a tav, right?—that I’m not aligned with what’s right and true, then I need to give myself warning signals. I’m in a problematic place. I have a problem right now. So I need to sit with friends and farbreng. And maybe I need to—I don’t like saying it—say some kapitelach of Tehillim. And I like saying this even less: maybe I need a little restraint, some kind of light diet. Yes. Bring a little of Hakadosh Boruch Hu back into my life. Maybe I’ve become clever within the bounds of the Torah, while missing the point. Yes.

1:04:06 Speaker 9 In the language of Geulah and Moshiach, simply—

1:04:08 Speaker 4 Yes.

1:04:09 Speaker 9 Make it more and more present for myself.

1:04:11 Speaker 4 I don’t know about “making it present.” That’s not in the language of the days of Moshiach. I need to cut back. There’s no—uh, there is—

1:04:20 Speaker 9 Fine, fine. Spell it out for me. What should I do?

1:04:23 Speaker 4 What should you do? A little iskafya. What, a person has become coarse? Like a pig that cries all day because even to breathe it has to lift its nose out of the dung, and then says, “How did this suddenly happen to me? Maybe the Rebbe really was Rebbe only until the year 2000?” What? Sir, iskafya. Start davening a little. Not in order to—for Hakadosh Boruch Hu to have a place in your life at all. Not for a revelation of light.

1:05:07 Speaker 9 Mm-hm.

1:05:07 Speaker 4 So that Hakadosh Boruch Hu will have a place in your life, so that you’ll have a Rebbe. For that, you need to do something. Maybe you need to exert yourself helping others and doing things that aren’t selfish? A person can be on a slippery slope of self-importance, and as we get older, our desires get stronger and bolder. So what if our beards grow and hide the stains of filth on our faces from us? That doesn’t make me more righteous. And in the end I even manage to say, you know what, “Higher and higher, without end.” I say He’s present in all the garbage too, and now I have a justification for everything.

1:05:59 Speaker 9 That’s Molech. You want religious people.

1:06:01 Speaker 4 Certainly.

1:06:02 Speaker 9 But I’m asking something else. There is the possibility of becoming materialistic, the way the Rabbi describes.

1:06:07 Speaker 4 No, I—

1:06:07 Speaker 9 I came to the conclusion—

1:06:09 Speaker 4 I didn’t start there. I didn’t start there.

1:06:11 Speaker 9 No.

1:06:12 Speaker 4 No, that’s what I said. Look, all these things about “my battery has run out”—why has my battery run out? Why? Again: a person has every right to grow up. He has an absolute duty not to grow old. Those are two different things. You can’t—the joy of children is what it is, you know. There’s nothing to be done about that. But growing old, growing old—do you know what growing old means? It means making peace with it. I accept it, and now even my limp has become a charming limp. There are things that are part of the beauty of being a child or a young person. You take those things and find a way to bring them into your life. Maybe you—but when you’re like that, you won’t look down on a child who does it. Growing old means losing that. How can I put it? I once told someone—it doesn’t matter who—“In your life, you’re on a slippery slope. You call everyone above you delusional, and everyone below you a heretic, and you keep sliding down, convinced that only they are changing. People move from one place to another, but you’re always in the right place.” That’s growing old and digging yourself in. Have you ever seen an old man run? Old men don’t run; they just quickly put a foot forward so they won’t fall on their faces. It’s all defenses to stay who I am, to remain where I stand.

1:08:32 Speaker 10 As if I’m dragging myself along and the whole world is being dragged along after me.

1:08:36 Speaker 4 I look—no, not that I’m an example—but I see the children jumping, and I smile. There’s a song in Yiddish, a song where an old man says to the children, “Don’t look at my white hair. In my heart, I’m with you. You should know that the leap from spring to winter takes only a moment.” We need to protect ourselves. And when you see that you’ve suddenly become a professor, you need to strengthen the soul. That’s becoming materialistic.

1:09:38 Speaker 10 No, but besides becoming materialistic, sometimes I’ve found a new sicha of the Rebbe that says exactly the opposite of what I thought. Here, I’m deliberately giving an example like that, Rabbi.

1:09:47 Speaker 4 How wonderful.

1:09:47 Speaker 10 I’m giving that example deliberately. What’s the diagnosis?

1:09:49 Speaker 4 Huh?

1:09:50 Speaker 10 What’s the diagnosis? Have I become materialistic, or have I found a new sicha of the Rebbe, or received a fresh slap from someone else that opened my eyes? In other words, how do I diagnose what’s happening with my understanding of Geulah and Moshiach? Is this Amalek, or is it something genuine? Is there a way to diagnose it, or is it a matter of “a righteous man knows the soul of his animal”? I don’t know. Each person needs to do an ultrasound of his soul.

1:10:13 Speaker 4 There’s no life insurance, no life insurance. You know, Rabbi Melech tells a story about—I bought the book—Rabbi Ze’ev Wolf of Zhitomir, the author of Or Hameir. I heard the story about him from our Rebbe, so I bought his book. I have it at home. He once said that he saw the days of Moshiach; he saw those moments. What did he see? He saw three things. I always forget one of them. One was a Jew who gets up on Shabbos morning, shaves his beard with a razor, goes to shul and demands shishi or shlishi. And he sees an elderly man—not on Shabbos—an elderly man who’s a tzaddik, with a beard and a long coat. He goes to shul, puts a coin in the charity box and says, “May we hold on to our faith,” that we should remain believers.

1:11:21 Speaker 10 The Rabbi is shifting this from diagnosis to prayer.

1:11:24 Speaker 4 Yes. Yes, yes. “Guard my soul, for I am pious.” “Save my only soul from the hand of the dog.” Yes, we need to daven to Hakadosh Boruch Hu to protect us. We need to ask the Rebbe always, “May we hold on to our faith”—that my faith shouldn’t be damaged. Ultimately, that can only come from Above. [Unclear] used to say—well, not always, but he would say it at moments of truth—you can’t... So it says, “Everything is in the hands of Heaven except for fear of Heaven.” One person says, “Everything I have comes from Hakadosh Boruch Hu, except for my Torah study and good deeds. I accomplished those with my own ten fingers.” And a chossid knows—what? Of course fear of Heaven comes from Hakadosh Boruch Hu! But it says “except for”—yes, because you can spoil it. We can spoil everything. That also somewhat contradicts the idea of hashgachah pratis and so on.

1:12:30 Speaker 11 More on that in the next podcast.

1:12:31 Speaker 4 I remember, back in the days of the shluchim at Rabbi Landau’s yeshiva ketana, another yeshiva opened there, at the Rakefes Hotel.

1:12:49 Speaker 11 The second floor.

1:12:50 Speaker 4 Yes, on the first floor.

1:12:51 Speaker 11 Above the dining room.

1:12:52 Speaker 4 Yes, not on that floor. Their hall was there, and their dormitory was on the floor above. There was one boy who came. His parents were very strong Moshiach supporters. They asked the Rebbe, wrote to the Rebbe, and [unclear] said yes, he should stay there. So his mother said, “Rebbe, if you want him to become anti, what can I tell you? That’s your choice.”

1:13:26 Speaker 11 The point about prayer, that’s, uh—

1:13:29 Speaker 4 Yes, yes, yes.

1:13:30 Speaker 11 To be connected.

1:13:31 Speaker 4 “Guard my soul, for I am a chossid. Save my only soul from the dog’s grasp.” Yes, you—what is “my only soul”? What is the yechidah? It’s Moshiach. Save it. And what is the dog?

1:13:43 Speaker 11 Amalek.

1:13:43 Speaker 4 Amalek.

1:13:45 Speaker 11 Well, that’s the title.

1:13:46 Speaker 4 Yes. Find the verse and make that the title: “My Only Soul from the Dog’s Grasp.”

1:13:54 Speaker 11 Thank you so much, Rabbi Maidovnik. Truly, thank you for the encouragement to take these things in and bring them deep into our hearts. We need to wipe out Amalek already, so that we merit, at this very moment, the complete revelation of the Rebbe shlita, Melech HaMoshiach.

1:14:05 Speaker 4 Study, study quickly. This can’t be. Today I came to this, [unclear]. I went over to the bochurim, my students: “Which maamar about Amalek are you studying?” How can that be? What are you waiting for—for it to arrive, or what? I’m telling you, I’ve been excited since last Sunday. I’m already excited.

1:14:24 Speaker 11 But with this, it’s sort of less about noisemakers than Rosh Hashanah, and—

1:14:27 Speaker 4 I don’t remember why I’m excited. I have—

1:14:33 Speaker 11 What does the rabbi recommend? No, Toras Chaim.

1:14:36 Speaker 4 Well, every maamar is good. I’ll tell you what: I studied them all. I went through them all, and I also forget what I’ve studied, because now I’m studying Toras Chaim. I studied Peh— I studied Peh Ches, I studied the one from [unclear], well, “Today and Amalek,” Peh Ches. I studied it. Amalek is the same Amalek.

1:14:56 Speaker 11 And the answers are in that maamar.

1:14:58 Speaker 4 Yes, and there are nuances here and there, but everyone merits it, and truly, it’s all within us. It’s all within us.

1:15:12 Speaker 11 Wow, wow. Thank you so much, Rabbi, for the encouragement.

1:15:15 Speaker 4 Long live our master, our teacher and our Rebbe, Melech HaMoshiach, forever and ever. There, you see? Even my “Yechi” is hoarse already. Yes, old and [unclear].

1:15:26 Speaker 11 Thank you. Thank you so much, Rabbi Maidovnik, for the program. Long live Melech HaMoshiach.

1:15:30 Speaker 4 Thank you very much.

1:15:32 Speaker 3 Ears to Hear. Audio programs for the students of the Temimim from the Or Yomi website. For more programs, dial star 6358. Long live our master, our teacher and our Rebbe, Melech HaMoshiach, forever and ever.