Rebbe’s Advice on Dealing With Impure Thoughts

Episode 157: "Rebbe's Advice on Dealing With Impure Thoughts" (כ"א בכסלו תשפ"ג)

Welcome to our weekly program, The Inside Story of Chabad in America, through the Mindel Archives. Since we're a few days away from Chanukah, I found here a letter from the Rebbe to somebody, but I'm just going to do the P.S. that the Rebbe wrote, and this has to do with the lights. So I'm going to read this P.S. now — I'm going to read it, very short:

"In reply to your question relating to the problem of temptation and the battle with the yetzer hara, which is a widespread problem — the way to cope with it is not to think about it. That is to say, whenever an undesirable thought enters the mind, you should not enter into argumentation with yourself as to how undesirable that thought is, and how unbecoming it would be to yield to the temptation, and so on. On the contrary, the Rebbe says, you should try to dismiss the whole thought from your mind. But inasmuch as it is possible to disengage the thought only by engaging in some other thought, therefore you should immediately divert your attention to some other matter — preferably a matter connected with the performance of a mitzvah. And since the Torah is called light, and we are in the holiday of Chanukah, and even a little light dispels a lot of darkness..."

This is the letter that the Rebbe writes. Look what the Chanukah candles are telling you — this will help to get rid of the tzoros. I guess this is what it means: that when the candles are burning, I think the person should sit and hear what the candles are telling them.

And then the Rebbe says — we were promised that the brocha recited in the lighting of the candles, and the intention with which you do it — because a good intention, a kavana penimis — and then it says here, the kavana penimis, do it with the right, good intention, and this will help with the problem of battling with the yetzer hara, if it's done with the right kavana. That means from here we see that the kavana of a person is important. You should sit by the candles, and you should meditate, and look at the candles, and think a good kavana — because kavana is important.

This reminds me — I'm talking about kavana — I heard once that the old Belzer [Rebbe?] used to daven in seven or eight minutes, so fast. So a chossid came over to him, so fast, and he says, "The main thing is kavana." He wants that — it's like a horse and wagon: when somebody goes on a horse and wagon, and the enemy tries to get on, so he goes so fast that the enemy shouldn't be able to get on the wagon. So they told him, "That's very nice, but what happens if the enemy is already on the wagon? What do you do then?" Then you need a lot of kavana to get rid of it. So it depends what the kavana is for.

The Rebbe writes to this person — but this he writes at the beginning of the letter, in the same letter — that you should leave your chevra until now, completely, and he underlined the word "completely" (legamrei). I guess — Markov [?] — he always searches for people; there are people who are highly depressed, to speak with them and to get them advice. That word, by the Rebbe, is very important — that some people think...

Now, I heard this — I also heard it from my father — since now it's after Yud Tes Kislev, I want to share with you myself: In Russia there was a chossid, and because he was a [unclear] he had a big family, very poor. So after some time he told his wife, "Now it's after this — it's another two months almost to Yud Tes Kislev, and let's say you have to collect, put away every day a few kopecks, a few pennies, for the seuda of the Yud Tes Kislev farbrengen — because you know, everybody knows that you make a big seuda, you should prepare, and I'll invite people. So put away — not all at once — but yeah, put away a little bit, okay?"

The time came, Yud Tes Kislev arrived, the wife went shopping, she collected some money, and she bought food, and she cooked food, and she made a whole table — maybe a big table with fish and meat. And the husband invited people to come. The husband comes home from shul at night, and he sees the table, baruch Hashem, and he's happy. Nobody's there — nobody came. She sits down, and he starts talking, he starts saying divrei Torah, thinking about Chassidus, and then he starts a niggun, and he starts singing. The wife is standing there, and the wife doesn't understand — the wife says to him, "Who are you talking to? Who are you saying this to? There's nobody here." So he says, "Good," he says, "today nobody is here, so what." But what happened after that — after a few minutes, maybe half an hour, people started to show up for the farbrengen. So this is something — the kavana is very, very important.

I think this reminds me of a story with an esrog: in Australia there was, you know, a wealthy person who had a beautiful esrog, and everybody wanted to bentch his esrog. So in the morning, the Rov came knocking on the door at five in the morning. The gvir was surprised — who is knocking? He opened the door: "You see, the Rov is here," he says. "I want to bentch — I want to be the first one to bentch." And the gvir was very, very impressed that he was going to bentch the esrog. And then he went around in the morning and told everybody what the Rov had done.

There was another Rov — a Litvishe Rov — he also heard that they made a big fuss of this, so the next day he also went to bentch, because they made a big fuss, and he became the second one to bentch the esrog, and the gvir didn't make a big fuss of it. So he says, "How come yesterday you made a big fuss, and here you didn't make a big fuss?" He says, "Because — what's your kavana? His kavana was to bentch right away; your kavana was different — your kavana was to make a big fuss." And that's the difference — kavana is very important.

So this is what we can learn from sitting by the Chanukah candles. I wanted to share with you this story. Im yirtzeh Hashem, next week we're going to continue with something — a very important letter of the Rebbe about Chanukah that I found, a handwritten letter from the Rebbe.