0052 - Hagomel After Flying on Airplane

00:01 In the Kuter Sichas Cheilik Yud Beis, page one fifty-two, there's a letter printed from the Rebbe concerning benching Gameil. And from that letter it comes out that every time you fly with a plane, you have to bench Gameil. Because the Rebbe connects whether you have to bench Gameil on a plane to the fact that the Alt Rebbe paskens that not only those four people who are mentioned have to bench Gameil, people who crossed the ocean, went through a midbar, someone was in jail, or someone was sick, but any person who went away past a makom sakana, inyan shel sakana, inyan shel danger, has to bench Gameil. But me'aleh according to that, the Rebbe says, if you fly in a plane, you have to bench Gameil. According to the other opinion, the Rebbe says that you have to bench Gameil only when you cross the ocean, et cetera. So then they, according to them, every time by plane you cross the ocean, you should also have to bench Gameil. But according to the other opinion that says anytime you're in a makom sakana, you have to bench Gameil. So you always have to bench Gameil when you fly a plane. Used to come out the journal, Yagal Teyreh, that the Rebbe started, that they would print, uh, things of the Rabbeim and also that people were able to write in shailas and write horos and write pilpulim. So I wrote a shailah, and I sent it to the orech, to the editor, Harav Levin, and I

01:15 wrote that according to this letter, how come we don't see that people bench Gameil every time they go by plane? When we cross the ocean, we bench Gameil, but according to this letter from the Rebbe, you should do it always. Every time that you go up on a plane, you should have to bench Gameil. Unless we're gonna say, I said, that the planes that were at the time when the Rebbe's letter was written is, they were more sakana, and now the planes are not s- not a sakana, and therefore now you don't have to do it. But I wrote, we have to know exactly what to do because we wanna follow what the Rebbe says. And I send that letter away. When I got the printed Yagal Teyreh, I saw my letter printed there, but in my letter, there was another two lines put in as if I wrote it in my letter. And there, there were extra words saying, "Ube-michtav shel acheir, Michtav Ha-now", as if I'm writing that there is another letter that was written by the Rebbe after that letter that I'm quoting from Cheilik Yud Beis in the Kuter Sichas. Heis iv, there the Rebbe added, "Ze atah ra'isi be-sefer Taaras Yonsef Cheilik Ches, Omet Tzadik Zayen v'Eilech", that just now I saw in Sefer Taaras Yonsef in this and this Ma'amarim Mokim, and in the Shailas Shuvet, Siita Eliyahu Cheilik Gidal, Sichah Dalet, Kamah days that there are many opinions there. And taka over there, there are different opinions what

02:27 you should do or not. When I came to Seven Seventy and I saw Rav Shalom Ber Levin, I asked him, "Why did you change my letter? I didn't write those words in the letter, so why did you put something on my name that I didn't write?" So he says, "I'll tell you what happened." Before every kuntres of Yagal Teyreh came out, it would go into the Rebbe. And when the Rebbe saw this letter that I wrote, the Rebbe added with his ktav yad chadeisha, he added, "In this letter," in my letter, as if I'm writing that the Rebbe wrote another letter where it says, "These Ma'amarim Mokim is." So he says he didn't do it. The Rebbe put it in. And actually, later on, when I saw this reprinted in different places, they taka wrote that hemsha to this letter, there's a heis sofit. But l'maaseh, in this case, the Rebbe didn't answer. He just said that there are Ma'amarim Mokim is where they talk about different opinions. But peh mamash, I met a little later Rabbi Reichig and we were talking about it, and Shmuel Reichig tells me that he once asked the Rebbe in yechidus this shailah, why don't we bench? And the maskanah was that the planes nowadays are not a sakana, and therefore nowadays you don't have to, unless you're going over the ocean. Yerida hayam. But otherwise, you don't have to because it's different. I don't remember if he said that the Rebbe told him that answer or he himself

03:43 asked the Rebbe, "Is this the reason that Rebbe agreed?" But the bottom line is that he told me that it came out from that yechidus that because the planes are different now than the time the letter was written, and there's no sakana, therefore nowadays you don't have to bench Gameil unless you're yerida hayam, you cross the ocean.