0101 - Critique to Editors of Lekutei Sichos

00:01 I want to mention one thing concerning our work on Likutei Sichos. There was a group of us who would take a sicha, an old sicha that the Rebbe said years before, look through it, learn it, and work on it, and prepare it in a way that the Rebbe should be able to magiya. And we would give it into the Rebbe, the Rebbe would magiya it, and that would come out for that week as a likut. We would call it the likut of the week. And then after a while, it would turn into the Seforim, and then finally turned into all the thirty-nine Seforim of Likutei Sichos. But the way it went was we would prepare it to the best of our ability, that this should be the sicha, the way it should be printed, and then the Rebbe would magiya. When he was magiya, he made a lot of changes. He added a lot. He had a lot of Ma'amarim BeKemas. He added Horos. He fixed a lot of things. But sometimes, not only would he fix certain things, but he would make comments on the side to the people who wrote it. And sometimes the comments were pretty sharp. In other words, commenting, how is it possible that you make such a mistake? It was many times he would write the word mavil. Mavil means that's outrageous. How could you write such a thing? And sometimes he would even write mavil in big words, and sometimes he would write mavil with three exclamation points,

01:12 and sometimes with three lines under the word mavil, showing how he feels that this is outrageous that you're able to write such a thing. I just want to mention one of the comments that he once made concerning something that we wrote. In the sicha, the Rebbe said that the word "Knani" also has a meaning besides being a person from Canaan, also has a meaning of a socher, a merchant is called Knani. Where do we see it? So the Rebbe didn't mention the source, but we know in Chitas it's brought down from a posek, posek in Tanakh, where it says, "Knani beyode meis nimirmo," which there in that posek it means a merchant. So we wrote that Ma'amar Ha'mokim. Rebbe wanted that the simple Ma'amar Ha'mokim is poshut from Gemaras, from Sukkim, from things like that, or simple things that have to be written. It's not for the Rebbe to do it. That's simple work, so we should write it. So we wrote the Ma'amar Ha'mokim to the word in the sicha. It said Knani means a merchant, a socher. So we wrote on the bottom, the source to this idea is from the posek in Tanakh, "Knani beyode meis nimirmo." Now the truth is, Rashi in Chumash, in Parashat VaYeshev, says also that the word Knani means tagra, which means a socher, which means a merchant. But we didn't write that Ma'amar Ha'mokim, that source. So the Rebbe added to the source, he added Pirush Rashi, that Rashi says it, and he underlined the word

02:32 Pirush Rashi, and then wrote the posek where Rashi says it. And then on the side, he wrote these words, a comment to us, and he wrote, "Ha'af echad mikem ein eloim bet Chitas?" Not one of you learned Chitas? In other words, if you learn Chitas and you learn Chumash with Rashi, you should remember that Rashi says in Chumash that the word Knani means a socher. If you didn't write from Rashi, it seems like you don't learn Chitas. So the Rebbe wrote, "Ha'af echad mikem ein eloim bet Chitas?" This was the comment that he made to this thing. And many other times he would make comments, and it seems like when he expected us to know better. See, those times when he fixed things not expecting us to know better, he didn't write anything. But if he expected us to know better, he wrote this comment and other sharp comments. And it made that we should always try to be very careful to make sure that what we write is a hundred percent right. And nevertheless, the Rebbe had a lot to fix and a lot to change, and added a lot, and even sometimes he added full seifim that he added in the Likutei Sichos.