0118 - Krupnik Yechidus - Growing a Beard Part 5

00:01 Another bocher who was a talmid in RJJ and he came to my was a bocher called Krupnik, and he became very through the year, so much so that he started growing a beard while he was learning in RJJ. So he told me that the Rosh Yeshiva called him over and told him that it's not nice. He should shave his beard. It's not right for him to have a beard. And then he added that since this was in the sixties, in the , there were a lot of hippies, and hippies used to have beards. So he said, "If you have a beard, you look like one of the hippies. And you're even causing Hashem 'cause you're joining with them. You look like a hippie." I got him to go into Yechidus of the Rebbe, and I was standing outside the door by the when he went in, and after he came out, he told me over what the Rebbe said. And again, this is something that he said, so we gotta rely on what he said. But this is what he told me then. That the Rebbe told him, "the beard, it's a that-- it's a says that you have to have a beard." So he said that I say to shave your beard. The Rebbe also told him that Al Pi Kabbalah, it's connected to Yud Gimel Midda Sarachmim, and that's why you should have a beard. But then the Rebbe said to him, ", you're right that your Rosh Yeshiva said that

01:12 the hippies have beards, and if you have a hippie, it's Hashem." So the Rebbe said, ", between the hippies is a Yid, and tuter mit ein avera veineker." That if there's a Yid amongst the hippies and he's wearing a beard, so he's doing it one avera less. In other words, these are the hippies that are wearing beards. The Rebbe turned it around. That one said that it's Hashem. And the Rebbe said, "Other Rebbe, the hippie himself, if he's a Yid, should wear a beard." So it's not a Hashem. It's . It's a one avera less that he's doing. So the Rebbe took what that Rosh Yeshiva said negative against the beard, and the Rebbe turned around and turned it into .