Ep. 54: Shortly After Discovering the Rebbe, He Was Contributing To Chazarah with Rabbi Eli Touger

00:00 Speaker 1 Everything, all the, these things, yeah, the Rebbe pushed it. But the Rebbe said something, Bachrin thought how to apply it, and we got it done. And that changed Lubavitch into, like, oh, when the Rebbe says something, he means it, and we mean it. We're gonna try to get-- we're gonna try to make it happen. It, and it was n- it was semi-new at that time. I mean, like, no-- People have been talking like this, but they never did it. Never did it.

00:35 Speaker 2 I'm Yossi Kamin. Welcome to Among Chasidim by Der Her, an ongoing farbrengen about life as a Chasid, our vibrant connection with the Rebbe, and inspired living shaped by the way he teaches us each and every day. Shalom Aleichem, Rabbi Tauger. How are you?

00:54 Speaker 1 Baruch Hashem. Baruch Hashem.

00:57 Speaker 2 Okay. Thank you so much.

00:59 Speaker 1 My pleasure.

01:01 Speaker 2 I am very curious. Uh, I know my-- I, I know much about you through your works. There's the Sichas, Sichas in English, and, uh, the Rambam, and many other projects. I, I'm not so familiar with, uh, your background, and I'm curious, uh... You weren't born doing Sichas in English, right? So how-- So what, what, what, what was the, uh, what was the story? Where, where, where were you from, and how did you, uh, how did you start coming to where you are today?

01:32 Speaker 1 Okay, look, all stories are stories. Family comes from Borisov. Borisov has a long history in Lubavitch. It's a small town about fifty vyrs o-out of, out of Minsk. Don't ask me what a vyrs is, but it's about, um, a, a kilometer or so. So Borisov is, is a small town, fifty vyrs, vyrs from, from Br- from, from, from Minsk. It was Lubavitch town. Shalom B-Borisov is a well-known mashpia. My family grew-- w-was there for many generations. They were Chabad Chasidim. I've got a Torah or sidur from my, from my o- my alter zeide. We're in geze, in real geze, the, the roots, the core. That said-

02:23 Speaker 2 That's so interesting

02:23 Speaker 1 ... our family came to America in nineteen oh five. Nineteen oh five, when you came to America, there was no official Lubavitch in America. There were Chabad shuls all over the place. Unfortunately, most of those Chabad shuls are no longer Chabad shuls, shuls because there wasn't any official, uh, leadership really until the Frierdiker Rebbe came. A couple years before that, slightly, but not real, Rebbe Yosef Yitzchak came. But as such, th-there wasn't that much c- much background around Chassidus. So the family became American. I grew up conservative, you know, strongly right-wing conservative Jew in Long Island. But, you know, we, we knew of Torah and mitzvahs. We kept a lot of it, and we didn't keep a lot of it. It's about that, that's the nicest way of saying it. I grew up, I grew up in nineteen sixty-- I mean, it was born nineteen fifty, grew up, uh, grew up, quote-unquote, "in nineteen sixties". I don't have to tell you w-what was going through America at the end of nineteen sixties. It was a whole d-

03:42 Speaker 2 Did you have any, uh, Chabad, Chabad identity at that point, or none of... I mean, you didn't even know about it-

03:47 Speaker 1 No, not at all

03:48 Speaker 2 ... growing up?

03:49 Speaker 1 Uh, my grand-

03:50 Speaker 2 Yeah

03:50 Speaker 1 ... my father, m- I remember driving through Crown Heights at one point. We were going to Brooklyn for whatev- for whatever pur-pur-purpose. My father points to Seven seventy and says, "We come from here." But he didn't tell me anything more about that. He didn't, that just... He said, "We come from here," and I didn't understand what he meant by that. He didn't wanna explain it any further, I guess. And, uh, he left us with, he left with that, uh, cryptic statement. So, uh, in, in, in Eretz Yisrael, I met Chaba- Chabad Chasidim.

04:30 Speaker 2 When you were, like, a teenager?

04:31 Speaker 1 At that point, right before age twenty. At that point, many Americans were looking, searching. This is-- You know, the, the Rebbe spoke more than anybody else really about, and, and definitely in the Jewish world, about looking for American searching youth. Like, I wasn't hearing those Sichas at that t-time, but yeah, he was speaking about me and my generation. I-- Jewish American youth at that time, we were fueled with the i-- The sixties was, was full of idealism, full of energy, wanting to change. On the other hand, no direction. A lot of people w-were turning east. I have many friends who went to India, China, Japan, looking for roots, looking f-look-looking for purpose, looking for, for meaning. Having grown up with a strong Jewish heritage, I felt my people-- Before I start looking in foreign fields, my people owe-- I owe it to my people to look there first. That's-

05:41 Speaker 2 So that, that was your own, like, your own decision before... I hear from others that at first they went to other places, and then they went to look in their back pocket, so to speak. You're saying you on your own moved that way.

05:52 Speaker 1 Let's put it this way.

05:52 Speaker 2 That's a-

05:53 Speaker 1 I did a little bit of, of, of, of looking in the other pockets, but I really felt that... Look, I went to Colgate University. Colgate University is a very special place One of the teachers that there in Colgate, he was a guy who, he studied Hinduism by spending two years in India. He studied J- in, in Zen by spending two, two years in a Zen monastery. He told me, and he to- and he taught me, "Don't just get caught up in a fad, you know, swayed by a current. You wanna do something, do it right. Study it from the inside. Let it take time." And hey, if I'm gonna spend a serious amount of time looking somewhere, you start-- You don't go somewhere else first. You go home first. That was a very clear realization. Why go someplace else-

06:47 Speaker 2 That's what he told you?

06:47 Speaker 1 Before you ever look-

06:48 Speaker 2 That's what he told you, uh, this professor?

06:50 Speaker 1 No. Actually, he, actually, he told, actually, he told me that. You know, again, this is ve-very curious that people didn't ex... People said hints, didn't explain it. He says, "You know, you're Jewish, you're looking for spirituality. Why don't you look into Hasidism? It's Lubavitch." He didn't tell me what Lubavitch was. It didn't really excite me very much, this idea of Hasidism, 'cause I, you know, any- everybody who, I mean, who's grown up in secular America thinks of Hasidim as some b- as something very backgr- y-you know, uh, 18th century, 19th century, definitely not 20th century. So we didn't really... When he said Hasidism, no, I wasn't very interested. So but, you know, he, yeah, he actually did say look into Lubavitch. And, um, w-well, it wasn't, it wasn't him per se. I went to Israel just to look around, and it's a lot of joy I met Chabad there. And they invited me to yeshiva, to yeshiva in Chabad for Shabbos. It was a little bit of an approach-avoidance conflict, because on one hand, I recognized that it was something real. On the other hand, it was very different. I mean, very, very different from the lifestyle that I was used to. And I had to think seriously whether I was going to actually make an experiment for this or not. Decided give it two weeks, and then, and then two months to see w- if it's going to sit, sit comfortably, become real for me or not.

08:38 Speaker 2 So what was happening in Chabad then? They had, uh, the Baal Teshuva yeshiva there? Like, what, what was going on?

08:44 Speaker 1 They had a regular yeshiva, the regular yeshiva which is still there now. And then Rabbi Gaffney, uh, had a Baal Teshuva program. I was lucky 'cause I knew Hebrew. Both-- I, again, I went to a very good conservative school, so I learned Hebrew as a kid. I'd been in Israel six, you know, close to six months, so my Hebrew got better. So I was able to semi-integrate into the regular yeshiva pattern. Like, um, like, um, a lot of the classes I went to, most, like I, like I looked up to Rabbi Gaffney and the Baal Teshuva p-people as somewhat of, you know, g-guidance and a place where I felt most comfortable with, because the Israelis were definitely a different breed. That said, you know, I could, I could study with them. You know, it w- I knew the language. The Gemara was something new, but not something impossible to study. I mean, that, that's really, like a very fundamental point. Gemara is actually very easy, and people can pick it up. If they get out of the illusion that this is difficult and realize that this is easy, they can pick it up.

10:18 Speaker 2 One second.

10:18 Speaker 1 And so I did.

10:19 Speaker 2 You, you realize that-

10:20 Speaker 1 And I was, no-

10:20 Speaker 2 Coming in fresh, because I, I think some people in yeshiva their whole lives are not convinced that Gemara is easy.

10:26 Speaker 1 Yeah, 'cause they d- 'cause they look at it that way. It becomes self, and that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. When you look at Torah study as easy, that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And when you look at it as difficult, that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. In other words, hey, I, I raised my kids in Israel. That's a whole second story, but, but I raised my kids in Israel. They were learning Gemara at age ten. Now, again, my kids are, are s- are somewhat gifted, but they had classmates and, uh, mates who weren't so gifted, and they were also learning Gemara at age ten. It's not so sep-- It's not something out of the question in the ordinary in Israel. Quite the contrary, it's common. So if a ten-year-old can, can study this page and understand it, a twenty-year-old who's been through acade-- some academic background and training can definitely understand it. And on the contrary, those people who don't, don't really want to, and I did. Now, my, my attitude was, if I'm gonna do this, I'm not gonna do this as a second-class citizen.

11:41 Speaker 2 Yeah.

11:41 Speaker 1 This is studiable. I can study it, and I did.

11:47 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm. So let me ask you, um, so when you're coming to Chabad and you're seeing the, the Bakharim, you're seeing Lubavitch, you're seeing Fromiden, what is it that... I mean, there's, there was a search here, right? So what is it that you're searching for and what is it that you're finding there?

12:07 Speaker 1 Look, first of all- What was s-- what I was searching for was not an I, but I say just what every baal teshuva, teshuva is searching for, is a way to integrate your own spiritual desires, your own spiritual feeling, your own desire to come close to Hashem with your actual everyday life, how you live in this world. Now, I won't say that every person in Chabad was an exemplar of that. I wish I could, but, you know. But everyone was semi-trying in that, in that goal, in that direction. I got to, to see Shlomo Chaim Kasselman. He was an exemplar in a s-- in a very real way. I don't-- I mean, uh, you know, there are different approaches among Mashpi'im. Not everybody venerated Shlomo Chaim the same way that the people in Chabad did at that time. But hey, this was a person who davened hours. He had real feeling in his davening. I didn't, but many did watch him from his w-- He would, he would go to the yeshi-- He would go to the yeshiva, attend davening in yeshiva, then go home and daven. I didn't go... M-m-m I wasn't among those who went, went, went and watched him, him through a window at his house while he davened. Uh, many others did, did. But he would daven for hours. He would sing and dance in his davening. It was... In other words, here you had a person who, for him, Judaism was, was not just a religion, quote-unquote. It was a

14:01 Speaker 1 fire. It was real. And he was there. There were others not quite on that level, but exemplars, people you could learn from. And I was willing to learn. And that-that's one of the f-the first things. A bochur has to... When it comes to yeshiva, y-you have to say, "Oh, this is something that I want. I want to see th-see this, see if it's real for me, see how I can make it real." So I look for, at people who it's real for them. So there, there were many people in Chabad who had that.

14:51 Speaker 2 So at a certain point in Chabad, you kind of migrated into the regular yeshiva? Is that what, is that what I'm hearing?

14:57 Speaker 1 Well, more or less from the beginning.

15:02 Speaker 2 So you had a relationship with the Reb Shlomo Chaim?

15:06 Speaker 1 Somewhat, but not really. Uh, he, uh, he was much... A, m-he, he w-he wasn't so available. He was sick most of the time. He-- This-- He, he passed away six months after I entered yeshiva. He was-- And he w-he was back and forth from the hospital, so I didn't really get a chance to get a personal relationship, ship, ship with him. Well, l-my first relationship was a lot with Rav Yanko Katz. Yanko was very... He was ma-w-mashgiach of Seder Nigleh. A, a very special yid. Mamish, you know, like... I can tell you, like, a guy who knew how to learn, loved learning. Which I'll tell you a story that I had. My s-- I sent my son also to Chabad. He learned, uh, under Rav Yanko as well. He was close to Rav Yanko. He was cute. Rav Yanko n-never told him about the clo-- My s- He never told my son about the close relationship that he and I shared. But, uh, you know, he obviously gave my son certain special attention. So my son wasn't, wasn't great at keeping Seder, but he loved learning. So he'd come to, to, to Rav Yanko with questions in learning. So Rav Yanko says, "Oh, this is a deep point. You know something? I gotta take time to think about it. Now it's Seder. Don't have quite time, much time to, mm, to learn it over. When I go home at, at night, I'll look into it. You'll probably look into it at, at night also. If,

17:07 Speaker 1 if you call me before, before eleven o'clock, I'll be happy to discuss it with you. After, after twelve, uh, uh, twelve is difficult. I used to be able to take calls and I, I used to study t-t-til one, but now I'm eighty years old. Can't, I can't do it. I can't do that anymore." Think about how a bochur lists-- how a bochur hears that, how small he feels. That was the type-- That was the yid Yank-Rav Yanko was. I mean, this is like a, a, a yid that's, uh, had learned, and he loved learning, and he spread that, and anybody who took him seriously picked that up. Now, that's something unique. And then, of course, there was... I, I studied personally under Rav Mattya Ashkenazi. Rav Mattya Ashkenazi, the rabbi of Chabad. This was a, a genius of a guy. He used to come to shiur and, like, roll off Achronim. I don't think he prepared. This was stuff that he was saying from memory. And he just had one year after the other learning Kidush. There's a machneh here, here. It was just... You know, the guy, guy was brilliant, encyclopedic, but also a very effective teacher. Like his-- He was-- It was a blat sheer, because Gemara Rashi Tosfos. Carefully, each Gemara, each Ra-- each line of Rashi, each line of Tosfos explained, and then peppered with acronym, we show them a-an acronym. He taught you the basics, and then how to explain the basics into deeper thought. Well, this was, you know,

19:11 Speaker 1 chmak. Chassidus, you know, again, Chassidus, I wanna say it openly, that Chassidus in Chabad wasn't... It didn't have the flavor, the intellectual flavor that Chabad really is known for. To put it bluntly, they were interested in teaching you, inspiring you how to daven. I mean, I didn't hear, hear Shlomo Chaim teach Samach Vov.

19:54 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

19:59 Speaker 1 But I was told that even, that he studied the, the scholar pieces of Samach Vov first, and then take out a small Avodat Hakodosh to catch the Avoda. In Chabad, they were very emphas-- they were give-- they were putting a high emphasis on davening, which is, again, very important. I mean, the Chassidus Yid has to know how to daven. But he also has to learn with what to daven, and just, you know, being inspired, oh. There's a classic story. One of the Alter Rebbe Chassidim davened four hours every Shabbos. And the S-- And he was a simple person. His fellow Chassidim asked him, "What are you do-d-doing davening four hours?" And he told them, the Alter Rebbe taught, "Zocher veShomer bedibur echadenaar." The dibur echad, the one wo-- the one word of Anochi Hashem Elokecha, has got to be the Zocher veShomer in your inner being, and that's why I daven with the four hours. Now, one, that's very inspiring. On the other hand, as Chabad taught, it's a methodical process where you review ideas. The emotion s-springs from the intellect. It's not just a emotional charge, I wanna come close to Hashem. So that was a little bit lacking in fa-- Like, as a Baalshesiuv, I was i-- every Baalshesiuv is into that emotional charge. But having been, be-being fed that on a constant basis, I felt a little bit, um, "Hey, there must be more to, to Chassidus than this." So I wasn't... I was pleased 'cause again, this is, it was Chassidus.

22:12 Speaker 1 It was rich. It was Ruchnius, which as American , you know, we nev-- I was never exposed to this. You know, nobody taught this, th-this. On, on the other hand, the intellectual development of it w-was kind of lacking, and I felt that missing. And al-also, like, the, the next, and the next point is also, they keep, they kept telling us, "Rebbe, Rebbe, Rebbe." And like, you know, it's cute. The Rebbe is in New York. I'm an American, so what am I doing in Israel? You know, like it became very clear to me that if, if this is what we're based on, go to the source. And so after a year and a half in Prachabadus, you know, I wanted to stay there long enough that I felt I could walk into seven seventy as one of the guys, not just the guy learning.

23:10 Speaker 2 So you ba-- So basically... So, uh, they say, "Agasta favial zeta famial." So you come in, you see everyone's talking about the Rebbe. So, so what, so what are you guys doing here? The Rebbe's in New-- The Rebbe's in New York. So that's, that's what propelled you to actually go. There's one personality in Chabad that you didn't mention yet, is, uh, Rabbi Mendel Futerfas. Did you have a connection with him?

23:34 Speaker 1 Mendel didn't get to Chabad until I left. Mendel got to Chabad Tefton Lamed Gimel. I spent a lot of ti-- I have a very personal relationship with, with Mendel from Tefton Lamed Bet when I was in, in La-Lamed Zayin when I was in Shlichas in Cleveland. But I'll get to that, I'll get to that later perhaps. But, uh, and that, in, that... He, he, he got to Chabad in... Shlomo Chaim passed away in, in, in Tefton Lamed. He had just gotten to England at that time, Mendel. And he came to Chabad, and, and, uh, went, went to Chidas to the Rebbe. The Rebbe to-Rebbe told him, "Zayn mashpia in Chabad." He looked at the Rebbe, "I've never mashpia for bachurim. You know, I was always dealing with Baal Batim." Rebbe said, "Well, when kasmos geven, epes is geven. It's a dorlach, geshtap a luch." Those are the Rebbe's words to him. He told me those, that personally. In other words, he, he felt that he was really... That was, you know, this wasn't his job. The Rebbe wasn't saying that you really, you're really plastic for job as mashpia, but there's a luch, geshtap a luch. Be an example for the, you know, an example for the bachurim to look at, that you'll at least see a Chassidishe Yid. So yeah.

25:08 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

25:09 Speaker 1 But, but that, that... But he came to Chabad Tefton Lamed Gimel. I had already le-- I left Purim Tefton Base. So, so I, so I missed him in Karhabad.

25:19 Speaker 2 Yeah, got it. So you decide that you need to go to the source, you need to go to seven seventy, but first you wanna be prepared and be able to jump right in, 'cause that's kind of what you were doing at Karhabad, I guess. So you s- then, so then you arrived in seven seventy, you said Lamid Base already?

25:36 Speaker 1 Purim Lamid Base. Right after Purim Lamid Base.

25:39 Speaker 2 And you came to learn, you came to learn in the yeshiva in seven seventy?

25:43 Speaker 1 I co- I come in, I, I see the rabbi walk, walk into Mariv, make a Bracha Shechianu. That's... We start from there.

25:53 Speaker 2 Okay. So go. Start. I'm ready. So what happened when you came, uh, Tap- Taphshalamid Base, day after Purim? What, tell me about that experience.

26:06 Speaker 1 Look. So being accepted in seven seventy w- was like I had a plastic from yeshiva. But after-- They never had Baltuvpas coming into seven seventy straight. You know, they had people who were raised in Lubavitch. Yeah, they had a couple from way before who got into, who, who went to Lubavitch high schools as kids, and so they grew up in the, they grew up in the system. But that a guy of we know twenty years old, I learned Karhabad, and, um, I'm now here, I can learn. Take me to yeshiva. It was Ra- Rabdavid, uh, Rav Raskin was like, um, like, "I see you." He looks at my matzatel and say, "I, I see that you, that they want, they want me to take you in, but I don't know. Um, why, why don't you try Hadar Torah?" And I said, "No, I'm not, I'm not interested in Hadar Torah. I've able to learn just with, to learn w-with the best of the Bacharim that you have." You know. It was back, it was a little bit back and forth. Luckily, that year, 'cause that was Taphshalamid Base. At that point, Yerachmi was-- That was Yerachmis Nagardo, it was Nasashivim. I mean, n-now there have been other Yerachmis Nagardo since then, but that was Y- Yerachmis Nagardo. A lot of people from Karhabad c-came in for Nasashivim. So, you know, we're... The people who knew me from Karhabad were able to convince Ra- Rabdavid m- to, to accept me, and, uh, you know. Especially at

27:54 Speaker 1 that time, directly after, after Pesach that year, they opened Enchovri Torah. And they needed, you know, a-- Instead of having the Zal downst- as it is nowstair- now downstairs in seven seventy, they opened Enchovri Torah. So nothing wanted to go there. I mean, nobody wanted to go there.

28:15 Speaker 2 Right.

28:15 Speaker 1 'Cause-

28:16 Speaker 2 But they never, they never spoke about it then. That, yeah.

28:19 Speaker 1 Yeah. So my And I had-- I wasn't so sensitive to learning in seven seventy at that point. So I was, you know, "Okay, this is where you're supposed to... Yeshiva wants you to go, you go." And so because, because of that, you know, I got close to Rav Mendlik, who I ke-- That was part of-- That was his project, it was at the Senchovri Torah. So, like... And, you know, Baruch Hashem. Also, the-- Rav Mendlik was, was a very interesting person because he again... He was Rav Yehudah Avis Price Talmud.

29:07 Speaker 2 Yehudah Avis.

29:10 Speaker 1 Yeah. This was like, you know, what you, you know, the whole method of, of learning a Rishon, seeing what she taught so, which Rav Yehudah Avis taught. If you look at the Shar- in the Shar Si Huda, which is, which is left from him, Rav Mendlik picked that up. He took her also to Achronim, and he was, like, very interested in conveying this to somebody. There weren't that many people interested in learning from him. What can I tell you? This is like, you know, there's, there were pe- there were people who learned in, in France. You know, the Fezners, the Bolshanskys, is, is Yidden who... The Common Sense, people who, who, who learn, uh, the Go- Um, Go- Goldbergs. People who l-learned in France, you know, she, she was there. They had a Schmitten Nigla, which, which was their... So they were the Bali Nigla of seven seventy. A couple of Israelis who, because of the familiarity in I- in Isr- of Israel, you know, they, they also were Bali Nigla. But no, no Americans were Bali Nigla. They, they, they didn't, they didn't like it.

30:26 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

30:28 Speaker 1 And Mendlik was very happy to find somebody who, who was interested in li- in listening to him, and he was in a very solid way of teaching you how to learn. You, you know, you, you wanna learn, you need to learn how to learn an Achron. He was amazing. Methodical, slow, where he ha-- You know, to sh- to show you how Katsos works, to show... You know, it, it was just very beautiful to watch and learn from I don't know why other, other people didn't get excited by it. I did.

31:06 Speaker 2 I was gonna say, I heard a lot of people talk about Rabbi Mendlik. I don't-- I, I haven't heard such a analysis of his shiurim like I'm hearing from you.

31:13 Speaker 1 Look, Rabbi Mendlik was a father to Bochurim. He used to care for... He didn't have any children of his own. He used to care for, for Bochurim as his own kids. Really. You know, if he felt, you know, if he didn't have a coat, Rabbi Mendlik noticed that. Now, things like that, he, he was very careful about. And every, and every knew him for that. Every knew him for, you know, his kavod haTorah for the Rebbe. I mean, a beautiful story. I, I, I was once giving a, a, a shiur or whatever in a, in a conservative sh-shul in New Jersey. The rabbi of the, of the shul was in New York. He picked me up. We, we drove to New-- We drove to New Jersey for an hour together. So we're talking to him. He says, "You know, why do you invite me?" Well, he says, "Well, I, I'm kind of interested in chasidus." Says, "What, what sparks your interest?" Says, "Well, I went to for Bragan Linz." Says, "Oh, really? You know, what, what sparked your interest? After all, you, you don't understand Yiddish." "Yeah. I'll tell you what really, what really sparked my interest. There was one man, tall, sl-slight- a little bit heavyset, standing by the Rebbe, and he stood there with absolute intention, like a soldier focused totally on..." When I said if somebody... If I saw a person who could have such concentration by watching the Rebbe, how that happens interested me, and that's why I was interested, and

32:50 Speaker 1 that's what interested me in chasidus.

32:52 Speaker 2 Right.

32:52 Speaker 1 In other words, Rabbi Mekubal did-

32:55 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm

32:55 Speaker 1 ... just by being who he was. But yeah, you know, uh, uh, it's really unfortunate people didn't understand him as a teacher. Again, that's in general with the Americans never, never picked up on learning Nigla.

33:17 Speaker 2 The American Bochurim, you're saying?

33:18 Speaker 1 Still is. Yeah.

33:24 Speaker 2 So, um, okay. So you were, you were kabbalah from Rabbi Mendlik in, in Nigla. But you mentioned earlier that when you were Kabbalah Bad that there was a lack of... I don't know what the word is, but the, the chasidus was, uh, more in the Avoda aspect of it than there's more to it. So I imagine you, uh, met the Rebbe Yael in, in, in, in seven seventy.

33:47 Speaker 1 So no. I, I, I had friends. Rebbe Yael at that time, he didn't give shiurim in seven seventy. Private people used to-- Private Bochurim used to come to him, him, him at home and elsewhere. He didn't, he didn't teach in seven seventy at that point, but he taught in, in Ocean Parkway. There was a Kliotzer Bochur in seven seventy who went to-- who was sent to Ocean Parkway each year to be kind of semi... Uh, there wasn't, there wasn't a sent, uh, a term shluchim then, but that's... To-today, that's the idea of sending Bochurim shluchim. That, that's, that same concept. So there's a, there's a Kliotzer Bochur who was sent there, and Yo-Yoel would come to the Ocean Parkway to, to, to teach. So I realized that if I want, uh, I wanted to hear Yoel, and I wanted to... And I therefore wanted to get, to go to Ocean, Ocean Parkway. Luckily, I had a very... You know, because of my relationship with Rabbi Mendlik, I was able to sort that out. You know? So he was, he did that for me, and Baruch Hashem. And, uh, I remember the, the first class Rab-Rebbe Yoel gave w-was nothing special. I mean, you know, tight... Said a maamer and teicht it, said it, teicht it. You know, teicht schmuck, but n-nothing special. Second class, we're learning Vayidai at that time. And the point that he was, he was teaching was chasidus, the Kelim, Amalim HaSefnimius u'Magalim HaTchisonius. That the ohr which is, which encloses itself

35:45 Speaker 1 in the, in the Kelim, the inner dimension of the, of the ohr is hid, and that could-- and only the outer dimension is revealed. And he, and he started to explain that, that. He asked a question. I forget exactly the, the question, but it was, you know, he asked the question, and he wanted Bochurim to answer it. Now, most of the guys were like, they knew Rebbe Yoel was playing with them. They didn't want to answer 'cause he's just playing with them. But I wanted the class to move. So he's waiting for an an- for somebody to answer. So I'm like, "I'm not embar- I'm personally embarrassed. You know, he'll probably shoot me down, but who cares? Let, let, let's get the sh- let's get the show on the road."

36:27 Speaker 2 Right.

36:29 Speaker 1 So it's-- And I had actually learned the maamer which was focusing on that same subject, uh, that morning. So I repeated exactly what it said in that maamer. So Rebbe Yoel says, "Yes, that's... You know, there's nothing wrong with what you're saying, but there's a logical development that's lacking from that, that you take-- You gotta go this point and that point, and then, you know... So, so how do you deal with that?" I didn't have any answers to his question. Says, "Does every-- Anybody else have any answers?" Nobody else had any answers. And, you know, he went, then he went around so, so gets back to my original question. And so, so, so people were playing with him again. Again, there was still a, a degree of, you know, like he, he's pushing you. Okay, somebody's gotta say something, so something so he goes further. Anyway, ultimately, finally, he, he start, he start, he starts, you know, pushing this guy down, pushing that guy down. And I get very upset. This is all-- this has taken half an hour already. He hasn't said anything yet. He's just... So I, I go, I go out, get the Maimon I was learning this, th-that I'd learned th-that morning. I read the Maimon. I said, "This is what it says here in the Maimon. This is the Pshat." Says, "Yes." Says, "Yes, the Maimon knows Pshat. But tell me, can you answer the questions I asked you in the first place?" Says, "No." "So if you can't answer

38:01 Speaker 1 them, then you haven't understood. Yes, you repeated the Maimon, but you didn't understand what it said." As they say in Hebrew, the coin fell. You, you knew exactly what... Oh, that Chassidus isn't just saying those words over again, repeating the sto... the, the truths which the Rebbe, which the Rebbe says. It's assimilating them to your own understanding, putting them in your own words, able to, to explain it to another person who doesn't necessarily know Chassidus. And Yoel thought that. And, you know, he-- I don't know how I should put it. That's what I try to do myse- personally. And I thank God because, you know, Yoel was a gift.

38:55 Speaker 2 So for you, that was like a new experience that you haven't, that you haven't, you hadn't yet experienced earlier in Chabad or whatever. That, that was a new experience for you.

39:03 Speaker 1 Everyone-- Yoel was a new experience for every person who under... who, whoever took him seriously. There's a very big difference between Divrei HaRav and Divrei HaTalmid. When the Rebbe speaks Chassidus, it's, it's a little... What can I tell you? No matter how much Chabad speaks about taking the aura of the Ba'al Shem Tov and putting it into conceptu- into a conceptual framework that everyone can understand, by the Rebbeim, it's Revushetera. For Chassidim, to make it real for them, it has to be taken a little bit further, taken from... There's a beautiful, um, article written by Chacham Pagan. Cha-Chacha was among, among the other things, he was also the editor of the Rebbe Tamim. Now, Shlomo Barisover wrote a translation of Pakeach Ivrim. Pakeach Ivrim is written in Yiddish, a very gruntle Yiddish, a very street, street Yiddish, the kind of Yid- too Yiddish which many people who know Yiddish don't, don't understand it 'cause it's too street Yiddish for them to understand. So Shlomo Barisover translated it into Lashon Hakodesh. When Chacham wanted to publish Shlomo Barisover's Chassidus, he had a big problem because was a Rebbe's not Chassidus, she's the Chassid. Chassidus is a Rebbe's domain to say, not a Chassid's. And he bring... he writes a very cl-clear exposition. He says, "When the Rebbe's of Chassidus versus Elokus in Seichel, Nishechel of, of Elokus. When, when a Ch-- when the Rebbe says, says Chassidus, it's not human intellect looking at an infinite God, it's an infinite God coming into human intellect." So the

41:35 Speaker 1 problem is, though, when you have human God coming into, into infinite int- into mortal intellect, it's not qu- it's not quite mortal intellect yet. A human being has to break that down into his own words, into his own musagim, his, his own conceptual framework, so they can understand. Yoel did that. I mean, obviously, the Rebbe gave him the tools. Let's, you know, like people, people don't realize how much of, quote, "Yoel's explanations are found in a Sicha there, in a Maimon there," et cetera. That said, the way he formulated it was something very unique. There aren't... Again, he had a tradition. He, he had heard from his teachers, from Shaul, from Shaul, Moshe Gerari, from, from many people who had studied masculine from the, from the previous generations. But he was unique. And so people who... Not many people really, like a lot of people, he, he didn't speak. It wasn't easy to, to listen to him. Not every, not everybody could grasp him. For push intellectually, he was, he was a little bit abstract. And his speaking, his speaking tone was not the easiest to grasp. So they didn't always clap what, what he was say-saying, and he... You know, I mean, I was amazed. In the, in the last twenty years, y-years of his life, he would say a shiur in S-Shabbos morning, seven, seven, in, in upstairs in seven... L-Last, uh, place was upstairs in, in seven eighty-eight. Maybe twenty-five people came to it. Think about that for a second. Yoel was

43:37 Speaker 1 saying Chassidus. He's explaining it beautifully as only he can, and twenty-five people were able to get out of their bed Shabbos morning to, willing to come, and only, and only twenty-five. I, I was just amazed. I mean, I used to come in Walkman especially just to hear him, you know, just to hear that shiur. I wasn't living in Crown Heights at that, at that time.

44:07 Speaker 2 The, the Friday night... His Friday night shiur had a bigger attendance, though.

44:11 Speaker 1 Yeah. But w- first of all, Friday night shiur 'cause it was semi, it had to be attended. You know, it was like, "But Reb Buck was saying yeshiva, and what else are we gonna do?"

44:22 Speaker 2 Right.

44:22 Speaker 1 But also, it wasn't... It was packed, but it wasn't super packed. Come on, let's be honest. And, and, and probably, maybe sixty, seventy bochurim. Of the two hundred bochurim, two hundred plus bochurim in, in yeshiva, again, couldn't hear all that well easily also. But, you know, it, it had a better attendance than the Shabbos morning. Shabbos morning was basically for baalabatim. But b'kitzur, not everybo-but it tuned into Yoel. But if you did, you got something from it. You learned to think through Chassidus. And that, and that made a very difference.

45:08 Speaker 2 Oh.

45:08 Speaker 1 Difference between... I-- It's cute because there was nobody who s- who spoke about us all more than Yoel. Nobody spoke of Rebbe more than Yoel. But he did it in a way where this wasn't just rattling around the flag. "Oh, we gotta do this." No, it wasn't just a... It was a message that came from the inside to the outside, not, "Oh, we, we've gotta do this. We've gotta do this."

45:45 Speaker 2 Good. Okay. It's very fascinating. Um, so I wanna hear also a little bit... You talk about, uh, Divrei HaRav and Divrei HaChamed. Let's talk a little bit about the Divrei HaRav. So you arrive Purim or after Purim Lamed Heitz. What was that experience seeing the Rebbe for the first time and subsequent farbrengens? What, what, what was, what was that like for you?

46:12 Speaker 1 Look, I had to learn this. What did I tell you? You know, wasn't brought up in a Baalshetram. I heard a lot about Rebbe, about the Rebbe. Had to learn what, what it means to be... What, what it means. First of all, hear-- the idea to s- to listen to a farbrengen for two, three, four hours, Americans don't do that. I mean, you know, if American hears a speech that's an hour long, he's tired. He wants-- He doesn't wanna listen anymore. Actually, you know, the best sp- You know, no speaker is supposed to speak for more than forty-five minutes. Okay. So the Rebbe, there was punctuated by Nigunim, et cetera, but the ability to halt cuff through a h- through a whole farbrengen, that required training. You know, that took, that took time, and you wanted to do it. So, you know, oh, this is where, this is where you are. You wanna, you wanna be able to, to wrap that. But it, it was, it was pro- It was very hard to... It was a hard skill to pick up.

47:28 Speaker 2 But was there still, like, a, was there still, like, a language barrier for you at that point, or it wasn't the language, it was the, it was the taichin?

47:34 Speaker 1 There was a little bit of a langua- a little bit of a language barrier, but I... But not so much. Language barrier, I picked up more or less, um, early. But just... Hey, how many people can, can s- how many people can sit and, uh, sit... You know, watching is definitely different from, from being there. But sh-show me people who, who sit through a, through, through a video of a farbrengen today. I mean, without fidgeting, rapt attention, focused, uh, you know. Sure. Uh, it, it's n- it is not an easy skill. And y-you wanted to know what the Rebbe said. And of course, you know, chazarah was a very big thing. You wanted to be like... If this is, you know, like... I should put it, I, I always had a d- an achievement, uh, ori-orientation. So the... Oh, if chazarah, if it's, you know, so if ch- chazarah is, is important, so I, I, I wanna be able to do that also. And it was, it was very cute. Like, I was never very good at, at following mamish word for word, but I was v- but I was very good at ideas. I could, I could get a b- the opinion of a sicha. So quite often by chazarah, it was a qui-- you know, like other guy, you know, my jo- my job in chazarah was often, "What's the flow? What, what is the next stage in, in, in the farbrengen?"

49:08 Speaker 2 Mm. You're saying so not so much, uh, the memory of, of the wording that the Rebbe used, but like what's the hemshach basically, the hemshach and yonen.

49:14 Speaker 1 Yeah. The hemshach ideas, 'cause we-

49:17 Speaker 2 I've actually heard your name when people describe chazarah those years. I've heard your name mentioned as a, a contributor.

49:24 Speaker 1 Yeah. Like I said, I was not a, I was not... Like, there were people who, who were very good at following the words. My ch- my emphasis in the, in chazarah was the hemshach and yonim, and, you know, the f-found the, the flow of the farbrengen, the id- and the way the ideas l- one led to the other.

49:43 Speaker 2 So you were able to do that within a short time of you coming to San Jose Medley?

49:48 Speaker 1 Yeah. Once w- once I picked up the Rebbe's Yiddish. I mean, you can't say the Rebbe's Yiddish... I still can't speak a good very Ba- a good Baal Batoshi Yiddish. You know, like the-

49:58 Speaker 2 So how did you communicate with Yale-

49:59 Speaker 1 You ask me-

49:59 Speaker 2 -and all th- these people, Rabbi Mentlick?

50:02 Speaker 1 First of all, Rabbi Yoel, I, I used to communicate a lot with him in Hebrew. He let-- Yoel lo-loved speaking Hebrew. He's like, 'cause that's his nat- that was his natural language as a kid. I mean, he, he was born in Russia. You know, in Russia his, his parents probably spoke Russian at home for a while. For a while he, he also spoke Russian, but, you know, um, he, he, he, he liked, he liked speaking Hebrew. He was, he was a kid, so I would speak, I would speak to him Hebrew. But I would, "Oh, yeah, I also learned Yid-- I learned Yiddish." But the Yiddish of Hasidism, the Yiddish, I'm saying a Baal Batish Yiddish.

50:33 Speaker 2 It's like the street Yiddish, like-

50:34 Speaker 1 How to get-

50:35 Speaker 2 Yeah.

50:35 Speaker 1 Yeah, you know. To serve supper in Yiddish-

50:38 Speaker 2 Yeah

50:38 Speaker 1 ... is very hard for me. Me too, um, when, when like, when I was teaching, when, when I had... Was raising my kids, we, we taught, we, we, we spoke to them in Yiddish till they reached six. At that point I said, "Wait a second. I wanna be able to communicate with my kids."

50:58 Speaker 2 It's important.

50:59 Speaker 1 So when they got to see, when they got to see this, I, you know, but just everyday stuff, um, you know, we switched from Yiddish then.

51:08 Speaker 2 Yeah. So back to the Rebbe, so you're saying the Rebbe's Yiddish is what?

51:12 Speaker 1 Well, it's, i-it's half Gemara, half Kas-- half Kabbalah, uh, half Kabbalah. It's, it's, it's not-

51:18 Speaker 2 Right.

51:18 Speaker 1 It's not a Baal Batish Yiddish, but-

51:19 Speaker 2 Well, I remember as a kid, I would listen to... I knew Yiddish as a kid, and then listening, you know, listening to Sikha, I didn't understand, uh, three, three quarters of it.

51:27 Speaker 1 Exactly.

51:27 Speaker 2 Yeah.

51:27 Speaker 1 So how, so the, the pe-- And I was the opp-the opposite.

51:31 Speaker 2 Right.

51:32 Speaker 1 Be-because I, I was able to understand the Aramaic, the Aramaic, the Gemara, the, and the Kabbalah. I was therefore able, able to get, get the idea of the Sis.

51:39 Speaker 2 Right. So, so it's very fascinating. I mean, uh, it's, it's very fascinating that you were able to, to pick that up with-within a short time. By the way, the Rebbe's Yiddish, I was listening recently to a few Chiddushim. There's a few that have, that are recorded. In the Chiddushim, the Rebbe does speak a little more of that, uh, you know, the conversational Yiddish. Since like it's a, and it's much harder. It's much, it's a, it's a lot more high, you know, the vocabulary. Not even the vocabulary, the, the, the expressions that the Rebbe uses is very different than the Sikhas. So you're, so you're, so you come to Seven Seventy, and you're, you're totally in. You're, you're, you listen to Reb Yael, you're, you're, uh, you're, you have Lubavitch Minchans. So what was the... When you heard the Rebbe speak, what was the, the, the new... I mean, you said that when you were Chabad, everything was the Rebbe, Rebbe, Rebbe, but you know, they don't know what the, what, what, what it's all, what it's all about. When you come to Seven Seventy, and you're hearing from the Rebbe direct-

52:37 Speaker 1 It's real

52:37 Speaker 2 ... yeah, so what is it?

52:38 Speaker 1 It's real. One of the classic things, thing, is that an a ment vs zogt, he means what he says. You can hear a person speaking honestly. He's not just talking about a dream, a goal, what I w-- you know. The Rebbe, s- whatever he said was very real for him, and therefore it was very real for you. And s- like that was w-- as Bochurim, Mivtzoaim meant something to us. Why? 'Cause when the Rebbe said, "Yet ad yid zo, so a ligin tefillin," that every Jew should put on tefillin. Oh yeah, so that's part of our job to go out and go on the street and make sure that every Jew puts on tefillin. When the Rebbe said every Jew sh- Jewish child sh-child should go to, uh, a camp, a Jewish camp, and so that's actually like the first thing I did, I did in, in, um, in Sach. This was Shavuot Lamad Gimel. The Rebbe sp-spoke about mifi olem v'onen ki misadar etha olam. This was right before the, the half year before the Yom Kippur War. He started speaking mifi olem v'onen ki misadar etha olam. It's a, it's a classic. It's, you know, it's now in the annals of Lubavitch history, quote unquote. The Rebbe s- knew, quote, "Knew this be-- knew the Yom Kippur War before ha-half a year before it's happened, and gave the, the, and gave the inner message, message to defeat the enemy beforehand." We didn't quite understand what was happening in the Ruchnius and what was

54:31 Speaker 1 happening in the future developments. We just know the Rebbe said something. We took it seriously. And I remember g-going up to David Raskin afterwards. So David and I have, have become friends over the, over, over the, um... 'Cause again, David took the Rebbe v- there was no, you know, the, when they, they, they titled the book about David, Abdi David, and that's really what it was. Uh, okay. There was no person who wasn't the Rebbe's eved like David Raskin. I mean, th-this, you know, w-when, when the Rebbe said something, it was real. David took that, you know. So, so I said, so I remember go- went up to David and said, "So, oh, we have to get every, every kid in Jew-- We have to go out and, and try to get... To do something." He says, "What do we do?" I says, "Look, let's develop a program. You know, every, you know, where, where we can get kids into camp. We'll go around to every Jewish school, Hebrew school, you know, educational, you know, day school, sc-school. Put up flyers on the streets, and every J- every Jewish k-kid in New York will get the Rebbe's message." You know, come, that was a little bit of an overstatement. We didn't actually do that. But, but we hit every official place, every official school got the Re- got the Rebbe's message. We rented seven sta-- seven cars going all over, all over New York City to do this. I remember Rav David being excited, "Seven

56:15 Speaker 1 cars doing the, doing the Rebbe's... Seven chariots for the Rebbe's word." He, he-- It was spotless at that time 'cause nobody ever done that before. But yeah. And these were-- What made it happen? Bochurim who took the Rebbe seriously. And the same thing that, that year, the Rebbe spoke about Hanukkah, that every Jew should have a, have a menorah. Oh, every Jew should have a menorah, so we, we went out, we bought up, we went all, all through every Jewish, Jew-Judaica st-store, so bought a bunch of menorahs, gave out menorahs on the street. Then we, we ran out. After a couple of days, there was no more menorahs to buy. Rav David knew somebody who had a metal factory, and we made our own-- They made-- He made special menorahs for, um, for us.

57:09 Speaker 2 Those are the famous Mitzvah Menorahs. That's when they were created.

57:12 Speaker 1 Thousands of year. Yeah. Where did this come from? 'Cause Bochurim heard the Rebbe, and they said, "Oh, he means what he says. Let's make it happen." That was, that was what, you know-- That was the spirit of the Bochurim that started that at that time. In other words, it was u-unique energy which, you know, beforehand there wasn't that same degree of manpower. And I would say, the-- I don't... Whatever, the flexibility wasn't there. We got, we got it done. And that's what's, you know, that's what started... Tanks was, was not the Rebbe's initiative. Tanks was the Bochurim's initiative. Everything, the-- all the, these things, you know, the Rebbe pushed it, but the Rebbe said something, Bochurim thought how to ap-apply it, and we got it done. And that changed Lubavitch into like, "Oh, when the Rebbe says something, he means it, and we mean it. We're gonna try to get-- We're gonna try to make it happen."

58:30 Speaker 2 Mm.

58:32 Speaker 1 That was the spirit of Go-- You know, like... It, it, and it was n-it was semi-new at that time. I mean, like, no-- People have been talking like this, but they never did it. Now we did it.

58:51 Speaker 2 Right.

58:52 Speaker 1 I mean, Miftach Tzion had been there before, but it wasn't quite with the same energy as, a-as this, as this. You know, Miftach Tzion, you went out to sh- for Friday af-- Friday morning, Friday afternoon, you went out to Miftach Tzion, you had your rap, but there wasn't... It didn't-- It was a personal thing. It wasn't, it wasn't having the, the, the, the nefesh, the, the, the energy to-- that, that these later mitzvah men did.

59:20 Speaker 2 Right. And those were happening all your years. May I ask you another question about the sichas? The... Besides those sichas when the Rebbe's speaking about mitzvah yom and all those things, but my, my other question is about what about the Rebbe's sichas in Torah, like the Rashi sichas, the Meimanim, the siyumim that the Rebbe makes. W-What was that to you that was different from when you heard from a Rosh Yeshiva or from o-other people?

59:49 Speaker 1 Look, you look at the Unansher Torah, so see this. What the Rebbe explains there with Modeh Ani, uh, like that's a classic, and he does it in, in all four p- in the four parties of Torah. But really, every Rashi and every Rambam, when it's magnified by, by Pnimiyus HaTorah, it's a different Rashi and a different Rambam. And so that's why, that's why so many people have, have tr-- You know, great Torah scholars look at the Rebbe's, look at the Rebbe's, his Rambams, and oh, some of them pick it up and say, "Wow." And some of them pick it up, and they put it down. 'Cause they... This is a whole new way of, of thinking of Rambam. So the Rebbe's Rashi. When the Rebbe's, you know... When Artskoff put up-- when Artskoff translated Rashi, and they didn't put it in anything from the Rebbe, part of that was political, but part of it was quite honestly, they just... The Rebbe's way of thinking, the Rebbe's way of reading a Rashi is so radically different from the way they do, it was hard for them to understand, a-and therefore it didn't go in. In other words, it was a whole new approach. That's one of the things, you know, I actually wanna go into. What we, we've done in translate, in translating the sichas, is that we've shaped it. On one hand, we're very true to the original. We keep-- And we have a very clear, you know, it's face-to-face translations. There's, there's no deviation

1:02:00 Speaker 1 from the source. On the other hand, there's plenty of explanation so that a person who's not familiar with that style can understand what the Rebbe's doing. And that's very important because as I said before, the, the ibiragang, the, the transition from Elokus and s-- uh, the Elokus kocht, kocht ap psyche to how a normal person understands, it's a transition. And what's taking the way the Rebbe understands something and putting into an American conceptual framework requires a certain shaping. And, uh, yeah, you learn, you know, you learn to do it yourself, but, um, if the text could be-- if that can be made available, and that's what we try to do in our se- in our translations, it's very valuable.

1:03:04 Speaker 2 Okay. So may-maybe this is a springboard that you can talk to me a little bit about Sichas in English. A little bit, like, a little bit of how you got involved in it and what was the seder of doing it and, and what it's all about, what it takes, et cetera.

1:03:20 Speaker 1 Okay. Sichas in English started Teves lamed heh, that's nineteen seventy-eight. I actually wa-wasn't in, in New York at that time. I was with Sichas in Clu- in, in Cleveland. Um, perhaps I was Teves lamed zayin. Mm. Actually, a couple... At that point, it was the first time there were-- then there was a real large amount of Baal Teshuva throughout, uh, throughout Ame-America and throughout the world, for that matter. People who didn't understand Yiddish who wanted to hear it in English. The-- That was the first time there was simultaneous farbrengens, you know, simultaneous translations at the farbrengen. And people wanted, "Oh, can we get copies of what the Rebbe said?" A-and a couple of, of at that time, bochurim, David Leib Grossmann, Levi Weinberg, uh, Guy Menachem Kalus. There was a bunch of people who they could do this, they wanted to do it, and they started. Quite honestly, it was a little bit erratic. Now, these are... So I came back from, from, from Cleve-- I was in Sichas in Cleveland as a bocher. I had just gotten engaged. Shortly, shortly after Purim. It's interesting that, that Purim kind of fe-features as, um, features as, as a, uh, transition point. But shortly after Purim, Purim, I came, I came back to, mm, C-Crown Heights right before, before my wedding. And they said, "Oh, you're here. Great. Take it over. We need somebody who's-- who can do this on a regular basis. Do it." So we start-- I started sh-shortly afterwards, Yo-Yona Apsten came in. Yona

1:05:29 Speaker 1 d-you know, did the organizational work. I did the translation, Yona did the organizational work. I have to... You know, like, Yona knew how to-- Yona gave himself over twenty-four/seven, three hundred and sixty-five days a year to making this pr- I mean, the project happen. I mean, like, you know, guy didn't sleep of... You know, he literally had, had, had, had, had his bed in the office for many years. Really, he was... You know, his bed was in the Sichas in English office. That's, that's where he was twenty-four/seven.

1:06:08 Speaker 2 Even when he was a bocher?

1:06:09 Speaker 1 Making sure the Moshiach... Yeah. Making sure the Moshiach happened. It was-- This was just like, uh, this is the way it happened. So, um, you know, I, I, I, I wouldn't say, say that I had that... My, my bed wasn't in seven/seven. In fact, I was just getting married that time. But, uh, you know. No, we, I mean, we started putting out the Sichas. There's still the first thing, lamed heh. From the second half of lamed heh, we got most of the Sichas. And, um, from lamed tes on, we, we came on a, on a regular basis.

1:06:55 Speaker 2 I have a question. How-- What's the process of translating the Sichas in English? You're doing it from your own Chazara or you're copying the HaNochas that are coming out and translating the HaNochas? How does it work?

1:07:07 Speaker 1 We're definitely co- definitely co- definitely copying the HaNochas, but we were doing something like Lah- what Lahak does, does. I mean, actually, David Feldman, he u- he, he used to, used to say, "Eli, I wish I could do what you did." Because we would synopsize the Sichas. You know, it's like, on one hand, this wasn't a full translation 'cause, hey, the Rebbe's Sichas, the, the Yiddish were forty, fifty pages. The Hebrew was, was al- is already cut down to, to twenty, thirty pages. We wanted to get ten pages, fifteen pages in English. That's, you know, most people can read ten, fifteen pages of that, you know, s-seriously, slightly in about twenty minutes. That's about-- That's what we wanted to get to. We didn't... You know, like, when you pr-produce a sixty-page document, it's self-defeating. Nobody's gonna read it.

1:08:09 Speaker 2 Right. It's actually very, um... I mean, I, I, I use them myself. If I, if I'm watching a farbrengen and I want basically a good synopsis of the Sicha- Basically, you have the whole taichin of the sicha without every detail just to get, understand the, the, the taichin. Sichas in English is great for that.

1:08:28 Speaker 1 Yeah. W-w- again, again, like I said, what I did in Ch-- what I did in Chesed, right? I, I did the same thing. Get a, a flowchart of the Rebbe's ideas and give it, give it over. Then, you know, s- later we, we, we changed a little bit 'cause the Rebbe was... But even, even in the l- even in the later years, his from, you know, in, in, from Mem Ches on, when we did the s-- when I started, um, I took a br-- I did the sichas from lamed, from lamed Ches to, to mem, and I started again in, in mem, in Mem Ches. But from m- you know, even the later sichas when we were m- more attentive to people at that point really w- we wanted to hear exactly what the Rebbe said. So we were more thorough in, in getting it word for, in getting, you know, like I said, not word for word, but, uh, more, more true to, loyal to the se- the text. But, uh, yeah, y- you can't be totally, you can't be totally stuck on the text, o-on the te- on the text. You have to, in an English audience, you have to craft it and synopsize it to a certain extent. Now, in Likutei Sichos we don't do that. Likutei Sichos we give, on the contrary, we expand what the Rebbe, what the Rebbe, what the Rebbe writes, not, not, not synopsize because it's a different process. Likutei Sichos is a direct translation of what

1:10:00 Speaker 1 the Rebbe said, expanded. In other words, when we do look at, when we do a sicha, w-we wanna b- w-we want, want to frame it in a manner which any person can more or less understand what the Rebbe says. That an-anybody who, who, who opens Likutei Sichos will take a look and, "Hey, I can read what it says. It makes a logic, it's a logical sense to me." You've-- The, the terminology, it's a little bit foreign, but it's explained there, and I can follow, g-go, g-go through it step by step.

1:10:34 Speaker 2 Do-- Are you aware of what the Rebbe's, um, reaction or to, to this whole idea of having the sichas in English was?

1:10:44 Speaker 1 Look, the clearest reaction, this was tesfünf lamed, this is, again, tesfünf lamed, uh, lamed tes. We were in di-- We were mostly in diapers. And at that point, Rav Zalman Khan and the director of Vaad Lehavas Hasichas had Emmanuel Shochat produce a translation of, of Likutei Sichos one to five, which is, it was Aleph, Aleph. In English it's one to five. In Hebrew it's, in Yid- in Yiddish it was Aleph and Beis. Now, Emmanuel is Emmanuel. He's like, you know, v- there's very few people like him. But, uh, so I don't know the full process of how and, and what, but before he published it, he, he put it into the Rebbe, and the Re- and he asked the Rebbe's permission to publish. And the Rebbe says, "Shayach levaad sichas in English."

1:11:55 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:11:55 Speaker 1 We got nothing better than that. In other words, that, that was our direct-

1:12:04 Speaker 2 Mandate

1:12:05 Speaker 1 ... stamp of... Yeah. No, and l-later, we, we put out a series, Timeless Patterns in Time. The Rebbe gave us his, his shar. The, the first, this was, these were adapted sichas, you know, not at all a direct, a direct translation. And the Rebbe, uh, he said we could, we could use his shar. That, you know what that meant? In other words, the Rebbe saw... And this is, I wouldn't say w-we were perfect at that time. Far from it. We were very s-- you know, we needed a lot of improvement. But the Rebbe trusted us that we were going in the right direction. We, we, we, we wanted the community's Torah, and he felt that, "Oh, these guys," you know, Yo-Yona and myself, s- other, other people working with us, "we're committed to the goal, and as we get better at it, the, a-as we, we work at it, we'll get better at it." Instead of, you know, like, one of the biggest problems, you know, the, people say that the, the enemy of good is, is not bad, it's excellence.

1:13:26 Speaker 2 Perfection, right?

1:13:27 Speaker 1 People... Yeah. Uh, if you're not perfect, we can't publish you. No. The Rebbe was very much, "Get it out. Get the message over. The message will be effective. It'll do something, and if not, and we'll go from there."

1:13:42 Speaker 2 Right. Um, I'm saying, and the, the, the idea of making this, the sichas accessible to the English-speaking crowd, I mean, this is a, a major step in Havatzelet HaMeayanot. I mean, it, it, uh-

1:13:58 Speaker 1 Look, the H- the Re- how many sichas did the Rebbe speak about Shivim LeOlam? And somebody finally did that.

1:14:09 Speaker 2 Right. And, uh, and, and, and, and recent years, you've been-- The set of Likutei Sichos that you're working on now, which is a total new project, a new access that gives pe- that, that gives the people to, to the Rebbe's Torah, right? That's, that's the most current and recent endeavor that you've been, uh, relationship involved in.

1:14:29 Speaker 1 Yeah. Baruch Hashem. Yeah. It's an am- it's amazing thing and, um, you know, we did six volumes where we showcase the Rebbe first on Ch-- on every Parshah and then e- and every Yuntif, selections from Likutei Sichos. Those are, that's the blue set that people are getting to know now. And the last two years, we've working on Aleph and Beis. Hopefully, um, by this year, maybe Al- maybe Aleph and Beis will come out. We're now in the final process.

1:15:04 Speaker 2 Is that the plan, to, to go Aleph-Beis, to translate the whole Likutei Sichos?

1:15:08 Speaker 1 Let's put it this way. We did Aleph and Beis. Now we're on Gimel and Daled. I've got questions afterwards what, what's exactly what, whether we, we should continue, we don't continue. Quite on... Just like Alf and Beis and Gimel and Daled, uh, there was a gap be- when the Rebbe between-- before Chei HaChai came out, after the Rebbe started editing those Sefas, which became Hei, Hei to Tes. And the, and those Sefas are totally different with a different goal than Alf and Beis. So again, I don't know if we're gonna go for... What's the next stage after, is after Daled? That's already a inner, um-

1:15:53 Speaker 2 I mean, eventually everything is gonna be translated at, at some point.

1:15:57 Speaker 1 Well, yes. Yes, but because look, this is one of my, my points in translation. If you have a physics trans- textbook in Yiddish, can you and I understand it? Mostly not. In other words, you have to know the jargon of the, of the subject before you understand it. So when you're doing a Rambam or, or even an intricate Rashi, is that Shayach to everybody or is it Shayach to somebody who is a student of that? Now, on one hand, obviously, the Rebbe said the Sicha, edited the Sicha, it's Shayach to everybody. On the other hand, Das Tachon is a Shayach to everybody. That's, that's an, that's our, our intern-- that's our internal divide, de- debate.

1:16:52 Speaker 2 But you... One sec.

1:16:53 Speaker 1 And I-

1:16:53 Speaker 2 One second. You just touched on something. The Rambam, you, you actually did translate in its entirety. What was that about?

1:17:01 Speaker 1 Yeah. Look, Rambam I translated entirely, A, because the Rebbe want people to learn it. And again, this is something where I took the Rebbe seriously. Nobody else did, except, uh, Hanoch Bakshal.

1:17:17 Speaker 2 He's-

1:17:17 Speaker 1 Beautiful

1:17:18 Speaker 2 He's the one that published it.

1:17:20 Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah. I remember his words, "Will this make the Rebbe happy?" I said, "The Rebbe will be overjoyed." See, if it was Rebbe, we get magait on them. We were going on this, you know. But the, the Rambam was a s- specific thing. You're learning Rambam.

1:17:38 Speaker 2 Right.

1:17:38 Speaker 1 Now, not every... Now, Lubavitchers learn Rambam. Nobody else in the world learns Rambam. Rosh... And this is, this is the unique thing of the Rebbe, and he's shifting subjects a little bit. But a Rosh Yeshiva learns Rambam when he has a, when he has kasha. He wants to make a pilpul, uh, cook the Rambam either to make a-- either 'cause he wants to understand how, how Rambam looks at the Gemara, or mostly 'cause he wants to make his pilpul and put the Rambam in, in his pilpul. One or two of the other, but it's not learning Rambam as Rambam. Rambam, he wrote his book to be learned Al Haseder, to know six hundred and thirteen mitzvahs, that you should go from Torah Shebichtav to Torah Shebe'al Peh and this is Shelem Torah Shebe'al Peh. So every kid from, from ten to fifteen should, then should learn my Sefer. That's what he writes in his Hakdama. Nobody ever did that, that had that sense of learning Rambam. Well, they do actually do that in, in, in Yemen, in Teman, or they did in Teman for many years. But definitely outside of that, of that small community in Teman who really, they actually follow the Rambam as Halakha. But everybody else in the Yeshiva community never learned Rambam, and that, that's a new revolutionary concept of Rambam. That, "Oh, lear- just learn it Haseder so you wanna understand the six hundred and thirteen mitzvahs." The Rebbe was Mechadeish that Rambam. This is, this is Mechadeish Rashi is,

1:19:21 Speaker 1 Pshuto shel Mikra. Chavel, is a board. This is-- The Rebbe had three teachers. Ra-- If, if you hear who are the three people the Rebbe would always mention after Rangan? Rashi, Rambam, the Rogatchover. However, there's, um, uh, the Torah beChaval is divided into Mikra, Torah Shebichtav-

1:19:46 Speaker 2 Rashi

1:19:46 Speaker 1 Rashi, Pshuto shel Mikra. Torah Shebe'al Peh redacted Halakha, Rambam. Gemara, not the book of Gemara, but the thought process of the Gemara, who the consensus is that? The Rogatchover. And these are the... And the Rebbe was, that's the, the Rebbe, the Re- the Rebbe, you know. And all those things, yes, the Rebbe would've mentioned everybody. But Rashi, Rambam, the Rogatchover. 'Cause in, in these three disciplines, he's, he was dedicated to each, each, the king of each three.

1:20:26 Speaker 2 Yeah. And-

1:20:27 Speaker 1 So-

1:20:29 Speaker 2 No, go ahead.

1:20:31 Speaker 1 Second, so again, second... When the Rebbe speaks of Rambam, it's a totally different Rambam than the actual... Let's put it this way. It's Pshuto shel Rambam. On the other hand, and it's taking the Rambam in a very, in a much deeper way than you would get it just from the text. Rambam, the text is just to teach how to do the mitzvah. The Rebbe is deeper than the most, th- th- th- than the HaRav Chaim or anything else. In a sense, he's, he's taking it much deeper. But yeah- He's focusing ultimately on what, on what the Rambam wants. But yeah, so, so going into when a, a sicha on a Rambam is really you have to get into the Rebbe's modus, you know, way of thought. So is that shayach for everybody? I don't know. On a, on a constant basis, we, we have-- You know, we do sa-samples of how the Rebbe does, so you can see how, how the Rebbe attacks a Rambam. We just-- We have samples of Rashi, but most of our sichas are focused on the Avodas Hashem, 'cause quite honestly, that's what people are looking for. Wanna see, see how the Rebbe t-taught you how to face life's questions, answer your, answer the personal issues which you come up, up in relationships, be it with Makom, be it with Chaverim.

1:21:55 Speaker 2 So you're, you're assuming that someone that wants to learn a Rashi sicha or a Nigla sicha probably is able to look at the original? Is that, is that the assumption?

1:22:05 Speaker 1 To do it well, yeah, you have to. I mean, just as I said, like, like I said, to, to learn a psychology text-textbook or learn a, a textbook in physics, you gotta, you, you gotta be somewhat of a, of an expert i-i-in that. So yeah, if, if we give you a-- If we'll spell out a specific sicha, we, we, and we, we do that, we, we have it. But to do every Rashi sicha, uh, you really gotta be, be into Rashi to do that. So that's, uh, that's, that's my, my own personal question, whether we actually will do that or not.

1:22:39 Speaker 2 Right. So my question is, do you think it's beneficial for someone that is learning in yeshivas or Lubavitcher and, and grew up in, in that system, and he knows Lashon Kodesh well, he can read the original. Is there, is there, is there a benefit for him to utilizing things from sichas in English for his own understanding, or it's not necessary?

1:23:01 Speaker 1 Look, let, let, let, let's step back. I got grandkids, go, go to Lubavitch high schools. My grandkids unfortunately don't know Yiddish perfectly. Some of them, yeah, some of them, no. Even those who do, it's not per-- Are not perfect in it. Mo- A lot of them are not. They're very-- A-and they're all fluent in Y-- In English. Their English is better. Even those who know Yiddish, their English is better than Yiddish. So in Eretz Yisrael, the people, the people who are learning, who, who they speak Hebrew, they're learning the sichas in, in translations, into Lashon Hakodesh. People think, "Oh, it's in English. It's just, it's teilech. It's n- the, the holiness is gone." On the contrary, I s-- I look at that as a milah. You're right, it's-- The holiness is not, is gone. You start to understand. You know, it's very easy when something-- When it's a holy text, in text you're saying-

1:24:13 Speaker 2 Teilech

1:24:15 Speaker 1 ... "Well, I learnt the Gemara. Gemara zok. I'm learning the Gemara, but I don't under- but I'm singsong and it'll go along, and I'm, I don't understand a single word that I'm saying." If you read it in English, you're forced to look at the words and understand what they say. And that's what the Rebbe wanted us to do, I think, to understand what he meant. So yeah. Now, so I think at a, at a beginning stage, it is definitely very valuable to... Again, we have facing translations, so you're not, you know, we're not telling you not to learn the Yiddish. It's on the, it's, it's two columns on the same page. Not even, you know, it's, it's not even one page on the other page.

1:25:12 Speaker 2 You look at the seconds, yeah.

1:25:13 Speaker 1 Two columns on the same page.

1:25:14 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:25:14 Speaker 1 Yeah. So that, you know, the, the-- It, that it's the same text. It's not-

1:25:19 Speaker 2 By the way, that's, I, I think that was an amazing... I don't know whoever's decision that was, that was an amazing chiddush of this latest volume. Is that-

1:25:26 Speaker 1 Spotli- spotlight design. They, they're, you know, like, I have to... You know, like, I remember we-- Some of us ar- some of us argued with them 'cause it's easier to read English as a separate page. And their vort, and they were right about it, is that, "No, we want people to go-

1:25:44 Speaker 2 Right

1:25:45 Speaker 1 ... back and forth."

1:25:46 Speaker 2 But it al- it also makes it like you don't have to be, "Oh, it's English, forget about it," or, "It's Hebrew." Like, y- anyone can open the Sefer-

1:25:52 Speaker 1 Yeah

1:25:52 Speaker 2 ... and utilize it, you know? Yeah.

1:25:55 Speaker 1 And you see immediately that the Heb- that the Hebrew and, and the Yiddish or the, or the Yiddish and the, and the English are connected one to the other. So that's, you know, Baruch Hashem. That's, that's the, the ultimate goal there. But so again, I'm not saying that, that you should, that a person re- should read only the English, forget about the original. And definitely , excuse me, as, as you go all, go, go deeper into the text, there definitely is an advantage in seeing Lashon HaRav, seeing the nuances o-of the original that you, that you can't, um, really get in, in English. A hundred percent.

1:26:43 Speaker 2 Right.

1:26:44 Speaker 1 Having said that, I, I have friends who read my translations, and they know Yiddish. "Hey, what you did here was amazing. I understand the sicha much better than I did in the original." 'Cause we taught it. I mean, we've got an amazing staff.

1:27:07 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:27:09 Speaker 1 Rabbi Weinberg adds, Shalom Zurkin is in, adds, Shmuel, Shmuely Apsan, his brother, his brother Z-Z-Zalmi Mayer, you know. We've got a bunch of people working on this, you know, solid minds who put in, each one puts in their, their own effort to make this, this work accessible and understand, and that there's, you know, the full depth of what the Rebbe's saying is there. I, I know it can't be perfect, but like I said, I have friends who understand what the, understand the sicha very well, and they look at what we do, they say the same. You know, this is a... It's amazing.

1:27:48 Speaker 2 Right.

1:27:48 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:27:49 Speaker 2 Okay. Definitely, uh, a major, major... I mean, the, the, the vast, the, the, the volume of what you've done is, uh, is pretty remarkable. And, uh, should, uh, continue being And I really appreciate, uh, this conversation. Very, uh, very intriguing.

1:28:13 Speaker 1 Good talking to you.